Toronto Mayor John Tory on Wednesday called for his city and Waterloo Region to work more closely to develop and promote the two cities as a single technology corridor.

Tory made the call during a speech to the Greater Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce, at which he said the two municipalities will grow a knowledge economy better and more quickly if they work together.  Earlier in the day, he and the mayors of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge hosted a roundtable discussion  at Communitech on how they can collaborate to improve the ecosystem.

Early next month, these municipal leaders will go to Silicon Valley together to promote the innovation corridor, meet with major technology companies active in Ontario and greet Canadian expats living in the San Francisco area. It’s the beginning of a more coordinated effort at developing a single tech ecosystem in the region.  

“The relationship between Toronto and this region is similar to that of San Francisco and Silicon Valley, London and Cambridge and Tel Aviv and Haifa,” said Tory. “Each of those hubs is comprised of two regions no further apart than Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo, one of which is a large urban metropolis and the other home to a renowned institute of higher education.”

Read Our Report on Canada's Tech Supercity

In his speech, Tory outlined a plan to promote the Toronto-KW innovation corridor as a globally competitive hub of innovation, on par with San Francisco, London, and Tel Aviv.

This corridor is a special place in the global tech world, he said, because of its diversity, educated population, global network, and quality of life.

And he stressed that all politicians and leaders in the enlarged region have to work together to improve transportation links so that Toronto-KW can truly be considered a single destination.

“The most obvious and immediate area for joint advocacy is to accelerate the flow of people, ideas and goods along the corridor by improving our transit and transportation networks,” said Tory.  

“We need to push for improved connections as an economic imperative for our region -- as a competitive imperative. And that means we should have faster and more frequent rail service, commuter flights and access to HOV lanes.”

The two regions are not competing against one another but must work together to compete against the rest of the world, he said. And the story they have to tell is especially timely as the low Canadian dollar makes Toronto-KW an affordable alternative to other hubs.

On Monday, Volta Labs announced that Jesse Rodgers will be the new CEO of the Halifax incubator for tech companies. Rodgers will be moving from Waterloo Region to fill the position next month.

Here are five thoughts on the appointment of the former director of the incubator/accelerators at the Universities of Waterloo and Toronto:

1. The pool of mentorship in Atlantic Canada instantly increases. Rodgers was a founding director at both Waterloo’s Velocity and Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab. He’s had an exit. He’s been in both product and business development. And next month he will be head the key startup facility in the region’s largest city. It’s a huge boost for the community given that he has expertise in so many of the key components of a startup ecosystem.

2. Hopefully, the universities will call Rodgers and ask for advice. Though the Atlantic Canadian universities have come a long way in teaching innovation in the past few years, there’s nothing in the region like Velocity or the Creative Destruction Lab. Rogers should have great insights on how to develop programs that convert waves of university startups into high-growth companies. It won’t hurt that the Dalhousie engineering school is right across the street from his office.

Peer-to-Peer Mentorship in Propel

3. This hiring further strengthens links between Atlantic Canada and the Toronto-Kitchener-Waterloo corridor. This can’t be emphasized enough. East Coast startups must — they just have to — position themselves more closely to international customers. With the Canadian dollar so weak, it’s excessively expensive to travel to London, New York and San Francisco for prolonged sales calls. But international business does meet Canadian innovation in the tech corridor between Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo. There are really great programs in this area that Atlantic Canadian companies are entering and should do so in greater numbers. And there are vast networks of investors and customers to be tapped. Volta already has strong links to Kitchener-Waterloo, and Rodgers should bolster this connection.

4. Hopefully, Rodgers will bring some needed oomph back to the IT segment in Halifax. Some promising IT companies have formed in the city in the past year or so, but not enough of them. At Entrevestor, we’ve just finished tallying Atlantic Canadian startups, especially new startups, for 2015, and we found that 78 per cent of the new companies in the region are in the IT segment. In Halifax, only 54 per cent of the new companies are in tech. (There was surprising strength in biotech and cleantech in the city last year.) There’s a feeling in Halifax that the tech group needs a shot in the arm — more collaboration, better ideas, bringing back mentors who may have wandered away.

5. I hope the Kitchener-Waterloo influence leaves its mark on Halifax architecture. (Yes, you read that correctly.) In Kitchener, they have done a wonderful job of taking old industrial buildings and repurposing them for tech companies. To name just two examples, the new Google headquarters and the Tannery Hub (where Communitech operates) are marvelous edifices. Rodgers will be the point man on establishing Volta in the Memorial Library. It would be great for the city’s architectural heritage if the Volta team creates a building as dynamic as the Tannery.

It’s a big list, but Rodgers is an interesting hire.

Corporate and statup communities should embrace a new collaborative model for innovation that will hasten the next wave of technology, Coca-Cola Co.’s head of innovation told a Fredericton audience Wednesday night.

David Butler told the R3 Gala that corporations and startups operate in dramatically different environments. So the best way for established businesses to nurture startups and benefit from their pioneering mentality is to contract them to solve problems.

Butler, the Vice-President of Innovation at the Atlanta-based beverage giant, calls the process a “co-creation system” and said Coke is now using it to solve big problems. The company simply tells startup communities about a big problem it’s having and lets the geeks come up with a solution. The result is often a new business that can solve similar problems for a range of companies, and Coke becomes the first client, brings the startup on to its Founders’ Platform and offers seed investment.

“Think about the assets you have in your company,” Butler told the business people in the audience. “Now think of what would happen to local entrepreneurs with a co-creation system. Think of how big it could be.”

Butler was the keynote speaker at the dinner, hosted by the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation,  which honoured the work of three practical researchers in New Brunswick whose efforts were improving the province’s economy.

Louisbourg Seafoods Launches Sea++

Butler said the ecosystems for startups and traditional corporations are as different as a coral reef and desert. And corporations can try to innovate by acquiring startups, setting up accelerators or acting like startups. But such efforts would be as disastrous as expecting fish from a coral reef to thrive in a desert.

