Two Small Fish Ventures

In the early days of Wattpad, I always wanted to send swag to our loyal Wattpad fans and ambassadors in showcase of our gratitude. These passionate users filled my heart so much that I just wanted to offer something to them to express my sincere appreciation of their support. Of course, from time to time, I would receive enquiries from our users asking where they could get those Wattpad hoodies and T-shirts that our staffs were rocking on social media. While we’d love to send out swags frequently, we ran into one undeniable problem—our user base is international. Creating merchandise and shipping it worldwide from Toronto can be a costly and time-consuming endeavour. That’s why when I was introduced to Printify I immediately felt connected to it.

Printify is, in their own words, a “transparent print-on-demand network.” The company is not a manufacturing business themselves but rather an online manufacturing marketplace that puts brands in contact with manufacturers around the world. Typically, when a brand creates merchandise they will find a print shop in their city, get their merchandise made, sell it online for their supporters to buy, and ship it out all on their own. This kind of merchandising can often become overwhelming and expensive due to international fees, but Printify exists in order to relieve stress and reduce costs by printing merchandise on demand in the very country it’s made to ship out to.

When I first heard about this company, I saw the value in it straight away. The digital world is full of what we call ‘micro influencers’ (definition: social media influencers with 2000 to 100, 000 followers charging $100 to $300 per post) who have started their own brands and are looking to grow their careers but may not have the funds to go out and mass produce merchandise for their supporters. Printify works as a solution for those who don’t have the means to create merchandise in the traditional way—Printify is also modernizing the merchandising landscape in this new digital age.

After meeting with James Berdigans, CEO of Printify and learning more about the business, I knew I wanted Two Small Fish Ventures to invest in their journey. My experience of building a large network of users allows me to see the value in such an innovative network dedicated to helping any size of business from small brands to enterprises alike.

So today, I am happy to announce that Two Small Fish Ventures has the privilege of investing in Printify. James and I both believe that building a strong network is critical to Printify’s success, and I cannot wait to share my knowledge and experience with their team while they embark on this exciting journey.

While we take this journey together, I would also like to highlight what a privilege it is to be working alongside some fantastic investors including Bling Capital (lead investor), Steven Chen (the co-founder of Youtube), Kevin Lin (the co-founder of Twitch), and Gokul Rajarm (the Godfather of Google Adsense). I cannot wait to see where this adventure takes us!

Contests have always been a fun way to get people excited about a challenge. Every year, the Watty Awards on Wattpad attracted hundreds of thousands of writers to take on the storytelling challenge, hoping to gain the recognition from the crowd. In the end, many great stories are shared and some of them are recognized for their popularity and unique plots.

On the innovation front, for centuries contests have also been very successful in bringing the crowd together and solving very challenging problems. In 1927, founded by French hotelier Raymond Orteig, the Orteig prize offered a $25,000 prize for any team who could build a non-stop flight from New York to Paris. Inspired by the Orteig award, in 1996 entrepreneur and Singularity University co-founder Peter Diamandis offered a $10-million prize, called the Ansari XPRIZE, to the first privately financed team that could build and fly a three-passenger vehicle 100 km into space twice within two weeks. Eventually, on October 21, 2004, Scaled Composites’ SpaceShipOne not only won the prize but also ushered us into an era of commercial space exploration and applications. Since then, XPRIZE became the global leader in designing and implementing innovative incentivized competition models to solve the world’s grandest challenges and solve the Earth’s most pressing problems.

The success of these contests clearly demonstrated that fun, engaging and rewarding contests, can unlock the collective power of people to take on a challenge of any problems or opportunities. The innovations brought together in the form of crowdsourcing can be very powerful and groundbreaking.

This is why I immediately fell in love with the idea of HeroX when one of its founders Christian Cotichini reached out to me a few months ago. XPRIZE spin-off HeroX is co-founded by Mr. Diamandis, challenge-designer Emily Fowler and Christian. Christian knew my experience in building large scale in community and network effect based businesses would totally see the collective power of the crowd on the HeroX platform.

In their words, HeroX is “a platform that would make the power of incentive challenges available to anyone. They are here to democratize the innovation model of XPRIZE such that anyone can host a challenge and leverage the collective power of teams to solve interesting problems.”

So far, HeroX has hosted a range of contests sponsored by many different companies. One of the challenges was Coca-Cola’s Sweetener Challenge. This challenge is looking for a natural, safe, reduced, low- or no-calorie compound that creates the taste sensation of sugar when used in beverages and foods. The reward for the challenge was $1,000,000.

