Relay Ventures is just over a year old. The firm, with offices in Toronto and Menlo Park, Calif., focuses on early-stage mobile connectivity opportunities, officially launched in March 2012 with the merger of JLA Ventures and RBC Ventures. The firm started out with approximately US$500 million in partnership capital, which included BlackBerry® Partners Fund II, closed later that year at US$150 million.

Fourteen months on, Relay has done a dozen deals and exited six portfolio companies, said Co-founder and Managing Partner John Albright in an interview with peHUB Canada. What’s more, the firm’s latest deal – the $16 million financing of the corporate spin-out of theScore Inc., completed earlier in May in partnership with “the Steve Jobs of sports media” – might be its most promising venture yet.

The launch of the Relay Ventures combined a unique array of organizations and talents. Albright, who began his venture career in the 1990s at JLA Ventures, and Relay Co-founder and Managing Partner Kevin Talbot, formerly of RBC Ventures, were leaders of their respective firms, and together managed the first Blackberry fund (closed in 2008). They brought in John Occhipinti, previously with the Woodside Fund, as partner in Relay’s Silicon Valley location, and Alex Baker as principal.

Relay Ventures was last year in the thick of mobile deal-making in North America. The firm led a US$11 million Series B financing of mobile rewards provider Kiip, co-led with Intel Capital a US$9 million round backing social radio platform Jelli, and co-led with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners a US$7.3 million Series A deal involving Influitive, an advocate marketing company.

The firm has kept pace in 2013, with theScore being Relay Ventures’ second new investment so far. It’s an unusual transaction by Relay’s standards in that the company is the publicly traded scion of Toronto’s Score Media Inc., which was recently acquired by Rogers Media Inc. for $167 million.

TheScore is led by CEO John Levy and Executive Vice President and COO Benjie Levy, the father-and-son team who built Score Media, a specialty sports channel with 6.6 million television subscribers. TheScore, noted Albright, was the mobile apps and web property of Score Media, featuring “terrific content” and “a loyal fan base,” but which was not of core interest to the broadcaster’s new owner Rogers.

This circumstance, said Albright, provided Relay Ventures with “the rare opportunity” to partner with the entrepreneurial Levy family to create an independent enterprise “100% focused on sports content delivered through digital media.” Evidently, Rogers also recognized theScore’s potential, investing alongside Relay and Levfam Holdings, the Levys’ investment firm, in the $16 million startup round.

The new company’s growth plan, said Albright, is global in scope. With its apps available on all major web and mobile platforms, theScore has already increased monthly users sevenfold since 2009, registering 4.2 million users (80% of them Americans) in 2013. This marketplace affirmation came despite fierce competition from well-heeled broadcaster-owned providers, such as BBC Sport, ESPN Goals andMLB.com At Bat.

Albright believes the sky’s the limit for theScore, which intends to drive to “10 million users, and then to 100 million users.” His conviction is grounded by faith in the Levy duo, which is “passionate about sports” and has already demonstrated mettle in successfully building Score Media in Canada “where there is a monopoly of big broadcasters and big broadcaster money.” The Levys, “the Steve Jobs of sports media,” quipped Albright, can do same in the digital and mobile space.

The Levys were also sold on Relay Ventures, he added, when they discovered that the investor could bring more to the table than just cash. Among the firm’s key contributions are knowledge and networks, which should speed theScore’s growth and raise its productivity, Albright said. After the deal’s closing, company management flew to Palo Alto, Calif., to join a roundtable of Relay’s founders and receive an “intelligence dump” and some “tricks of trade.” The event also saw theScore forge its first strategic partnerships.

Albright sees advantages in theScore being an independent company in a sector populated by broadcaster-owned providers. Without a larger parent, he said the enterprise can avoid being another “cog in the wheel,” making it more competitive and better disposed to recruiting quality management talent.

He does not see many downsides in theScore being a public company, of which Albright is now a director. From Relay’s perspective, it’s no different from any other private startup, with the firm able to exercise a typical degree of influence due to the nature of the governing partnership.

In addition to interesting deals, Relay Ventures has had its share of lucrative exits of late. The sale of Toronto-based QuickPlay Media Inc. to U.S. private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners in mid-2012 generated a 40% IRR for the firm, and was about 4x its original investment. Relay obtained similar performance, said Albright, from last month’s sale of Belfast’s Aepona to Intel Corp.

http://www.pehub.com/202545/relay-ventures-big-score/

Company plans to grow team; aims to fix North America’s hiring problem for the construction, retail, restaurant, hospitality and franchise industries

 TORONTO – March 21, 2013 – ClearFit, the company that makes it easy for organizations to find and hire the best person, has closed a $7 million Series A round of funding from GrandBanks Capital and Relay Ventures.

