One of the first studies on funding Internet startups in Canada reveal both the volume of activity and the amount of the deals, especially those focused on Internet services, have jumped dramatically. There was so little activity in 1998, it couldn't be tracked. Indeed, the principals of Eharvest say now that if they were starting all over again, they believe they would have been able to find Canadian backers. Its portal for pig sales also offers chat rooms, forums and news. Some of Eharvest's rivals were getting double that from U.S. venture capitalists.
Scale is an important issue in the Internet space.
It's either go big or go home. You can't start by being very thinly capitalized and then hope to keep raising more capital every couple of months because the burn rate is very high and, in some cases, you need to create enough of a barrier or disincentive for another competitor to come in by having the capital available. Still, a lot of young companies had to go south for the cash. The firm said it is now in talks with venture capitalists in San Francisco and Chicago to meet that target. Rabobank said it has not ruled out providing the follow-up financing.