Source:  Financial Post

Christine Dobby | Oct 12, 2012 2:00 PM ET | Last Updated: Oct 12, 2012 2:02 PM ET
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Help Build Notman House

Notman House launches Indiegogo campaign

Also in Montreal, Notman House, a co-working office-space for early-stage technology startups and general hub of innovation, is looking to raise $100,000 through a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.

Set in a historic building in the Plateau neighbourhood but near the downtown core, it has been running in “proof of concept mode” for the past year and attracted $1.7-million in government grants and a $4.3 million loan from BDC and Investissement Quebec. But that funding is conditional upon Notman House itself coming up with $1.1-million in private contributions. Law firm Fasken Martineau LLP has already kicked in $1-million.

It has raised more than $20,000 so far and hopes to reach its goal by Oct. 29.

Extreme Startups unveils its second cohort of startups

Toronto accelerator Extreme Startups recently revealed the five companies that made it into its second cohort of companies. They’re already at work preparing for demo day, which will be held on Nov. 28.

The companies are Kera, a web browsing platform, Picatic, which does crowdfunding for events, MyShoebox, a cloud-based photo backup platform, Shifthub, which offers shift scheduling for small businesses, and Venio, a healthy-eating platform.

I met Karim el Rabiey from Venio in July on the way to Montreal’s International Startup Festival. During an on-board pitch session on the Startup Train (organized by Guelph, Ont.-based co-working group ThreeFortyNine), Venio emerged as the favourite, as picked by the train’s sponsors. They’re still in beta mode but Karim tells me they’ll be launching an app soon.

Also pitching on the train was Bebedo — an online search platform that helps connect you with events in your area — which stood out to me in part because of its all-female technical team. Bebedo will be taking part in Extreme’s new Preccelerator program that gives local entrepreneurs free space.

Four other startups, Brika, MommiesFirst, Pictoreo and Relay, will also be taking advantage of that program.

FedDev Ontario loaning $4.4M to KW startups

Five Kitchener-Waterloo startups got a boost from FedDev Ontario, which is investing a total of $4.4-million in them through repayable loans, it said Thursday.

Maluuba Inc. — the company with the Siri competitor Android app we featured in last week’s Startup Roundup — will get up to $980,000 to further develop its natural language processing software.

The other companies getting help from the government agency with a mandate to spur economic growth in Southern Ontario are P&P Optica, Avenir Medical Inc., Axonify Inc. and Sweet Tooth Inc.