Glen Lougheed

What are the AI investment trends in Canada? Check out this excellent analysis from the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) team

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Some interesting thoughts in the inexorable march forward of each AI generation, but also the limits to where AI really shines. In terms of repurposing exisitng content, there seem to be some real value adds here - but exactly how useful this 'professional' podcast really is remains to be seen.

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It was great to speak with the Logic earlier this week and share Tidal Venture Partners perspective on the subject of fund domiciling strategy.  It may sound like we’re in the weeds on this topic, but the question of where to domicile is a growing conversation and consideration for many Canadian fund managers with big long-term implications for our innovation economy.  The challenge of Canadian companies remaining Canadian owned will only become more acute if more Canadian funds start to domicile in other jurisdictions.

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Two years ago Cameron and I spun out Spearhead Corp Dev from Firepower. With a new identity came a new set of values to live by. We picked 6. We picked well: they have stood the test of growth and the test of time. They are one of the few things that haven’t changed over the past 2 years. Except for one: “Act like an owner”. By that, we meant: “Be accountable to the commitments you make; the responsibilities you take on; and the relationships you build. Deliver against the odds, against the obstacles or challenges that may get in your way.” And it’s been incredible to help our entire team adopt this mindset and approach, and help them see what is possible. That said. All the buzz around #foundermode over this past weekend led me to challenge our use of the word “owner”. Reading the piece by Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator, that set off socials on fire, it’s clear that “Act like a founder” is what we truly meant. Graham cited Brian Chesky of Airbnb, who said: “The less hands-on I was at Airbnb, the more I got sucked into problems. And by the time I got sucked into a problem, it was like 10 times as much work.” Instead, he decided: “I’m going to be involved in every single detail. And Airbnb is not going to do anything more than I can personally focus on.” Founder mode is exactly, precisely, absolutely on point. This restated value means to guide our team to approach their day to day with the same oompf as the legendary hands-on founders whose names are tied to founder mode (Steve Jobs, Mark Zukerberg, Tobias Lütke, Elon Musk, Patrick Collison, Jeff Bezos, to list a few). By contrast, a lot of owners are passive; often, they are just capital. Nothing wrong with that, to be clear—we simply want to align our corporate values to where they have the most impact, which is with Moritz, Daniel, Hunter, Kimberly, Bobby, Feargal, Thomas, Abdus-Samad, Aianna, and their teams. I’m absolutely jumping on that bandwagon. Get me the merch.

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The Access Group has acquired Paytronix, a leading customer engagement platform for convenience stores and restaurants. The deal, announced on Nov. 1, 2024, aims to expand Paytronix’s platform offerings and accelerate its growth. The acquisition will also double The Access Group’s North American team and integrate its business management solutions, such as CRM, inventory, and accounting, with Paytronix’s loyalty programs, mobile apps, and online ordering tools. Paytronix will retain its name and continue serving major brands like Panera Bread and QuickChek Corporation. Both companies expect the partnership to enhance their value and growth in the U.S. market. Read More: https://lnkd.in/ezdJwzYm C-Store Dive Jessica Loder Branded Hospitality Ventures Hospitality Hangout Podcast #Hospitality #Growth #Technology #Innovation Andy Crofts Jo Fontaine John Coldicutt James Swaine Rachael Moss Charles Gray Dan Murphy Chris Lanno Matt d'Arbeloff Stefan Kochi

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Collision Conf is one of the biggest tech+AI events in North America and I am looking forward to learning more in this exploding space. If anyone is heading that way, feel free to ping and we can connect! #AI #generativeAI #digitaltransformation

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Below is a good summary and context for the Q3 quarterly report released by the CVCA. On the surface, it seems like it was a good quarter for venture investment in Canadá. But a quick look under the surface paints a potentially very different picture: - the 130 deals closed in Q3 matches the lows during COVID in 2020 - the $2,651MM in deal value appears fairly robust other than the heady days of 2021. But it includes both the Clio deal of $1,240MM and the Cohere deal of $616MM leaving the remaining 128 deals totalling $795MM, matching the levels last seen during COVID in 2020 - the vast majority of the source of the capital invested in Q3 are from US or other foreign sources of capital - early stage investments continue their trend of performing poorly this year What does this all mean? Not really sure yet. It certainly was not a good quarter of activity but it’s too early to call this a trend. But is it a leading indicator that deal activity will continue to be constrained? Is there evidence of a lack of Canadian source capital required to invest in startups, and in particular, early stage opportunities. When the Federal government decided to increase capital gains taxes, many people in the innovation community sounded the alarm bells. The fear was that such an increase will further take the air out of the sails of funding startups in Canadá. While it is still too early to conclude the impact of such a move, it is clear the timing of this decision is very unfortunate because there is a clear trend that the activity in venture from Canadian sources of capital is slowing down materially.