Another interesting challenge on HeroX was a partnership with NASA Tournament Lab. The challenge was to create a complete system inside a space suit that collects human waste for up to 144 hours and routes it away from the body, without the use of hands. The reward for this challenge was $30,000.

HeroX really enables anyone, anywhere in the world, to create a challenge that addresses any problem or opportunity, build a community around that challenge and activate the circumstances that can lead to breakthrough innovation. In the past few years, HeroX has built a strong community of innovators to help numerous organizations such as NASA and Coca-Cola, to crowdsource innovation to solve marketing, business or technology problems faster and better than traditional approaches.

Today I would like to announce that Two Small Fish Ventures has the privilege to invest in HeroX last year in 2017, which would give me the opportunity to share my knowledge and experience with the HeroX team. Look forward to being part of HeroX’s journey and helping HeroX democratize innovation.

If you love figure skating, you would know that Patrick Chan is the most decorated male figure skater in Canadian history. He once explained why having too many (in his words, four) quadruple jumps in a long program would diminish the quality of figure skating. Setting up a quadruple jump requires so much set up. He said, "So what's happening, and what you're going to end up seeing is just people moseying down the ice and setting up for a quad. So four times, that's already two-and-a-half minutes of the long program taken up.” This also means that it leaves much less time to show off intricate footwork in other routines. 

Have you ever feel this way with your work? We spent so much time on just getting ready to do the work than actually doing the work!

Let me give you a few examples. To arrange a 30-minute meeting, it may take a few email cycles over the course of a few days to find the time that works for everyone and book a room that’s available. To prepare a board meeting, you have to look up the previous meeting minutes, gather the latest stats from a few different people to put together a board deck. To solicit a business meeting with someone in another city, in addition to booking the flights a lot of prep work is required to look up the information about the company and the person you are about to meet.

For some fortune people, they may have administrative assistants to help with these tasks. In many cases, we have to DIY. Though these are all important tasks, they are delegatable and menial tasks, which could be and should be done by a machine rather than a human.

I can totally imagine in the future every employee can have their own automated assistant so that they can focus on tasks that only humans can do.

So, when I met with Roy Pereira, CEO and co-founder of Zoom.ai recently, I totally get his mission. In his own words:

Zoom.ai mission is to give everyone in the company their own automated assistant so that they can focus on their higher-value job duties.

At the moment, Zoom.ai can handle tasks such as meeting scheduling, meeting preparedness, introductions to people you want to meet, travel logistics, and more through a simple chat interface.

But this is just the beginning. Through machine learning, Zoom.ai can become smarter and smarter over time and can take on even more. The number of tasks that can be automated is infinite. Most importantly, as Zoom.ai becomes the fabric of the company, it can provide bird's-eye view and insights about the company that it couldn’t possibly gather before.

Today, we are very privileged to become an investor in Canadian Innovation Awards New Startup of the Year winner Zoom.ai as part of its $3.1 million seed extension funding round led by Evolution Equity Partners with backing from Betaworks, BDC, Good News Ventures and North Spring Capital. Look forward to supporting the Zoom.ai team on this journey.

Before moving to the City of Toronto from the suburb, I have a dear friend who had helped me with numerous home maintenance jobs in the last decades. He remodelled my kitchen, furnished my basement and pretty much did all the odd jobs whenever I needed a handyman. Let me put it this way, my old house had his fingerprints all over.

But since our move to Toronto a few years ago, he could no longer help me. He works mostly in the suburbs. Getting into the city to help me with small jobs is no longer cost effective for him. Since then it has always been a painful experience when it comes to home maintenance, especially when my house is more than 80 years old! Honestly, I can go on and on about all the tiny and yet very annoying maintenance issues I had to deal with in the last few years, and I can certainly tell you a few funny and yet frustrating stories when I was facing some disastrous home maintenance crisis.

So when I had the opportunity to meet with Ryan Shupak, CEO and co-founder of Jiffy, I can certainly see the need of Jiffy in large cities such as Toronto. Unlike in the suburbs and small towns when people tend to know who to call for home maintenance, in the cities finding a home maintenance professional and scheduling an appointment could be quite daunting. At the same time, home maintenance professionals are spending a lot of money on advertising and virtual assistants to make sure their sales funnel is large enough. And yet, they still have to deal with many back-office issues such as scheduling, billings or simply calling back the potential sale prospects.

Jiffy is not only a marketplace to connect home maintenance professionals with people who need their help, but it also is a productivity platform for them. Jiffy marries the network effect of a marketplace and the efficiency of their productivity tools to create a very unique opportunity for home maintenance professionals to transform the way they conduct business while giving the power to consumers to connect with them.

