Welcome to this week’s Sunday Briefing. In this issue:
An annual summer patio party
Measuring an 8.8 magnitude earthquake
Lessons from 10 years of entrepreneurship
Now on to today’s briefing.
-Emily, [email protected]
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Victoria startup Ceedar raises $200K to streamline bookkeeping for digital companies
Local startup Ceedar just closed a $200,000 USD pre-seed round to grow its automated bookkeeping service for digital companies. Metalab Ventures led the funding, joined by angel investors who include some of Ceedar's own customers—like Tamaribuchi founder Mark Nichols and Input Logic co-founders Shawn Adrian and Gavin Vickery—who liked the service enough to invest in it.
Connor Turland and Pegah Vaezi launched Ceedar in 2023 with a simple idea: make bookkeeping less painful for entrepreneurs. Instead of juggling separate bookkeepers and clunky software, businesses get everything in one package. The platform hooks up to bank accounts and payment systems like Stripe, automatically sorts transactions, tracks sales tax, and delivers monthly financial reports. "What this new wave of entrepreneurs really need is a set of tools to make the process of getting a business started less daunting," Nichols explained to BetaKit.
The strategy seems to be working. Ceedar turned profitable earlier this year and saw 70% month-over-month revenue growth in Q1 2025. With fresh funding in hand, the team is eyeing expansion into the U.S. market. As co-founder Turland puts it, their vision is to become "the power plant for the Canadian digital economy."
🗳️ Question of the Week
Have you (or someone you know) ever used a mobile health clinic or pop-up health service?
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📰 More Victoria innovation news
🎙️ Let's talk about it: District of Sooke Mayor Maja Tait joined the Chamber Chats podcast to discuss her municipality's distinctive characteristics within the Greater Victoria’s 13 communities.
🌊 I can feel it coming in the air tonight: Ocean Networks Canada's seismic sensors detected an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off Russia and tracked the resulting tsunami waves that reached British Columbia waters seven hours later.
💼 Working 9 to 5: Certn co-founder and CEO Andrew McLeod shared insights about building his technology-focused background screening company and navigating nearly a decade of entrepreneurship challenges.
Want to reach Victoria tech leaders? Advertise in the Victoria Tech Journal to get in front of founders, investors, and innovators. Contact [email protected] to learn more.
🕴️ Tech jobs of the week
Find your next career:
Senior business application developer at the Office of the Auditor General of B.C.
People and business operations coordinator at Firstlight Technologies
Principle software development engineer at Workday
Hiring in Victoria? Reply to this email and let us know!
📅 Upcoming events
This workshop series has been developed specifically for engineers, designers, planners, consultants, educators, scientists, managers, and leaders seeking to navigate climate complexity, revolutionize the way they approach systems change, and integrate regenerative design principles into the fabric of their work.
August 13 | Geeky Girls Patio Party 2025
The annual Geeky Girls’ Patio Party brings everyone together to connect, share summer adventures, and discuss fall plans. This year, iWIST is also excited to announce three recipients of scholarships for women in STEM.
Have something or someone we should know about?
Reply or email [email protected] so we can work together to spotlight the lesser-known stories of Victoria's tech ecosystem.