Kensington Market - Little Italy - Little Portugal : Innovation + Job News

It was just three months ago that we first wrote about ShopLocket, when the startup launched a beta version of their ecommerce platform. It turns out co-founders Katherine Hague and Andrew Louis were onto something with their idea.

It's an embeddable tool that you can add to your website, blog, Facebook page—just about anywhere you might be creating content online—and sell something quickly and easily, without needing to go to a third party site (like eBay) or take on the trouble and expense of setting up a full-fledged online storefront. ShopLocket announced recently that they've closed their first round of seed funding: $1 million from several venture capital groups and private investors.

Hague and Louis's first step, upon learning that financing would be forthcoming: staffing up. When they started, it was just the two of them, plus a paid intern who served as a community manager. They've since added two positions—one business development and one software engineer—and will have a graphic designer joining them in the fall. Louis says they also plan to add some contract positions.

"We get the biggest bang for the buck by using the money to hire people," says Louis, "but now there's also room to start using paid advertising and promotions." Then he adds, intriguingly: "The key is finding ways to make the most of a still pretty limited budget. We can't do TV advertising, but we can spend a bit of money cooking up a promotional stunt."

Louis says it's still early days for startup economy here. "Canada has had some companies do really well, but nothing at the scale of Facebook or PayPal. So generally, [we found fewer] people able to help a startup out at the very early stages, both in terms of early investment or mentorship."

But that's getting better and has been balanced out by the fact that the region remains relatively strong. It's one of the reasons ShopLocket was able to go from beta to financing so quickly, in fact. The company is partly financed by US investors who were "actively looking outside of their own country" for opportunities, and found Canada's stable economy appealing.

Toronto also has "an educated and talented population, and access to large markets" Louis points out—both very useful when you're trying to grow quickly. 

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Andrew Louis, Co-founder, ShopLocket

The Centre for Social Innovation wasn't, as it happens, looking for additional opportunities to grow.

CSI, which offers shared spaces geared to small- and medium-sized social innovation organizations, started out with one facility on Spadina, in 2004, and had been adding rapidly to that: they bought a building in the Annex in 2010, expanding to a second location, and are currently implementing plans for a third site, as part of the massive Regent Park revitalization effort. They had a fair bit on their plates already.

But then came the call from New York. A real estate company had recently purchased, for nearly $1 billion, the Starrett-Lehigh building. At 2.3 million square feet, it's one of the 10 largest office buildings in Manhattan. They were looking for innovative tennants, they wanted CSI and they weren't going to take no for an answer.

The developers are trying, says CSI CEO Tonya Surman, "to find a way to bring some magic and life to the building—to do something that had more life, more energy, more community." Slated to open this winter, CSI Starrett-Leigh will offer mentoring, networking and tennant support services similar to its Toronto locations.

It's something that CSI, after eight years developing its co-location model—one which incorporates community animation and other engagement tools—is uniquely equipped to do. And it is, she adds, a model that is very characteristic of this city.

"I do think that Toronto and Canada—we're better at collaboration than most other cities and countries. I think that there's something in our DNA that's related to our history, our diversity.... We've had to learn to work across differences better than others. The DNA of collaboration runs in our blood."

"Toronto has played a leadership role," Surman says, in exploring new economic models that rely on innovation. It's leadership, clearly, that others are eager to benefit from.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Tonya Surman, CEO, Centre for Social Innovation

It has been, 1DegreeBio founder and CEO Alex Hodgson says, a busy summer.

"We closed a funding round in early July, we've hired new hands and moved to new offices," Hodgson tells Yonge Street. Amid the flurry of growth activity, the medical research database startup has also been redesigning the front and back ends of its website and adding new products.

Hodgson says that over the summer, the size of her staff has more than doubled, from four full-time employees to nine, with one more new position about to be added. She says the hiring itself has been a delicate process--so many new staff at a small startup company can dramatically affect the culture. However, she says she's confident she's found the right people.

Where to put them all has been another challenge. The company recently moved into a new 725-square-foot office space in a former U of T science building on College Street, an almost literal stone's throw from the lab where the 1DegreeBio was founded. "The space is so perfectly suited to our company," she says, "we've recycled the old science equipment into office furniture." And just months after moving in, the company is already expanding, negotiating the addition of another 500-square-feet of space to accommodate more contract staff as the company grows. 

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Alex Hodgson, CEO, 1DegreeBio

It was $250,000 in student fundraising that got Trinity College's solar panel development started, and soon they will been giving money back to students as an innovative--and sustainable--source of student aid funding.