Today, I am so glad to announce that we have joined Ryan in his startup journey as an investor in Jiffy, along with Golden Venture Partners and Hedgewood. Look forward to transforming the home maintenance experience with the Jiffy team!

When it comes to shopping, I am very sure that I am a “pro”. I always do my shopping during the sale seasons. I always look for discount codes. Not only do I look for saving opportunities, but I also look for rewards. Therefore, I usually have credit cards that collect points, and I participate in many loyalty programs - from frequent-flyer miles to the ramen reward card offered by my favourite ramen joint. I am a proven use case of a consumer who spends money diligently.

But when it comes to redeeming the rewards, the experience could be rather frustrating. I usually have to accumulate tens of thousands of points before I can redeem a decent coffee maker through my credit cards. When it comes to redeeming travel rewards, that is even worse. Blackout period or peak season requires extra points, which essentially makes the effort of collecting points not worth it.

We have known Derrick Fung, CEO and founder of Drop, for many years. So when he was about to start Drop a couple of years ago, I was fascinated by its value proposition. He envisioned Drop to be the new reward and loyalty program that any millennial will ever need. It brings value to the millennials through their day-to-day spending. In their words, Drop “is designed to fit into any lifestyle — anyone can earn rewards, even if they don’t use a credit card.”

Drop allows consumers to link their debit and/or credit cards to the platform and through their day-to-day purchase activities, they will earn many relevant rewards offered by the merchants and marketers on the Drop network.  

It is a very bold value proposition and a huge undertaking for a startup, and yet Drop is on its way to reinventing the loyalty industry.

In the last couple of years, Derrick has turned this great idea into a great company. Today, more than 1 million members earn rewards at their favourite stores every day. Drop has created a 3-sided network of these three parties through their daily natural engagement on the platform. It is certainly a rising financial technology platform that is transforming the relationship amongst merchants, marketers, and consumers.

Today, we are very privileged to become an investor in Drop, along with NEA, Sierra Ventures, Portag3 Ventures, and other investors as part of its US$21 million dollar round. Look forward to supporting Derrick and his team on this journey.

Did you know that other than being an angel investor, I have another full-time job? Yup, I am the Chief Operations Officer of the Lau’s residence. I am in charge of the inventory of all household supplies. I am also in charge of the weekly grocery purchase and any emergency purchase during the week. Other than making sure all supplies are purchased and delivered to our house using the Just-in-time Scheduling Methodology (sorry for this jargon since I am an industrial engineer). Of course, I also have to make sure all purchases are considered as “High Quality, Low Price”.

I am sure all household-COOs would agree with me that the job has not been an easy one. One mistake in the purchase order could result in a young kid crying “No more cookies? Wwaaahhhh …”

Imagine what it is like for the folks in the foodservice industry? What if the chef needs cilantro for his Vietnamese pho, but the order of cilantro turns out to be parsley? Or when coffee shops run out of lactose-free milk and can only offer almond milk or soy milk as alternatives?

Therefore, when Saif Altimimi, CEO and co-founder of ChefHero, was raising a round of fundings, I was very interested to learn more about the business.

In a nutshell, ChefHero is a platform that streamlines the procurement process in the foodservice industry. So far, there are more than 300 companies that have trusted their procurement process with ChefHero and the number is growing rapidly. By curating and aggregating both the supply and demand side in the foodservice procurement process, ChefHero is leveraging the collective power of both sides of the equation. Along with its very intuitive and well designed mobile app, ChefHero is well positioned to reinvent the procurement process to make it far more efficient. Chefs can easily shop and purchase all their supplies at the best possible price with the quality they would like on any device at any time.

We are very privileged to be an investor in the venture. We believe that ChefHero will become one of the biggest procurement networks in the foodservice industry.

I remember in the early days of Wattpad I was the only person in the community team. Among other things, I was the one who single-handedly answered all the support tickets. When it was only tens of tickets per day, it was not that difficult. As the user base grew, I soon had to deal with hundreds of tickets per day. Fortunately, many of the support tickets were similar in nature. Thus, by having templates to handle these repeated inquires the volume was manageable.

As Wattpad continued to grow, when it came to user support we didn’t take our eyes off the user experience. Initiatives like community peer help or FAQ were developed but the objective was always about empowering users to resolve their issues as soon as possible.

Last year when the Wattpad team told me that they have deployed an AI bot to empower users in the support process, I was intrigued. It was then when I was introduced to Creative Destruction Lab alumni Ada Support.

