Financial District : Innovation + Job News

Less than one year after spinning off from the University of Waterloo and setting up office at the MaRS incubator's downtown Toronto office, Smarter Alloys has signed a development agreement that could change the shape of the orthodontics industry. The technology developed by Smarter Alloys founder, Dr. Ibraheem Khan, allows special alloys to remember multiple "shape memories." The process means such materials may be programmed to perform multiple functions.

The implications of Smarter Alloys technology extend to multiple industries, including printers and hard drives, automobile components and energy conservation. Last November, the company won the CleanTech North Innovator of the Year Award for its technology's potential to harvest wasted heat and reduce fossil fuel consumption.

The deal announced this month, according to a statement by Khan, "is poised to greatly improve the functionality of smart materials used in orthodontic applications.... We’re especially pleased with this agreement because our partner has a proven track record of taking innovation and converting it into improved dental care."

The announcement is the first of four to six development agreements that Smarter Alloys expects to announce this year, to accompany further growth. They recently hired a business development manager with the help of a $50,000 grant from MaRS and expect to double the size of their technical team. They also plan to open a manufacturing facility in 2012.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Chris Stevenson, Director of Communications, MaRS; Ibraheem Khan, Smarter Alloys

A venture capital investment of $23 million landed by Toronto mobile company Fixmo in late 2011 has already seen the company add 10 staff members, according to Fixmo chief marketing officer Tyler Lessard, bringing the total staff to 50. He says they will continue to grow their staff over the next six to 12 months as the company gears up to develop a broader global profile (they have postings for multiple positions up now).

Founded in 2009, the company originally set out to provide personal data security to users of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, through a set of software tools. But the mandate changed somewhat in 2010 when Fixmo partnered with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to commercialize the intelligence agency's internal integrity monitoring system.

"Fixmo was chosen for that partnership because of our record of success in the field of mobile security," Lessard says.

The company, headquartered on Yonge Street near King, soon opened a Virginia office and acquired Conceivium to offer a "holistic range of mobile integrity management software."

2011 saw rapid growth as the trend towards "bring your own device" policies in corporations has led to increased challenges for IT departments, who now need to secure data across a range of operating systems and software brands used by their employees. As the mobile age evolves, Lessard sees the demand for these services continuing to grow as they expand beyond North America and broaden the range of products they offer.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Tyler Lessard, Chief Marketing Officer, Fixmo

Ryerson University's Flybits research group, a team working in the school's Digital Media Zone, recently won a "Golden-idea" award for a head-mounted computer display designed for police and security officers.

"Police need access to information, and we usually give them a walkie-talkie," says Dr. Hossein Rahnama, the research director of Ryerson's DMZ. Officers typically need to stop what they are doing to call in requesting or relaying information before returning to the situation at hand. "With head-mounted displays, when they need information, they look at a small screen in front of their eyes and see maps, sensors, etc."

The idea was developed in partnership with the Swedish company Appear, for a challenge developed to find solutions for Motorola's Golden-i wireless headset. "This is a great achievement, showing how effective European and North American partners can work together," Rahnama says.

Such tools may be the future of computing, and not just for police. "This is the post-tablet future of computing," says Rahnama. "Right now, everyone is moving to tablets, but after that, the new generation will be wearable computing."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Dr. Hossein Rahnama, research director, Ryerson Digital Media Zone

Toronto-based Spatial View, headquartered near Front and University in the financial district, recently introduced a device to allow iPhone users to watch 3D content without glasses, and has also signed a slew of deals to provide such content, according to COO Al Lopez. The company has also recently released a screen attachment for laptops to allow similar 3D viewing. 
 
Launched strictly as a display technology company in 2004, Spatial View focused on "auto-stereoscopic 3D," which allows three-dimensional viewing without the use of glasses. "In the past couple years we've moved more into distribution of 3D content on mobile, laptop and desktop devices over the Internet," Lopez says, pointing to a recently announced deal to distribute a Peter Gabriel concert filmed by Eagle Rock Entertainment. "We'll have more exciting distribution announcements in the next month, names I'm sure you'll be familiar with."
 
Spatial View has 42 employees in offices in the US, Germany and Nova Scotia, along with its Toronto headquarters, Lopez says. But the staff is growing, with positions open now for six more employees. "We're seeing a lot of opportunity to grow as we expand to more and more platforms," Lopez says.

GO Transit, the Ontario-government-run regional transit network in the GTA, launched a new mobile application, GO Mobile, on Nov. 10.