“It’s not that it just doesn’t work -- it’s that the models are flawed,” said Butler. “So we tried to come up with a new model, one that we think will be responsible for the next wave of innovation.”

He cited examples in the U.S., Australia and Vietnam in which Coke had told tech entrepreneurs about their problems and the result was a new startups. For example, Coke wanted to know more about when to stock vending machines and what to put in them. Sydney-based Hivery, which is offering predictive analytics to a range of food companies, is now on the Founders’ Platform.

The focus of the R3 dinner was on the pioneering work of three researchers:

- Liuchen Chang is an expert in renewable energy conversion and systems. He has developed ways for energy to flow from small sources on to the grid, rather than just having the grid just deliver electricity from big plants. Chang's research has allowed a variety of different types of energy sources to be added to the grid at varying voltages.

- Alain Doucet has worked with several small and medium-sized businesses to develop a variety of innovations. For example, he and his team developed a “plug and play” type of adapter for Leading Edge Geomatics’ aircraft that allows them to exchange a range of highly sophisticated aerial surveying equipment. Before that, the company was required to have a separate aircraft for every configuration – just to meet Transport Canada certification. Now it has a permanent, certified mounting system that fits all of its equipment.

- Amber Garber has developed a selective breeding program for salmon. Her salmon broodstock have a higher growth rate and are resistant to sea lice and bacterial kidney disease. Sea lice resistance reduces the need to bathe the fish in peroxide, which makes the fish stop eating for at least a week. Bacterial kidney disease resistance significantly reduces the need to use antibiotics.

This week in Jobs of the Week, we are featuring three positions from the Entrevestor Job Board that feature development and content marketing skills.

NewAE Technology of Halifax is looking for a software development programmer. DPL is looking for a content marketing specialist in Moncton, and Sentinel Alert of St. John’s is looking for a senior full stack developer to work remotely from anywhere in Canada.

NewAE Technology develops open-source hardware and software solutions for performing security analysis of embedded computer systems.

DPL is a data-management company out based out of Moncton. 

Sentinel Alert is an early stage start-up that uses advanced mathematics to avoid workplace accidents.

Our Jobs of the Week column features positions available on the Entrevestor Job Board. Entrevestor and Qimple operate the Entrevestor Job Board, which helps match job openings and candidates in the tech and start-up communities.

Halifax

NewAE Technology

Software Development Programmer

NewAE Technology is looking for a software development programmer to fit in with its small company culture, which would occasionally mean performing tasks that are not specifically listed in the position’s job description. Responsibilities of this position include design and implementation of Python application for data capture, design, and implementation of embedded firmware in C/C++, research of security analysis techniques, supervision of students and interns, and management of related open-source projects. Desired qualifications include a PhD in VLSI, microelectronics or similar field, 10 or more years of C++ on larger structured projects, four or more years’ experience with Python for desktop/server, and a working knowledge of assembly language on microcontroller and microprocessors.

Moncton

DPL

Content Marketing Specialist

DPL is looking to fill a position with roles in management, and the writing/creation of online content for YouTube, Facebook, and blogs including training and content videos. Responsibilities include content writing, video production and editing, working with media channels, and administering marketing campaigns. Desired skills include email marketing, CMS, Hootsuite, Storyboarding, SEO, lighting, video editing, and video production. There are no educational requirements and all employees receive five weeks’ vacation.

Canada-wide

Sentinel Alert

Senior Full-Stack Developer

St. John’s-based Sentinel Alert is looking for an energetic and enthusiastic engineer to work with their four-person development team on managing and fine-tuning the back-end infrastructure, database, communications protocols, front-end websites, and web apps. Responsibilities for the Senior Full-Stack Developer include participation in design, development and maintenance of database, web, and mobile solutions, as well as improving user experience through user interface, widgets and visualizations. Qualifications for the position include five-plus years’ experience working on end-to-end enterprise grade software, expert knowledge of PHP, MYSQL, architecting APIs, experience, familiar with emerging trends in web technologies and frameworks, and a bachelor’s degree or diploma in computer science, computer engineering and/or relevant work experience. 

C100, the organization that helps Canadian startups navigate Silicon Valley, has launched a program of ambassadors across Canada.

The San Francisco-based group announced last week that it has named a group of “well-connected ambassadors” in major Canadian cities who can identify and engage the most promising startups in their region.

Comprised largely of Canadians working in the tech community in Northern California, C100 helps Canadian startups with introductions, mentoring and regular events.  Its most popular event is 48 Hours in the Valley, in which select startups spend a couple of days at programs in Silicon Valley.  (C100 is now looking for applications for the next 48 Hours in the Valley in June.)

“C100 has historically done an excellent job of selecting quality startups for their annual programs,” Harley Finkelstein, C100 Board Member and COO of Shopify, said in a statement. “However, being headquartered in San Francisco, we have relied on our partners to recommend companies. We’re excited to launch the Ambassador Program as an opportunity to activate C100 members in Canada, who can effectively analyze and refer the most impressive companies within their regions.”

In Atlantic Canada, the C100 ambassador is Jevon MacDonald, who was the Co-Founder and CEO of GoInstant Inc., which was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2012. He is also a Co-Founder of Startup North.

The C100 ambassador in Waterloo Region is Stephen Lake, the Founder and CEO of Thalmic Labs. Lake and his co-founders were named EY Ontario’s Entrepreneur of the Year in the Young Entrepreneur category in 2015.

The other ambassadors are:

- Aydin Mirzaee, Ottawa, Co-Founder of Fluidware.
- Dan Debow, Toronto, entrepreneur and angel investor. Most recently, he was SVP, Emerging Technologies at Salesforce.
- Matt Switzer, Vancouver, Senior Vice President, Labs, Corporate & Business Development at Hootsuite.
- And, Dax Dasilva, Montreal, CEO of Lightspeed.