As Ada Support’s CEO and co-founder Mike Murchison puts it, “Ada Support is Support for 21st Century”. They “provide automation-first chat support anywhere your customers are”.

By integrating Ada Support into the Wattpad app, users can now chat with the bot and communicate the problems they are having. With the power of artificial intelligence, through conversations, the bot will diagnose the issues of which the users are experiencing and then direct them to the appropriate resources or remedies.

Today Ada Support is an integral part of many other companies such as Rogers Communications, Shopify and Coinbase. It has now scaled to millions of support conversations per day, As it scales, through data network effect Ada Support has become more and more intelligent in helping organizations to support their users.

Today Ada Support announced it has raised $2.5 million in funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from Version One Ventures. Two Small Fish Ventures is also participating in this round. I am so excited that we can be part of Ada Support’s journey. Toronto is the best place for Ada Support to scale its business since Toronto is the epicentre of artificial intelligence. We believe Ada Support will be the support interface for the 21st century.

    Although the Internet has been commercialized for over twenty years, many industries are largely operating in the same way that they were operating twenty years ago. Why? Partially it is because many of these industries are highly regulated. If an industry is highly regulated, the incumbents are also largely protected by the regulations. As such, it is much more difficult for the disruptors to reimagine the business processes. In many cases, the disruptors fall back to automate the existing processes. The changes become incremental - and more importantly - not digital native.

But we have seen it over and over again: it can be very powerful when a disruptor can obliterate business processes instead of automating them. Uber and Airbnb are two excellent examples of the disruptors bypass the traditional systems and create game changing companies.

That’s why we are excited about Ask The Doctor - rather than automating the existing medical system, Ask The Doctor bypasses the system and reinvents a new way for people to connect to doctors to receive immediate help in 3 simple steps.

Step 1: Ask Your Health Question.

Step 2: Select Your Doctor.

Step 3: Get Your Answer.

It is instantaneous. It is affordable. It is global. Most importantly, as more people use Ask The Doctor, it gets smarter! Ask The Doctor achieves all these without any dependencies on the traditional system. It is a classic disruptor that leverages network effects - in this case data network effects - to build a fantastically defensible business.

Eva and I have known Ask The Doctor CEO and co-founder of Prakash Chand for quite a while. We are excited about what he has built and even more excited what he will build. Today we are very privileged to announce that Two Small Fish Ventures is advising Ask The Doctor. Look forward to seeing how Ask The Doctor reimagines how people seek for medical help.

A couple of weeks ago, on the 11th day of Ellen DeGeneres' 12 Days of Giveaways, Ellen gave her audience the ultimate surprise! Partnering with the show, Surpriise, the first and only mobile gifting app that allows users to send Visa gift cards digitally to anywhere in the world, gifted the audience with $300 gift cards loaded in the app. You can just hear the roar in the video below and know that this surprise is very well received.

Surpriise, created by our portfolio companies, Vouchr, is transforming the gift card industry globally. We invested in Vouchr back in 2015 but kept in under the radar until now. I still remember how excited I was when Rob and Suresh, co-founders of Vouchr, introduced me to the app. I love how it empowers users to send gifts to each other, regardless of where they are, and what kind of gifts they want.

Gifting is a universal culture. No matter where and how they grew up, people often gift to others to express their love and gratitude. Especially on people’s birthdays and during Christmas, people always look for the perfect gift to surprise their loved ones.

But trying to get me the perfect gift - and you can ask Allen - is always a challenge. He gave up on the idea of surprising me with a gift long time ago because I dread when I get a gift that is not too much of my liking. I guess that is because I am so used to my favourite childhood gifts - red packets. Growing up in a traditional Chinese family, adults would put money in tiny red envelopes and would gift to others on their birthdays and Chinese New Year. They called these red packets or “Lucky Money”. By saving up the money, I got to spend them on things I absolutely loved.

Therefore, I am so thrilled by Surpriise that allows me to send anyone a digital gift card that allows the recipient to spend in the stores they love, or experience at places they enjoy. Surpriise even allows me to gamify the gifting experience with the recipients, such as solving a riddle, or taking a selfie at a designated location. The app not only empowers the recipients to choose their own spending experience, but also empowers the givers to interact with friends through the gifting process.

Surpriise is the first of many products that Vouchr is going to develop. In their own words, Vouchr is going to “Redefining Digital Gifting & Rewards”. The opportunity here is massive. In 2015, over 8 billion red packets were sent digitally in China while it is estimated that the gifting market size in US alone is about USD$131 billion. We look forward to seeing Vouchr transforms this market into a fun and engaging one.