The application for iPhones, Blackberrys and Android-enabled smartphones allows riders to view schedules, receive alerts and personalize information. In a release announcing the application, GO VP Mary Proc said the initiative should enhance customer service.

"We're very excited to offer our passengers the ability to access GO schedule information right in the palm of their hands," stated Proc.

Behind the scenes, the application represents a significant achievement not just for the transit service, but for Ryerson University's Digital Media Zone (DMZ), an 18-month-old innovation and business incubator at the downtown University. Six Ryerson students and one recent graduate collaborated to build the application for GO.

School representatives say this represents an evolution in the university classroom experience, with students getting hands-on, real-life experience dealing with projects for real-world clients. Stephen Johns, a computer-science grad who worked on the project said in a statement, "GO Transit was an ideal partner for our group as they were committed to experiential learning and developing a great, knowledge-based transit application."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Michael Forbes, Ryerson Digital Media Zone; Vanessa Thomas, GO Transit

Toronto startup InferSystems earlier this month announced the launch of its proprietary advertising bidding software. Just one day after that release, the company, founded in 2009, was named to the Canadian Innovation Exchange's list of the 20 most innovative tech companies in Canada.

InferSystems' proprietary technology, the Infer RTB Optimizer, aims to change the world of "real-time bidding" (RTB). Enabling media buying/selling platforms to build accurate data models from Internet response data, the prediction engine allows marketers to get better value for their online advertising money. Ben Mair, president and CEO of InferSystems, says the software will dramatically improve the return on investment for advertisers through a form of arbitrage. They system using a form of "machine learning" to continuously improve performance.

The Canadian Innovation Exchange's annual Top-20 list highlights companies selected from hundreds of applicants. The 20 winners will present at the annual CIX conference to be held at the MaRS Discovery District in December. CIX co-chair Chris Arsenault said in announcing the winners that the list represents the "leaders of tomorrow."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Lynn Walks, InferSystems; Jackie Peterson for CIX

Toronto's Segasist Technologies, whose founder, Dr. Hamid Tizhoosh, told Yonge Street in September that he expected US Food and Drug Administration approval for his oncology diagnostic product this fall, recently received that approval.

"For a small company such as ours, this is amazing," Tizhoosh says. "FDA approval doesn't mean you've made it as a company. You still have to take the product to market. But getting approval is one of the key challenges of the medical devices market."

Tizhoosh says he's now in discussion with his investors to prepare to launch a technology he believes could "revolutionize" the oncology industry by providing easier, more reliable contours of tumours, a process that now takes an extraordinary amount of time for oncologists. "I am extremely happy, extremely proud, but we still have hard work ahead of us."

Tizhoosh says he expects to hire three or four new staff by January to help the company's growth, bringing his staff to 11 or 12 people.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Dr. Hamid Tizhoosh, CEO, Segasist

Toronto's Chango, a media company dedicated to "search retargetting"—serving display ads to customers based on their recent search activity after they have left Google, Bing and Yahoo—has been growing quickly. This year they were named to the Deloitte Fast 50 "companies to watch" list of Canada's fastest growing technology startups.

The pace of growth is likely to accelerate soon, as the federal government agency FedDev Ontario recently announced an investment in the company of $978,333 to support research into real-time bidding software and finance growth. Chango says the investment will lead to 37 new hires at its Toronto offices.

"The funding will be used to accelerate our growth plans into the fast-growing search retargetting space," CEO Chris Sukornyk said in the announcement. "We appreciate the support from FedDev Ontario to retain technology start-ups in Canada."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Chris Sukornyk, CEO, Chango; Gary Toft, Ministry of Economic Development

Toronto medical software startup Segasist Technologies plans to launch its new cancer diagnostic tool Reconcillio at the American Society for Radiation Oncology conference in Florida early next week. Founder and CEO Dr. Hamid Tizhoosh says the product represents the culmination of his company's work and could eventually "revolutionize oncology."

Reconcillio is an automated "contouring" tool that learns from doctors as they outline tumors for diagnostic, treatment planning and monitoring purposes. Each oncologist will have his or her own style of contouring, and often several doctors will need to spend hours separately performing the process to reach consensus. The software learns different doctors' styles and can then apply them to new medical images. It can provide "consensus contours" showing how multiple doctors in a hospital would contour the image. And Tizhoosh says eventually, it could provide a cloud-based tool containing the consensus of all 5,000 or so oncologists in North America.

