When the Pebble watch recently scored more than $10 million in backing via Kickstarter it concurrently drew more attention to how the concept of a crowdfunded venture remains behind the curve in Canada. Eric Migicovsky, the Vancouver-born University of Waterloo graduate whose customizable wrist device has been capitalized with more than 100 times its original goal, may not have needed to reside in Palo Alto to imagine the Bluetooth gizmo — but successful startups are generally a product of the environment from which they originate.

With no indication of plans by Kickstarter to break beyond the Amazon payment system technically limited to U.S. residents, a platform called Ideavibes has announced its intentions to step up, with the hope that the Canadian government will follow the legitimization of crowdfunding. For now, the opportunity for an American donor to get equity in a program through the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act has no equivalent around here.