Innovation + Job News

A program that Ontario Minister of Economic Development and Innovation Brad Duguid says will "foster tomorrow's business leaders" offers enterprising students looking for a summer job the chance to create their own.

The Summer Company initiative offers students aged between 15 and 29 funding of $3,000, alongside training and business coaching, to start their own business.

Those accepted into the program get $1,500 up front in seed money, as well as $1,500 upon completion of the program. They're also partnered with a business mentor to help them implement their business plan. Program guidelines say that almost any type of business can qualify, as long as it is owned and operated independently by the applicant and is a new startup. It is a competitive program with limited spaces—students wishing to apply can visit the Summer Company website for information on how to register.

The program is one of a few initiatives by the province to aid students looking for summer employment. Others include job listings and a $2-per-hour subsidy for employers.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Andrew Block, Office of the Minister of Economic Development and Innovation

Siemens Canada has broken ground on a new Pickering plant for its subsidiary, Trench Canada Instrument Transformers, that will create 350 new jobs.

In a speech to the Ajax-Pickering Board of Trade late last month, Pickering mayor Dave Ryan said that the plant is the result of a long effort by the city to entice the company. "We started building this relationship with Siemens Canada seven years ago. While it took some time, I'm sure everyone agrees that these 350 prestige jobs are definitely worth the time, energy and effort," Ryan said.  "Together, Siemens and Trench will solidify Pickering's burgeoning reputation as one of Ontario's preeminent energy hubs."

Mark Guinto of the mayor's office said it was largely Pickering's established status as "a strong nucleus of the energy industry"—home to a nuclear power plant and other energy industry staples—that made the city attractive to Siemens. The Durham Strategic Energy Alliance, headquartered in Pickering, was involved in meetings with Siemens from the beginning, he said.

According to Guinto, the plant is under construction now and will open in late 2012. The number of jobs could possibly increase if the plant expands in the future.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Mark Guinto, Public Affairs Coordinator, Office of the Mayor of the City of Pickering

Lowfoot founder Philip Playfair says that when smart meters were introduced in Ontario, he had a revelation.

"I realized with smart meters we'd be able to measure when people were and weren't using power," he says. "And when you can do that, you can turn conservation into a tradable, viable commodity." His own background was in running a billing company, and he was going "stir crazy' in retirement after he sold it. So he recruited a partner and in 2009 Lowfoot was born in an office near the airport. 

The company offers energy consumers reports on how much energy they consume and when, and offers them targets for reduction. When they exceed those targets, they get credits that are paid out in cash via PayPal. For now, Playfair says, the money "mostly comes from our bank account," and is generated through advertising and sponsorships. But down the road, Playfair says he expects most of his company's revenue to come from utilities themselves who will see real value through the energy reductions. A utility could spend hundreds of millions on new production plants, he says, or could instead spend substantially less reducing consumption to meet existing supply.

The service is active in Ontario, where consumers own the right to their own energy-usage information, and has launched for users of some utilities in Texas and California. Playfair says they are finalizing a pilot project in the Netherlands now. The idea is just beginning to take off. "We're moving from a culture of energy entitlement to one of efficiency," he says.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Philip Playfair, founder, Lowfoot

As recently reported by Yonge Street, work has now begun on the Athletes Village for the Pan Parapan American Games on the waterfront. The project is as much an employment story as it it a develoopment story. The construction, handled by EllisDon, will create 700 direct jobs, according to Infrastructure Ontario's Mandy Downes.

"Currently there are already 50 workers onsite," Downes says, "carpenters, engineers, supervisors and security. At the peak of construction, the project will employ 700 in construction." Those are just some of the 5,200 jobs the Ministry of Finance estimates the project will "create and support" directly and indirectly.

The Athletes Village will transform part of the waterfront, adding more than a thousand new residential units as well as a streetcar line and a residence for George Brown College after the games in 2015.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Mandy Downes, Infrastructure Ontario

Hydro One, Ontario's public electricity generation company, is overhauling three Toronto-area transformer stations as part of province-wide updates to 80 per cent of the generating system.

The Leaside, Hearn and Manby transformers will be completely rebuilt by 2013, in a move a spokesperson for the utility says will enhance the environmental sustainability of the plants. "All three projects will be more reliable and efficient because Hydro One is replacing old equipment and technology with new equipment. The upgrades to all three projects will also support future renewable generation connection," writes Tiziana Baccega Rosa of Hydro One's media relations department.