The company's history, Tizhoosh says, goes back to when his grandfather died of lung cancer. Then an engineer, Tizhoosh vowed to fight cancer. "I had young children at that point, so it was a risky move, but I decided to do a PhD in medical imaging." Originally born in Iran, Tizhoosh was based in Germany, but moved to Canada in 2000 and took a job as a professor at Waterloo University. It was there he set up a research team to develop his software, and by 2007, he had a prototype.

Tizhoosh says the company established itself with grants and venture capital financing in downtown Toronto because the access to world-class cancer hospitals was too good an asset to ignore (though the commute to Waterloo where he continues to teach is sometimes difficult). In the past year, the company, based at the MaRS incubator, has growing from to five from three staff, and expects to relocate to its own offices early next year. Reconcillio will be the third product the company has launched--its second, the engine that will eventually drive Reconcillio, is awaiting FDA approvals. Tizhoosh expects to receive those next month. From there, more financing will be made available and the company will begin the approvals process for Reconcillio.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Dr. Hamid Tizhoosh, CEO, Segasist Technologies

The MaRS Discovery District, opened in 2005, has rapidly fulfilled its intended function as a hub of research and an accelerator of innovation—an incubator of dozens of start-up companies and a link between researchers, hospitals, universities, entrepreneurs, financiers and venture capitalists. Today, more than 2,300 people are directly employed by the various tenants housed at its College Street MaRS centre, and it recently announced an expansion that will see it almost double in square footage and make it, according to the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, "the largest urban innovation hub in the world."

The phase two construction—which was always part of the long-term strategy—was halted when the global economic crisis struck in 2008. Now it's back on, with committed tenants and provincial government financing, according to MaRS Discovery District CEO Ilse Treurnicht.

The construction, now underway and scheduled for completion in September 2013, will employ 4,000 workers. Information supplied by the office of the minister of innovation suggests the job gains will not all be temporary, either: after completion, 5,000 people are expected to work at the facility, including employees of anchor tenants Public Health Ontario and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

"Today, start-ups are blooming and growing across the GTA," Treurnicht writes. "These young, high-growth companies create the majority of new jobs in modern economies.... The expanded MaRS Centre will catalyze more startups and help grow companies that will generate thousands more knowledge-based jobs in the years ahead."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Ilse Treurnicht, CEO, MaRS Discovery District; Office of the Minister of Research and Innovation; Chris Stevenson
Communications Director, MaRS

In the minds of many people, Google's purchase of Toronto startup BumpTop for a reported $35 million last year put the Toronto tech sector on the map, and also secured the position of Xtreme Labs (and its affiliated investment arm Extreme Venture Partners) as the big players in the local mobile software development industry.

So some excitement greeted the launch this month of a new venture by some of those familiar players--the new app-monetization platform Blu Trumpet is led by Nina Sodhi, the University of Waterloo alum and Harvard MBA who served as COO of BumpTop. And the venture is the first to emerge from Xtreme's partnership with New York-based IAC, Hatch Labs, which bills itself as an "entrepreneurial sandbox" for mobile products.

Blu Trumpet, with sales and administration offices in New York and development based at Xtreme's Yonge Street headquarters, has introduced an advertising mechanism for app developers that they claim users will enjoy rather than find annoying. "We call it it 'life after banners," says Sodhi. "It's an app discovery tool that app clients add to a nav bar, so users choose to navigate to it to find other apps from advertisers." Karthik Ramakrishnan, the product director who heads the development team in Toronto, says that early metrics show more than 10 per cent of users come back to the app discovery tool again and again, "so we know it is adding value for the users." Which, Sodhi and Ramakrishnan agree, makes it all the more valuable for both advertisers and host apps.

Sodhi says that Blu Trumpet currently has a team of four working in Toronto and two in New York, and expects to double its staff her and perhaps triple it in New York by the end of the year. She says that originally the company's plans had not called for basing all development work here, but that the rich pool of talent that's available here, and that has been shown to be "willing to stick things out" with start-up companies, made the decision obvious. Sodhi attributes the bustling scene here to both the presence of great engineering university programs in the area and to government programs that support innovative startups. Meanwhile, Ramakrishnan says that prominent "exits" like the sale of Bumptop last year have created an appetite for startup life among local developers. "People are interested in startups again--the risk factor is mitigated by the coolness, the desire to be in on the ground floor of something exciting," he says.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Nina Sodhi, CEO, Blu Trumpet; Karthik Ramakrishnan, Product Director, Blu Trumpet

Last year, Toronto-based application developer Polar Mobile doubled the size of its workforce as it grew quickly to serve a roster of corporate clients. In November, company spokesperson Jon Zifkin said it was a matter of the company having built a solid development foundation upon which it was now rapidly building. "The immediate future is pretty steady growth as we continue expanding our reach globally," he said.