The 252 solar panels installed on the roof of the school by a team led by consultant Oxtoby of CarbonFree Technology, which were unveiled last week, are a direct result of a student fundraising drive in 2007 that generated $250,000. An additional $262,000 for the project was provided as an interest-free loan from the City of Toronto. Now that the panels are plugged into the grid, generating revenue for the school through the province's feed-in-tarrif program, the school estimates it will repay those loans in approximately 12 years.

After that, the revenue generated by the panels will be used to fund student aid at the school. They will generate approximately 67,000 kiloWatt hours per year of sustainable energy.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: David Oxtoby, CarbonFree Technoloy

The power of social media has made it ever easier for students to connect with one another (Facebook, remember, was launched as a Harvard University social tool). The internet is a powerful driver of social interaction. But when it comes to serving students' academic needs, according to Ryan McDougall, the range of services and how they interact has been pretty poor.

McDougall is the Communications Director of uBuddy.org, a brand-new academic-oriented social networking site created by and for University of Toronto students. After launching in mid-February for beta testing, McDougall says the site has already attracted 1,200 users. "It is designed to be an efficient and powerful tool for--among other things--note sharing, meeting classmates and starting course discussions," McDougall says.

The site was the brainchild of U of T grad Charles Qu, who recognized a hole in the market when he himself was a university student, and developed the platform and startup company with help from MaRS.

McDougall says that during the pilot phase, the service is available exclusively to U of T students. But he says there are plans for expansion to other universities in the fall of this year.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Ryan McDougall, Communications Director, uBuddy.org

It's been a big month for news out of the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD).

First, on January 13, the school announced that famed architect Will Alsop, who designed the university's iconic Sharp Centre for Design, has joined the faculty as an adjunct professor. OCAD's Martha Ladly, chair of the Art, Media and Design masters program, said that Alsop has "proven to the world his commitment to standards of excellence, and to the necessity of design for humanity through sustainable practices, creativity and imagination." Ladly noted that both graduate students and upper-level undergraduates will benefit from Alsop's advice and instruction.

The internationally renowned designer is scheduled to begin teaching an undergraduate course at the school in September. His appointment runs through 2013.

Shortly after that, the school was the recipient of $359,800 in funding from the federal government through the Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative. The funding will see OCAD partner with small- and medium-sized businesses for research, design, development and commercialization projects. MP Paul Calandra, speaking on behalf of the government, said the initiative will both create jobs locally and drive innovation among local businesses.

Sara Diamond, president of OCAD, said that projects under this initiative are "game changers" in their industries, and that the school's history as an incubator of applied research and market-ready innovation means it is well-suited to fulfill the program's hopes. Diamond said that the program will focus on innovations in the mobile, health, environmental and digital sectors.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Sarah Mullholland, OCAD University; Gary Toft, Ministry of State for Economic Development for Southern Ontario

As the ongoing municipal election campaign has demonstrated, building a bike-friendly city is not without controversy, and it's not easy. But the Netherlands has managed the job pretty successfully. "The bicycle is the most popular form of transportation for the 16 million people who live in the Netherlands," Dutch Consul General to Toronto Hans Horbach recently said in a statement. He noted that there are more bikes than people in his country, "resulting in less traffic, less pollution and a healthier population."

Visiting experts from the Netherlands were in town this week to share lessons from the most successful cycling country in the world with Toronto transportation planners, engineers and cyclists. During the two-day ThinkBike event held September 20 and 21 at the El Mocambo nightclub, experts shared best practices information about Dutch cycling infrastructre, and surveyed the downtown core and the Sherbourne Street corridor to suggest improvements for increasing bike use. According to organizers, the workshops included topics such as "bike safety, communting by bike, biking to school, bike parking, bikes and public transport, law enforcement," among others.

According to the City of Toronto, this is the first city to host such an event, though the example will soon be followed in Chicago and other North American cities.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Steve Johnston, Senior Communications Coordinator, City of Toronto

Earlier this year, Zerofootprint introduced a new innovation: the "Talking Plug." It's an outlet that can monitor a building's energy use � down to the level of individual appliances � and show how much power is being drawn and how much it costs. It could also allow a person to shut off individual outlets remotely, and instantly see the savings in energy and dollars.

That product, which drew notice via an outline of the technology in Forbes written by Zerofootprint founder and CEO Ron Dembo, was just among the latest of dozens of initiatives the company has launched. "We're essentially a about measurement," Dembo says, "once you measure energy use you can see how it compares to others and actually reduce it."