First of all, huge congrats to the SkipTheDishes team! Food delivery giant JUST EAT just acquired the rocket ship SkipTheDishes! It’s hard to believe that only 18 months ago Two Small Fish Ventures invested in SkipTheDishes. Although it is bittersweet to see SkipTheDishes exits our portfolio so quickly, no doubt this acquisition is a big win for everyone involves.

1. Big win for people living in mid-sized cities and suburbs.

SkipTheDishes squarely focuses on - and only focuses on - mid-sized cities. It is very smart strategy as half the population in North America resides outside of metropolitans and yet most of the food delivery companies ignore these markets. Why? Almost all the other food delivery companies are based in big cities and that’s the market they understand. On the other hand, SkipTheDishes is based in Winnipeg, whose population is only 730,000. It is counter-intuitive but that’s exactly why SkipTheDishes succeeded - it truly understands the market that it serves better than anyone else. It gives SkipTheDishes the unfair advantage. With this acquisition, the now-on-steroid SkipTheDishes can expand into other mid-sized cities more rapidly. More people can now benefit from the time saving and convenience of having food being delivered to them at affordable prices. This is life changing for millions of people.

2. Big win for SkipTheDishes and JUST EAT

With hundreds of employees already serving many markets in the US and Canada, SkipTheDishes is well on its way to build a world class independent company. The only thing that is stopping SkipTheDishes from growing even faster is its own capacity. By partnering with food delivery giant JUST EAT, SkipTheDishes can fulfill its vision much sooner than it possibly can as an independent company. Equally importantly, JUST EAT can now leverage SkipTheDishes’ secret sauce and expand into markets where it couldn’t before. Clearly a win-win.

3. Big win for the Winnipeg and Canadian startup ecosystem

Last but not least, the acquisition is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of the next chapter of an amazing story. Already one of biggest fish in a small but growing pond, SkipTheDishes will continue to play the leader role in Winnipeg’s startup scene. We always believe that anyone can build a tech company anywhere these days. With this acquisition, more capital, knowledge and talents will be recycled. The bar has been raised. The virtuous cycle has begun.

Once again huge congrats to the SkipTheDishes team. Thanks Josh, Andrew and their colleagues for letting us sit on the front row seats. It was fun to watch them ride this rocket ship. Look forward to seeing many more rocket ships from team Canada!

Today, we are very honoured to be named one of the five power couples in Canadian Tech by the Globe And Mail, who are “brought together by their mutual fondness for engineering, elevator pitches and all-night brainstorming sessions.”  Very happy that our friends are on the list too. 

Looking at our portfolio companies, Wattpad and other amazing companies in Toronto, there are other power couples who are doing great things in Canadian Tech as well. To name a few - John Philip Green (CEO, CareGuide) and Malgosia Green (CPO, Tophat), and Melissa Nightingale (Head of Creator, Wattpad) and Johnathan Nightingale (CPO, Hubba), Prakash Chand (CEO, AskTheDoctor) and Neha Khera (Venture Partner, 500 Startups Canada), Carl Mercier and Tami Zuckerman (Co-Founders, VarageSale). I am sure I am missing a few. My apology for any omissions. 

I believe these couples certainly would agree with me that “two are better than one”. Having worked with Allen in tech since we graduated from school, we grew together, weathered the tech bubble burst together, dived into entrepreneurship together and raising a family together.

It has not been an easy journey, but certainly is an exciting, fulfilling and a loving one.

Cheers to all the tech couples in the world!

Last year when Allen and I were invited to speak to a group of DMZ alumni about our experience in Wattpad, Allen talked mostly about the founding story of Wattpad. I am not going to repeat it here because it’s his story to tell. So what did I tell the DMZ alumni at the time? I spoke to them about passion - founders need to be passionate about building the right product for their users first. Success will then come naturally.

After graduating from Engineering school in University of Toronto in the 90s, I joined a software startup called Delrina as a Quality Assurance Engineer. We aimed to build the world’s best fax software. We did it and we dominated the market. Most people don’t know what fax is these days: it is an ancient technology that scans and transmits printed material - both text and images - through a phone line from one fax device to another fax device on the other end LOL! Not only did I caught the startup bug during that experience, but I also became passionate in building great products for users. I was told that I was the spokesperson for the users before the users even laid their hands on the product. Therefore, I relentlessly hammered on the product on its quality front, hoping the users would enjoy using the product. In all my other roles in my career, that has always been my guiding post.

