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Let's dive into some news, profiles, and trends we think you'll find interesting. Reply directly to this email and let us know what we should cover in the next newsletter!

Spotlight: Allen Lau & Two Small Fish Ventures

Allen Lau, Co-founder and Venture Partner at Two Small Fish Ventures joins us as a speaker for our event on December 5! Let's learn more about Two Small Fish!

What makes Two Small Fish different?

Two Small Fish is led by two visionary founders (of Wattpad) who know what it takes to turn a simple idea into a global, tech-enabled platform. They know that entrepreneurship is about more than just a great idea. Successful entrepreneurs take their idea through the 4S’s: starting an idea, sprouting the idea into something tangible and unique, scaling it into a platform and network, and successfully seeing it through to an IPO/exit.

Why was Two Small Fish founded?

Eva and Allen have both been active in the tech ecosystem for decades and have been witness to the nuanced inflection points within the industry.

From the dot com bubble, all the way to the mobile, social, quantum, and AI/ML era of today. They have seen how some companies thrive and disrupt, and how others fall through the cracks. They draw on their respective industry expertise to help their portfolio companies grow their business and scale across regions and sectors.

By continuing to recognize the trends that are changing the way we socialize, commute, work, play, and live, Eva and Allen offer a rare and crucial insight that propels the successes of our portfolio companies into hyperdrive.

What is Allen's background?

As the CEO and Co-Founder of Toronto-based Wattpad, a global multi-platform for original stories and leading social storytelling platform, Allen led an international team with the inspiring vision to leverage groundbreaking technology to fundamentally disrupt the entertainment industry while empowering diverse voices. Because of Allen's leadership and vision, today Wattpad is home to a community of nearly 100 million people who have written more than a billion uploads on the platform.

Wattpad raised USD $120 million from top VCs in Silicon Valley, New York, Canada, and Asia. In 2021, the company was acquired by Naver, the South Korean internet conglomerate, in a transaction valued at more than USD $600 million.

Learn more about Allen's entrepreneurial journey, Wattpad, and Two Small Fish Ventures at TechTO's IRL event on December 5. Come participate in Allen's Q&A and meet him in person. Buy tickets here.

Other Canadian Venture Capital Funds started by founders:

• LOI Venture: Venture fund backing tech founders under 30 co-founded by Ryan Holmes of Hootsuite

• Garage Capital: Waterloo-based fund started by the founders of Vidyard and BufferBox

• Panache Ventures: Cross Canada early-stage fund co-founded by the founders iBwave, Beltron and iStockphoto

• N49P: Pre-seed venture fund launched by the founder of HomeSav and co-founder of TechTO

News and Must Reads

Here is some of the top news and reads from across the ecosystem:

• Bill Gurley describes several red flags that may make you cautious of investing or joining a startup in a Venture Capital Red Flag Checklist

• Throwback to the last time Stuart Lombard spoke at TechTO. In this video, he describes what are the key questions you have to answer as a founder: WATCH HERE

• Learn more about how Railvision closes $5m CAD  and what this means

• Ugowork closes $22.8m Series B - how did they do it?

TechTO Talent

Looking for a job? Here are the ones we think are cool!

Software Developer at Flexpa - APPLY HERE 

At Flexpa we’re solving hard problems in healthcare by making it easy for patients to share their claims, benefit coverage, and other data from health plans. We’re a developer-first platform with rich APIs, robust developer documentation, and other tools to help applications to build novel patient and provider experiences powered by claims data.

Growth Marketer at Sowingo - APPLY HERE

At Sowingo, our mission is to transform healthcare offices by offering dental professionals an intuitive and user-friendly platform that uses a cloud-based application to simplify the complexity of purchasing and managing healthcare inventory. Sowingo disrupts the healthcare supply chain by providing a platform that links eCommerce with inventory management, connecting vendors to a digital sales channel with an ERP integration solution for their customers. We are a team of in-house engineers, sales professionals, doctors and designers who are building software for the future of dentistry.

Events and Links

Check out the interesting content, events, and happenings for the community here:

• TechTO Together: Our Last #IRL Event of the year! December 5 - REGISTER HERE

•  OneEleven Fall 2022 Showcase: December 8 - REGISTER HERE

Want to showcase your company, events, and opportunities to 60,000 subscribers across the Canadian Tech Eco-system? Reach out to [email protected] to learn more!