The new executive-in-residence at University of New Brunswick teaches his students more than how to develop, fund and sell a product.

David Wagner can also teach them the importance of luck and timing, and that sometimes they go against you.

For almost 10 years until October 2015, Wagner was President and CEO of Fredericton-based Atlantic Hydrogen Inc., a company that developed the CarbonSaver technology that removes carbon from natural gas and produces a low CO2 hydrogen.

Under his leadership, AHI raised $50 million from private and public sources including Emera, Shell, Encana, and federal and provincial governments.

But the company ran out of money and declared voluntary bankruptcy last September.

Read our Report on the R3 Gallery in Fredericton

For Wagner and the other staff it’s been tough accepting that conclusion, although most have now found new work in the Fredericton area.

“It was difficult through the bankruptcy process, the liquidation of assets, seeing the company dismantled,” Wagner said. “Everything we’d built over 14 years is gone.

“I’m proud of all we did at AHI. We didn’t fail, we just ran out of money. We raised $50 million over my 10 years and we spent $50 million. Some have said we could have expected to spend $100 million when developing game-changing technology.”

Wagner said the experience has highlighted the importance of providing startups with continuing funds as they develop.

He said the company’s fund-raising efforts were hampered by the downturn in the energy sector, and New Brunswick’s recent change of government.

“We got caught in a funnel of downward motion … ” he said. “… The new government’s timing to decide and our ability to hang on didn’t equate.”

He said it took 10 years to get to the stage of commercial development, but without sustained money they couldn’t finish the job.

“People see you’re a 10-year-old startup with no revenue, and they wonder why.

“At AHI we had a lot of success. We wouldn’t have got where we did without the support of our 47 shareholders and government at all levels.

“But when a company gets to a certain point you’re old news. People wonder, do I keep putting money into that company or put investment somewhere else?”

Wagner, who was raised in Cape Breton, had an international career with Unisys Corporation, including six years as the CEO of Unisys Canada.

He said Canada should increase its investments in innovation and the commercialization of university research.

“Government has a role to play in the very early stages when the risk is high. You can’t expect private investors to take all that risk. They can get burned — either the companies don’t work or they get diluted by later rounds of financing.”

Red tape is a problem, he said.

“Currently, the bureaucracy involved in getting and maintaining funding make it hard to explain that what you said three years ago in your proposal has changed and you now need to do something differently to meet market demands.”

In his new role, Wagner is the battle-scarred veteran. He is happy to bring his experience to University of New Brunswick’s Technology, Management and Entrepreneurship (TME) program.

“Dhirendra Shukla (the program head since 2009) has taken TME to another level. Dhirendra looked at some of the best programs around the world and said, ‘Why can’t we model our program on those?’

“Students create a product or service, create a company and raise funds for it.

“Some of the companies, such as Smartskin and Castaway Golf are succeeding. Students see this and are inspired.”

As AHI is wound up, ownership of the company’s intellectual property is being decided.

Wagner said there is no similar technology on the market.

“No one else got as far as we did. Time will tell if it does work out. It may be picked up … Hopefully someone will advance the technology.

“The main take-away is that we succeeded in many ways that are good for the region. We developed knowledge and the brains we need to keep in the region.”

There are two big things Patrick Kiely hopes his company Island Water Technologies will accomplish in 2016: one he is certain will happen, and the other he hopes will happen.

Montague, P.E.I.-based Island Water Technologies, which uses its unique technologies to treat wastewater in small communities or outlying areas, is now working with three distributors to sell its ClearPod product across Canada. Kiely, the company’s CEO, is certain sales of ClearPod — a small device that is dropped into a septic tank to restore performance of failing systems — will increase through the year.

What he hopes will happen this year is the first installation of the company’s larger and newer product.

“I hope the highlight of 2016 will be the installation of one or two of the world’s first mobile solar-powered water treatment plants — one in New Brunswick and one in North Africa,” said Kiely in an interview last week. “Now that’s an optimistic goal, but it’s what we’re working toward.”

P.E.I.'s RevIQ to Double Staff

Until this month, Island Water Technologies and ClearPod were two separate companies with Kiely being a key shareholder in both. ClearPod produced its product for septic tank owners, and Island Water Technologies was pioneering a solar-powered water treatment facility for small communities.

The company has received funding from Innovacorp (secured because it has based all of its product testing and validation in Truro), various angels and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. ClearPod and Island Water Technologies have just merged under the Island Water Technologies name and have enough funding for about the next 18 months.

Island Water Technologies also attended an incubator hosted by Cycle Capital Management, the Montreal-based cleantech fund that has also worked with Halifax companies SABRtech and LED Roadway Lighting.

The enlarged company is now selling ClearPod through distributors in British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia, and is looking at lining up sales agreements in the United States in the Carolinas, Georgia and Texas.

“We’re really eager to drive the sales in Canada, and we’re also looking at select states in the U.S.,” said Kiely. “The challenge for us is to find distributors who can sell the product. It’s very difficult to sell anything involving septic tanks to homeowners unless they are recommended by people who work with septic systems — so tank manufacturers, pumpers, installers.”

Meanwhile, the company has been working with the Cycle Capital and Dalhousie on solar-powered water treatment facilities, and is enhancing the product by making it mobile. What that means is they can be driven to remote locations, such as outlying communities or mine sites, where there is no — or limited — electricity, and treat the water.

Read our Previous Report on IWT

Kiely said the first two markets for the product will be the military and the mining industry. He is interested in using the facilities for disaster relief, but agencies working in that field want to know the technology is 100 percent proven before they use it. They’ll be later adopters, he hopes.

Kiely cautions that a lot of things would have to fall into place for the mobile units to be in operation this year. He’s more confident they can be operational in 2017.

“In reality we’re looking at 12 to 18 months from now, and it’s looking pretty good,” he said. 

