Memo II
Craft Beer gets Crafty, Empower the Freelancer, Hidden Gem, Latest Funding Rounds
Hello!
Apologies for the delay in the release of Memo II, it’s finals season…
We now have over 50 subscribers to the newsletter. Big thanks to everyone for the support and I am determined to provide you with interesting content in every memo!
If you missed it, check out Memo I:
Craft Beer gets Crafty
Ollie Order | Vancouver, BC | SAAS
A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to take a little day trip from my student home in Hamilton to a small town on Lake Erie. After a walk on the beach and pretending I was somewhere warm, we headed to the local brewery in town. Opened in February 2018, Breakwall Brewery starting pouring craft beer for the small population of Port Colbourne, ON of approximately eighteen thousand. 9 O’clock whistle IPA, my Breakwall Brewery personal favorite, is now arguably one of my favorite craft beers to date! I’m no beer expert, but it had an excellent body and a great finish. After, I thought how does a small brewery in a small town, compete in such a competitive market and make its way onto store shelves? Since that weekend I have yet to find the 9 O’clock IPA in any store and I live only 2 hours away.
Craft beer sales across Canada have seen a major surge over the last decade, nearly doubling from $1 billion (CAD) in 2014 to $1.9 billion (CAD) in 20191. While major alcohol conglomerates such as Molson Coors Beverage Company (TAP) have experienced a decline in their beer categories. As per Professor Alfons Weersink at the University of Guelph, “The decline in the consumption of mass-marketed beer and the significant increase in craft beer consumption is partially reflective of demographic shifts.”2 Alfons argues the drivers behind the surge of craft brewers in Canada are the following:
Loosening of Regulations
Changing Demographics
Demand for Local / Culinary Tourism
Craft Beer now accounts for 6% of the Canadian alcohol beverage market and is expected to triple over the next few years.3 The LCBO has experienced a significant rise in craft beer sales over the last five years from $10 million to $80 million.4 According to Alfons, this dramatic change in beer preference isn’t the result of ‘trendy’ millennials but rather the baby boom generation entering their later ages and demanding such a product. If you are interested in learning more about Alfon’s research, click here.
Witnessing this growth across Canada and realizing there wasn’t a sales software designed specifically for craft breweries, was the founding team of Ollie Order. Founded in 2019 by Ryan Wilson, Jesse Bannister, Karl Campbell, and Mike Macquisten the group has set sights on building the best omnichannel sales software for BC breweries. Since its launch, multiple breweries, wineries, cideries, and distilleries across Canada are using the platform to manage sales and distribution. Ollie offers support with:
Order Management
Warehousing
Reporting
Accounting
Sales
Payments
Online Store
Additionally, the platform has built a buyers’ community to help beverage companies spread awareness of their products and get into stores across the country. “Breakwall Brewery, did you hear that!” The community allows buyers, such as distributors and purchasing agents, to search and discover new brands and product offerings in an easy-to-use marketplace which allows them to place and track their orders.
The team at Ollie designed the platform to suit the demands of these busy microbreweries. They offer a unique integrated payments system to help breweries reduce their AR, manage invoices, and even generate tax reporting documents on the fly. With a plugin for Quickbooks, users can manage all accounting needs on their phones. The addition of a CRM tool allows quickly growing companies to effectively grow their sales team and customer base.
The company completed an undisclosed seed round in 2020, and has already grown to 16 employees, and acquired clients like Collective Arts, a major craft brewery based in Hamilton, Ontario.
Ollie’s founding team brings plenty of experience to the platform. Ryan Wilson, with a strong passion for innovation and technology, has held many c-suite positions since his graduation from the University of British Columbia in 2008. Jesse Bannister previously worked at Direct Tap, a BC company focused on modernizing beverage delivery and storage. Jesse also founded Provincial Spirits, a cocktail beverage company based in Port Coquitlam, BC. Karl Campbell, UBC engineering grad and founder of SalesLitre Technologies - sales software used by over 50 wineries in BC. Mike Macquisten, founder of Direct Tap, Kegshare, and FreshTap brings a plethora of leadership experience. Overall this founding team is stacked with technological expertise and industry experience.
With a 30% increase in the number of new breweries from 2016 - 2018 (the majority being craft beer), Ollie Order has positioned itself extremely well to leverage this growth.5 With a competitive pricing model, Ollie is able to attract even the small cash-strapped players. With their online marketplace communities, they are able to promote clients to buyers and agents. Moreover, their fully integrated all-in-one platform will allow craft breweries to sustain lean operations and spent the majority of their time doing what they love, brewing a great beer!
Empower the Freelancer
Benji | Toronto, ON | FinTech
Since the end of March 2020, freelance marketplaces like Fiverr and UpWork have seen extraordinary growth. Upwork has experienced an 811% jump in stock price since the beginning of the pandemic and Fiverr has recorded a 916% spike during the same period. Fiverr’s earnings report in February of this year reported a whopping 45% increase in buyers year over year.6 These are powerful signals announcing the growth of the freelance economy.
During a previous position as a research assistant, my team examined the effects of the Gig economy on journalists. Some conclusions we found include:
The once supportive 9 to 5 career, providing benefits, and financial security, is a thing of the past.
