Memo IV
Show me the Crypto, No more Rollerblades, New Fund Announcement, Latest Seed Rounds
Welcome!
For those of you new to Murdock Memo, it’s a bi-weekly newsletter focusing on the early-stage startup ecosystem in Canada 🇨🇦
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Show me the Crypto
Zaprite | Vancouver, BC | FinTech
Oh yes it’s the Jerry Maguire meme, now updated after 25 years for your enjoyment. Jokes aside, I would not be surprised if this is the reality for sports agents today. As bitcoin and cryptocurrencies become all the craze, demanding payment of salary in bitcoin (BTC) doesn’t seem outrageous. Look no further than Jacksonville Jaguars’ first overall pick in the NFL’s 2021 draft, Trevor Lawrence.
The young star is expected to receive 100% percent of his endorsement from Blockfolio in cryptocurrency. Trevor isn’t the first footballer to jump on this movement, Russell Okung has been battling with the Carolina Panthers for two years to get a portion of his salary paid in bitcoin.1 Dallas Mavericks, owned by bitcoin advocate Mark Cuban, have begun accepting bitcoin as payment. Even companies like Microsoft, Burger King, and Pizza Hut are now accepting BTC. Many major athletes and retailers are slowly adapting to the crypto craze, but will this shift become mainstream with the 9-5 workforce?
I believe the next wave of adoption for crypto P2P payments will be led by freelancers and digital workers within the next two years. As I’ve previously discussed in Memo II, the freelance workforce is growing, therefore an application designed to support this creator economy with a simple P2P bitcoin payment option will be highly coveted in the near future.
Today I’m excited to share the news Vancouver-based company Zaprite is currently beta testing a solution to empower freelancers to get paid in bitcoin!
What’s really interesting about this startup is its founding story, and how John Magill built Zaprite in his spare time out of necessity. John, who is a full-time freelancer himself, started picking up contracts from bitcoin companies in Montreal doing UI/UX work where he received payment in bitcoin. As an advocate of the digital currency, John was thrilled to be receiving it in exchange for his consulting work. When we chatted, John said:
“Getting paid in Bitcoin, that was awesome. Then I tried to figure out how I was going to invoice, and that was a bit of a nightmare — trying to set up my own BTCPay Server and have a node running and trying to configure some kind of software that was able to take real-time quotes on the price”
The downside of getting paid in bitcoin — it requires more work than traditional fiat currency. Not only will the recipient have to set up a digital wallet and a secure process to receive it, but the price of BTC also fluctuates periodically, and to get the correct conversion rate at the time the invoice is paid can be tricky.
“So if I send somebody an invoice, you know, I don't know if they're going to pay it immediately or in a week's time or two weeks time, what's the price going to be? So, you've got to have the correct in-real-time conversion rate. Which is kinda tricky, even for somebody like me who was more technical and had been into Bitcoin for quite some time and had been figuring it out, it was still kind of like a daunting task” - John
John is not the first person looking to solve a similar issue. San Francisco-based Bitwage is a full stack HR enterprise software allowing large companies to manage payroll and invoicing for employees who are interested in getting paid in a combination of Bitcoin, Ethereum, or fiat currency. The platform aids HR teams at major tech companies like Airbnb, Uber, and Google. Additionally, the reason why Carolina Panther’s offensive tackle, Russell Okung, was able to get a portion of his salary paid in bitcoin was because of Strike. Founded by Jack Mallers, Strike is in the process of building a global payment application on the lightning network. In layman’s terms, Jack is building a completely free and instant international money transfer application on the blockchain, capable of sending any amount in multiple forms of fiat or cryptocurrencies, which is expected to be available in 200 countries by the end 2021.2
Bye bye Western Union!
Jack’s platform has already garnered a lot of interest from the NBA, MLB, NFL, and several Billboard Top 500 artists about receiving part of their salaries in bitcoin.