Fast forward to my time at Wattpad. When I joined Ivan and Allen in 2009, I was tasked with whatever Allen and Ivan didn’t have time to do. I was tasked to look for an office space, keep all accounting records and most importantly, take care of our users. I spent most of my time engaging with them, analyzing their behavior and worked very closely with Ivan to incorporate their feedback into the product. During the four years I spent in Wattpad, we grew the user base from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions. The success of such growth is really rooted in our passion in building a product that users would love and enjoy.

Recently when I was introduced to the folks in ENGINEERING.com. They have a very successful business already. However, they would love to do more. They wanted to connect engineers and celebrate the amazing things that engineering has brought to the world. Here, I see the same passion, the passion in bringing the engineering community together and unleash the collective power to make the world a better place.

My experience in building the Wattpad community, coupled with my engineering background allows me to serve this company in a very unique way. Today, I am thrilled to join ENGINEERING.com’s Board of Directors (news release). Knowing that ENGINEERING.com wants to celebrate engineers who make things that make a difference is a very important cause I am proud to be part of. I can’t wait to share with them my experience and help mobilize more than 100 million global engineers who do amazing things.

When Allen and I meet new faces in networking events, often people are curious about how we met. So now, once and for all, let me tell you. We met in the summer just before my freshman year in Engineering at University of Toronto. He was a year senior to me and we were introduced through some common friends. Once school began, we hung out often in the engineering library in the Sanford Fleming building. And of course being a very smart woman, I picked this very brilliant guy and the rest is history. 😀

Why did I choose to become an engineer? Because I love STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). In my high school years, I was particularly fascinated by science. Wearing a lab coat, and working with test tubes, bunsen burners and microscopes, etc. were a lot of fun and fascinating. However, one thing was very frustrating. Had I incorrectly set up my experiments, be it with the wrong chemicals or measurements, I had to start the experiment all over again. When the lab assignment deadline is pressing, having to redo it was certainly not a fun thing.

Therefore I always admire scientists who spend so much time to meticulously conduct their experiments to validate their hypothesis. In many experiments, a lot of compounds are involved. A small mishap in the process could cost them months if not years of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, currently there is no easy way to allow scientists to quickly and easily search millions of papers to find the data they need, such as antibody usage data. Needless to say, millions of dollars - let alone valuable research time - are wasted in failed experiments that are preventable.

So when I was introduced to BenchSci, I was intrigued. Their team is made up of scientists who truly understand the needs of their fellows. They explained that even though the internet has ease the flow of information within the science community, the cost of retrieving data is still extremely high and ineffective. Not only is scientific information scattered and buried inside millions of scientific publications, but the information is also unorganized and unstructured in such a way that it is very tedious to retrieve and make use of.

For example, when a scientist would like to use an antibody in one of their experiments on brain cancer cell research, the scientist would have to comb through many publications from many different disciplines in order to understand how other scientists use this specific antibody in their experiments. Sometimes these other experiments may not be even related to cancer research. The scientist would have to draw her own assumptions on the usage and properties of the antibody in order to apply the learnings in her own experiments.

In other words, collecting information about the usage and properties of different compounds in different scenarios from a totally disorganized arrays of data sources is a painful step in conducting scientific research.

The BenchSci platform leverages machine learning to allow scientists to quickly and easily search millions of publications to find antibody or other compound usage data. Equally importantly, not only does the platform properly organize data for retrieval, but it also connects scientists with many disciplines around the world. The platform enables scientists to share their own proprietary observations pertaining to the antibodies in their own research, which might only be captured in their own laboratory log books. BenchSci is aspired to become a very powerful community of scientists who hold the knowledge that the world awaits to unleash.

In their words:

“BenchSci was born as a result of our team’s continuous struggle of sifting through millions of scientific papers to find the antibody validation data. We are to liberate scientists from the burden of conducting the grunt work when planning experiments and to prevent scientists from spending valuable research time and resources on failed experiments.”

BenchSci is accelerating the pace in global scientific research when groundbreaking scientific discovery is crucial. The success of the platform will contribute directly to the advancement of the medical and pharmaceutical community, food science and many other disciplines that rely on the collective knowledge and success of scientists in the world.

We are so proud that we have the opportunity to invest in BenchSci in May 2016. It is such a privilege to be in the journey with BenchSci founders Liran, Tom, David and Elvis to unleash knowledge in the science community.

Yesterday Snapchat announced that it has acquired Toronto based Bitstrips. Congratulations to my friends Jacob, Shahan and the Bitstrips team. They built an amazing product - Bitmoji - and it was a fantastic outcome for all stakeholders.

Two Small Fish has been advising Bitstrips for quite a few years. So I would like to take a second to tell the Bitstrips story from my perspective since now is a good time to tell it.

