Canadian Crowsourcing Company (CCC)

Earlier this week, I sat down with Cambrian House CEO Michael Sikorsky about the Calgary-based company’s unique approach to creating new business opportunities. For those unfamiliar with Cambrian House, it’s a company that actively sources ideas from the community and then rewards people whose ideas eventually become businesses. (here’s how Cambrian House describes the process).
Sikorsky, a serial entrepreneur who’s on his seventh start-up, said Cambrian House is a lot like a mutual fund given its business depends on a variety of ideas/ventures rather than only one. With crowdsourcing becoming all the rage since Wired Magazine put the concept into the spotlight, Cambrian House has been attracting a lot of attention from publications such as BusinessWeek. It was not much of a surprise when Sikorsky said Cambrian House is looking to raise $5-million to $6-million in private equity over the next few months so it can expand its workforce and implement more projects.
The company current has three businesses: Prezzle, Robinhood Fund and Gwabs. Of the three, the biggest is Prezzle, which lets you send an online gift certificate from retailers such as Target, Amazon and iTunes within a digital present (you get to pick the “wrapping paper”).
For more on Cambrian House, check out this interview that Sikorsky gave to TechDigest a few months ago, as well a CBC radio broadcast on crowdsourcing.