It’s an unusual move for a U.S. startup to go public in Canada, rather than taking venture capital money. But that’s exactly what Frankly Inc. did last year, engineering a reverse merger to list on the TSX Venture Exchange. (For my interview with Frankly CEO Steve Chung, see here.) But what exactly is the TSX Venture Exchange, and what does an entrepreneur need to know about it?
For starters, the TSX Venture Exchange is part of TMX Group, parent of the Toronto Stock Exchange. But it’s the junior exchange, designed to help small and early-stage companies gain access to capital. The roots of the exchange lie in Canada’s natural resources – oil and gas, mining, etcetera – a Wild West sector subject to booms and busts. But in recent years, TMX has worked to bring in more companies in other industries, especially technology.
