Four Canadian startups have recently announced fresh funding rounds to fuel their growth. Here’s the latest on who raised, how much, from whom, and what they’ll be putting the new funds toward.
Thinkific raises $22 million in growth financing
Vancouver-based Thinkific, which offers a platform for businesses to create and host online courses, has raised $22 million CAD in growth financing, bringing the startup’s total funding to date to $25 million.
Rhino Ventures, a Vancouver-based venture capital firm, led the round, having also led Thinkific’s past three financings. Thinkific will use the new capital to accelerate product innovation.
Thinkific claims it has seen significant growth during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Founded in 2012, Thinkific aims to help businesses create, market, and sell their own customized online courses. The startup claims it has helped more than 50,000 entrepreneurs and businesses earn more than $650 million through online courses to date.
Thinkific also claims it has seen significant growth over the last few years, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. The startup reported a 200 percent increase in online courses being created on its platform since March, and also claimed 150 percent year-over-year revenue growth.
Greg Smith, co-founder and CEO of Thinkific, claimed that with the growth impacted by COVID-19, the course creation industry has been “changed forever.”
Attendease raises $1 million investment facility
Vancouver-based event automation startup Attendease has raised $1 million CAD in non-dilutive financing from TIMIA Capital.
Attendease has built an event management platform for corporate event teams that facilitates the management of an entire range of events in a wide range of types and sizes.
TIMIA Capital provides financing to SaaS companies in exchange for payments based on revenue. The firm’s payments are tied to monthly revenue, increasing in strong revenue months and decreasing in low-revenue months, until the capital, plus a multiple, is repaid. The new funding will be used to accelerate Attendease’s sales and marketing efforts.
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“Venture funding doesn’t guarantee success. For Attendease, the addition of smaller, non-dilutive capital injections as we grow organically makes sense and keeps everyone’s expectations in check,” said Attendease CEO Todd Heintz. “This approach allows us to continue on our strong growth path, add capital incrementally, and ultimately still win in the long run.”
Founded in 2004, Attendease began by working with corporate events teams to build solutions to fit their needs. The startup then evolved from being a services business to become a full recurring revenue SaaS business.
Replica Analytics raises $1 million pre-seed round
Ottawa-based software startup Replica Analytics has raised $1 million CAD in pre-seed capital from two institutional investors and an undisclosed international angel investor group.
“The additional funding will allow us to expand our work with the life sciences industry and the healthcare delivery sector.”
– Khaled El Emam, Replica
Replica Analytics claimed there was no lead investor in the round of financing. The two institutional investors included Facit, a commercialization venture firm supporting oncology innovations and Mitacs, which supports innovations in collaboration with universities.
Replica Analytics has developed a technology to generate privacy-protected synthetic data while maintaining the statistical properties of real data, and without breaching regulatory privacy requirements.
Synthetic data is a process of data anonymization and is used in a variety of fields as a filter for information that would otherwise compromise the confidentiality of particular aspects of the data. Replica Analytics is looking to apply its software to collecting, accessing, and sharing health data.
The new funds will be used to accelerate Replica Analytics’ research, and will also be put toward the development of new data synthesis and simulation technologies.
“The additional funding will allow us to expand our work with the life sciences industry and the healthcare delivery sector, and invest in additional R&D to include dynamic privacy risk assessments and enable simulator markets,” said Khaled El Emam, co-founder and director of Replica Analytics.
HealthTech Connex raises $2 million from BDC Capital
Surrey, British Columbia-based HealthTech Connex has raised $2 million in non-dilutive growth capital from BDC Capital’s Growth and Transition Capital division.
The funding will be used to launch the latest version of the NeuroCatch Platform, expand sales and marketing efforts, and seek clearance for the sale of the device in the United States, as well as to pursue research and development.
Founded by Kirk Fisher and Ryan D’Arcy in 2013, Healthtech Connex and its subsidiary NeuroCatch are the developers of the NeuroCatch Platform, a portable device that measures brain waves, and was approved by Health Canada last year.
The product is already used in Canadian clinics, however the startup is looking to deploy the NeuroCatch Platform in the United States.
Image source Unsplash. Photo by Annie Spratt.
