Haloo Secures $3.5 Million to Expand Enterprise SaaS Model

Toronto-based legaltech startup Haloo has successfully closed a $4.7 million CAD (3.5 million USD) funding round to enhance its trademark search solution. This all-equity, all-primary early Series A financing round was led by Boston-based AI-focused venture capital firm Innospark Ventures. Other notable participants included BDC through its women-focused Thrive platform, LOI Venture (co-founded by Hootsuite founder Ryan Holmes and New Avenue Capital founder Manny Padda), and existing investor W Fund.

Haloo Secures $3.5 Million to Expand Enterprise SaaS Model
Haloo Secures $3.5 Million to Expand Enterprise SaaS Model

Toronto-based legaltech startup Haloo has successfully closed a $4.7 million CAD (3.5 million USD) funding round to enhance its trademark search solution. This all-equity, all-primary early Series A financing round was led by Boston-based AI-focused venture capital firm Innospark Ventures. Other notable participants included BDC through its women-focused Thrive platform, LOI Venture (co-founded by Hootsuite founder Ryan Holmes and New Avenue Capital founder Manny Padda), and existing investor W Fund.

Haloo was initially launched under the name Heirlume by CEO Julie MacDonell and CTO Sarah Ruest. The company originally aimed to assist small businesses in conducting professional-quality trademark searches and filing trademark applications. However, the startup has recently pivoted its business model, shifting from being the "GoDaddy of trademarking" to offering its solution under an enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

MacDonell believes that Haloo has found product-market fit with this new model and plans to use the recent funding to scale the company. The service employs a machine-learning model developed in-house to replicate the complex human analysis involved in comprehensive trademark searches. According to MacDonell, "In our platform, they can run 10 searches in under a minute, because we offer batch searching… To replicate that in human hours, that's going to take about 12 hours of work."

Around the time Haloo raised its $2.9 million CAD seed round in 2022, the team realized that selling directly to small business owners, while possible, was overshadowed by a larger opportunity: selling to lawyers, trademark agents, and enterprise customers. Haloo decided to continue serving small businesses but repackaged its service into a white-labelled API to sell to domain registrars and other entities that serve small businesses, offering the service as an upsell to domain purchases.

Throughout 2023, Haloo focused on validating this new model, and now, MacDonell feels confident in the results. The startup stated that it currently "serves several hundred SaaS customers" with its enterprise product. Today, the product aims to assist intellectual property teams, including lawyers, trademark assistants, and paralegals, whether they work in law firms or enterprises.

To scale from several hundred users to tens of thousands, Haloo plans to strengthen its sales, marketing, and recruiting efforts with the fresh capital. The firm recently hired Mark Jacobs as chief revenue officer. Jacobs, who previously served as senior vice-president of global commercial services at Corsearch, brings over two decades of experience in the IP industry. MacDonell described Jacobs' joining as a significant achievement for the startup at its current stage.

In addition to Jacobs, Haloo has also brought on Ignace Mouzannar as vice-president of product and engineering. Mouzannar, who previously worked at Smooch (acquired by Zendesk in 2019), is expected to help the company scale its user base while maintaining software stability and accelerating feature releases.

MacDonell also believes that government trademark offices could benefit from Haloo's software. In June 2023, the IP division of the Canadian Bar Association sent a letter to Canada's deputy minister, highlighting "unacceptable proportions" of delays in trademark examination by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO). The letter stated, "For every four months of real time, CIPO examines only one month's worth of trademark applications, falling further behind every month."

MacDonell emphasized the potential impact of Haloo's technology on reducing such backlogs: "In 20 seconds, you can get a provisional approval on a trademark with AI through our technology." She envisions significant improvements for government offices if they adopt cutting-edge technology like Haloo's.

W Fund's general partner Kate Brodock commended Haloo's efforts in leveraging technology to streamline trademark processes in the legal industry. "This next stage will allow the company to further build a strong, leading-edge product and remain highly competitive in the market," Brodock said.

With the recent funding and strategic hires, Haloo is poised to scale its operations significantly, targeting a broader market and enhancing its offerings to meet the needs of a growing customer base.