In 2007, shortly after Ivan and I started Wattpad someone introduced us to Virgin Mobile. It was before the iPhone. So mobile apps, like Wattpad that ran on the RAZR and other feature phones, were at the mercy of the carriers because they control the deck. No carrier deal means no downloads - as simple as that. We have got a lot of people saying no to us as no one believed that people would read on mobile.

Of course we proved them wrong but that’s another story for another day.

Back to Virgin Mobile. Shahan Panth was the product marketing manager in charge of their deck. He loved the Wattpad idea and gave us our first break. We had our first carrier deal!

Shahan left Virgin shortly after but we kept in touch. He started his own company called Bitstrips with a few friends. Their first product was Bitstrips for Schools. Bitstrips for Schools lets students create comics without drawing a line, and helps teachers turn any topic into a fun and collaborative classroom activity.

It took them quite some time to gain traction. After a few years, many schools in Ontario adopted Bitstrips. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great business as schools typically don’t have huge budgets for this kind of stuff.

So it was time to pivot.

The second product was also called Bitstrips. The difference is that instead of targeting schools, this time they targeted consumers. Bitstrips are instant comics starring people like you and your friends. It creates a fun and visual way to communicate on social networks. It got not much traction initially. However, as the product improved, all in a sudden it went viral. And then it went from viral to super viral. And then it became one of most viral products in recent memory. Sort of like Pokemon Go, but even bigger. It unseated Facebook to become the number 1 app in the App Stores for weeks. As you may recall, Bitstrips dominated your Facebook newsfeed for a long time as everyone created instant comics starring oneself and shared with friends. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers also invested in Bitstrips at that time.

Unfortunately with tens of millions of monthly downloads, their server melted in front of their own eyes. The service was down most of the time as it simply couldn’t handle the load.

By the time they scaled the service, most people had moved on to the next big thing.

So it was time to pivot again. Could they catch the lightning twice?

The third product was called Bitmoji. Bitmoji is based on similar technologies that they built for Bitstrips and Bitstrips for Schools but for a different use case. Bitmoji gives people an entertaining and dynamic visual identity that lets you express yourself in ways that words can’t capture. The Bitstrips team discovered that people mostly used it in communications apps so they created Bitmoji for Facebook Messenger, Bitmoji Keyboard, Bitmoji for Chrome to make it super easy to use Bitmoji regardless of which apps people use. Tens (hundreds?) of millions of people - including yours truly - became Bitmoji regular.

The Bitstrips team indeed caught the lightning twice.

Given the sustained traction they have, it isn’t a surprise that Snapchat acquired them.

That’s the end of the Bitstrips story from my perspective. And it has a happy ending.

If there is a moral to this story, it is that perseverance pays off. All 3 products were based on the same belief. They all let people express themselves in ways that words can’t capture. Bitstrips for Schools was a good idea. It had product market fit, but it failed to become a big business. Bitstrips was a better idea. It had greater product market fit. Even though it became a big business, it failed to become a sustainable big business. Bitmoji is an even better idea. It has amazing product market fit, and the team learned from its past failures to turn Bitmoji into a great business.

It took almost 10 years from start to finish. It was a long journey. The Bitstrips founders and the team believe in themselves and keep iterating until it works really well. If you think this is the exception, you are dead wrong. Most startups take that long to turn a great idea into a great product, then into a great company, and then finally into a great business. Instant successes like YouTube and Instagram are the exceptions rather than the rule.

Once again, huge congrats to the Bitstrips team!

P.S. The Bitstrips team even made a comic about the acquisition. Please see below.

Many social media influencers have created massive followings. It is not uncommon to find YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat or Wattpad influencers who have millions of followers. These social influencers have built online followings so strong that they dwarf many Hollywood celebrities. In addition, these social influencers have built personal and authentic relationships with their fan base. These relationships become extremely valuable to brand marketers as it creates new channel for brands to connect with consumers. By creating branded content with social media influencers, brands can amplify their message and engage directly with their target audience in a very authentic and scalable way.

I understand first hand how powerful it is through Wattpad’s own influencer program - Wattpad Stars. Throught Wattpad Stars, many brands such as AT&T, Coca-Cola, GE, Sony Pictures, etc. leverage Wattpad influencers to tell their stories on Wattpad natively. Unfortunately for many other platforms, it is no easy task for brands to connect with these influencers and manage marketing campaigns with them across multiple platforms. That’s why today we’re very excited to announce that we have invested in #paid to solve this problem.

