research and innovation : Innovation + Job News

Three new Toronto anti-cancer research companies were launched last month with investments from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR). Frank Stonebanks, the organization's VP Commercialization said in an announcement that the new companies are among the "most promising new approaches" to the age-old fight against cancer.

TORCell Therapeutics, created by the University Health Network (UHN) and OICR, will focus on its first human clinical trials for a new treatment for acute myeloid leukemia.

DLVR Therapeutics, also a partnership between OICR and the UHN will take a potentially safer and more effective chemotherapy treatment developed by UHN doctor Gang Zheng and further develop the therapy.

Harmonic Medical, founded out of Sunnybrook Hospital, will perfect a prototype ultrasound therapy to destroy cancer cells and bring it to clinical trials.

"These three companies represent the best in Ontario innovation," provincial Innovation Minister Glen Murray said in a statement. Murray also said the investment in these companies will create "high-quality jobs" for researchers.

Writer: Edward Keenan

Source: Rhea Cohen, Director of Communications, OICR

Spenz, a downtown Toronto startup that has created a personal budgeting app for the iPhone and the web, officially launched late last month at the prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield event in New York City. After competing with almost 1,000 other companies to be included in the event, Spenz was the only Canadian company accepted.

The company was founded by Justin Hein and Pavel Choulguine in November 2010. They secured angel financing and moved into space at Ryerson's Digital Media Zone, and wound up growing their team to nine staff members in a little over six months.

According to Hein, "Spenz started off slow, with bumpy design, slow development and lost business guys. We were building a business model, coming up with feature sets and constantly changing what Spenz was." In a news release, he added that the Disrupt launch, "was grueling but ultimately rewarding that the judges view Spenz with the same enthusiasm as our investors and team do."

The company claims to offer many more features than standard budgeting applications, with an intuitive back-end that anticipates tags and inputs users will need. Most transactions reportedly take less than three seconds to enter, a major benefit in the market, and the program features a competitive game-like incentive system.

Next up, the company is pursuing another round of financing while it develops its application for the Blackberry, Android and other mobile platforms.

Writer: Edward Keenan

Source: Calvin Sribniak-Jones, Director of Marketing, Spenz

Anyone with a mobile device will know that Flash animation--such a wonderful tool on the desktop--doesn't translate all that well to mobile devices. That very problem inspired Chris Brady to found his startup Animated Media in late 2008. "He saw that Flash was a good tool to create content but not a good tool to run content on anything besides a desktop," says Lisa Brady, Director of Marketing (and, incidentally, Chris Brady's spouse). 

Brady and his team developed a technology that allows Flash to run on a less than 1 gHz machine, and to run in native applications for mobile phones including the famously Flash-free iPhone. The recent rapid acceptance of the company's product in Europe and around the world recently drew notice from the provincial government, who labelled Animated media an "Ontario Success Story."

The company has grown, Lisa Brady says, to six employees (they added one just this spring), and she says they're "always looking for other talent." She says that for now the company's focus is continuing to market the product and pick up more traction in an international ecoomic environment that has, over the past few years, seen R&D budgets shrink. "The prospects are really good, but the process takes time. We're just six people trying to get the message out there."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Lisa Brady, Director of Marketing, Animated Media

In September 2009, sports fan Jesse S. Moeinifar was listening to a radio talk show debate an essential boxing question: Mike Tyson or Muhammed Ali? "I tried calling in to share my opinion, and I was put on hold for 45 minutes, then nothing. I decided to put together a company that meets the challenge of communication between news organizations and their consumers."

The result, Viafoura, was incubated at MaRS and recently moved into Ryerson's DMZ. Moeinifar says the coding took some time to perfect,but his product--a user engagement platform that allows users to interact with content providers through video, text and video debate--has recently gained notice for its innovation. After launching at the prestigious DEMO conference in California, Viafoura gained notice in the New York Times, among other publications (you can see their launch presentation here).

"Before we even got off the stage, we had six emails from news organizations around the world interested in our product," Moeinifar says. And the momentum continues to grow. After adding a staffer this spring, the company (now three employees strong) recently won the Canada 3.0 pitch-off competition.

The next step? "It pretty much comes down to getting the product out there," Moeinifar says. "Having the product really speaks for itself."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jesse S. Moeinifar, Founder and CEO, Viafoura

Natalie MacLean has made a name for herself as Ontario's most-read wine web writer, publisher of an email newsletter with 120,000 subscribers and editor of the wine hub NatDecants. Recently she worked with the developers at Fluid Trends to create an innovative mobile application for buyers at the LCBO.