The reconstruction will create approximately 65 direct jobs during the construction phase, as well as offering apprenticeship electrician opportunities.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Tiziana Baccega Rosa, Hydro One

Switchable Solutions, a startup that formed to commercialize technology developed at Queen's University in Kingston and developed by Greencentre Canada, is working to open an innovative recycling test facility in Mississauga.

President and CEO Mark Badger says the plant will begin operating in late 2012, and could employ about five employees when it opens. "The nature of these things is to start small and scale up," he says. "So we'll grow from there."

The company will use the plant to demonstrate its plastic waste recycling process, which can recycle expanded polystyrene plastic waste, including packaging foam and coffee cups. In tests, the company claims, their process produces materials "displaying similar characteristics to virgin polystyrene." Formed last year, the company is headed by Badger, a former head of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association. In addition to the recycling process, they are testing a process to process bitumen from oilsands while creating fewer toxic byproducts.

Switchable Solutions completed an equity offering last November that generated $3.23 million, and Badger says that recently announced federal development funding of $5.48 million to Switchable Solutions and GreenCentre Canada will help the demonstration plant's progress. "Some of that funding is destined for the plastics recycling facility," Badger says.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Mark Badger, President and CEO, Switchable Solutions

Over the past year, the Ontario Ministry of Health has launch six new Family Health Teams in the city of Toronto, bringing the total number of the innovative, prevention-focused healthcare outlets in the city to 21. Ministry of Health communications officer David Jensen says the new offices will create 66 new positions—46 for health professionals and 20 for administrators—bringing the number of new jobs created by Family Health Teams in Toronto to 331.

Family Health Teams, Jensen describes by email, "are locally driven family healthcare delivery organizations that include family physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers, dieticians and a range of other interdisciplinary healthcare providers working collaboratively to provide comprehensive, accessible, coordinated family healthcare. As a collaborative team practice, FHTs emphasize health promotion, disease prevention and chronic disease management. FHTs use information technology as the backbone of system integration, linking patient records across different healthcare settings giving providers timely access to test results and other important data."

According to the Ministry of Health, the 21 branches in Toronto will serve 316,000 patients, including 86,000 who previously did not have a family doctor.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: David Jensen, Communications Branch, Ontario Ministry of Health

Greengauge founder Lindsey Goodchild doesn't think of herself as a "typical entrepreneur." About 18 months ago, she finished her post-graduate work at Ryerson in sustainability and started doing consulting work for corporations. "I started consulting with really large companies and saw a lot of really good strategies, but when it came to executing those strategies they fell flat." What they needed, she realized, were tools to allow them to better implement their well-intentioned strategies after they left the boardroom.

She submitted an idea to a GreenApp challenge sponsored by Ryerson and Blackberry to develop an application for mobile devices and the web to allow companies to better monitor and implement their green strategies. She won the contest, and Greengauge was born. She raised $30,000 in seed funding last fall, around the time she was finally able to quite her full-time job to focus on the company. She hired a full-time CTO at the start of this year, bringing her staff to "two-and-a-half," she says, including their part-time CFO.

Just as Ottawa-based Coral CEA has invested in Greengauge as part of funding it announced for four Ryerson DMZ companies, Goodchild says the company is now weeks away from launching its first product for limited private beta testing.

"We're really focussed on researching how to embed sustainability into organizations," says Goodchild, noting that she's drawn invaluable support from the academic community, the Ryerson DMZ and some advisors at MaRS.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Lindsey Goodchild, CEO, Greengauge; Coral CEA

When the winners of the ClimateSpark Venture Challenge were announced early this month, local "mini-farming" social enterprise Young Urban Farmers CSA (YUFCSA) got a $10,000 shot in the arm. More than that, says the organization's sales manager and board president Chris Wong, they got valuable community feedback and advice during the process of working through the competition.

"It was very helpful for us, as I'd guess it was for most or all of the participants." Through rounds in which feedback was offered by members of the public and by industry experts, the organization was able to hone its message and model. "One example is, we had the chance to focus, hone and quantify our measuring of the greenhouse gas reductions that result from our gardens." The amount of reductions, it turns out, in 2011, was 2091 kg of C02, or 84 kg per participant in the program.

Those reductions come from YUFCSA's efforts to convert residential backyards and front yards into community gardens. Shareholders receive produce farmed by volunteers from neighbourhood mini-farms. In 2010, the organization's first year, they established seven gardens; last year the number grew to 14. This year, with the help of the funding from ClimateSpark, Wong expects to have between 20 and 25 gardens operating.

Wong notes too, that as one round of the competition, participants pitched their ideas directly to potential investors. Many of the companies and organizations who participated hope to gain investment as a result.

