A Big Month for Canadian SaaS
A milestone month for the Canadian SaaS ecosystem with a flurry of activity from Omers Ventures, Wealthsimple, OneEleven, Real Matters, Freshbooks, Shopify, SAAS NORTH, Trulioo, Beanworks, and a guest appearance by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
According to Gartner Inc., The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 18 percent in 2017 to total $246.8 billion. SaaS is expected to grow 20.1 percent to $46.3 billion with North America continuing to lead the way and Canada playing a significant role.
Last week, Omers Ventures closed its third fund, stating $300 million in commitments. They currently have $800 million in assets under management. The Omers portfolio of companies includes: Shopify, Hootsuite, Vision Critical, Vidyard, Klipfolio, Hopper, Hootsuite, Build Direct, Jobber, Wattpad, Nudge, and many more. Omers Ventures say their companies have raised an additional $1.2 billion in capital and have created over 5000 jobs.
In new Series B funding, 29 year old Michael Katchen of Wealthsimple raised another $37 million. Now at $74 million in funding, the $37 million dollar injection comes from Power Financial Corporation Group of Companies. Wealthsimple competes in the robo-advisor fintech vertical, with $1 billion CAD in assets and over 30,000 customers in Canada and the US. Justin Trudeau paid Wealthsimple a visit to congratulate them.
OneEleven, Canada’s largest scale-up innovation hub, celebrated it’s 250,000 square foot expansion in Toronto’s new Union park innovation hub project. Bilal Khan, CEO of OneEleven, hosted the Prime Minister and Toronto’s Mayor on a discussion around tech and innovation.
Real Matters, a Canadian real estate data firm and Whitecap Ventures Partners company, has gone IPO. This marks the biggest IPO in Canada since Shopify. Real Matters raised about $157 million in the IPO, giving the company a valuation in excess of C$1 billion.
Looking to reinvent your service/platform? Freshbooks has done it as successfully and smoothly as possible. Mike McDerment, founder and CEO of Freshbooks, and his leadership team did something most organizations would never dare to do; they created another service called BillSpring to build out the new Freshbooks platform. Freshbooks’ reinvention is likely to become a go to case study for SaaS companies looking to upgrade or reinvent their technology.
Trulioo, a Vancouver based digital identification verification service, was recognized as a CNBC top 50 Disruptor company for 2017. Trulioo tracks twice as many people as Facebook; 4 billion.
Vancouver based Beanworks, an accounting automation platform, raised $4.5 million in series A funding. Together with CEO, Catherine Dahl, the funding was led by the Vancouver Founder Fund and TIMIA Capital.
Shopify Announces lead sponsorship of SAAS NORTH Conference, Canada’s SaaS Conference. Tobi Lütke founder and CEO of Shopify, John Ruffalo of Omers Ventures, and Mike McDerment, CEO of Freshbooks were all speakers last year. This year’s conference will have 70+ speakers and 1200+ attendees.
