😱 Campaign updates, alumni updates, and a TELUS photo op!

🔔 Your campaign updates feed

🚗HOVR was featured in the Toronto Guardian! Hear from their Founder and CEO, Harrison Amit, as he discusses how HOVR is redefining ridesharing by driving success for both drivers and riders. Read the full profile here.

🌷Flower Turbines was granted a patent for their common break for a cluster of turbines. This patent introduces a shared electronic brake system for turbine clusters, reducing the need for individual electronic components. Read more about their update here.

🏥Kovo+ CEO, Justin Anderson, recorded a walkthrough of their investor pitch to answer your key questions. Watch the overview video here. They also announced a new partnership with Open Practice Solutions. Read the press release here.

🥂Sheringham Distillery is celebrating after taking home two awards at the 2024 Pr%f Awards! They won a Silver Medal after earning 86 points in a masked tasting for their Raincoast Gin and brought home a Double Gold Medal for Unmasked Design. Read more about their announcement here.

🔔 Alumni news

🤑Blossom Social was featured by Apple as one of the Top 25 Apps for 2025 on the App Store. They were the only finance app and one of only two Canadian companies to make the list. Big congratulations to their team on this huge accomplishment! Read more on the news from their CEO.

🍄‍🟫The Better Butchers are collaborating with Genuine Taste so product development for a hybrid meat product utilizing cultivated fat. We can’t wait to see what they cook up! Read more about their partnership plans.

🏠RYSE’s founder shared some of the key milestones the company achieved in 2024 including entering new retail stores, expanding new product lines, and securing more patents. Read more about RYSE’s 2024 performance here.

🪙tiptap was recently interviewed by The Logic where they discussed trends in contactless giving including that contactless payments made up 53%of all payments in 2023. Read more from their interview here.

🤔 What’s on our minds

In what some are calling a “rebranding of content moderation,” Meta has rolled out sweeping changes to how it polices speech on its platforms. The updates—announced by Mark Zuckerberg in a casually filmed Instagram Reel, naturally—include dismantling the company’s third-party fact-checking program, loosening rules on “low-severity” content violations, and shifting much of the moderation burden onto users.

Basically, it’s like Meta looked at its old playbook, shrugged, and said, “Let’s just wing it.”

The third-party fact-checking program, once the cornerstone of Meta’s fight against misinformation, is now headed to the tech graveyard. Instead, the company will lean on volunteer-driven fact-checking, similar to X’s Community Notes. Sounds nice in theory, but with uneven participation globally, critics are skeptical about its ability to replace professional oversight.

Even bigger changes are happening behind the scenes. Automated systems that flagged harmful content—like hate speech or harassment—are being scaled back for less severe violations. Meta says it’s a move to prevent overreach, but the fine print? Users will now need to report questionable content themselves.

What’s driving this shift? Efficiency, sure, but there’s also speculation it’s about politics. Meta has faced years of criticism from both sides: conservatives accusing it of censorship and liberals accusing it of failing to curb hate speech and misinformation. This new “hands-off” approach may be Meta’s attempt to please (or frustrate) everyone equally.

The big question is whether this makeover will lead to a freer, more balanced digital space—or a breeding ground for chaos. For now, it feels like Meta is trying to ride the middle ground with a blindfold on... and hoping no one notices the cracks in the foundation.

🌟 FrontFundr Bulletin

✍️ICYMI last week, we shared our recent feature in The Globe and Mail. Our Founder and CEO, Peter-Paul Van Hoeken, sat down with reporter Jameson Berkow to discuss the private markets and how retail investors can participate. The reality is more companies are choosing to stay private with the number of operating businesses on the TSX dropping nearly 40% from 2002 to 2023. This excludes retail investors from key wealth-generating opportunities - FrontFundr is changing that! The article also features Stack Capital Group who give investors exposure to later-stage private companies such as Canva and Hopper. You can read the full article in The Globe and Mail.

🏅Last quarter we announced that we were thrilled to be recognized as one of the TELUS #StandWithOwners winners. You can view our profile along with the 19 other winners here. This past week the TELUS team came by our offices in Toronto for a meet & greet and to drop off a gift box that included some products from the other winners.