Over 8,000 businesses use ClearFit. The company offers a free trial that can be set up in a quarter of the time of a traditional job posting, then – with partners like Monster.com and CareerBuilder – helps find candidates. ClearFit’s patented software then uses data analysis to predict employment success five times better than traditional hiring, all included in the cost of a regular job posting.

Tim Wright, partner with GrandBanks Capital, will join the ClearFit board. Wright has over 20 years of operating experience in various technology industries and his significant operational experience and work in the human capital management (HCM) space offer strategic alignment with ClearFit’s focus on small businesses.

“Small businesses are inadequately served by large, enterprise hiring software. ClearFit puts enterprise-class capabilities within reach and tailors them directly to the needs of small business owners,” said Tim Wright, partner with GrandBanks Capital. “They are addressing a massive sector of the economy that does not have a capable solution.”

ClearFit addresses a $60 billion underserved market, delivering a tailored hiring solution to construction, retail, restaurant, hospitality, and franchise customers. The company previously raised $1.7 million in late 2012 with investments from Relay Ventures and a group of prominent Toronto investors.

“We’ve experienced incredible growth this year and we’re scaling ClearFit to keep up with demand,” said Jamie Schneiderman, co-founder of ClearFit. “Scaling this quickly would be impossible without our own product to help us find the best people for our culture.”

ClearFit is building a unique organizational structure, designed to appeal to entrepreneurial talent. According to Ben Baldwin, co-founder of ClearFit, “an increasing number of enterprising young people are choosing incubators and accelerators over continuing school or traditional entry level jobs. We’re attracting this talent by allowing young entrepreneurs to run a vertical business within ClearFit.”

About ClearFit

ClearFit’s mission is to help people succeed at work. ClearFit ensures that the right people are in the right jobs, resulting in happier employees and more productive organizations. ClearFit provides the easiest way for organizations to find and hire the best person for the job. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. Learn more at www.clearfit.com.

http://www.clearfit.com/about/

A venture capitalist’s message to Canadians: Go big or go home

If you’re a Canadian entrepreneur trying to fight your way to the top of the high-tech food chain – and not just in Canada – you will likely find yourself, at some point, in Silicon Valley. “For tech companies, Silicon Valley is the world capital,” says Kevin Talbot, co-founder and managing partner at Toronto-based Relay Ventures, which invests in early-stage mobile technology companies.

But in the more than 12 years that Mr. Talbot, a native of Toronto, has been investing in the Valley, he has met far too many Canadians who are unprepared for the go-big-or-go-home ethos that prevails in this tiny slice of California.

“The pace is unrelenting,” says Mr. Talbot, who works out of Relay’s Menlo Park, Calif., office. “Entrepreneurs have to understand that their competitors here view the entire world as their market. They’re not building a lifestyle business or a domestic business. They’re in this to build a bigbusiness.”

Mr. Talbot is a charter member of C100, a non-profit organization that helps Canadian entrepreneurs find partners, mentors and financing in Silicon Valley – all with an eye to building the next billion-dollar business back home. Since its launch in 2010, C100 has mentored 80-plus entrepreneurs and helped them raise more than $330-million in financing. (This past September, it also launched a British branch.)

“I think that what C100 and firms like mine do by bringing Canadian entrepreneurs to the Valley and connecting them to the people who will be channel partners … and potential acquirers, is to hold them to a bar that is higher than they’ve ever been held to before. I’ve always said that being the best Canadian ‘X’ isn’t good enough. You have to be the best in the world.”

As for nurturing our own ecosystem here at home, Mr. Talbot agrees that Canada needs a more robust venture capital industry, with more money flowing to entrepreneurs. But we also need more entrepreneurs to invest in.

“If you think about our education system, the way people are programmed, smart people will go to university, take engineering or computer science, and go get a job,” Mr. Talbot says. “We need skilled people who make the choice that, rather than going to work for a company, they go and start a company.”

Tens of thousands of start-ups launch every year, and just a few of them break out. That means Canadian entrepreneurs have to be willing to fail – and not give up. “Not every company should be financed – that isn’t really the way the world works,” Mr. Talbot says. “It’s okay to have failure. It’s okay to aim really, really big.”

