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👋 How did some of Vancouver’s trailblazing startups successfully scale their products and teams globally?

Leaders from Clio, Hootsuite, and MintList shared their experiences at this week’s #VTJTalks, hosted in partnership with Invest Alberta and in collaboration with ProductBC and ProductCamp Vancouver. Missed it? We’ve got a recap of some of the most valuable and practical tips below. 

You’ll also find out which local startup launched a V1 release that ranked among the top 10 most popular products on Product Hunt, as well as which innovator was acquired by a pioneer in its field based in Berkeley.

Now onto today’s briefing. It’s 1,217 words: a four-minute read.

-Lisa Tanh, staff writer

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Read more at vantechjournal.com

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Spoitz Enterprises, a local macroalgae biochemical engineering firm, has been acquired by Marine Biologics, a Berkeley-based innovator in the field.

Founded in 2021, Spoitz has been researching the fermentation of Canadian seaweed to enhance its functional food properties. These include antioxidant strength, the ability to neutralize harmful free radicals and protect body cells from damage, as well as gel structure, which involves natural compounds in seaweed that trap water to create thickness, stability, and texture in various applications.

The combination of Spoitz’s expertise and Marine’s product development capabilities will support the design of customer solutions that were “previously impossible to imagine,” according to the company. Their initial focus will be on the food and beverage sector, addressing challenges related to taste and functionality. Spoitz will operate as a subsidiary of Marine Biologics and will gain access to its new Berkeley Innovation Lab.

Along with the partnership marking a major milestone, Spoitz also secured funding this week from the Canadian Food Innovation Network, a not-for-profit that supports the advancement of food technology and innovation across the country.

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Defang — which offers the easiest way to develop, deploy, and debug cloud apps — launched its V1 release and was ranked among the top 10 most popular products on Product Hunt, a community-driven platform where users discover and share innovative tech.

The startup streamlines the process of turning an idea into a cloud application within minutes — instead of days or weeks — through its tool. By leveraging LLMs and generative AI, an AI agent enables developers to generate an outline of their application from a simple English-language prompt. Users can test the application on their private server or in Defang’s playground environment. If there are any errors, the AI agent is able to automatically identify and provide instructions on how to fix them. Then, with a single command, the application can be deployed to the developer’s cloud of choice. Defang currently supports AWS for production use cases, and GCP and DigitalOcean in beta.

Defang was already in the spotlight last week as it pitched at the Google for Startups Accelerator Demo Day. It was the only Vancouver company accepted into this year’s cohort. Another fact to note: The startup was founded by a trio with experience at Microsoft and AWS who previously sold another venture to the leading finance and HR company Workday.

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“Another fantastic Vancouver Tech Journal panel, presented with ProductBC & ProductCamp Vancouver, focused on "Scaling World-Class Product & Teams."

Thanks to Nicole Hsueh for organizing and Brock Lalla from Invest Alberta for moderating an insightful panel at Convergence. Highlights below:

Mehrsa Raeiszadeh, co-founder of MintList

Get paid then build: Make sure you identify unit economics. A feature might sound great, but who is willing to pay for it? Mehrsa recalled going to car dealerships with a prototyped idea for MintList and securing multiple six figures in committed ARR from a validated demand for features before a single line of code had been written. Identify if your customer would commit to paying for the solution you are brainstorming to de-risk and gain early traction.

Timothy Yeung, director of product management at Hootsuite

Jobs To Be Done (JTBD): Timothy identified the importance of using the JTBD framework to keep product teams on track. Focus on outcomes, not features: Customers 'hire' a product or service to achieve a specific goal or solve a problem (e.g., people don’t buy a camera; they hire it to capture and preserve meaningful moments).

Michelle Dunlea, VP of product management at Clio

Speed: Focus on speed and urgency in the 0-1 phase. There is a need to hire product managers who are subject matter experts to move with speed. For example, an expert in the legal field when building a platform for law firms.

Product growth: Growing product adoption through referral rewards programs and partnering with professional organizations, such as Law Societies and Academic Institutions, has helped Clio build the trust and reputation that is essential for their success.”

Read more »

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