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Are you a B2B software startup founder at the very start? Then you have to meet this early-stage investor! This week's findfunding.vc spotlight is on Dominic Lau from Ripple Ventures. He: 🇨🇦 Is Vancouver and Toronto based 🎣 Loves to fish 🎶 Founded the RippleX Fellowship - a platform to help underrepresented founders access mentorship, intros, and the tools to get from idea to revenue to funding Amongst founders, Dominic and his team at Ripple Ventures, including Matt Cohen, are known for being hands-on partners who open valuable networks, navigate challenges together, and assist in closing crucial revenue and funding deals. Make sure to: ✉️ Pitch him at [email protected] 👀 Look into the RippleX Fellowship - they take 10 companies 2x a year through the Founder Fellowship program and also back companies through the Fellow Fund For more, check out our funder spotlight card below along with Ripple Ventures' profile on findfunding.vc (link in comments).

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Come join the Future of Frontier Technologies AI & blockchain event panel in Santa Monica! ✨ We are hosting an event on Friday, May 3rd during @Farcaster's FarCon weekend. Which will bring many blockchain experts & builders to LA! Emerging LA is collaborating with Lightspeed's Faction VC as a co-host, with Partner Timothy K. moderating a panel. The panel will discuss the questions that you are probably wondering about these technologies: • How can AI and blockchain work together? • How will these frontier technologies impact industries today? • What are the real-world use cases that these technologies solve? • What are the current dynamics between innovation and regulation? ​One on hand, AI offers the promise of abundance, democratizing content creation but will open the door to (deep)fakes and mistrust. On the other hand, ​Blockchain offers digital scarcity, authentication, and trust in a world inundated with digital replicas. --- The audience will be filled with founders, technical builders, investors, and industry executives in sectors that are most relevant to these trends: Gaming, media, content, finance, social. The early bird ticket sold out quickly last week and the general admission tickets expire on Wednesday, so don't miss out and grab yours soon! Partners for this event include Sunset Ventures and AI LA as well as others in town: • LA schools & clubs: Wharton Club of Southern California, Wharton Digital Assets Club, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Blockchain , and Blockchain at USC • CPG startups & Brands: Studio TBD, doorsa, Red Bull --- PROMO CODE DISCOUNTS! If you are a student or alum from Penn/Wharton, Harvard, USC, reach out and ask for code!! 😉 See you on Friday! (Link to event in comments) #ai #blockchain #farcon #web3 #LA

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As a founder, have you ever been curious about this whole angel investing thing? This week's findfunding.vc spotlight is on an investor who's an expert in it you simply have to know: Matt Wilson, MBA from Allied Venture Partners. He: 🇨🇦 Is Calgary based 😇 Manages one of Canada's largest angle investor syndicates (now at 1,800+ members!) 🏒 Worked as a professional ice hockey referee, which he says shares remarkable similarities with investing Amongst founders, Matt Wilson, is known for bringing empathy and perspective as a former founder himself. Aside from financial support, his goal is to be the 'right' investor - one that aligns with a founder's vision, shares his network, and provides strategic insights when asked. ✉️ Make sure to pitch him, invest, scout, advise and more at https://linktr.ee/alliedvc For more, check out our funder spotlight card below along with Allied Venture Partners' profile on findfunding.vc (link in comments).

