The first annual Spotlight Awards last week honoured eight of Canada’s most notable startups, among them Shopify and Chango.
Shopify chief platform officer Harley Finkelstein (left) and director of product Satish Kanwar accept their Spotlight Award
Awards were given to companies that either surpassed a $1 billion valuation in the past year (achieving “unicorn” status, in startup lingo) or made a $100-million exit.
Programmatic ad platform Chango received an award for its $122 million acquisition by The Rubicon Project in March, joining dating site Plenty of Fish, employee incentives firm Achievers, smart eyewear designer Recon Instruments, digital music service Stingray Digital Group and web publisher VerticalScope on the stage at Spotlight. (Except for Stingray, which had an IPO on the TSX in May, each of the companies were acquired between August 2014 and July 2015.)
The two “unicorn” awards went to Shopify, which held a $131 million IPO in May, valuing it at $1.27 billion, and Slack, a work productivity app that Spotlight considered Canadian because founder Stewart Butterfield is from Vancouver and it does much of its development work there. Although Slack hasn’t yet made an exit, it was valued at $2.8 billion in its latest round of investment.
Spotlight founder Razor Suleman (also one of the award recipients as the founder of Achievers), said he created the awards to highlight the growth of Canada’s tech sector and the fact that, for the first time, Canada has produced eight tech companies worth more than $100 million in the same year.
“Shopify broke the four-minute mile,” Suleman said. “They were a Canadian-made, Canadian-financed, Canadian-operated company that achieved $1 billion status this year. Shortly after they did that, we saw Slack get to unicorn status, Kik just got to $1 billion last month.”
Suleman credits increased government funding, as well as successful community organizations like MaRS and Communitech, for helping put Canada’s tech sector on the map.
Chango founder Chris Sukornyk (left) receiving his award from John Albright of Relay Ventures
Chango founder Chris Sukornyk said that Canada now has all the ingredients for an ambitious young tech startup to achieve its potential. “It’s a powder keg of top talent, really creative energetic people in the area, and a great place to raise families,” he said. “Now you’ve got better access to capital, you’ve got a lot of great early stage VCs.
“But most importantly, you’ve got successes. Those people are going to spin out other startups. I know there are people within my organization that, although they’re happily employed now at Rubicon, in the future they’re going to be pretty amazing to watch.”
The Spotlight Awards were attached to Venture North, a tech conference in Toronto intended to connect U.S. venture capitalists with Canadian entrepreneurs. The event was emceed by Globe and Mail editor-in-chief John Stackhouse, and awards were presented by partners from major VC firms like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. Ticket revenues were donated to startup accelerator The Next 36.
