Hey Amigos,

📰 It's February: the cold, dark and rainy month of the year when it feels like everyone’s either skiing in Whistler or getting sunburnt in Cabo. Well those of you coding late into the night at a WeWork with ramen, we see you.

In other news this month:

• Taylor Swift is long on Lily Lou Aromas 

• Apple Vision Pros are selling like hotcakes

• Kim K (364m followers) gave Mala the Brand a shoutout on IG

• Adam Neumann wants to buy back WeWork

• And LOI’s Ryan Holmes and CBC Dragon Den Investor Arlene Dickinson are collab’ing for an AMA next week 

You heard that right. Hootsuite Founder, Ryan Holmes, and CBC Dragon Den’s Arlene Dickinson will be coming to you live next week. Save your seat or forever hold your peace.

Wanna suggest a name that’s not on there? Slide into our DMs.

Alrighty now. That’s enough tech talk. Toss up your feet, sip on that cortado and let’s hit our menu ☕️

🍽 On Deck Today:

• 🤩 We’ve hit RECORD level applications for our 2024 Labs/Boost Founder Cohorts (thx to you beautiful souls spreading the word)

• 💸 LOI Venture invested $300K into Blossom Social (LOI alumni that’s 15x’d their users in less than a year)

• ⛳️ LOI meetups are being hosted across the country by alumni like Azia Mery and Sam Demma (Toronto), Salenda Dhillon (Vancouver) and Amanda Tanner (Montreal); hit ‘em up on Slack if you wanna join

• 📰 Taran and Bunny from Blume were featured on Young Genius

• ❤️ Your gift offerings to Anshul Sharma in response to our last newsletter was super appreciated

🏆 LOI Wins of the Month

Since our young Canadian founders are too dang humble to callout their own wins at the dinner table, we’re gonna play the role of braggy parents and do a James Harden happy dance in your honour 🎶

• 😳 Taylor Who? Taylor Swift ordered some candles from Lily Lou Aromas last week and it was wild. Message Lily for the reaction video if you haven’t already seen it.

• 🍷 Like Pinot Noir? Leejoo is hosting a Vancouver coworking session for local founders. This week’s theme is French salon. RSVP here.

• 🍰 Low on Valentine’s Ideas? Arpan and the Proximy team are hosting a cake-making workshop with Raveena; email Arpan to RSVP

• 💸 New pre-seed round, who’d dis? Addy and the Suno Chat team launched their pre-seed round and just surpassed 20k messages sent on their platform

• 🗽 “Siri, take me to the big Apple” — Adauris is graduating from the Morgan Stanley accelerator this week in NYC and likely will be needing your dinner reccos for a celebratory night out on the town

• ⛳️ Cue the golf clap friends: Liam and the Make Progress team (Makeprogressai.ca) got accepted into 3 large accelerators including Amazon’s Edtech Accelerator

• 🎉 Reusables is launching with Walmart, Metro and Sobeys this spring

• 📈 Move over OpenAI: Pascal and the Parados team are starting to commercialize their product as they ramp up with more customers

• 🎓 Drake’s got company: LearnIt just launched in Toronto and Dhiraj is taking the team out for lunch this week to celebrate

• 🧃 Watch out Red Bull: The cofounders of Benny just added Tara Bosch to their advisory team

• 🤯 Kim Kardashian (364m followers) gave Mala the Brand a shoutout on IG. DM Melody if you need the full story.

• 🛒 New App Alert: Alykhan just launched TeamCart in the app store — a service that allows people to shop online with their friends

• 🇿🇦 LOI’s going international: Lauren DeSouza just launched a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University in Africa

• ☕️ Dragos just launched PathPeer: a mentorship platform that lets students find your dream gig

• ♻️ Be One to Give is going electric with the purchase of their first electric cargo bike. Add to the GoFund page to help their dream come true

• 🤖 Francois Le Roux is launching an AI startup assistant beta soon. Join their waitlist to get first access.

• 🚀 Hold up, La Vance just launched a Kickstarter for WooYourBoo

• ☕️ Free coffee? Salena Dhillon is hosting a Nemesis meetup this week; send her a Slack message to RSVP

• ⌚️ Love your watch? Vanessa and the Floka team are days away from their Garmin integration going public.

• 🇲🇽 Didn’t apply to YEY this year? You may wanna close your ears for this one. Paige and Harrison from Couchhaus just got back home from a free trip to Mexico courtesy of their YEY awards package

Want your startup featured in the next news round-up? Post a Slack update in our #amplify channel or click below.

🔒 LOI Updates To Know

• 🏆 Want free prizes? Shari from our Success Academy team is giving away 100 students who successfully complete the Success Academy Course by February 12th at 5:00 PM PST a complimentary 1-Year Subscription to Scribd and some Free LOI swag. May the odds be ever in your favour

• 🎉 Could you use $10,000 for your startup? Powered by the Rideau Hall Foundation, Ingenious+ is a National Youth Innovation Challenge that gives youth, aged 14 to 18, the opportunity to share their innovations and receive funding, mentorship and learning opportunities. Apply before Feb 22 by clicking here

• 🎯 Wanna level up your board experience? iGP is partnering with LOI to empower 5 LOI alumni to go through Levels 1 and 2 this year. If you’d like to be considered for a scholarship in the next cohort, email [email protected] 

👀 Reads That Caught Our Eye

• How this $50B brand gives personal gifts to customers

• Top decision-making frameworks for founders

• 9 ways to get your startup team to use AI more

• The 2024 metrics it takes to raise a Series A

🤌 Swipe of the Week

Don't forget: snag your seat to our AMA with Arlene Dickinson and Ryan Holmes today or forever hold your peace

Your startup bestie-boos,

💙 The LOI Fam

P.S. If you want to apply for our 2024 Labs/Boost founder cohort but haven't had the time, email Rob ASAP so we can connect with you.