In their own words:

We help brands reach new audiences. We're passionate about providing a simple & elegant influencer marketing solution for brands. At the heart of #paid, we're revolutionizing marketing and democratizing access to the top creators. People are no longer looking at commercials, they're looking at their smartphones and following the latest trends on social media. There are those, known as influencers, empowering themselves to do what they love for a living through #paid. They’re the content Kings and Queens. The unique voices. The childhood heroes. The new age creative artists. The ones who allow the entire world to experience their art and storytelling on a daily basis.

When we made the investment last year, it was decided that we would rather keep it under the radar for a while since #paid’s founders Bryan and Adam would like to keep building the company for some time first. Since we made the investment, the #paid team has made tremendous progress with all the KPIs pointing to-the-top-and-to-the-right. So we believe timing is right to tell the world about this investment and that’s why we are adding the #paid logo to our portfolio page today.

As 2015 came to an end, it’s time to both reflect and look forward. It is hard to believe that it has been just a little over 12 months since Two Small Fish Ventures made our first investment. Subsequently we made 5 more investments. We announced 4 - Gallop Labs (acquired by Big Viking Games in January 2016), CareGuide, Hubba and SkipTheDishes while the other 2 chose to fly under the radar for now. Many of our portfolio companies are doing really well. That being said, building a startup is a very long journey that takes many years. As our focus is early stage startups, all of our portfolio companies are still in the first inning. It will take them eight more innings to declare victory. But so far we are extremely pleased with our batting average! ** **

Our focus is in the Toronto-Waterloo tech corridor. Therefore, not surprisingly 5 out of these 6 companies are based in Toronto with Winnipeg based SkipTheDishes being the lone exception. Interestingly, so far we have not made a single investment in Waterloo even though we met with quite a few Waterloo based companies. With so many amazing tech startups coming out of Waterloo, it is only a matter of time before we invest there.

We are very thesis driven. As such, we only invest in early stage internet companies with strong network effects. We are also sector agnostic. Our 6 investments cover FinTech, marketplaces, food delivery and enterprise networks. Interestingly, we did not invest in a single potentially-large-scale consumer oriented network like Wattpad. We didn’t intentionally stay away from it. However, in the past couple of years the incumbents - Facebook, Google and a few other - have become increasingly dominant. Nowadays it is much harder for new entrants to create broad consumer networks as it is very difficult to displace the time users devote to the top apps. Moving forward, we believe that it will be even more difficult to find investment opportunities in broad consumer oriented networks. But never say never!

Even though it has been 20 years since the commercialization of the internet, surprisingly there are still so many sectors that have not been disrupted. We believe that the internet revolution is still in its infancy with so many opportunities ahead of us. In 2016, we will continue to stick to our thesis - invest in Toronto/Waterloo based early stage internet companies with strong network effects - but we will be increasingly focusing on sectors that have not yet been disrupted by the internet. We love sharing our experience, particularly the hard lessons and mistakes we learned through building Wattpad. We certainly want to pass on our valuable learning to others. By sharing our experience, knowledge, resources and connections with other entrepreneurs in the Toronto-Waterloo tech corridor, we hope we can help create a lot of startup successes and ultimately help the Canadian startup ecosystem flourishes.

According to a recent study by The Economist, Toronto is the world’s best city to live in. I agree wholeheartedly. It’s a safe, friendly, clean, diverse and prosperous city. We feel so blessed to call Toronto home since Allen and I moved from the suburb a year ago.

Did we miss our lives as suburbanites? Well, yes and no. In the suburb traffic was not as hectic and our house was more spacious. On the other hand, I love the convenience of city life. Sometimes, I wonder if there is a utopia where we can have all the space we want, like in the suburb and yet, have all the convenience offered by the city.

The utopia may not exist but I certainly know one startup that is bringing the convenience of a city to less populated areas. In June 2015, we co-invested in the seed round of Winnipeg based SkipTheDishes with our friends at Golden Venture Partners. SkipTheDishes connects local restaurants with food couriers so that people could enjoy the convenience of having great local food being delivered to them. In their own words:

“By seamlessly connecting you to local restaurants and food couriers, we make your city’s great food more accessible, opening up more possibilities for food lovers, more business for local small business owners, and income for food couriers.”

www.skipthedishes.com

We are very excited about this opportunity because we have first-hand understanding of the problem that they are trying to solve and of course the 3-sided network effects. Since founding in 2013, their service has already expanded into over ten cities across Canada and US. Their seamless integration not only creates strong local networks of restaurants and food couriers, but their customers are also enjoying the convenience of food ordering and delivery they never had before.

We look forward to seeing SkipTheDishes continues to expand their network in the US, Canada and the rest of world.