Canada Gets Real About Seed Investing With New $45 Million Fund

If you need more proof that seed investing is taking over the world, just look up north to Canada. Three years ago, a group of angels started Montreal Startup, a $5 million seed fund. This week, they are launching their second, $45 million fund under a new name, Real Ventures. It will invest in startups across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver, but mostly within 250 kilometers of Montreal where most of the partners are based.

The partners include serial entrepreneur Austin Hill, John Stokes, and Jean-Sebastien Cournoyer, Daniel Drouet, Alan MacIntosh, and Mark MacLeod. The fund will invest in web, mobile, software, digital media, social and casual gaming startups.

A $45 million fund is small by venture capital standards, but it is actually quite large for a seed fund. New York City’s Founder Collective, for instance, is a $40 million fund. The more seed capital gets spread across different pockets of entrepreneurship, the more chance there will be for new startup hubs to grow or feed into the bigger hubs in California and, increasingly, New York. You can learn more about Real Ventures and its investing philosophy in this blog post.

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Google Feels Bad For Killing Newspapers, Gives Journalism $5 Million In Charity

Google announced today that it intends to give away $5 million dollars to organizations trying to find innovative ways to continue the practice of Journalism.

Great. Anything that even vaguely creates more jobs for writers is okay in my book, especially when I look at my tally of how many times you guys say I should be fired.

Unfairly blamed for the decline of media by Rupert Murdoch and his ilk, perhaps the higher ups at Google feel bad about their status as scapegoat for the Internet’s detrimental effect on the news industry and that’s why they’re feeling so generous?

Google will be giving away $2 million to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, with $1 million going to the Knight News Challenge and $1 million going towards continuation of U.S. Journalism grant making, whatever that means.

The remaining $3 million will be spent internationally.

From Google:

“Journalism is fundamental to a functioning democracy. So as media organizations globally continue to broaden their presence online, we’re eager to play our part on the technology side—experimenting with new ways of presenting news online; providing tools like Google Maps and YouTube Direct to make websites more engaging for readers; and investing heavily in our digital platforms to enable publishers to generate more revenue.”

… And getting a $5 million dollar tax write-off. In any case, the media industry shouldn’t look a gift search engine in the mouth; With newspaper circulation dropping 5% since last year, any sort of cashflow is more than welcome, even if it is charity.

Image: Failblog

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LDK Solar Inks $300 Million Deal With BYD

Several big names in solar have settled from recent highs on Wall Street, but there’s still a lot of money running into the sector.

On Monday morning, LDK Solar announced that it has locked up a new two-year sales deal with Chinese juggernaut BYD worth roughly $300 million. Under the deal, LDK will provide monthly shipments of polysilicon starting on January 2011.

It’s another win for the solar wafer manufacturer, which earlier this month raised its third quarter revenue guidance about 7% to a range of $610 to $640 million. In addition to raising its outlook, LDK noted that shipments of solar wafers and modules were outpacing demand.

For its part, the diversified BYD— which makes everything from automobiles to mobile phone batteries— has made no secret of its ambitions in green tech.

Earlier this year BYD announced that it will spend more than $3 billion over five years to construct one of China’s biggest solar power battery plant in Shangluo. Meanwhile, the company has also been working on large-scale energy storage solutions and their all-electric vehicle, the e6, is being prepped for a US debut. Although BYD (which Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has a 10% stake in) has struggled this year amid soft demand in China’s auto market, the company has seemingly maintained its aggressive stride in the green sector.

“We are very excited to add BYD, a leading high-tech enterprise that has a strong commitment to the green energy sector, as a key customer,” LDK’s CEO, Xiaofeng Peng said in a statement.

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