LIGHTSPEED POS INC.

This Montreal-based point-ofsale and e-commerce software provider was founded in 2005 by Dax Dasilva and it now has offices in Ottawa, New York, Olympia, Wash., Santa Cruz, Calif., Ghent, Belgium, and Amsterdam, reflecting its worldwide growth ambitions. An acquisitive company with $160.5 million in revenue last year, in May it struck a global retail partnership with Alphabet Inc. to embed Google’s advertising tools directly into its commerce platform, thereby enabling small businesses to advertise to people looking for alternatives to the e-commerce giants. Better still, the new tool is free for Lightspeed’s existing customers. Other recent deals include the March Us$350-million acquisition of Vend Ltd., a New Zealand retail-management software maker, and buying a couple of internet-based restaurant management software makers in December, spending US$430 million on Rhode Island-based Upserve Inc. and US$440 million on New York’s Shopkeep Inc. Fun fact: Lightspeed has appeared in the pages of Financial Post 31 times since the beginning of 2020, as of May 11.