Those words appear prescient on the heels of two recent Polar announcements. On August 17, Polar unveiled a deal with Nokia that will see it develop 300 or more applications for big-name corporate clients for use on the Nokia phones. In the announcement, a Nokia spokesperson cited Polar's ability to scale up to meet the demands of the world's top-tier brands as a key asset in the deal. One week later, Polar announced the opening of an office in Dubai alongside a deal with a major Middle Eastern phone manufacturer to build more than 100 apps to serve the region. Once again, the company's ability to scale quickly was cited as a decisive factor.

Polar spokesperson Sydney Strader says that as the announcements suggest, the investment in a scalable platform for apps is now paying off. "We can now turn out apps for big clients as quickly as two weeks, and that's across every single smartphone platform, as well as tablets," she says. "Growing to become a large global player is certainly the intent. Every year now we've seen growth around the world, and we continue to expand in those markets.

As you might expect, the company is continuing to hire at a quick rate. "Our team is pretty much constantly growing now," Strader says of the 40-employee company. "There are lots of open positions, and we expect that to be the case going into the future."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Jon Zifkin, Director of Business Development, Polar Mobile; Sydney Strader, Communications, Polar Mobile

The Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) has announced that its fourth annual conference will be held at the MaRS Discovery District in downtown Toronto beginning Dec. 1, 2001. The event brings together entrepreneurs, startup companies and investors to share information and ideas through presentations and networking opportunities.

The conference also features the unveiling of this year's CIX TOP 20, a high-profile selection of the 20 most innovative companies in Canada. Registration for both the conference and consideration in the top 20 is open now. "CIX has established itself as the must-attend conference," says CIX co-chair Rick Nathan in a statment. "This year we have added even more facilitated meeting exchanges to ensure these players have a chance to make real contacts that will ultimately lead to partnerships, investments and growth."

Registration is available online. A list of keynote speakers and presentations will be announced in the coming weeks. However a sneak peak list of attendees includes Jordan Banks of Facebook Canada, John Albright of the BlackBerry Partners Fund and Claudia Fan Munce of IBM Venture Capital.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Katye Seip, Achilles Media, presenters of the CIX

Rapidly growing local solar energy company SunEdison, a subsidiary of the international conglomerate MEMC Electronic Materials, has announced a deal to increase production of solar panels at the Flextronics facility in York Region. The increased production sees Flextronics physically expand their plant and hire 400 new staff to meet demand.

Jason Gray, SunEdison's Canadian manager, says that with this announcement, his company has been involved in creating between 800 and 950 green energy jobs in the solar industry in the GTA within the past two years. That includes a growth at the company's head office from two to 50 staff over that time, as well as the creation of 100 new jobs building racking equipment at the Samco facility in Scarborough.

"A lot of our investment here has been spurred by the [locally manufacturing requirements] Ontario government's Feed-in-Tarrif program," Gray says, "But Ontario has a long history of manufacturing, so it makes a lot of sense that the region is able to leverage that existing strength."

Gray says that right now most of the increased production capacity at these plants where SunEdison has created increased opportunities will serve the company's local projects, but that in the long term, such production experience and capability will create excellent potential for a green energy export industry.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jason Gray, VP and Canadian Country Manager, SunEdison

Earlier this year, Clive Hobson of Innovative Composites International told Yonge Street that the local manufacturer of innovative building materials expected to soon land a contract that would be a "home run in terms of growth and revenue." A $68 million deal to supply housing in Haiti and Ghana announced last week appears to fit the bill.

Innovative Composites will supply 2 million square feet of its patented EcoScape housing under the deal, and will construct and operate a new manufacturing facility in North Carolina to serve the contract.

"This is a game changer for ICI. One we have been working on for the last two years," said Innovative Composites President and CEO Terry Ball in a release. "We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but I believe we haven't even scratched the surface in terms of market penetration and will be able to accelerate project roll out once the SC facility is up and running,"

The company was founded in Toronto in 2007 by former Magna International employees who have developed new thermoplastic building materials used to construct bridges, shipping containers and housing, among other things. Company spokesperson Hobson says it is hurricane-proof, fire-proof and virtually indestructable, and can be used to make almost anything.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Clive Hobson, Director of Communications, Innovative Composites International