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Any talk about the growth of the AI chip business is usually driven by stories about how dominant Nvidia's market share is, or how companies like AMD and Intel are trying their best to catch up. So it might be easy to assume that there isn't a chance for startups to compete. But several Canadian startups are finding a place in the chip market, which has room for them to co-exist with and compliment what's being sold by the big multinationals (and, possibly, disrupt them). https://lnkd.in/gm_gs9m9

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Abundance AND impact? Yes, please! 🌳 Merging historical IRRs of 35% with social impact investing, our search fund is a creative, emergent and exciting way to shape the future of Canadian small business. The New York Times did a great piece on traditional search funds and the opportunities in this space. #regenerativeleadership #canadiansearch #canadiansmb #eta #impactinvesting

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Spent a wonderful week in Canada with family! Now back to business.. Here's your weekly AI update: 🔙 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐬: 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 Week 51 | August 5 - August 11 The OpenAI Brain Drain Industry: 🚨OpenAI co-founder John Schulman leaves for Anthropic; President Greg Brockman is taking extended leave through the end of year. What's interesting is that three of their most technical co-founders (Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, Andrej Karpathy) have all left the company now. This then begs the question - is this a result of natural silicon-valley attrition, or is there something deeper going on here? And moreover, how will this impact the technical moat that OpenAI has built over the years? (https://lnkd.in/gztRKhwV) 🚨Google announced that new Gemini AI-powered features will be incorporated in a variety of home devices, such as Google Home and Nest (https://lnkd.in/gV2QacAQ?). It also announced a significant reduction in token cost of Gemini 1.5 Flash (https://lnkd.in/gbNe6yNU?) 🚨Figure releases Figure 02, it's newest humanoid robot. Figure has been actively testing robots with BMW at a manufacturing plant. Figure last raised $675M Series B in February 2024, valuing the company at $2.6 billion. (https://lnkd.in/gZnPSke4) 🚨Mark Zuckerberg said on Meta's Q2 earning call that to train Llama 4, the company will need 10x more compute than what was needed to train Llama 3. (https://lnkd.in/g5pEPrTw?) 🚨Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, renewing claims that the company is betraying its founding aims of benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits. (https://lnkd.in/gAk5grU6) Financing and M&A: 🚨Groq raises $640m in Series D at a $2.8B valuation. The round was led by Blackrock Private Equity Partners with participation from other investors such as Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco, KDDI, and Samsung Catalyst Fund. (https://lnkd.in/gRtKQKvW?) 🚨Hugging Face acquires Seattle data storage startup Xethub. The HF team plans to integrate Xethub's backend storage technology, enabling developers to host more large models and datasets than currently possible. CEO Clem Delangue 🤗 confirmed this was the largest acquisition the company has made thus far. (https://lnkd.in/g8fJ-BjT) 🚨OpenAI is leading a $60m Series B funding round for Opal Camera, a maker of professional-grade webcams(https://lnkd.in/gMT9dkTG) 🚨ProRata.ai a company that has invented an attribution technology to properly compensate content owners, has raised a $25m Series A, led by Prime Movers Lab, Mayfield Fund and Revolution Ventures. (https://lnkd.in/gumjbWmj) R&D: 🚨Alibaba Group releases Qwen2-math, a SOTA model for math-specific tasks. (https://lnkd.in/g8Jh3M7T?) Other Interesting Resources: 🚨 Between May and August, more Humane AI Pins were returned than purchased (https://lnkd.in/gy56qpKm?). 😯

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The AI hype bubble is almost over. When investors refused to fund new AI startups because they know they’re going to fail, then the AI hype bubble is starting to fail. Even the most clueless, Investors now know that this is a bubble waiting to burst like the metaverse bubble and the dotcom bubble. And nobody wants to be left, holding the back on this bubble. The era of free money iis over with interest rates sky high. When big tech companies are losing money on AI and the bigger AI startups are demonstrating that they are all dead and struggling to even have revenue, then no one is interested in funding, smaller AI startups that they don’t believe will be profitable anytime soon. People aren’t waiting for an AI unicorn to break out. They are waiting for Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and similar to start buying distressed AI startups. Collapsing companies and minimal paths to profitability doesn’t help a space that was already overhyped. Don’t forget in all this mess that the unfortunate reality is that engagement and retention don’t match installs and downloads. What I mean by this is the most basic of mobile tracking were ignored. You don’t judge success in the mobile market based on downloads or installs, but rather based on retention and engagement. What this means is, it’s not actually impressive for OpenAI to get to 100 million users quickly if 2% of them retain. The question is not how many people signed up for a free account. The question is how many monthly active users and daily active users do AI startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Stability, and others have. And how many are paying customers? And what we are finding is that retention is in low single digits. The reality is that AI startups are getting users the way that mobile free to play did. And they haven’t found a way to actually make money on that. Don’t ask an AI startup how many users signed up. Ask them how many DAUs and MAUs they have. Ask them what their ARPDAU is. What you will find is that every number is low. AI startups have no idea how to do monetization, and they don’t have regular active users in any volume. What this points to is that they’re all going to fold or get bought.

