Canadian startup news of the week (9/11/22)

Welcome to BetaKit’s startup stories of the week! Here, you will find the week’s most important news, features, and editorials published on BetaKit. If you prefer this update hit your inbox every week, make sure to subscribe to the BetaKit Newsletter using the form at the bottom of this page.

Top Stories of the Week

Open banking working group failing to address critical governance, standards issues

Working group participants from the FinTech community and those familiar with the talks expressed concern that delaying governance decisions could hamstring the system, leaving Canadians without recourse if their data or accounts are compromised.

Panache closes $100 million for second fund as firm doubles down on seed-stage startups

Originally launched in 2018 by a team that came out of 500 Startups Canada, Panache’s stated goal at the time was to become “the most active and best-performing fund of its kind in the country.”

Shopify swaps CFO, COO amid financial downturn

Amy Shapero, the company’s CFO of five years, will step down following Shopify’s third quarter 2022 earnings announcement on October 27. Jeff Hoffmeister will take over as CFO.

Adam Nanjee departs Microsoft for Startups to lead venture capital in Canada for Amazon Web Services

According to Nanjee’s LinkedIn page, as the head of venture capital for Canada, he will be responsible for building partnerships between venture firms and AWS in order “to scale and invest in the best-in-class startups leveraging AWS.”

Five months in, details on Canada’s new Innovation and Investment Agency remain sparse

Since the budget announcement, the federal government has little to offer about what the agency will look like, its role, how it will work and, most importantly, whether it will work at all.

Only one individual seems to be empowered to address the future of the agency, and that’s a government outsider currently on contract with the federal government: Dan Breznitz.

Latest Funding, Acquisitions, and Layoffs

• CAL – Headversity acquires HIS (read more)

• VAN – Curatio merges with RxMx (read more)

• TOR – HyperComply – $6.4M (read more)

• MTL – Panache Ventures closes $100M for Fund II (read more)

• MTL – Kaloom – $27.4M (read more)

CANADIAN TECH IS (STILL!) HIRING

“I’m just concerned about finding tech talent.”

Nora Jenkins Townson (Bright + Early) and Meagan Simpson (BetaKit) join to explain why over 350 companies are still looking to hire Canadian tech talent in the midst of a downturn.

LEARNING FROM EMBEDDED FINTECH LEADERS AT TRACTION

“Shopify Pay still uses Stripe and they have some crazy scale.”

Immad Akhund (CEO, Mercury) and Jon Fry (CEO, Lendflow) join BetaKit to discuss how startups can embed FinTech into their products, increase revenue, and avoid the hidden icebergs.

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