For those who have even modest success, the key is to get back into the start-up game. “Hopefully they’ll be hungry to have a bigger success, and they won’t have as much pressure because they’ve paid off the mortgage,” Mr. Talbot says. That’s the way things work in Silicon Valley, which is why it has such a critical mass of mentors and financiers.

Mr. Talbot has some words of encouragement, too: “I’ve always believed the money will find the best opportunities,” he says. “We’re all here to help.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-competes/a-venture-capitalists-message-to-canadians-go-big-or-go-home/article7880787/?cmpid=rss1

By Tim Peterson

Last July mobile rewards startup Kiip announced it had raised an $11 million funding round “led by Relay Ventures, with participation from existing Series A investors Hummer Winblad and True Ventures, and others.” Now the company is disclosing that Interpublic Group was among those “other” investors.

IPG’s investment doesn’t preclude Kiip from taking funding from or working with other agency holding companies, Kiip cofounder and CEO Brian Wong said. However it does solidify ties between Kiip and IPG’s collection of agencies. The startup has already worked with Initiative and Ansible. Now Kiip will also work closely with IPG Media Lab, the holding company’s unit charged with finding emerging technologies for clients to start using in their marketing.

Wong wouldn’t say how much cash IPG poured into Kiip but described it as a “strategic” investment, which suggests the holding company took a small stake in the 21-year-old’s startup compared to the VC investors. Then why wait to announce IPG’s investment until six months after the round was announced? So that articles written about the round didn’t overshadow IPG’s inclusion and vice versa, it seems. “I think it was more a matter of people being too busy; there was no real reason for us [to announce it],” Wong said.

“What we wanted to do is have a really clear idea of how that partnership would look like, how we would work together, before we were able to talk about it publicly,” Wong added. “I wish I had a more juicy answer for you, but it literally was like, ‘Let’s just do it in January’ because we don’t have to [announce it]. We’ll just wait until it’s a kick-off to the year and really showing that validation [for Kiip].”

Also validating’s Kiip position as a mobile rewards partner are the 100 campaigns it ran last year for 75 brands including Pepsi, American Express, Best Buy and Mondelez. The startup had started out as an in-game ad platform, high-fiving mobile gamers with virtual goods when they completed a level or beat a game, but has grown into rewards platform that brands can use to deliver offers tied to these “own-able moments” — moments that can deepen the relationship between brands and consumers, Wong claims. Last year Kiip saw 1 billion of these moments—and 280 million in the last 30 days—and served 200 million rewards. Wong wouldn’t say how many of those rewards were redeemed “because that way people will know our revenues” but said that redemption rates range from 10 to 25 percent per reward.

Kiip’s rewards platform has been largely mobile-centric—spanning 700 apps, 70 percent of them games, according to Wong—but the company has begun making headway into search and social. Discussing the IPG investment during last week’s International CES, it seemed a logical next step for Kiip could be the connected car. “Let’s just say it would be a mistake for us not to think about other areas where rewards could be applied to,” Wong said.

“Our eventual goal as a company is to own every single achievement moment on the planet, whether it be you hit your energy savings goals with your Nest thermostat or you were able to get good mileage with your hybrid [car],” he said.

http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/ipg-invests-mobile-rewards-startup-kiip-146575

Mark Organ and the team at Influitive are charting a new course.  Not just in terms of building a great company but also having a successful entrepreneur move back home to Toronto and begin reconstruction of a world class team and company like he did at Eloqua.

For those still unfamiliar with the Company, Influitive (www.influitive.com) is creating a new category for managing customer advocacy programs.  Their flagship product, AdvocateHub, provides businesses with a platform that marries social influence, gamification and social media response.  Using an army of advocates, Influitive allows their clients to efficiently reach potential customers through social channels using an independent voice.   Social media continues to changes the way consumers learn about products and SaaS continues to change the way organizations purchase technology.

Companies now do a great job of “listening” to what people have to say on the social web but advocacy and social marketing are still in their infancy.  An independent voice of the customer, managed through Influitive, will be the standard for B2B social media marketing.  Buyers place importance on social media and ‘blind’ personal endorsements.  Influitive reduces friction in the buying process by connecting customers with referral leads for reference calls, social proof assets and social media interaction.

We feel privileged as investors to be leading Influitive’s Series A financing and advocating on behalf of Mark and his team for years to come.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-competes/qa-how-can-your-business-attract-a-venture-capitalist/article6192366/

In what it’s calling “Festivus on Copious,” Copious has enlisted seven web-savvy celebrities to sell their personal things on Copious over the coming week with proceeds benefiting a charity of their choice.

