TitanFile Inc.’s decision to seek financing from the First Angel Network of Halifax has resulted in an oversubscription of the offering by 86 percent – one of the strongest responses in the history of the angel group.
Dartmouth-based TitanFIle, an award-winning online document transfer company, announced Thursday that it has raised about $1.2 million that it will use to roll out a new product – a secure document-sharing and collaboration software that focuses on ease-of-use and flexibility.
Last year, TitanFile, co-founded by CEO Milan Vrekic and CTO Tony Abou-Assaleh, raised $250,000 in seed funding from Innovacorp, and the Nova Scotia innovation agency agreed to put in $250,000 in follow-on funding this year as long as the company came up with matching funds.
So TitanFile turned to FAN, a Halifax-based network of private investors spread throughout the Maritimes, with the aim of raising the other $250,000. The network organized meetings in Halifax, Moncton and Sydney at which Vrekic pitched to the members. Every single member who attended the meetings ended up investing, so the network contributed a total of $464,000 – 86 percent more than the company had sought from FAN.
“We’re very excited about TitanFile,” FAN Director and Co-Founder Brian Lowe said in an interview. “This is the first time that all the members who attended [the pitching meeting] ended up investing.” He added he believes the company will get good traction with its new product and could exit before too long.
TitanFile also raised a little more than $100,000 from two private investors and borrowed about $400,000 from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.
TitanFile’s new product allows customers to collaborate around documents so the emphasis is on people and teams instead of files and folders, said Vrekic. Customers can easily group their contacts into communications channels and then simply drag and drop files into that channel. Channel members always have access to the most relevant and up to date files resulting in a more efficient decision making and improved productivity.
The two largest Atlantic Canadian law firms, McInnes Cooper and Stewart McKelvey, have selected TitanFile as a secure communication solution with their clients, said the company. Other clients include the Ontario-based Accelerator Centre, Canada Revenue Agency and several universities in the U.S.A.
"We have seen magnificent traction within our pilot deployments and many of these early adopters became paying clients within days." said Vrekic.
TitanFile works on multiple devices, including personal computers, smartphones and tablets, and does not require the customer to install special plugins, configure computers, or add custom hardware.
Though it’s less than two years old, TitanFile already has an impressive trophy cabinet. It was named in Branham300 as one of the Top 25 Canadian Up and Coming ICT Companies and has been nominated for this year’s Manning Innovation Award. Last year, it won a Canada-U.S. Innovation Award as well as a Cloudy Award in the category of People’s Choice: Best Cloud Newcomer, presented at the South by SouthWest conference.