Montreal Tech Watch

Playerize is FounderFuel’s first startup to close first round of funding ; $1m to grow Vancouver offices

Quick but great news of the day: Venturebeat reports Playerize has closed its series A, getting $1m from Real Ventures, Rho Ventures, as well as invidual investors such as Mike Edwards of Initio Group, David Chamandy of Machkor, Martin-Luc Archambault of Bolidea, Dan Robichaud, and Jason Bailey. It’s a diverse group of investors, with investors [...]

wavo.me, a new music player made for the web

Conor Clarke, one of Wavo.me’s cofounders, took a stab today at the iTunes player, and most of the iTunes clones for its bland design. That was a very ballsy comment, in a world where most designers have granted God status to Apple and its design sense. In lieu of the boring grey and “swedish-style” design, [...]

Willet converts “window shoppers” into customers

Willet has a little neat trick for ecommerce sites. Visitors who are casually browsing products are invited to ask their friends if they should buy or not the product. The call to action question is plugged into Facebook, and presented as if it was a dire question for the user. It’s fun, simple and turns [...]

Playerize announces $374k revenues and closed funding round

Playerize announces $374k revenues and closed funding round

Playerize, with an all-star team from Vancouver, jumps on the social gaming opportunity, and is providing an ambitious set of tools to game publishers, to acquire new players, and also increase engagement. Playerize was introduced today by one of their new investors (Rho Ventures) as opportunistic entrepreneurs. With the explosion of social gaming, mainly on [...]

GrowLab announces 5 startups in its accelerator program

Given FounderFuel’s new accelerator program, it’s interesting to see what’s done elsewhere. GrowLab is a new accelerator initiative, with startups given between $20,000 and $25,000 in funding. Interestingly, they’re also beginning today, with 4 months to get to the next level. The winnning startups joining the Vancouver-based accelerator’s first edition are cloud-based education platform matygo, [...]