From a tech world perspective, the most compelling stuff is from Randi Zuckerberg, who has listed items including a limited edition Facebook hoodie from the company’s early days which was available only to employees. She’s also selling dresses she’s worn while representing Facebook at the Democratic National Convention and at the Emmys. All proceeds from her sales will go to Covenant House.

Ms. Zuckerberg is not the only Facebook-affiliated celeb involved. Boo The Dog, the famously adorable pet of a Facebook employee, is selling items such as books and a collection of plush toys to benefit Operation Smile.

Anyway, it’s a cool play to get more people to check out Copious, which launched last year to essentially be a more personalized eBay with a social backbone. The company raised a healthy $5 million in a Series A funding round this past summer and last month expanded its focus beyond women’s apparel and accessories to include men’s clothing and gender-neutral items like artwork.

Of course, Copious is not the only startup making a go of it in the marketplace space — Poshmark and Threadflip do similar things. The concept of buying used things from other people is not everyone’s cup of tea, but memorabilia and collectibles have always had wide appeal, so this is a clever promotion of all that the site can be used for.

I sat down with Copious’ CEO Jim Rose earlier this year after the company raised its Series A to talk more about Copious’ vision and the competitive landscape for TechCrunch TV.

Video in below link.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/26/a-cyber-monday-schtick-thats-actually-cool-randi-zuckerberg-and-others-sell-their-stuff-on-copious-for-charity/

As more and more travelers use mobile devices to plan and purchase travel, this move underlines CWT’s commitment to invest in innovation and position mobile solutions as an integral part of its offering. By acquiring the leading developer of mobile technology in travel, CWT will further reinforce its mobile offering – a fundamental step in its promise to deliver the perfect trip to business travelers.

This acquisition will open up further opportunities for both business travelers and corporate customers. Business travelers will have access to a broader range of on-the-go services including airport parking, restaurant bookings, hotel reservations, ground transportation, and airline offers such as in-flight internet. Customers will benefit from a new approach to tackling issues associated with compliance. The ability to aggregate travel information from multiple sources means that customers will be able to gain increased visibility of overall travel spend as well as better track travelers for safety and security purposes.

Douglas Anderson, CWT president and chief executive officer commented: “This acquisition puts us in an exciting place within the industry; working with the expert in mobile technology puts us in control of our own ‘mobile destiny.’ Injecting WorldMate’s proven mobile expertise into our existing range of products will bring additional services and functionalities to our clients and their travelers.”

WorldMate, headquartered in San Francisco with operations in Israel, was founded in 2000. It will operate as a subsidiary of CWT. The WorldMate mobile app is used by over 10 million travelers to organize their itineraries, get real-time local information and book hotels and car rentals while on the go.

“We’re delighted to offer CWT clients access to WorldMate’s leading range of on-the-road services,” commented Jean Tripier, WorldMate chief executive officer. “In addition to becoming an integral part of CWT’s growth strategy, we will remain committed to providing the highest levels of support to our existing clients and the millions of travelers we service today.”

WorldMate will work with CWT teams to enhance existing tools such as CWT To Go™, CWT’s globally-recognized mobile app for travelers. Developed with Rearden Commerce, CWT To Go includes itineraries, mobile check-in, flight alerts and gate changes, information on nearby restaurants, maps and directions. CWT will continue to partner with Rearden Commerce on the distribution of Deem travel and merchant solutions.

http://www.carlsonwagonlit.com/en/global/news_and_media/news_releases/2012/20121031-cwt-acquires-worldmate-leader-in-mobile-travel-technology.html

Mark Connon, the company’s executive vice president of corporate and business development, said advertisers and publishers can do a number of things (largely related to targeting) in the desktop world that they don’t have easy access to in mobile due to restrictions on third-party cookies. So Nexage is taking a platform-style approach by integrating with outside services.

For example, one of the company’s initial partners is PlaceIQ, which can give advertisers more location analytics about the people viewing their ads. Another is TRUSTe, which allows publishers to give readers an opt-out option from behavioral targeting. Nexage Connect is launching with four partners, and Chief Marketing Officer Victor Milligan said the company plans to “expand the number of ecosystem partners” significantly next year.

In many cases, Nexage customers could integrate these services on their own, but in this case Nexage gets to handle all the technical hassles, and it offers a single place where advertisers and publishers can add services as desired. The exact details of the integration will differ from company to company, but Connon said there will “literally be check boxes to allow these attributes.”

Nexage recently raised a $15 million Series B from SingTel Innov8, Hearst, and others.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/02/nexage-connect/