"It was both fun and painful developing this newfangled, label-scanning mobile app ... the fun part is being done," says MacLean by email. The application allows shoppers at Ontario liquor stores to snap a picture of the bar code on any label and get tasting notes and food pairing suggestions.

This label-scanning innovation builds on the success MacLean and Fluid had with their original Tips and Tastings app, highly rated by the New York Times (and, according to the creators, the best-selling wine app in Ontario). Sales, according to MacLean, have grown more than 200% over the past year. MacLean says that so-far feedback from wine lovers on the new label-scanning innovation has been good.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Natalie MacLean

The U of T spin-off company DVS Sciences opened a new R&D headquarters in Markham last week, a step forward in what company President and CEO Scott Tanner describes as a "significant success story" for the local innovation scene.

Tanner said the company had its origins around 2005 within U of T spin-off company Sciex when he began research to apply mass spectrometry to biology through individual cell analysis. DVS was launched in 2009 and moved back into the University of Toronto fold, where Tanner says they were able to take advantage of "multi-faculty, multi-disciplinary" collaboration.

Since then the company has launched six instruments, and recently got a significant boost for its innovative products with the publication of a large paper from Stanford University published earlier this month in the journal Science. "The technology has had great support already, and we had several research papers published. But this is the first big paper in the biological sciences press that people will see...Just since the paper was published, we've been getting four or five inquiries a day."

The gangbusters growth is manifesting in many ways. In addition to opening the new office, Tanner says the company has just finished a round of hiring, adding three staff in the past week. He says that the company will open a sales office in California this summer and he anticipates hiring an additional 22 or so staff by the end of the year (about 13 of them in Markham).

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Scott Tanner, President & CEO, DVS Sciences

Late last month, Ontario Minister of Energy Brad Duguid appeared in Vaughan to announce a $50 million investment in a new Smart Grid Fund that the provincial government says will create jobs and build Ontario's capacity for sustainable energy.

The fund will invest in local projects that either build the capacity of the network or demonstrate a new smart grid technology. "Smart grid" is a term used for a set of technologies that use monitoring and communications to allow the electrical system to run more efficiently and sustainably.

A spokesperson for the minister's office dis provide a specific estimate for how many jobs this investment would create, but noted it is part of a green energy plan that has already created 13,000 jobs and is expected to create 50,000 in total. But the jobs will likely be mainly in the field of engineering and technology, supporting the development and commercialization of new technologies that monitor and manage electrical generation and could include electric car charging stations.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Gloria Bacci, Media and Issues Officer, Ministry of Energy

Temporal Power, a cleantech company that is a MaRS client based Burlington, secured financing earlier this year to pursue its breakthrough sustainable energy technology that could eventually make green sources of power such as wind a more viable source of electricity.

Company CEO Cam Carver says that the team of four at Temporal Power -- who currently rely a good deal on outside contractors -- now has the capital to pursue "utility-scale demonstration" projects of its flywheel technology. The flywheel allows for storage of electricity for later deployment on the grid at large scale and low cost. Storage has been seen as a key obstacle to full adoption of green energy because of the intermittent nature of generation techniques such as wind.

Carver says that the demonstration projects are expected to be ready sometime next year.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Cam Carver, CEO, Temporal Power

Just two weeks ago, we reported that rapidly growing Toronto agency Plastic Mobile had been nominated for a Webby Award for its innovative Pizza Pizza mobile app. Last week, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences put a happy ending on that story for the local agency by awarding the Webby for Mobile Shopping to Plastic.

The award was the only one in a mobile category presented to a Canadian company, beating large American giants such as Target and Walgreens. Melody Adhami, co-founder of Plastic Mobile says that the award is payoff for the leadership role her agency has taken in the mobile arena. "Winning the Webby Award serves as our validation and compensation for innovating and pushing boundaries. Receiving this honour continues to propel us to innovate by reassuring the team that the time and effort invested in innovation is highly worth it."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Melody Adhami, co-foudner, Plastic Mobile

Online data backup company KineticD, based at Yonge and Eglinton, has been named the top up-and-coming technology firm in Canada by the Branham Group. The 15-employee company established in 2002 serves business clients with online data storage and sharing services.

The annual Branham300 ranks the top technology companies in Canada every year, while its subsidiary list, "The Next 50" ranks the fastest-growing up-and-coming companies. KineticD ranked number one on the latter list this year when it was unveiled last week.

It was just the latest in a series of encouraging signs for KineticD. Early last month, the company announced it had acquired cloud backup software company Robobak, earlier this year it announced some key appointments and the launch of iPad capabilities for its software, and last fall the prominent Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list showed KineticD as the 19th fastest growing company in Canada.