Insurance and Health benefits are now the responsibility of the journalist and no longer the publisher.
Being available 24/7 and capable of making multiple tight deadlines is the minimum requirement for succeeding as a freelancing journalist.
The journalism industry is just one sector to experience considerable change. The freelance economy as a whole reached $1.2 trillion (USD) in 2020.7 The same report found that 36% of Americans performed freelance work in the last 12 months.8 As this economy grows, supplemental services to support these workers will be needed, yet haven’t as of yet. Well, maybe until now!
Introducing Benji! A Toronto-based service that helps Canadian freelancers find tax write-offs. Founded in 2019 by Mohammed Asaduallah, Founder of Women and Color and former Senior Product Manager at Tulip Retail. As industries begin to push towards freelance work, Mohammed is building Benji to help this growing workforce with the right financial tools to succeed.
Benji filters through a user’s multiple bank statements to categorize their different business expenses and notifies them of purchases that can be tax-deductible. Priced at only $100 per year, which is considerably cheaper than most business tax software, a subscription to Benji can be written off as a business expense. Double bonus! It’s reported that 72% of freelancers aren’t aware of which expenses are tax-deductible.9 Benji looks to help this demographic in making better purchasing decisions. The platform already has plenty of success with helping freelancers save, on average $9,387.53 per year.10
That’s not all, more exciting news about Benji is their future ambition to launch a neo bank specifically designed for Canadian entrepreneurs and freelancers. More details to come! With the growing creator economy and the increasing number of Canadians working as freelancers, financial services suited for such workers will be required in the future. I hope Mohammed the best of luck and hope Benji will be the one-stop-shop for the financial needs of freelancers in the future.
Benji isn’t the only Toronto early-stage startup focusing on empowering the new generation of workers. Two seasoned operators, Jafar Owainati and William Maninguy are focused on building a better system for companies to approach compensation as work becomes remote, Barley.io, still under development, is their solution.
With new pay equity regulations passed by the federal government in 2018, Barley looks to build a platform that helps teams retain top talent, meet regulations, and provide fair equity compensation in a market that is moving remote and freelanced. Jafar and William both come with strong product-building experience to a space that is evolving and very much in need of a solution like Barley.io.
It’s exciting to see Toronto founders working on solutions to better equip the future workforce and if become successful, will be great acquisition targets.
Hidden Gem
Pennygem | Toronto, ON | Edtech
Currently part of the incubator program at DMZ in Toronto and founded by Kate Mansouri, Pennygem is a financial education platform encouraging children to build stronger saving habits and improve financial literacy. The app is built with features to manage allowance, set chores and tasks, and the ability to set interest rates to teach kids the importance of savings.
A neat feature of the app is the online store. It’s designed to allow kids to spend their earnings on different toys as a reward for saving their money. The intriguing part is parents are allowed to approve what items the kid can buy and how much they are allowed to spend. Thus making it a safe environment for the child.
As Edtech start-ups in Canada such as Applyboard, TopHat, Disco, and Showbie just to name a few, gain strong adaption and considerable funding, it’s a great time for Pennygem to enter the highly interesting vertical. Having launched its beta in April 2021, the platform is still very new. Nevertheless, with the help of DMZ’s coveted incubator program, this could really accelerate Pennygem’s development.
If successful, Kate’s education platform would become an excellent target for acquisition or partnership for a major financial institution. Some prospects would be challenger banks like; Wealthsimple, Neo Bank, and Koho. Or traditional institutions like RBC, Tangerine, or CIBC. All three of which have made considerable strides in offering innovative solutions.
Latest Seed Rounds
Below is a short curated list of funding annoucements of early stage companies that Murdock Memo finds intriguing
SquareFeet.ai - Montreal, QC - Reinvent the way real estate developers and brokers work on launching a new condo or rental project - $25K from Front Row Ventures (Student-led VC)
Disco - Toronto, ON - A platform for education creators to build and scale their learning empire easily in one place - $4.75M from Global Founders Fund, Inovia Capital, Golden Ventures, GSV Ventures, and MANY others
Swyft - Toronto, ON - Allowing retailers of all sizes access same-day delivery through advanced technology and affordable pricing - $22M from Inovia Capital, Forerunner Ventures, Golden Ventures, Trucks Venture Capital, and Shopify. NOTE: this was a Series A round, not seed. I’ve added this announcement because it’s a very interesting company that should be followed
Allegory Insurance - Toronto, ON - Building the future of insurance to help good drivers save money and prevent accidents by using AI and machine vision - Raise was undisclosed from a single angel investor
Memo III will be released on April 26!
https://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/international-trade/market-intelligence/reports/customized-report-service-the-beer-market-in-canada-and-craft-beer-trends/?id=1577715795738
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321948351_The_Canadian_Craft_Beer_Sector
http://www.pacrimdistributors.com/blog/2020/10/14/whats-happening-in-with-canadian-beer-sales-2021-market-update
Ibid.
Ibid.
https://investors.fiverr.com/press-releases/press-releases-details/2021/Fiverr-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2020-Results/
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/15/a-snapshot-of-the-1point2-trillion-freelance-economy-in-the-us-in-2020.html
Ibid.
https://www.betterwithbenji.com/
Ibid.