The company launched as a non-profit in 2005, but launched a for-profit segment to manage its Velo carbon-footprint-measurement software two years ago. From its start in 2008, Dembo says the company has grown to 25 office staff today (noting, however, that much of the company's work -- design, manufacturing, PR � is outsourced, so employment might not be the best measure of growth). "Eseentially, in the first quarter of this year, we've generated as much revenue as we did in all of last year," he says. "And back then, it was about the same -- over the year before, about a factor of four. Though I can't imagine we'll sustain quite that pace for too long."

Unless, of course, the right customers come to the table. Dembo says widespread sales of the Talking Plug await a large order of a few hundred thousand to make production scalable. He's hoping the Ontario government will see the value of its interface for use with the smart meters currently hooked up to residential hydro accounts. "We could get this out quickly -- with or without the smart plugs -- just by tapping into the smart meters," he says. "The provincial government could create an industry here."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Ron Dembo, founder and CEO, Zerofootprint

Got an Innovation & Job News tip? Email [email protected].

Samir Al-Battran, President of RentCompass, says his company started when he realized that people looking to move wanted information on the move. "We found that the real estate market in Canada  -- and specifically the rental search industry -- did not have any practical solutions that meet today's demands and advancements in technology," he says. "The recent rapid spread of smartphones made it possible to build mobile solution to find information on the go, and that was the inspiring point for RentCompass."

Last week, the company launched a native application for the iPad, a first for a Canadian real-estate search company. Earlier RentCompass launched the first rental application in the country for the iPhone. Al-Battran says he just sees the market for mobile applications getting bigger. "We believe that mobile applications are the future, especially in our segment. Our vision is that people should be able to find apartments or houses for rent on the go, whether they are driving or walking in a neighbourhood that they liked, or while commuting to work or school."

The start-up of three people offers ads for free, and is free for people to download or visit on the web. Al-Battran says that the business plan calls for selling advertising on the site. In the near future, he says, the company will likely be hiring support staff and, down the road, some developers, to complement their core team.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Samir Al-Battran, President, RentCompass

"Doesn't everyone want to design a bike?" asks David Chant, in explaining how he came to launch his boutique bicycle company Beater Bikes in the summer of 2009. The self-described "bike nerd" -- who owns an assortment of high end pedal-powered vehicles -- felt that there was a particular niche waiting to be filled. A quality bike built for city driving -- ready to go with fenders and chain guards -- that would ride well but be priced low enough that you "wouldn't have to worry about locking it up on the corner."

After a year or so of designing and learning the ins and outs of contracting manufacturing in Europe (and a two-month shipping delay in Amsterdam), his first shipment of bikes arrived late last summer. The ladies model sold out within months, and, as Chant says, "the bikes are flying out the door -- we even have a waiting list for the women's model." Is this success? "It's not bad for a one-man operation selling bikes out of an art gallery," he says.

Chant already has his eye on next spring, when he plans to launch a new and improved model. To that end, he's conducting a survey online right now to see what people are looking for in a bike. Chant says he sees Beater Bikes' future in "going a bit more international" -- doing most of his sales through e-commerce.

Still, as he speaks, it's clear he sees it as much as a calling as an empire-in-the-making. "I love bikes and I want more people in Toronto to ride them. Putting more bikes on the road is my form of advocacy."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: David Chant, Owner, Beater Bikes

Got an Innovation & Job News tip? Email [email protected].

Hailey Coleman was backpacking across Europe with a friend when she found herself "in London, England, hobbling home barefoot" with her heels in her hands. She realized then that an innovation was needed to keep the feet of nighclubbers safe.

Now, at age 22, she's the founder of Damn Heels, a company that produces and sells foldable slippers in a small case designed to be carried in a handbag. At the end of the night, the slippers fold out to fit on a woman's tired dancing feet, and the case folds out to fit her heels. She sells the product for $20 (including tax) on her website, and is now seeking Toronto retailers to carry it.

The path between inspiration and corporation was a natural one, Coleman says. As a student, she was taking a business-plan-writing class. "I found myself going through all the steps of creating a company -- hiring a designer, finding manufacturers -- so I thought I'd just continue until I had a company."

After launching the company in December 2009, Coleman remains the sole employee -- for now -- running her business from her Chinatown apartment. But she doesn't expect to stay small for long, as she says the response to her product since it was introduced at a Motionball event has been "awesome."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Hailey Coleman, Damn Heels