The sad state of Canada's (and specifically Toronto's) early-stage venture investment sector is enough to make entrepreneurs run for the hills -- or at least run south to our more risk accepting and Web 2.0 knowledgeable U.S. neighbours.

The BBC news service had a story that once again tracked how an innovative Canadian start-up had to go south to get attention. Now, of course, they are superstars. The firm? StumbleUpon. I have to confess I didn't even know they were Canadian. Damn our resource-driven economy. It continues to stifle early-stage tech companies.

"We had had some venture capitalist calls in Canada but they were never really interested in the product - as much as how fast we were growing.

"We had been under the radar in Calgary but there are a lot more people who want to find something new here," he says.

StumbleUpon has since been named the number one social media company on the web by Business 2.0 magazine.

Prominent Silicon Valley investor Brad O'Neill stumbled upon StumbleUpon and a series of e-mails and phone calls led to the founders being invited to California.

At the end of 2005 two of the three decided to move to San Francisco, with Justin LaFrance still based in Canada.

StumbleUpon's founders had an idea. They wanted to track the most interesting web phenomenon in a way not possible through Google. How to do it was the question.

"The general idea was how to discover really interesting information without searching for it.

"At the time, I was a huge Google fan. It had been around for a year or two in the mainstream. But it was still only good if you actually knew what you wanted to look for."

StumbleUpon lets users - called Stumblers - give the thumbs up or down on (...read more...)