Atlantic Venture Forum, an investor conference that showcases startups on the Canadian East Coast, is looking for founders to present at this year’s event June 22 and 23 at the Westin Nova Scotian in Halifax.

Applications to present at the event close tomorrow and can be found here.

Now in its fourth year, the AVF each year has allowed more than 20 companies to present before the audience, which includes a range of investors from outside the region.

The conference features two streams of presenters – early-stage and growth-stage – and chooses the best pitch from each. Last year, PACTA of Halifax won the early stage category, while the winner among the growth stage companies was HotSpot Parking of Fredericton.

Read our Coverage of the 2015 AVF

Critical Path Group, the company organizing the Atlantic Venture Forum, said the investors attending the event this year for the first time include Clete Brewer,  Managing Partner of NewRoad Capital Partners, Greg Smith, Chief Investment Officer of Timia Capital and Marcus Daniels, Founder of CEO of HIGHLINE, to name a few.

The keynote speakers this year will be Ted Graham, Innovation Leader at PwC Canada, Russell Tencer, Co-Founder and CEO at United Wind and Michael Katchen, Founder and CEO at Wealthsimple Financial Inc.

Disclosure: Peter Moreira is a member of the AVF Industry Advisory Board, a voluntary position. 

Today we are launching our annual survey of Atlantic Canadian startups -- a key component in allowing us to provide you with news on the East Coast startup community. 

We're asking each Atlantic Canadian startup that was active in December 2015 to complete this confidential survey for the good of Entrevestor and the community it reports on. If you believe, as we do, that Entrevestor helps in the development of the Atlantic Canadian startup community, this is your chance to support us. Just as PBS has its funding drives, Entrevestor has its annual data campaign. We're not asking for money. Our only ask is that you take three minutes to fill out our 23-question survey. 

You can fill out the survey here.

There are two reasons why you should take the time to do so. First, our data gives all of us a greater understanding of what is happening in the startup community. We publish aggregated data (never data from individual companies) in our quarterly Entrevestor Intelligence reports, so everyone can understand what is happening in the startup world. This is a rare benefit for a startup community of our size. We also produce a 40- to 50-page report that we sell to interested parties. These include government departments, accelerators, venture capital funds and regulators. This means decision-makers gain an understanding of the community, which leads to better programs. 

The second reason to participate is our databank allows us to continue reporting on what you do. It's no secret that monetizing news is difficult. There's a market for our data. When you complete our survey, you're helping us to stick around. It's like a crowdfunding campaign -- only it costs you no money and helps us to improve our product. 

We are looking for companies that meet three criteria:

- They must be locally owned;

- They must be commercializing proprietary technology;

- And they must be producing at least one product for the global market. 

Age is insignificant. We have a couple of companies that date back to the 1990s. We're interested in new companies, but we want active teams that are actually developing their product and business. It's got to be beyond the idea stage. 

We have collected a list of 355 companies in Atlantic Canada that meet our criteria. We'll be contacting them by email next week. It would be great if you could complete the survey now and save us the trouble of bothering you. Remember, everything you tell us will be absolutely confidential. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Peter at 902 401 2048 or peter@entrevestor.com. 

Many thanks in advance, 

Peter and Carol Moreira

Interviewing MediaSpark CEO Mathew Georghiou about his new Kickstarter campaign is a surprising experience. You start talking about the crowdfunding of his new board game and end up hearing about his growing portfolio of high-growth businesses.

Here’s the news we set off discussing: Sydney-based MediaSpark has launched a crowdfunding campaign for two table-top card games under its GoVenture brand. The games are called Entrepreneur and Monster Hunter. The company hopes to raise $5,000 in a campaign for the games, which will be available in September.

Beyond that, Georghiou revealed the exciting things happening at other businesses he heads under the MediaSpark umbrella. The massive multi-player online business education game GoVenture World, which he has been working on for years, will begin its initial tests soon. MediaSpark is in discussions with universities and community colleges about awarding credits for students who play GoVenture World, which simulates the actual business world.

And Georghiou is now raising capital for Lokol.me, the hyper-local news site that is now a hit in Cape Breton. The site received 650,000 unique visits in 10 months. He is seeking about $500,000 in funding for Lokol.me.

Orenda Scalaing at IBM Incubator

Georghiou and a staff of 17 are now developing these products from the Sydney headquarters, and right now their focus is mainly on the crowdfunding campaign for the card games.

“We’ve been developing games for many years — all of our products are educational, though,” said Georghiou in an interview. “We wanted to try something that was more consumer-focused and not necessarily focused on education. Of course, every game is educational in some way.”

When it thought of a consumer card game, MediaSpark gravitated naturally to entrepreneurship, the subject of GoVenture World. So it came up with Entrepreneur, a game in which players have to sell a product.

But the team also wanted something that was completely different, so it came up with a companion game on a similar format, Monster Hunter, in which the players buy the weapons needed to hunt monsters.

Georghiou said it’s a common strategy for table-top games to crowdfund in pairs and then to consider marketing the two games separately in the future based on the feedback gained from the campaign.

“One curious stat is that on Kickstarter the table top games category has more funding than the video game category,” said Georghiou. “Crowdfunding has actually created a bit of resurgence in table top gaming. There are a lot of successes. Of course, there are a lot of failures as well . . . . It’s a very large market and a lot of competition.”

A few days into the campaign, Georghiou said the feedback has already led to a few possible changes in the product, such as in the design of the cards.

Eyeball Inc., the Bedford company that’s developed an online network for amateur sports, has launched a new web-based platform for league and tournament organizers.

The company said in a statement today it has formed a partnership with the 2016 SEDMHA Honda Minor Hockey Tournament,  a 240-plus-team event that will use the new platform.

Founded by tech vets Jay Steele and Shaun Johansen, Eyeball has developed a social network that allows people to follow minor sports teams. The company found a strong market among sports teams in the Halifax area. That led to a $1 million investment from publicly traded Clearwater Fine Foods Inc. late last year and additional funding from a handful of angel investors.

