David Kedmey and Xiao-Ping (Steven) Zhang take home the top prize.
EidoSearch is the grand prize winner of the Alpha Exchange Innovation Campaign, presented by
Backbone. The company was chosen from a field of strong candidates at a live-pitch event May 15, held during the OCE
Discovery 12 show in Toronto.
It all comes down to this: three hours, 10 finalists and a panel of industry experts. And by 5:00 pm on May 15, the winner of the Alpha Exchange Innovation Campaign will be known. The 10 finalists — in no particular order — are:
The Alpha Group, the organization responsible for the Alpha Alternative Trading System, launched Alpha Exchange on Monday, April 2, 2012. The Exchange is the product of close to two years of development. The company says the Exchange will provide an alternate forum for listing Canadian businesses in tech and certain financial areas, and builds on the success of Alpha’s Alternative Trading System (ATS), over which about 20 per cent of TSX-listed stocks are currently traded.
Michelle Scarborough has seen and done it all. Over the past 20 years she’s been an entrepreneur and built companies from the ground up; a prolific angel investor in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary; worked for investment groups and merchant banks; and developed an acceleration model used in Canada and the U.S. In 2007, she founded Canada’s Top 10 Competition (
www.topcanadiancompanies.com) in order to identify some of the best investments in Canada and raise the bar on early-stage investing.
Wildeboer Dellelce, a boutique corporate finance firm, is a sponsor of
Backbone’s Start Me Up contest. We sat down with the company’s Paul Flint to get his take on the importance of supporting the innovative and technology space in Canada.
Small ICT businesses looking to succeed need to look beyond playing only in our own backyard. A world of opportunity is out there for Canadian ICT innovators, but they need to seize it, and sometimes they need to be ready to ask for help.
The National Research Council Canada has helped more than 50 companies through its incubator program over the last 13 years. The program, in part, includes finding a mentor within the research community to support each startup. “We focus on technology, rather than offering business support,” said Marie Lussier, Manager of Industry Partnership Facility with National Research Council Canada.
Startup business NuEnergy has been leasing space at the St. Albert facility of novaNAIT for nearly two years. novaNAIT, in Alberta, supports and facilitates applied research and development of commercially relevant products and services for industry.
entrepreneurship@UBC is a campus-wide initiative led by the Sauder School of Business, the Faculty of Applied Science, the Faculty of Science and the University-Industry Liaison Office. I sat down with Carl Leacy, Program Director, to discuss this program and the importance of supporting innovation at the university level.
The Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University is home to one of the largest entrepreneurship departments in Canada, which includes major and minor degree programs plus two MBAs. Students are taught by experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who have started dozens of companies and helped hundreds of entrepreneurs raise more than $2 billion in financing.
If Canadian entrepreneurs have a mindset challenge, it’s probably dreaming big enough. We don’t do that as often as we should, and this conservative, pragmatic approach can put off investors looking for bigger gains—even if the idea really has legs. That doesn’t seem to be the problem for Joseph Fung, serial entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of TribeHR.
Earlier this week
I posted about a mini road show I was about to go on, with events in Toronto and Ottawa. Well, am back now, and I'd say it was pretty successful all around. This was the 2012 IT Buyers Forum, sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, with some help from the Export Development Corporation and Invest Ottawa.
As many experts have said, building a successful start-up requires identifying an industry pain point, and that’s what Kristin Garn, founder, director and CEO of Mathtoons Media did for secondary-school math education.
HP might be one of the farthest things from a start-up, but the company knows more than a few things about innovation. And those insights could be very useful to small businesses.
The three pain points of early-stage companies are human capital, markets and capital. The first two are served by various accelerators and incubators, but access to capital continues to be a tough nut for many start-ups to crack, especially in today’s economy.
“If you look at the technology and ICT structures in Canada and you take out RIM, you’ll notice a huge drop-off in terms of size,” said Eugene Bomba, Senior Manager, Emerging Company Services with PwC. “There are a ton of smaller tech companies just starting out, yet the revenue in that sector is still really good.” PwC wants to guide and nurture these start-ups and it is willing to put resources behind that effort. Many entrepreneurs don’t have business and finance experience—which is where PwC’s expertise comes in.
Niagara-based
FourGrouns Media is a video production company which creates video content for the Web and television. It was founded four years ago by Adrian Thiessen and his partner Kristen Nater and, like many start-ups, they realized they didn’t have the expertise or connections they would need to be successful, and so they went in search of resources.
In the past decade, technology has been the fastest-growing industry sector in B.C., but it remains predominantly populated by small companies. Ninety-six per cent of all tech companies in B.C. employ less than 50 people, said Bill Tam, president and CEO of the BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA).
Valerie Fox is the Director of Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone. She has more than 25 years of experience in creative industries and has worked with technology in universities and in the private sector. The Ryerson Digital Media Zone is a sponsor of Backbone’s
Start Me Up contest, and we sat down with Fox to get her take on the importance of supporting the innovative and technology space in Canada.
From October 22 to 24, 2012, business leaders, innovators and prominent speakers from around the globe will gather in Montreal for the world’s leading information technology conference: World Congress on Information Technology (
WCIT 2012).
Canada’s technology market is underachieving due to a lack of support by the private sector and a securities exchange structure that sets tech entrepreneurs up for failure, according to
Jos Schmitt.
Alongside its federally-mandated mission to accelerate the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) in Canada, Canada Health Infoway does its part to help fund smaller innovations that highlight the power of technology to improve healthcare.
Once entrepreneurs have a great idea they also have a healthy accelerator community to turn to for help, but what about before that big idea hits?
Need a handyman, a personal trainer or a math tutor for your kid? What’s the easiest way to access these service providers in your community? That’s the question Rob Platek is working to answer with his online marketplace
jobdeals.com.
BCIC, the British Columbia Innovation Council, is dedicated to developing globally marketable innovative B.C.-based entrepreneurs in the global scene—with emphasis on marketable.
A year and a half ago, when Senia Rapisarda joined the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to head up the BDC Venture Capital’s new Strategic Initiatives & Investments (SII), she made an insightful, worldly observation about Canadian entrepreneurship.
For me, one of the best Chapters in the book... Adam uses many examples of how SJ (Steve Jobs) drilled culture and acceptable behavior through the ranks at Apple and describes his fight against the bureaucracy that tends to cripple and slow organizations as they grow. SJ was fervent in his fight to maintain a start up type environment upon his return to Apple.
I just returned from a meet-and-greet arranged in Kitchener by Communitech to connect early stage technology companies to potential investors. Although tonights event felt a bit like an awkward high school dance, I think that the efforts being made by Communitech in K-W are exceptional.
If you run a small business, it is increasingly important to stay ‘ahead of the game’ instead of just being a player.
As an entrepreneur, start-up or small business owner, do you have questions that constantly keep you up at night? You know what I mean – issues, stressors, reoccurring business questions you just can’t shake! They sit in the back of your head all day, and then keep you up at night.
In honour of Canada's birthday, I'm updating my list of Canadian individuals and companies who contributed to digital culture or technology.