"It is an honor to be recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in Canada," Jamie Brenzel, CEO at KineticD, said in a statement when the Deloitte list was unveiled. "KineticD has seen rapid growth over the last five years. Our dedication to delivering innovative new offerings ensures our customers and partners have access to the most secure and reliable storage, recovery and remote access solutions in the industry."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jamie Brenzel, CEO, KineticD

Toronto-based children's entertainment company Spin Master Ltd. has partnered with the Canadian Youth Business Foundation to launch a $500,000 Youth Innovation Fund that offers young entrepreneurs up to $50,000 in start-up financing, as well as mentorship support. In a prepared statement, Spin Master chairman and co-CEO Ronnen Harary said the fund was inspired by 2011 being the Year of the Entrepreneur, and that it was a chance for his company to "give back."

The focus on youth startups is appropriate for Spin Master, not just because they make products for children, but because the company got its start in 1994 when founders Harary, Anton Rabie and Ben Varadi were in university. They had $10,000 to launch a company, and began with an "Earth Buddy" novelty toy�a doll stuffed with seeds that grew living "hair" when watered. Since then, the company has launched dozens of other products for the children's market, opened offices around the world and hired more than 1,000 employees. It is the third-largest children's consumer products company in North America.

It also claims to be the fastest-growing such company, and that growth is evident locally. The company is currently hiring 16 employees for its Toronto office (more in Los Angeles and elsewhere).

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Harold Chizick, VP of Global Communications and Promotions, Spin Master Ltd.

Synaptop, a Toronto startup company based at the foot of Yonge Street, launched it's innovative cloud-computing operating system last month. "It's a virtual operating system built for the current times," says Sami Siddique, Synaptop's president and CEO. He says the system adjusts the focus of software to recognize how people really use the internet, allowing the collaborative and sharing functions of applications such as Facebook and Twitter to apply to every application. "You can follow anyone in any application. You can co-DJ, co-edit, co-browse with your friends."

Siddique, who has a background in computer science and healthcare applications (he did 3D research at the Princess Margaret Hospital) launched the company in 2007. He set out to build a "new entry point to the internet" that allows users to collaborate in work, education and entertainment. That vision was realized with last month's launch.

The product is in Beta mode now, and Siddique says the company plans to launch an assortment of new applications to go alongside the ones available at launch.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Sami Siddique, Synaptop

Earlier this year, the creative team at Toronto-based marketing, design and branding agency Up Inc wanted to test a new bookbinding technique. So they recruited local photographer Sandy Nicholson to shoot the faces of people from every age between 0 and 100. The book, 0to100, was published in March.

But it was the iPad application version of the book that has really become a smash success for Up Inc. Through it's innovative use of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, a company spokesperson says, it has managed to reach the top of the App store's "What's Hot" list in over 70 countries, as well as drawing raves from Gizmodo, Fast Company, and other international media.

The award winning firm was founded in 2007, and continues to grow (they're hiring four now).

Source: Sue McCluskey. Up Inc.

Toronto got its first bike-sharing service since the closing of Bikeshare several years ago, and the BIXI network -- established in Montreal, Boston, London, England and elsewere -- is offering a bigger, more financially sustainable service. As it launches, the service offers 1,000 bikes available at 80 stations around the downtown core. Members can use bikes for half an hour free of charge, and rent the bikes by the hour, returning them to a docking station when they are done. Non-member rentals are also available for tourists and residents.

The program signed up 1,000 advance members during a drive last year -- a milestone that meant they got a $4.8 million startup loan from the city of Toronto. The company will also rely on corporate sponsorships for revenue. Initially, it was announced that ING Direct would be the sponsor, but it now appears that Telus and Desjardins will have their branding appear on the bike-share infrastructure.


Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Marshneill Abraham, for BIXI Toronto

Toronto-based Firmex bills itself as a "Virtual Data Room," allowing clients in security-sensitive industries such as the finance, legal and medical professions to share documents quickly and securely.

The company has recorded exponential growth since its founding in 2006, according to VP Elizabeth Caley, and saw an 85 per cent revenue increase last year. The market for confidential online sharing continues to grow, according to Caley, and Firmex's position as an established industry leader with an excellent workplace culture ensures its continued growth. "We combine the simplicity of sharing documents that's become popular in the consumer market with the security that's needed for business transactions," says Caley. "We've taken a very pragmatic but aggressive approach to serving our clients' needs...and constantly innovating with the product itself."

Caley adds that the company is a "fun place to work," another key to its success. And more and more people are working there, too. They have recently added 10 positions, and Claey says they expect to add another 10-15 positions in the next two months, bringing the staff to about 50 employees. Caley notes that rapid growth presents a new challenge: "We're starting to run out of space."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Elizabeth Caley, VP Product Management, Firmex