Clearwater Leads Eyeball's $1.1M Raise

“The SEDMHA Honda Tournament is the perfect opportunity for us to launch our web platform,” said CEO Steele in the statement. “We initially developed this app so that it could be a venue to assist with the coordination of youth sports, but it’s also a place for communicating important information, and celebrating achievements in sport. The web platform will help bring this type of engagement to the next level and allow us to reach a new set of users.”

Held in the Halifax area, the four-day SEDMHA Tournament is one of the largest in North America, comprising 18 different ice surfaces, more than 500 games and more than 5,000 players and coaches.

The new Eyeball platform will allow tournament and league organizers to upload their complete schedules, rosters, and information in a few simple steps.

The company said the clean design of the web platform lets visitors quickly find when and where their next game is. In addition, the platform still offers users the ability to network and communicate on mobile devices.

“Eyeball’s platform is ideal for streamlining communication and fostering tournament engagement,” said Wayne MacDonald, chairman of the SEDMHA Honda Tournament.

“Eyeball will assist the SEDMHA coaches, parents and players with everything from showcasing division brackets, coordinating carpooling and tracking stats, among countless other details.”

Steele and Johansen have previously launched and sold two startups. During the original dot-com boom in the mid- to late-1990s, they teamed up to launch Plazmic, an early mobile venture that they ended up selling to Research in Motion. A few years later, they started another mobile startup called Viigo. And again they sold it to RIM.

With his focus on entrepreneurship, new technologies and immigration, Akram Al-otumi is working hard to grow the population and economy of Nova Scotia, his adopted home.  

Halifax-based Al-otumi is a Co-Founder of 3D Next, which he set up in 2012 with Montreal-based Michael Groenendyk. The partners sell and install Tinkerine DittoPro 3D printers and train buyers to use the technology.

Al-otumi’s many community contributions include founding the Azal Student Agency for international students and newcomers, and the Enactus Nova Scotia Alumni Network, which helps students use entrepreneurship for social good.

“I have a big interest in immigration,” he said. “It’s crucial to retain and attract youth to grow our economy.”

His commitment to the cause has been recognized numerous times. His accolades include Provincial Representative and HRM Volunteer Awards.  He was also named a 21 Inc. Leader for the 21st century, and a Top 25 Immigrant in Canada by the Royal Bank of Canada.

MouseStats Plans Next Moves in N.S.

As an immigrant himself, Al-otumi understands the complexities of adjusting to a new place and culture.

He came to Halifax in 2007 having grown up in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. He was attracted to Halifax because of the universities, the legendary friendliness of the people, and the fact it is a sea-side province.  

“I came to Nova Scotia when I was 19,” he said. “I worked. I was very social. I did my best to integrate, to understand the culture. It wasn’t easy, but after a few years I felt at home.”

After studying English, he received a Bachelor of Commerce from Dalhousie University in 2012. At Dalhousie, he also gained an Entrepreneurial Skills Program Certificate and an Intercultural Communication Certificate.

He wants others to benefit from his experience.

He sits on diverse professional boards, including the board of Fusion Halifax, the board of 21inc and the Sub-Committee on Population, Immigration and Retention with the OneNS Coalition.

Fusion Halifax is the largest networking association for young professionals in the city with more than 2,000 members and outreach to more than 10,000 people.

At Fusion Halifax, Al-otumi is the Director of the Entrepreneurship Action Team with responsibility for entrepreneurial programming and events. He works closely with universities, innovation incubators and accelerator programs across Nova Scotia.

Previously, at Fusion, he was Director of the Immigration and Diversity Action Team where he helped organize the first annual Career, Education and Settlement Fair, an Immigrant Entrepreneur Showcase and Career Spark.                          

It’s not easy to fit all this activity around his work and studies, especially as he is currently working toward two Masters Degrees.

The Masters programs include a Master of Technology Entrepreneurship and Innovation at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, and a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (Business Leadership and Systems Thinking) from Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C.

“I work 14 hours a day, but my schoolwork is almost done. That’s a relief,” he said with a grin.

Rather than look forward to relaxing, he is working on a new platform to facilitate import and export trade between Canada and the world.

“I want to simplify the process to help people import and export easily,” he said.

“The system is difficult. There are long waiting times while banks and other parties notify each other. There’s a lot of wasted time and costs. I’m developing an online platform that will allow the process to be managed in a systematic manner.”

He said that competing platforms exist, but that the others tend to focus on either supply chain management or import and export matchmaking whereas his will facilitate the entire export and import processes.

“We will make things faster and more efficient,” he said.

“Now that Nova Scotia is home I want all the best for it. My vision is to grow my Nova Scotia startups and take them to the world.”

After a quarter-century of helping Atlantic Canadian entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurs3.0 is closing down.

The non-profit organization formerly known as Entrepreneurs’ Forum announced Thursday that its board has decided to cease operations due to financial constraints.

Entrepreneurs’ Forum was probably best known for its mentorship dinners, in which a select group of mentors would have a meal with an entrepreneurial team and work through their challenges. They often led to long-standing relationships.  As Entrepreneurs3.0, or E3, the organization enhanced its programing to include access-to-capital missions that helped startups travel to Toronto to meet with potential investors.

“We had an amazing run,” said CEO Kathleen Rayworth in an interview. “We helped over 2,500 entrepreneurs over the years. And this year was our best year in terms of performance. There obviously is a need for this service in the ecosystem.”

Rayworth said there is approved funding in place for part of the E3 programing, especially the access-to-capital missions. She is in talks with groups that she hopes will take it over.

The most recent access-to-capital mission was held in February in Toronto. Six companies from New Brunswick and two from P.E.I. took part, participating in more than 50 meetings. An E3 report said the missions are gaining a favorable reputation, not only among Atlantic Canadian startups but also among investors in Toronto.