What makes Zaprite stand out in this new space is John's deliberate focus on the freelancer. While Bitwage focuses on enterprise solutions for large companies, and Strike on global payments, there is a unique niche in the bitcoin P2P payment space yet to be met, such as a product purely focused on freelancers and the creator economy. Working as a graphic and web design consultant all his career, Zaprite’s founder knows a thing or two on what works best for the creator economy. Building a better solution for receiving payment in bitcoin wasn’t a focus for John until it was. As he says, Zaprite was born as a product he needed himself. A year ago, the invoicing software he originally used to bill clients no longer allowed him to select BTC as the currency. So, he did as any entrepreneur would do…build something better.
“And then the invoicing software I was using changed their terms and conditions one day and sent out an email blast that said, if we catch anybody putting anything to do with Bitcoin or cryptocurrency on their invoices, we’ll ban their account. So I just thought, OK, that's it. I just got to build something myself because this is just getting ridiculous” - John
Originally started as a side project in the evenings, Zaprite is now a fully functioning MVP (minimum viable product). When building the platform, John focused on creating a consumer-friendly service that was secure and designed for non-technical users.
“So yeah, it was just basically trying to create a product for non-technical Bitcoiners that were interested in Bitcoin and wanted to start invoicing in it and getting paid in it” - John
Zaprite works by allowing freelancers to build their own invoices and select their preferred method of payment, fully or partially in BTC. So far this sounds normal, but a feature John has added to the service is a plugin to pull the real-time BTC price as the payment is being made by the customer. Integrated in the Zaprite payment page, for the customer, is a simple interface to process the payment and for the freelancer to have the funds sent directly to their own non-custodial bitcoin account. The payment page also provides the customer a QR code for easy scanning. If that isn’t interesting enough, John also added project management tools into the Zaprite platform, to help freelancers track the progress on their work.
When I raised regulatory concerns with John, he mentioned Zaprite doesn’t initiate bitcoin transfers, offer wallets, or holdings. The platform doesn’t touch the payment at all, its focus is to allow users to easily get paid in bitcoin. By not offering such services, Zaprite avoids KYC thus avoiding regulatory concerns and allowing for quicker and secure transfers. John is an advocate for privacy and is building a service focused on empowering freelancers, not one to track their payments.
“The two things that are guaranteed to be part of the future are the creator/gig economy, and bitcoin. They are both one hundred percent guarantees, like nobody's going to bet against those two markets. So if you can build a tool that in any way helps in those markets, fantastic!” - John
Personally, I believe money movement is currently nowhere near its fullest potential and is extremely underwhelming. Current products like Interac e-transfer, PayPal, Wealthsimple Cash, Venmo, TransferWise to name a few are still very far from what I believe the future of money movement will look like. Companies and individuals building products and services to improve this space will be of interest. In John's case, he’s furthering this space by creating a bitcoin focused service tailored for freelancers.
John is currently raising capital and looking for investors with a strong bitcoin thesis as he enters the next stage of growth for Zaprite. In addition, John is actively collecting feedback from beta testers to improve the product. If you can help to optimize the Zaprite experience, click on the button below to use the free trial!
To end our conversation I asked John,
“Where would you like to see Zaprite 15 years from now?”
“I would just love if Zaprite’s main contribution was bringing a ton of new users onto Bitcoin. If it is still here 15 years from now, then it means I'm doing something right and that's good. But, it is literally just an onboarding tool to get people onto Bitcoin. Because on a personal level, it is really just my passion to spread the benefits of Bitcoin to people, because I really do think that it’s an immensely powerful tool for humanity. And I think it is underestimated right now.” - John
No more Rollerblades
Humdinner | Apsley, ON | Retail
Can you remember your first drive-in restaurant?
For me it was the late 2000s in Myrtle Beach, SC. My grandparents had taken my sister and me to a Sonic drive-in for lunch. I remember pulling up to a parking spot and clicking a button on the menu board to get service. A static voice came over the PA and we ordered hot dogs and soda! A few minutes later a server came flying out of the building on rollerblades carrying a funky-looking tray, I would quickly learn was designed to rest on your car’s window… a revelation at such a young age!
