Mark Skapinker is a Managing Partner at Brightspark, a software, Internet and Mobile venture capital firm with offices in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Brightspark has twice won the Canadian Venture Capital Association "Deal of the Year Award" for its successful investments in ThinkDynamics (acquired by IBM) and Radian6 (acquired by Salesforce.com).
Born in South Africa, he immigrated to Canada where, along with Bert Amato and Dennis Bennie, he co-founded Delrina, where they devised its first product, the electronic form software PerForm. He served as Delrina's President. The firm was well known for its WinFax product and was acquired by Symantec in November 1995.
In 1997 he founded Balisoft Technologies, an Internet infrastructure company that created intelligent customer interaction software. This firm was merged with Servicesoft Technologies in 1999, which was in turn acquired by Broadbase Software in September 2000, and thereafter by Kana.
In 2008, Mark co-founded iStopOver.com, a Toronto-based Internet business focused on peer to peer travel with online ecommerce which was sold to 9Flats in 2012.
In 2000, Mark co-founded Brightspark Ventures in Toronto. For over 20 years, Brightspark has managed early stage and seed Venture Capital funds, with over $135 million under management. Sophie Forest has been a Managing Partner in Brightspark since 2004. Brightspark's investors include individual Canadian accredited investors, Family office and institutional investors.
Venture capital is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Marc Lowell Andreessen is an American businessman and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard. Andreessen is also a co-founder of Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites and an inductee in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame. Andreessen's net-worth is estimated at $1.7 billion. Critics of Andreessen allege he displayed a conflict of interest by effectively negotiating against Facebook shareholders.
Bain Capital is an American private investment firm based in Boston. It specializes in private equity, venture capital, credit, public equity, impact investing, life sciences, crypto, tech opportunities, partnership opportunities, special situations, and real estate. Bain Capital invests across a range of industry sectors and geographic regions. As of 2022, the firm managed approximately $165 billion of investor capital. The firm was founded in 1984 by partners from the consulting firm Bain & Company. The company is headquartered at 200 Clarendon Street in Boston with 22 offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Delrina Corporation was a Canadian software company active from 1988 to 1995. The company was best known for WinFax, a software package which enabled computers equipped with fax modems to transmit copies of documents to standalone fax machines or other similarly equipped computers. It also sold PerForm and FormFlow, electronic form software. Delrina was acquired by the American software firm Symantec in 1995.
Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of December 2017, the firm, including its various predecessors, have raised approximately $65 billion (USD) since 1981. Apax Partners is one of the oldest and largest private equity firms operating on an international basis, ranked the fifteenth largest private equity firm globally.
i-drive was a file hosting service that operated from 1998 to 2002.
PerForm and PerForm PRO were electronic form programs, initially designed to work under GEM in DOS. Later versions were designed to work in Windows 3.1, at which point it was succeeded by FormFlow.
Bert Amato is an investor and consultant in the high-technology industry. He currently sits as an advisory board member of several firms, including XDL Intervest Management, Farelogix and Infotriever.
Dennis Bennie is an entrepreneur and early-stage investor based in Toronto, Canada. He co-founded Mission Electronics in 1979; co-founded Aviva Software in 1982; co-founded Delrina in 1988; raised two venture funds under XDL Group and is currently a mentor, advisor and angel investor to early-stage technology companies.
Wesley Chan is an American venture capitalist and the co-founder and managing partner of venture capital firm FPV. A graduate in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chan first became known from his work in the early days of Google, founding Google Analytics and Google Voice, and for building Google's early advertising system.
Powerset was an American company based in San Francisco, California, that, in 2006, was developing a natural language search engine for the Internet. On July 1, 2008, Powerset was acquired by Microsoft for an estimated $100 million.
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.
DFJ Frontier is an American venture capital firm with offices in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Santa Barbara, California as well as Portland, Oregon. The firm invests in seed and early-stage technology companies on the West Coast, initially funding companies with between $100,000 and $1 million. The firm has approximately $80 million under management in two funds, DFJ Frontier Fund I, LP and DFJ Frontier Fund II, LP. DFJ Frontier typically leads the first round of investment, with one of its partners serving on the board of the portfolio company.
Scene7 is an American on-demand rich media software company that provides document hosting and interactive publishing services such as online catalogs, targeted email, video, and image management. Retailers use the company's services to showcase products on their websites and to allow customers to interact with the products. Scene7's technology allows users to manipulate product images by zooming in and rotating products, simulating the inspection of merchandise in retail stores.
Francisco Partners is an American private equity firm focused exclusively on investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses. It was founded in August 1999 and based in San Francisco with offices in London and New York City.
Scott Harris Lenet is an American venture capitalist and entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of two venture capital firms: the corporate venture capital firm Touchdown Ventures and the seed stage venture capital firm DFJ Frontier.
Paul Lee is a Canadian video game developer, venture capitalist, businessman and entrepreneur. He is the former President of Electronic Arts, a video game and interactive software company.
Blockchain Capital is a venture capital company founded in 2013 by brothers Paul Bartlett Stephens and William Bradford Stephens. As the first, dedicated venture capital firm exclusively focused on investing across the blockchain ecosystem, Blockchain Capital is one of the most active and experienced venture investors in blockchain technology.
Wealthsimple Inc. is a Canadian online investment management service. The firm was founded in September 2014 by Michael Katchen, Brett Huneycutt and Rudy Adler and is based in Toronto. As of November 2021, the firm holds over C$15 billion in assets under management. It is primarily owned by Power Corporation indirectly at 54.2% through investments made through their holdings in Power Financial, IGM Financial and Portag3.
Allen Lau is a Hong Kong-born Canadian entrepreneur who is the co-founder and CEO of Wattpad.
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