The organization surveyed 40 clients that it assisted in 2015 and received 17 responses.  These companies’ employment levels from their first E3 session to the survey increased 20 percent to a total of 60 people, and their revenues increased 51 percent to $793,900. The 17 respondents raised a total of $600,000 in 2015.

The report also said 96 percent of the respondents said they could not have found the assistance they received from E3 elsewhere.  

“E3 has had numerous successes over the years such as building a network of over 2000 advisors, working with over 2000 entrepreneurs to grow their enterprises, advancing business, partnerships and strategic networking in a variety of ways,” the organization said in a note to supporters Thursday. “By doing so, we have helped to accelerate the regional economy for over two decades. 2015-2016's results were in fact our best, showing e3's importance across Atlantic Canada.”

Ubique Networks Inc., a Sydney startup that reduces the lag in multiplayer online games, has landed venture capital funding from Toronto-based Extreme Venture Partners and Innovacorp of Halifax.

The funding announcement was one of two announced by Innovacorp on Thursday. The venture capital fund also said it provided half of a $1 million funding-raising round by Halifax-based SkySquirrel Technologies, which uses drones to assess the health of crops, especially vineyards.

The statement did not reveal how much money Ubique raised but the deal is still an interesting one for two reasons. First, it’s Extreme Venture Partners’ first investment in Atlantic Canada that we’re aware of, part of a mild wave of VC money coming into the region from Toronto. Second, Ubique appears to be the first of the one- or two-year-old IT startups in Cape Breton that has attracted private VC investment.

“We see a huge potential in the dynamic optimization technology developed by Ubique,” Ray Sharma, executive managing partner of Extreme, said in a statement. “There are more than 700 million people around the world playing multiplayer online games or engaged in e-sports and the numbers are growing.”

In multiplayer online gaming, one of the key problems is the lag caused by network congestion, and by the distance between the players and the game servers. Ubique has developed a platform called Swarmio, which drastically reduces lag through “dynamic optimization of game servers”.

Swarmio also hosts an intelligent lobby system for multiplayer and e-sports games.

“The multiplayer online games and the e-sports sectors are growing rapidly but both the publishers and the gamers want drastic reduction in lag, and that is what we are providing,” said Ubique Founder and CEO Vijai Karthigesu. “This funding will enable us to build out our user base, increase our production output and meet our global customer demands.”

There seems to be growing interest by Toronto VC funds in Atlantic Canada. The Toronto-Vancouver fund Highline recently participated in the $575,000 raise by Clean Simple of Halifax, and OMERS Ventures of Toronto last summer joined a follow-on round for Leadsift of Halifax.

Build Invests $1.9M in Spring Loaded

SkySquirrel had said recently that it was putting the finishing touches on a $1 million raise. The4 deal it announced Thursday comprised $500,000 contributions from both Innovacorp and an undisclosed Ontario-based private investor.

“This investment will let us ramp up to launch the next-generation of our product before the current year’s growing season is in full swing,” said SkySquirrel Co-Founder and CEO Richard Van der Put. “We’ll also be able to hit the gas on pursuing new customers in the U.S. and Europe."

The company’s initial focus is on the $85-billion global wine market. SkySquirrel’s flagship product is helping commercial vineyards improve crop yields and reduce costs, tackling stubborn viruses such as leafroll disease and flavescence doree, where often the only solution for an affected crop is to tear out the infected vines before the disease spreads to the entire field.

“SkySquirrel has developed an outstanding aerial imaging solution for the high-value wine industry, and the technology has tremendous potential for other agricultural markets as well,” said Andrew Ray, investment manager for IT at Innovacorp. “We’re proud to back this strong team and technology.”

Disclaimer: Innovacorp is a client of Entrevestor.

ACOA Funds Venture for Canada Program

Top university graduates from across Nova Scotia in June will begin two-year paid fellowships at some of the province’s most promising emerging and early-stage startups. The Government of Canada on Friday announced a $45,450 contribution to enable Venture for Canada to create the infrastructure needed to place six fellows at venture-backed Nova Scotian companies. The non-repayable contribution comes through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency’s Business Development Program.

A new Nova Scotia Program Director will work to close a gap between startups and post-secondary institutions by matching top university graduates with cutting-edge, homegrown organizations in the ICT, oceantech, cleantech and life sciences sectors. Through a fellowship program, companies will gain access to the talent and energy they need to thrive, and graduates will gain the experience, mentorship and networking opportunities they need to become the innovative entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

After receiving nearly 1,700 applications, Venture for Canada is confident of the very high quality of graduate talent that will be made available to the startup companies.

Kinduct Joins RBC Training Ground

Kinduct Technologies, provider of innovative data collection and analysis software, is partnering with the Canadian Olympic Foundation in supporting a new talent identification program called RBC Training Ground. The program is a series of regional combine events designed to help Canadian sport officials uncover athletes with Olympic podium potential. A collaborative effort between RBC, CBC, the Canadian Olympic Foundation and the Canadian Olympic Committee, RBC Training Ground was hosted in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Halifax in 2016.

At RBC Training Ground, athletes perform a set of workouts that measure speed, power, strength and endurance. Using performance benchmarks provided by high-performance officials from various national sport organizations, Kinduct Technologies can collect and analyze these young athletes’ results, and ultimately determine if they exhibit Olympic-level fitness potential.

SimplyCast Launches Hands-Free

SimplyCast, a leader in marketing automation, has announced the launch of its new service: Hands-Free.

Hands-Free is a new initiative of SimplyCast where the team’s collective knowledge will be used to create and manage marketing campaigns for clients. Essentially with Hands-Free, a client can sign up and SimplyCast will create, manage, and report on any and all marketing campaigns done in the SimplyCast 360 platform for that organization.

Hands-Free will allow companies to harness the power of marketing automation and offer more to their customers without needing to learn how to operate the technology. This is ideal for businesses that may not have the staff or resources to use marketing automation themselves.

