Yesterday it was announced (here, here, and here) that Toronto-based Top Hat has raised $22.5 million (USD) in Series-C funding. The round was led by New York-based Union Square Ventures.
I am always excited to see Toronto-based startups doing well and I am particularly excited by this remark in USV’s blog announcement:
“Also worth noting is that Toronto continues to impress us with its quality and diversity of companies. We now have five investments there, placing Toronto third as a location in the USV portfolio after New York and San Francisco.”
I have largely avoided commenting on politics and Trump on this blog, but at this stage it is almost impossible to do that.
Donations are starting to pile up for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as the tech community, and many others, begin to respond to Friday’s executive orders. Lyft announced a $1 million contribution to the non-profit group.
At 6 AM this morning, Richard Florida started a tweet storm where he argued that “Trump’s immigration insanity” will fundamentally threaten the core of America’s innovation hegemony.
Yesterday it was announced (here, here, and here) that Toronto-based Top Hat has raised $22.5 million (USD) in Series-C funding. The round was led by New York-based Union Square Ventures.
I am always excited to see Toronto-based startups doing well and I am particularly excited by this remark in USV’s blog announcement:
“Also worth noting is that Toronto continues to impress us with its quality and diversity of companies. We now have five investments there, placing Toronto third as a location in the USV portfolio after New York and San Francisco.”
I have largely avoided commenting on politics and Trump on this blog, but at this stage it is almost impossible to do that.
Donations are starting to pile up for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as the tech community, and many others, begin to respond to Friday’s executive orders. Lyft announced a $1 million contribution to the non-profit group.
At 6 AM this morning, Richard Florida started a tweet storm where he argued that “Trump’s immigration insanity” will fundamentally threaten the core of America’s innovation hegemony.
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
And this is an elegant visualization by Ray Luong of ridership levels over the course of one day: February 4, 2016. If you can’t see the embedded video below, click here.
Note how the lines speed up as they go through the Transbay Tube connecting San Francisco and Oakland. That’s actually what happens. Within the 10 km-long tube, the trains reach ~130 km/h, which is more than twice as fast as the average speed throughout the rest of the network.
“Toronto is a great place for startups. In addition to five investments of ours that are HQ’d there, I know of at least one other USV portfolio company that has much of their engineering team in Toronto. The talent, mindset, and quality of the people in the Toronto/Waterloo tech/startup community is really top notch and we love investing there.”
Go Toronto.
(Of course, Toronto really means Toronto-Waterloo. That’s the geography of the ecosystem.)
(He also argued that Canada, and more specifically Toronto, serve to “gain substantially”, as there will no doubt be a doubling down on tolerance to attract the best talent from around the world.)
And I am seeing folks from Toronto offer up their homes (publicly on Twitter) to anyone who might be stranded at Pearson International Airport as a result of the orders. Many have even tweeted out their phone numbers.
Everywhere I look this weekend I am seeing these sorts of messages. So while I could remain quiet, that doesn’t feel right. And that’s because what is happening is not right.
And this is an elegant visualization by Ray Luong of ridership levels over the course of one day: February 4, 2016. If you can’t see the embedded video below, click here.
Note how the lines speed up as they go through the Transbay Tube connecting San Francisco and Oakland. That’s actually what happens. Within the 10 km-long tube, the trains reach ~130 km/h, which is more than twice as fast as the average speed throughout the rest of the network.
“Toronto is a great place for startups. In addition to five investments of ours that are HQ’d there, I know of at least one other USV portfolio company that has much of their engineering team in Toronto. The talent, mindset, and quality of the people in the Toronto/Waterloo tech/startup community is really top notch and we love investing there.”
Go Toronto.
(Of course, Toronto really means Toronto-Waterloo. That’s the geography of the ecosystem.)
(He also argued that Canada, and more specifically Toronto, serve to “gain substantially”, as there will no doubt be a doubling down on tolerance to attract the best talent from around the world.)
And I am seeing folks from Toronto offer up their homes (publicly on Twitter) to anyone who might be stranded at Pearson International Airport as a result of the orders. Many have even tweeted out their phone numbers.
Everywhere I look this weekend I am seeing these sorts of messages. So while I could remain quiet, that doesn’t feel right. And that’s because what is happening is not right.
