Plus: Willow.ca acquired by rental platform Guiker.
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BetaKit partners with Good Future
(BETAKIT)
BetaKit has announced a new strategic partnership with Good Future to fuel the growth of Canada’s leading startup and technology publication.
Good Future, the family office of Canadian entrepreneurs Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar, will support the advancement of BetaKit’s business and inject capital as the new majority shareholder. Good Future’s investment will accelerate the growth of BetaKit’s editorial and business teams from coast to coast, with new hires already on the way!
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Coinbase’s head of policy on latest in Canadian crypto regulation
(BNN BLOOMBERG)
Faryar Shirzad, chief policy officer at Coinbase, joined BNN Bloomberg to discuss Coinbase’s ongoing conversations with Canadian regulators on cryptocurrency and its latest meeting with the Shopify and OSC CEOs.
“The regulators in Canada have done an excellenet job in providing a path for companies like ours to register and provide services to our customers in a way that’s compliant and trusted,” Shirzad said.
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Real estate investment startup Willow.ca acquired by rental platform Guiker
(BETAKIT)
Toronto-based proptech startup Willow.ca, which offers a fractional real estate investment platform, has been acquired by Montréal-based rental platform Guiker for an undisclosed amount.
Following the acquisition, which closed last week, Willow.ca’s platform features have been replicated on Guiker’s platform. In a statement sent to BetaKit, Guiker CEO Nan Hao said all of Willow.ca’s existing users have been migrated to Guiker
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Payments Canada’s Tracey Black on shaking up the country’s payment system
(THE LOGIC)
Tracey Black, president and CEO of Payments Canada, a non-profit organization in charge of Canada’s payment infrastructure, spoke with The Logic in the run-up to the release of the latest federal Fall Economic Statement.
In the interview, she answered Payments Canada’s critics, and talked about her hopes for the Real-Time Rail.
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Two years after Graphite Ventures spinout, MaRS IAF is ready to invest again
(BETAKIT)
Since its launch in 2008, the Toronto-based MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF) has grown into one of the country’s most active early-stage venture capital (VC) firms. But after Graphite Ventures was spun out from IAF in late 2021 as a private sector fund, IAF lost nearly all of its employees. Emil Savov was hired and tasked with rebuilding the IAF team.
His work is now getting closer to completion.
“We’re ramping up,” Savov, IAF’s managing director, told BetaKit in an exclusive interview. “The idea is to bring [IAF] to the strength that it was before the [Graphite] spinoff, and maybe even go beyond that.”
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Apple Pulls Plug on Goldman Credit-Card Partnership
(THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)
Apple is pulling the plug on its credit-card partnership with Goldman Sachs, the final nail in the coffin of the Wall Street bank’s bid to expand into consumer lending.
The tech giant recently sent a proposal to Goldman to exit from the contract in the next roughly 12 to 15 months, according to people briefed on the matter. The exit would cover their entire consumer partnership, including the credit card the companies launched in 2019 and the savings account rolled out this year.
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How talent across Canada can break into tech
(BETAKIT)
Despite layoffs and economic uncertainty, Canada still faces a tech talent shortage. Yet many viable candidates who could help fill the gap often struggle to build the networks and skills necessary to break into the industry.
Speaking with BetaKit, Pablo Listingart, Executive Director of ComIT, explained more about how Team-UP’s programming and structure help people successfully break into tech.
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SoFi Is Exiting Crypto With Banking Regulators Stepping Up Scrutiny
(BNN BLOOMBERG)
SoFi Technologies Inc., the fast growing one-stop shop for financial-services products, is exiting crypto even with token prices surging because of increased scrutiny of the sector by banking regulators.
The San Francisco-based company told crypto customers Wednesday they will need to liquidate their accounts in coming weeks, or move to crypto exchange and wallet provider Blockchain.com.
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Getting hybrid work right requires building a long-term plan
(BETAKIT)
The future came early for Canadian businesses, as hybrid work shifted from a COVID-19 emergency response to a permanent reality. Now, some sixty-five percent of Canadian knowledge workers work in a remote or hybrid format.
In a recent BetaKit Live, three experts—Denis Gaudreault, the country manager for Intel Canada, Michael Almeida, a business unit leader at Softchoice, and John Trougakos, a professor at the University of Toronto—all shared their perspectives on how other companies of all sizes can get hybrid work right.
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New Binance CEO Richard Teng says firm has ‘robust timeline’ for board, financial disclosures
(FORTUNE)
The new CEO of Binance, Richard Teng, is friendly but cautious—a far cry from his predecessor, Changpeng Zhao, who last week agreed to step away from the company he founded as part of a $4 billion criminal settlement with the U.S. government.
“We are starting from a position of strength. The fundamentals of the business are extremely strong. Our capital structure is debt free, expenses are models, and our revenue and profits remain robust,” he said.
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Diagram Ventures announces new $60-million VC fund to build and back early-stage cleantech startups
(BETAKIT)
Montréal-based venture builder and investor Diagram Ventures has launched a ClimateTech Fund, securing nearly $50 million CAD in commitments as part of its initial closing.
Diagram’s new cleantech-focused venture capital (VC) fund will launch and invest in early-stage technology startups developing solutions to help tackle climate change and reduce emissions.
Diagram’s ClimateTech Fund marks the latest in a group of new cleantech-focused Canadian VC funds rolled out in recent weeks.
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Web3 Startup Wormhole Locks Up $225M At A $2.5B Valuation
(CRUNCHBASE)
Messaging protocol startup Wormhole raised $225 million at a $2.5 billion valuation — the biggest round this year in the Web3 space.
The round is exceedingly large when considering how slow funding has been this year in the Web3 sector. Many investors have backed away from the space as the venture market continues to slow and a series of scandals and regulations have affected the crypto industry.
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