“This new service is something we’re really looking forward to,” said President and CEO Saeed El-Darahali. “It’s a great way for us to put our knowledge of automation to work for clients and help them expand their reach easily and effectively.”

This week in Job of the Week, we are featuring a position with Fiddlehead Technology, which is seeking a principal software engineer on the Entrevestor Job Board.

Fiddlehead Technology is based in Moncton and focuses on using Big Data to better manage the food and beverage industry supply chain. Its technology helps global food and beverage manufacturers make better forecasting decisions. It wants to reduce the 2.4 billion kilograms of food that are wasted in supply chains each year in Canada alone.

Our Jobs of the Week column features positions available on the Entrevestor Job Board. Entrevestor and Qimple operate the Entrevestor Job Board, which helps job openings and candidates within the tech and start-up communities.

Moncton

Fiddlehead Technology

Principal software engineer

Fiddlehead Technology is seeking a principal software engineer to fill a vacancy at its Moncton office. The company is looking for a technically adept and experienced individual with understanding of API development, statistics, SaaS, back-end and middleware development, data-science, supply chain management, NoSQL, and Java. Applicants are expected to have three years’ experience in a similar role. The compensation includes a competitive salary, stock options, and health benefits. The company is offering the successful candidate the opportunity to have a big impact on a small team and be well rewarded for it. 

The Velocity Fund on Thursday presented a total of $125,000 in seed funding to seven companies whose products range from hardware that can diffuse landmines to an app that eradicates the need for passwords.

Held at the Student Life Centre at the University of Waterloo, the Velocity Fund Finals are held three times a year to find and reward the best young companies coming out of the university. The Velocity Fund hands out about $400,000 a year to help develop startups affiliated with the university.

“The Velocity Fund has enabled the growth of more than 75 companies in Waterloo region, by awarding over $1.5 million in funding,” said Mike Kirkup, director of Velocity, the university’s incubator. “It is a testament to the University of Waterloo’s entrepreneurial culture to see so many incredible companies today, and we look forward to having them join our community of startups at the Velocity Garage.”

Tory Calls for Innovation Corridor

The four $25,000 winners announced on Thursday in the 15th finals were:

Fiix – This company’s popular app connects consumers with car mechanics so they can arrange repairs at their home or office. The users simply go online to state what they need and they get a quote. They agree to a job at a fixed price – often 20 to 50 percent cheaper than usual – and the mechanic comes to the customer. Fiix is now live and did $15,000 in business in its 12th week. The company says the market is huge – worth $150 billion in the U.S. alone.

Landmine Boys – This team of students has built a new robot to diffuse landmines to avoid human or environmental harm. There are now 100 million landmines in the ground in 70 countries and disposal teams can only get rid of them by blowing them up. It can be lethal and harms the environment. Landmine Boys’ device can work on any landmine and reduce the time to dispose of it from six hours to 15 seconds. The compan has the support of all the major landmine organizations.

Okey – This mobile app gets rid of passwords by using smartphones to log into computers instantly. As long as the phone is near the computer, the desired site opens instantly through the app, which protects the user with military-grade encryption. It works the second the computer is turned on. Okey is starting with Apple products and the company retained 86 percent of the customers who downloaded the app in its first week.  

Pegasus Aeronautics – This team of engineers is developing advanced hybrid powertrains to extend the time that drones can stay in the air. Drones are unmatched for industrial inspections but the problem is flight time. Pegasus has developed a safe hybrid power source can extend 15 mins of flying time to two hours. The product can be retrofitted on to existing drones. It is gearing up for a limited release with five companies and preparing for a full launch within three months. Pegasus was the top hardware company, meaning it took home an additional $10,000 in funding.

The Velocity Fund each semester also presents $5,000 each to three early-stage startups. The winners on Thursday were AVRO Life Science, Moocow Unicycles, and Gamelynx, which was selected by the audience for the People’s Choice award.

Former Finnish Prime Minister Esko Aho called on New Brunswick companies last week to capitalize on the second industrial revolution to prosper in the digital age.

Huddle reported on Esko Aho’s speech in Moncton, and you can read the full report here.

Venn Innovation invited Aho to the region because Finland has developed into one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, and he provided essential leadership as prime minister in transforming the country’s economy. He had advice on how provinces in Eastern Canada can follow this example.

In his speech, Aho pointed to the book The Second Machine Age, by MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. “The first machine age made it possible for mankind to cross the border of physical power of human beings and animals. But the next phase is going to be based on the second machine age making it possible to go beyond the limits of our brain power. That is going to happen now.”

We’re delighted today to launch our spring Entrevestor Intelligence report on Atlantic Canada, which focuses the growth of new startups, and the deal that sparked the startup craze in the region.

As we’re reporting today, this supplement shows that Atlantic Canada saw a surge in company formation in 2015. By our count, there were 93 new startups launched last year. That boosted the entire number of startups in the region to 355 – an increase of 24 percent over the year before. Check out the tremendous infographic by our artist, Roxanna Boers.

These are, of course, preliminary numbers and we will refine them as we develop the databank. (To help us, we’d ask all Atlantic Canadian startups to take two to three minutes and complete our latest survey.)

The cover story of the Entrevestor Intelligence report looks back at the deal that sparked the mania for startups in the region – the exit of Radian6. We just passed the fifth anniversary of this landmark deal, and Mark Taylor talks with the main players in the company, asking them what the deal meant.

In other articles, we look at a key crowdfunding campaign that is being watched across the country, and the new national Natural Products incubator that is headquartered in Prince Edward Island. Gerard Buckley, the Founding Partner of Jaguar Capital, weighs in with advice on structuring boards of directors or advisers to ensure maximum performance.

You can download the report here, and hard copies will be available soon in startup hubs around the region. This is the twelfth Entrevestor Intelligence we've put out in Atlantic Canada, and please also check out the report we put out on the booming tech community in Kitchener-Waterloo. 