That nostalgia is of no interest to Apsley, ON-based retail consulting company Humdinner. The company has designed TrueContactless drive-thru and curbside pickup restaurant layouts with the use of digital ordering screens and remote service windows. Raising an undisclosed seed round in August 2020. Leveraging the current pandemic and rising popularity of ghost kitchens, Humdinner is offering unique layouts for restaurant owners.
Having designed multi-lane drive-thru and pickup options, restaurants can service 3x more guests and require less staff on hand to fulfill orders, according to the company’s brochure. Their goal is to completely redefine the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) industry and offer scalable and customizable builds for restaurant brands.
Drive-thru is just the beginning, the company hopes to expand into patio, cafe & urban, and grocery & retail settings! The next time you visit a cute local coffee shop and sit down to enjoy an apple fritter and cappuccino, you might just be placing and receiving your order from an oversized iPad.
Would you be interested in an experience like this, or are you more traditional, like myself and rather the joy of being served by someone on rollerblades? Share your thoughts in the comment section!!
New Fund Announcement
Launchit Ventures | Hamilton, ON | HealthTech
Hamilton, ON has the 2nd largest hospital network in Canada with over $4B in healthcare spend.3 The industry is also the largest employer in the area. The majority of this success has stemmed from the medical research intensities of Mohawk College and McMaster University. McMaster is the most research-intensive university in Canada.4 Paring this powerful industry with the growing tech ecosystem, pioneered by McMaster Innovation Park, Hamilton has positioned itself to become a hotbed for healthcare advancement.
As a newly minted alumnus of McMaster University, I’m very excited to see capital being deployed to the community’s stronghold. This is the case of the new Health-tech focused venture studio, Launchit Ventures. A recent Betakit article mentioned the fund is focused on bridging the gap between a founder with an idea and the reality of bringing a health-tech product or service into the market.5 Launchit Ventures founders, Jamie Harsevoort and Frank Naus, executives of healthcare software Lumedi, plan to bring their industry experience to help build the future of health care technology. With the aid of Launchit, the Hamilton health care community could become a leader for the industry in the near future.
If you or anyone you know are building in the health-tech space, you can apply to Launchit Ventures using the button below:
Latest Seed Rounds
Below is a short curated list of early-stage funding annoucements Murdock Memo finds intriguing!
Wingocard - Montreal, QC - Mobile banking app targeting teens, to help them manage budgeting and spending, while allowing parents to digitally collaborate and monitor their teens’ habits - Raised $1.7M from Panache Ventures and Diagram Ventures
Defined - Vancouver, BC - Described as the front page of DeFi, Defined looks to build a data platform for the open web to allow crypto traders and holders to have the quickest access to all necessary data on cryptocurrencies. ‘Google for DeFi’ - Raised $2.5M from Mark Cuban, Compound, Tiny Capital, Version One Ventures, and other individual investors
Abroad - Toronto, ON - As companies go remote, employee onboarding and offboarding is a whole new ballgame. Abroad is creating an application which helps managers more efficiently onboard new hires and increase engagement - Raised an undisclosed amount in May
RVezy - Ottawa, ON - Community-driven marketplaces are only getting more popular! RVezy is a platform for individuals interested in RV rentals and unique travel experiences. Offering full insurance coverage and rentals costing on average 40% less than traditional agencies - Raised $23M from Michele Romanow and Frind Properties
Memo V will be released on June 28st!
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/30/russell-okungs-bitcoin-salary-could-trigger-more-pro-athletes-to-invest.html
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/strike-is-bringing-the-lightning-network-to-more-than-200-countries-2021-01-06
https://investinhamilton.ca/industries/life-sciences.
https://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/articles/mcmaster-named-canadas-most-research-intensive-university-for-the-fourth-year-in-a-row/
https://betakit.com/new-venture-studio-launchit-ventures-wants-to-help-entrepreneurs-commercialize-canadas-next-fantastic-healthtech-idea.