Scenic, smart, sea port, and sustainable do a good job of describing Vancouver and the startup scene
Some may call Vancouver the Canadian Seattle, since it’s just north of Washington state. But those who love the city know it’s not copying anyone. The densest city in Canada thanks to a reliance on residential high rises in lieu of suburban sprawl, Vancouver is the third largest city in Canada, with a total of nearly 2.5 million people in the metropolitan area.
Frequently named one of the most livable cities in the world (something it does share with Seattle), Vancouver has stood on the world stage multiple times, such as when the city hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics. Five public universities in the area prepare students for technical careers and many start tech businesses.
Also nicknamed Hollywood North for all the TV shows filmed in the area to take advantage of Canadian tax breaks, media savvy helps their tech startups as well. Sustainability ranks high in Vancouver, a field rife with tech startups.
1. Hootsuite
One of the first and still most popular “meta-media” players, Hootsuite makes it possible to juggle a variety of social media accounts without dropping balls right and left. Social media control is difficult, but with Hootsuite thousands of paying customers find that it’s relatively painless.
Starting not long after the iPhone appeared, Hootsuite opened their doors in November 2008, just as social media was finding its footing. In 13 months, they pulled in $1.9 million in Series A funding. Four rounds and 10 investors later, their total financing to date is $246.9 million from investors like Accel Partners and Fidelity Investments.
2. Zymeworks
Big cities with multiple universities and hospitals sprout medical startups. Zymeworks plans to greatly improve biotherapeutics. Utilizing the body’s own defenses, Zymeworks targets biospecific antibodies. Another frontier? Protein engineering.
Founded on April 1, 2004 (no fooling), Zymeworks stayed under the radar until March 2008 with an angel investor flew in with $1.3 million in funding. A bit more than a year later, CTI Capital arrived with $3.2 million and another $8.1 million in September 2011. A total of eight funding rounds have backed Zymeworks with $125.87 million in financing. The company went public in May 2017 at $13.00 per share and gathered $58.5 million in gross proceeds.
3. BuildDirect
How does a company that launched in 1999 in the home improvement market count as a tech startup? Because BuildDirect stayed quiet and “in the kitchen,” so to speak, for years then turned up the heat with $16 million in venture money in June 2012, 13 years after the door opened. Why? The BuildDirect Home Marketplace and the new Gateway Supply Chain upended the traditional market.
After their initial venture funding, $4 million followed in October 2012, $13 million a year later, $30 million in Series B in January 2014, and finally $50 million in December of that year. They raised $110.27 million in total once they got tech-i-fied with their online design tools.