Welcome to our weekly Canadian startup news segment where we bring you the most important events in the world of canadian startups. We cover all major cities in canada, mainly Toronto, Montreal & Vancouver and other emerging startup scenes.

FOLLOWING CHANGES TO BUSINESS, COINSQUARE LAUNCHES CRYPTO TRADING APP

Coinsquare has launched a new app that allows Canadians to buy, sell, and trade different types of digital stocks and assets.

The new app: Quick Trade, offers commission-free transactions and allows users to manage a portfolio of digital assets.

Quick Trade currently allows the trading of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, XRP, and Bitcoin Cash, and plans to bring in more digital currencies in the next few months.

The launch of new startups like Quick Trade comes as Coinsquare faces strong competition from companies like Wealthsimple.

The launch of this new app follows a number of changes at Coinsquare, as it faces more and more competition in the crypto currency trading space.

At the end of 2020, the company said it planned to relaunch Coinsquare’s trading platform and leverage new technology and protocols, as well as expand beyond digital currency into institutional trading.

In a recent statement, Hosiak said the new Quick Trade app is the first of “many” announcements to come from Coinsquare.

“Our new Quick Trade app is part of our commitment to offer Canadians the most user-friendly, comprehensive and secure investing experience,”

Hosiak added.

The launch of Quick Trade also comes as Coinsquare faces strong competition from other Canadian FinTech startups, like Wealthsimple, which has seen its own crypto trading platform gain significant traction in recent months.

During the recent GameStop stock frenzy, Wealthsimple Trade app saw a surge in popularity, which included a 50 percent increase in sign-ups and its trading volume doubling. A source familiar with Wealthsimple noted to BetaKit that the increase in interest for the trading app began well before the GameStop frenzy, driven in large part by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For more information: https://betakit.com/following-changes-to-business-coinsquare-launches-crypto-trading-app/

THIRD-QUARTER SEES LIGHTSPEED CONTINUE GROWTH TRAJECTORY WITH REVENUE INCREASING 79 PERCENT COMPARED TO LAST YEAR

Lightspeed POS saw another quarter of growth, with a 79 percent year-over-year increase in revenue for its fiscal third-quarter 2021. This year also included two major acquisitions for the startup: ShopKeep and Upserve.

The Montreal-based company’s revenue totalled $57.6 million when accounting for the addition of its purchases.

Lightspeed’s fiscal third-quarter saw the Montreal-based company make the two significant acquisitions as part of the company’s strategy to raise the company’s profile in the United States.

In November, Lightspeed acquired cloud commerce provider ShopKeep. The deal was initially slated to total $440 million, however the overall price was adjusted at close based on the price of Lightspeed’s subordinate voting shares.

Shortly after acquiring ShopKeep, Lightspeed also acquired restaurant management software company Upserve for approximately $430 million.

CEO Dasilva has been candid about his plans to double down on the US market.

This goal was also supported by Lightspeed’s decision to seek a dual listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in September.

At the time of the two acquisitions, ShopKeep and Upserve had 20,000 and 7,000 customer locations in the United States, respectively.

The deals contributed $8.6 million to Lightspeed’s overall revenue, which excluding the acquisitions was $49.3 million. Software and payments made up the largest portion of Lightspeed’s numbers, pulling in $52.5 million.

Another focus area for Lightspeed has been on making the most of the larger shift in retail to omnichannel commerce, meaning retail that takes place both in-store and online. Following Lightspeed’s NYSE debut, Dasilva said the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to omnichannel, highlighting the need for merchants to bridge physical experiences with digital commerce.

“As soon as the pandemic hit, omnichannel was no longer a nice to have, it became a must have,”

Said Dasilva

“The value of our cloud-based, multi-channel solution is becoming more apparent as a result of the pandemic, as are solutions such as Lightspeed Payments which had another record quarter.”

said Lightspped CFO, Brandon Nussey

Even with some effects for its merchants caused by COVID-19 lockdowns, the team expressed their optimism about Lightspeed’s outlook.

For more information visit: https://betakit.com/fiscal-third-quarters-sees-lightspeed-continue-growth-trajectory-with-revenue-increasing-79-percent-year-over-year/?utm_source=BetaKit+Newsletter&utm_campaign=88a49af619-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_BK_12_13_2020_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2ec531721a-88a49af619-199852057

TORONTO BASED RETAIL STARTUP HUBBA TO SHUT DOWN AFTER 10 YEARS OF BUSINESS

Just over ten years after its creation, Toronto-based retail startup Hubba will shut down operations, BetaKit has learned.

A communication confirming this difficult decision was sent to investors Monday.

An unconfirmed number of Hubba employees were also laid off Monday as part of the decision

Hubba as a startup had partnered with several notable investors, including Goldman Sachs, Kensington Venture Fund, Real Ventures, and Brightspark Ventures, and others.

Acccording to CrunchBase’s statistics the company had raised over $60 million in venture capital to date.

Hubba was also notable for an experienced leadership team with time at BlackBerry, Wattpad, Mozilla, GMP Securities, and Workbrain, where Zifkin was an early employee prior to its acquisition in 2007.

Considered for most of the decade one of Toronto’s hottest startups, Hubba hit difficult times in 2018, as the company lost its chief technology officer and chief marketing officer in an three-month span, in addition to two rounds of layoffs which saw headcount reduced by almost half.

The company at the time was also in the midst of a pivot away from enterprise to independent retail. In its early days, Hubba offered a platform for brands, distributors, and vendors to manage product information, and a discovery network allowing ‘craft’ brands to get on the radar of larger retailers

From 2018 onward, the company focused entirely on independent brands, matchmaking them with retail distribution and allowing buyers to order directly through Hubba.

“Hubba brought together a group of people who not only cared about the product that they were building, but the community they were a part of. You’re going to see that impact for years.”

“We started seeing this world of independent retail, and our brands didn’t want to necessarily get into Walmart,”

Zifkin said at the time.

It is unclear to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic had hampered Hubba’s growth and customer base.

Questions of legacy are difficult for companies that have existed nearly the lifespan of the ecosystem they sprouted from.

If Zifkin once famously said that “Toronto does not have a start-up problem, we have a finish-up problem,” it was an honest assessment from a local ecosystem booster who would also claim that

“Ben Zifkin is one-of-a-kind,” “Not only one of the biggest thinkers, I think he’s also the most selfless and generous person in the Toronto emerging tech community. I can’t count the number of times he’s called or texted me words of advice and encouragement, or invited me to come present our company to new audiences.”

Aran Hamilton, CEO of Toronto startup Vantage

“They were building a startup, but so many of those people were trying to have a positive impact on the world in a dozen different ways,” Nightingale said. “Hubba brought together a group of people who not only cared about the product that they were building, but the community they were a part of. You’re going to see that impact for years.”

For more information visit: https://betakit.com/hubba-to-shut-down/?utm_source=BetaKit+Newsletter&utm_campaign=88a49af619-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_BK_12_13_2020_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2ec531721a-88a49af619-199852057

Stay tuned for weekly updates and the latest news from the world of Canadian start-ups.