Startup hedge funds, private equity funds and venture capital funds in Canada are struggling to raise money.MARK BLINCH
Toronto-based mobile security company Fixmo Inc. has some big new backers, in the form of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Paladin Capital Group, who joined a $23-million financing for the firm.
Fixmo also said it got cash from Horizons Ventures, the venture capital firm that handles billionaire Li Ka-Shing's money. Fixmo makes applications to help companies and governments manage security on the wireless devices their employees use, enabling workers to bring their own devices rather than use those issued by their information-technology departments.
The investment is a big endorsement for the companies and investors who are turning southern Ontario into a hub for application development, as the Globe and Mail wrote about in this feature.
In Paladin Capital, Fixmo gets a Washington-based investor with connections to the U.S. government and military establishment. Paladin Capital managing director Kenneth Minihan, a retired general from the U.S. Air Force and a former director of the National Security Agency, is joining Fixmo's board.
Kleiner Perkins is about as famous as it comes in venture capital, having been early stage investors in companies like Amazon, Google, Netscape and Sun Microsystems.
The big guns from the U.S. and Hong Kong join a group of locals who have been backing Fixmo and its founder Rick Segal for some time. They include Wellington Financial, Inovia, RHO Canada and Extreme Venture Partners. (Wellington Financial has done a full run down of the investors as part of a victory lap on its blog.)