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AI Meets TED. Looking forward to hosting this Braindate(tm) with fellow TEDsters in Vancouver. AI: Incredible Potential or Horrifying Peril? Let’s take sides. Let’s debate and discuss 😎 #AIDecade #TED2024

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Check out this epic interview.

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South Africa has made significant strides in the transition to renewable energy over the last two years and has ambitious plans for the next two years. Between 2021 and 2023, the country increased its total renewable energy capacity to over 10,623 megawatts. This was a modest increase from the previous year but indicative of steady growth in the sector​. Looking ahead, South Africa aims to dramatically increase the share of renewable energy in its electricity mix. By 2030, it is projected that renewables could supply nearly 49% of the country's electricity needs, a considerable rise from current levels. This goal is supported by both governmental policy shifts and increasing private sector involvement in renewable energy projects​. Thanks to the AI revolution the amount of electricity we need is limitless.

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"He's all sizzle, no steak." Jas Johal's and Richard Zussman's scathing assessment of Ken Sim, FCPA, FCA in "Ken Sim - Our Deeply Unserious Mayor?" on 980 CKNW. (Excerpt) "Now, as I've said, this highlights for me, the bigger issue which essentially is we have a Mayor who is not very serious for a city dealing with very serious challenges. "It's a city with a $2 billion budget, yet still goes cap in hand looking for corporate sponsorship because it has difficulty balancing its books. "You have a fiscal conservative who in the last 2 years raised property taxes by 18%, yet Kennedy Stewart raised property taxes by 24% in 4 years. At the rate this mayor is going, taxes will be even higher than that leftwing Mayor, Kennedy Stewart. "Think about this for a second...community centre fees have gone up, parking fees have gone up. This mayor promised to bring in his 3-3-1 policy which means you'd only have to wait 3 days for approvals when it came to home additions, 3 weeks for townhouses, 3 months for midrises and 1 year for highrises...has any of that come to fruition? I don't think so...no one has seen that. "He's also increased the mayor's budget...it's now a political office more than anything else. "He's run on being trasnparent. Try getting information on FIFA World Cup from him. "And what about infrastructure? Look at the Kits Pool, a landmark in the city. It's not going to be open this summer at all. The Stanley Park train...I don't even think it's wheelchair accessible. And on and on it goes. "He says he wants to fix the Park Board, now he says he wants to get rid of Park Board. That's fine if you agree with him but that tells me he doesn't even get along with his own people. "This man has been handed a super majority and what have we seen from him? Not a lot. And considering he's the first Asian major in the city...congratulations to him, I think that's a wonderful achievement...but has he levereaged that to build the City, to push the City, to challenge the City when it comes to anti-Asian racism in a meaningful way. Has he gotten involved in part of the broader conversation around foreign interference? "He doesn't have the gravitas in my personal opinion. That's what I have seen. He's all sizzle, no steak." City of Vancouver ABC Vancouver TEAM for a Livable Vancouver #vanpoli #vancouver Colleen Hardwick Bill Tieleman Business Council of British Columbia Greater Vancouver Board of Trade                  https://lnkd.in/gPYwmqSD

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Sometimes timing is everything and our launch of the first public Dogecoin proxy in Canada as CSE:SPIR and the US as OTC:SPLCF couldn't have been any better. The strategy is 2 fold: 1) Create and develop more utility for the Dogecoin ecosystem thus accelerating adoption and the institutionalization for global markets 2) Introduce an on-chain tokenized asset management platform that can take in crypto or fiat in exchange for LP exposure to traditional asset management funds and annual yield or distribution. As an example: Dogecoin can now allocate to real estate on-chain making 8-12% / yr and receive distributions in any currency or coin they deem. This is a business that is merging traditional asset management with digital asset management which is one of the largest trends underway globally, and we have a 16-24 month regulatory moat before we see any public listed full prospectus cleared competition. Bitcoin reaches its peak price in every cycle ~500 days post-halving like clockwork, which puts us in Sept 2026. I suspect the rest of the ecosystem will follow as always, especially Dogecoin.

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