Tanya Collier MacDonald in many ways exemplifies what was happening in the Atlantic Canadian startup community in 2015.

She entered (and did well in) a competition. She worked with an accelerator outside the region. And she gained traction with her product. But above all, she launched a tech company. That’s worth noting because strong company formation was one of the hallmarks of the East Coast startup community in 2015.

Collier MacDonald is the Founder and CEO of Orenda Software Solutions, the one-year-old Sydney startup that won the Cape Breton region in Nova Scotia’s I-3 competition, and is now working with the IBM Innovation Centre in Toronto.

“Orenda is developing its platform and heading into the commercialization phase,” said Collier MacDonald of the company, which produces social media analysis technology that analyzes in real-time the overall reputation of an organization, usually a medium to large enterprise. “And we’ve formed one partnership with a national company.”

Orenda was part of a wave of company launches across Atlantic Canada in 2015.  In our preliminary tally, Entrevestor has counted a total of 355 startups in Atlantic Canada as of Dec. 31 2015 – an increase of 24 percent over a year earlier. The big reason for the increase is that we’ve counted 93 companies that formed last year, with the heaviest concentration in the IT sector.

In compiling the Entrevestor Databank for 2015, we really strove to make sure we cast a wide net (with a fine mesh) over the region to capture as many startups as possible. We refused to compromise on our definition of a startup: each has to be a locally owned company that is developing a product for the global market from proprietary technology. It can’t be a service company. At least one founder has to be in Atlantic Canada.

Read our New Entrevestor Intelligence Report

We’re now in the process of surveying these companies, and next quarter we’ll give more data on such areas as revenue, funding and employment. For now, we’re presenting our initial findings on the composition of the startup community, and the big news of 2015 was company formation.

“This isn’t surprising, if you look at what the universities are doing, if you look at what Propel is doing, and what’s happening in other programs,” said Dhirendra Shukla, the Dr. J. Herbert Smith ACOA Chair in the Engineering faculty at University of New Brunswick. “If you talk to investors, they say the capital these days is restricted, but they’re really excited about the deal flow.”

Calculating company formation is always tricky. Consider this: In the autumn of 2014, the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation received 62 entries for its Breakthru competition, which targets the hottest new startups in the province. A year later, Innovacorp in Nova Scotia received 188 applications for its I-3 Technology Startup Competition. And the regional accelerator Propel ICT took 33 companies through its 2015 cohort, and then received 162 applications for its first cohort of 2016.

So how do we end up with only 93 new startups in 2015?

The answer is that there is high attrition in startup teams. Within the selection process, these organizations weed out people who are thinking about starting a business, but decide against it for various reasons. And as the accepted teams go through the programs, several drop by the wayside. Last year there was considerable attrition within the Propel Launch program.

So our 93 startups are those that were “active” as of Dec. 31 – which means the teams are working diligently on moving their companies forward. They include some – but not all -- of the regional finalists from the I-3 event. They also include all of the first 2016 Propel cohort, because those teams were all active enough to pass the Propel selection camp early in the year.

Our list of companies launched in 2015 ranges from teams working on an idea part-time to those in accelerators to those incubating at universities to a company like Saint John-based Gemba Software Solutions, which launched with a $1.5 million investment in September. Gemba was spun out of Saint John-based Innovatia.  The new company’s ProcedureFlow software provides visual process maps that offer new employees and others the ability to quickly navigate their way through the company’s operations. At its launch, it received $1.5 million in funding from NBIF and Innovatia.

“The money is helping us to actually develop the market,” said Gemba's CEO Daniella Degrace. “We are using the money to help us expand the sales capability and to continue to develop our product.”

Most of the 93 rookie startups – including Orenda and Gemba – are in the IT space. A full 73 new tech startups entered the databank -- or 78 percent of the total startups founded in 2015. That’s an even larger weighting in IT than you’d expect, as IT accounts for just two-thirds of the broader Atlantic Canadian startup community.

The creation of 93 new startups marks a dramatic increase over the two previous years, when we counted about 60 companies launching each year. We also witnessed a decrease in companies that failed – there were 33 of them in 2015, about half the number a year earlier. (There was also a handful of companies that exited, left the region or became service companies, thus leaving our databank.)

There are a few interesting notes about our tally on new companies throughout the region. There is stronger company formation in both Newfoundland and Labrador (12 new companies) and Prince Edward Island (seven new companies) than we witnessed previously.

And the buzzing startup community in Cape Breton continued to launch new companies without losing many to attrition. Even though a high proportion of its companies are pre-revenue and have not received equity investments, there have been relatively few teams that left the arena. Some 10 new companies have formed, all in IT.

Meanwhile, the IT sector is undergoing slower growth in Halifax.

With 128 in total, Halifax is home to more than one-third of the total startups in the region, and it accounted for about one-third of the startups that launched in 2015. But the 18 new IT companies that sprouted up in Halifax last year amounted to just 54 percent of the new companies in the city.  That confirms the impression held by several observers that there has been a deceleration in the formation of tech startups recently in Halifax.

On the other hand there were 10 new life science companies formed in Halifax. They were companies like Covina BioMedical, founded by Dalhousie University researchers Caitlin Pierlot and Brett Dickey. The company (formerly known as Biofix) won the 2015 BioInnovation Challenge, which searches for the top new life sciences company in the region.

Covina is developing a new bone cement to be used in the treatment of orthopedic patients. The new product is a non-toxic glass ionomer cement that would simplify the procedure for treating broken bones in such patients.

The formation of new companies is good news for the startup community. It brings new life to the grouping of startups in the region and shows that Atlantic Canada has the intellectual capacity to develop new marketable ideas. But it also strains capacity. One question that UNB’s Shukla asks is: how will all these new companies be funded in the future?

“Unless we see some exits, we might not see fresh money coming in,” he said. “The next few years will have to result in something more exciting in terms of exits. If not, [the result will be] pressure for companies to go looking for capital elsewhere.”