Toronto entrepreneur Grant Ritchie set out to solve a problem of the web: local-business information. To solve it, he founded
Locationary, a multiple user-created database of local place information that allows businesses to more effectively reach customers and consumers to more easily find more accurate, up-to-date information. It's motivating point is that, unlike many crowdsourced information projects, users can actually get paid for contributing good information.
That concept took a leap forward towards widespread commercialization recently when Locationary attracted $2.5 million in financing from local capital funds Investment Accelerator Fund and Trellis Capital, as well as from its existing investors, Extreme Venture Partners and Plazacorp Ventures, Angels and Management. Ritchie called the investment a "great vote of confidence" in his project and said the money "will enable us to hire more engineers, evolve our local data service offerings and to launch our new local data management system for federating local business place information."
Already, the company is
hiring new engineers for its Toronto office. "We are in the process of hiring about five people immediately," Ritchie says. "And I could see us scaling up a bit more than that over the next 18 months."
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Grant Ritchie, CEO, Locationary