The other big winner at the ClimateSpark challenge was Zooshare Biogas, winners of $40,000 for their plan to create energy from the Toronto Zoo's animal waste. 

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Chris Wong, YUFCSA; Toronto Community Foundation

Dr. Marvin Schwartz is a maxillofacial surgeon who has seen his share of arthritic joint problems.

"You could say this is many years in the making," he says of his company, 4iBIO, which is conducting clinical trials now on an artificial joint implant it hopes to make available for animal use this year.

"Helping humans is down the road," he says, noting that regulatory approvals are much more difficult for the human medical market than for the veterinary one. "The process is set. I have an American patent and other patents to follow. We've finished clinical trials on sheep hips, we're just finishing a clinical trial on dogs, and we have the intention of going to the veterinary market in about six months," he says.

The current dog trials are being conducted at the University of Guelph, with 50 per cent of the funding coming from the federal government (and the other half coming from 4iBIO). Schwartz says that he is seeking about $1.5 million now to set up a manufacturing facility in the GTA that will receive imaging data—such as CT scans—from doctors anywhere in the world and create a custom-made prosthesis for the patient using 3D modelling. For the trials, the company's three principals have been contracting out the manufacturing work, but expect to hire about three staff for the new plant when it opens.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Dr. Marvin Schwartz, CEO, 4iBIO 

Craig Follett, founder of the Toronto startup uniiverse, which launched publicly last week, describes his company as catering to the "sharing economy."

"It's a person-to-person marketplace for services and activities," he says. "It allows anyone to monetize their time, resources, skills or their possessions." He says, for example, that people can offering cooking classes, rent out their power tools or organize car sharing. "One cool thing we have in Toronto is lunch sharing. If you get, say, five people who all work at BCE Place who are sick of food courts, they can join together and everyone in the group takes turns bringing in lunch for all five people." That's just one example, he says, of how the site encourages in-person interaction as much as commerce.

Though it launched globally, the platform sorts users by location, offering hyper-local functionality. "For instance, it will take your location as The Junction, and show you first offers based closest to The Junction."

The idea for the company occurred to Follett and his co-founder Ben Raffi about a year ago while he was working for a management consulting firm in Toronto. They found a CTO, and began working on it full-time in June, 2011, with the founders putting up their own savings as seed money. They attracted $750,000 in angel investment, and have now grown their team to nine staff working out of a Jarvis Street office in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood.

Follett says that in the first 24 hours after the site launched on Feb. 7, the number of listings grew by 200 per cent. "In the wake of the economic crisis, and a number of economic, social and cultural trends," he says, including decreased attachment to ownership and an increase in freelance work, "this allows people to be a bit more resourceful."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Craig Follett, Founder, uniiverse

One year ago, says founder Chris Ye, Uken Games had five staff, and it has grown since then to employ 27 people in its Toronto office. And they're still hiring.

"We are expecting to be 40 people by the end of this quarter," he says. "We think that 2012 will be the year mobile gaming really blows up, and we think over the next two to five years, a few really large companies will emerge to dominate the field. We aim to be one of them."

The company was launched three years ago when Ye and co-founder Mark Lampert met at a Facebook app development camp. "We had some success with some gifting apps," he says, noting that a trick-or-treating application they developed for the social network drew sponsorship from Nestle. "We had a million monthly active users, we made money, and that got us excited."

The duo began making games, and eventually started selling those games across multiple platforms so they were not just playable on Facebook, but through iPhone, Android and Blackberry mobile devices. They now have eight titles, and a game engine that allows them to develop more new games quickly. "We've got 25 million installs now, and we've got large-scale distribution. So we're focused on launching new titles."

Ye says that the company has been profitable for two years now, and has been able to finance its growth through revenue without taking on outside investment. And that has meant, too, that they haven't had to consider moving.

"You can do it without going to Silicon Valley," he says. "There's great talent here in Toronto, which was the driver for us in choosing to stay here. But we also like being at home."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Chris Ye, Founder and CEO, Uken Games

The Ryerson University DMZ—short for Digital Media Zone—launched in the spring of 2010 to incubate new, innovative businesses from Ryerson students and alumni. Less than two years and 39 startups later, the incubator is growing.

This spring, it will open a new 5,400 square-foot space in the basement of the building it occupies at 10 Dundas Street East, bringing its total space to about 15,800 square feet.

"With the addition of the new space, the Zone will be able to accommodate about 50 new innovators," says DMZ media representative Lauren Schneider.

Schneider says that the Zone's successes so far—including noteworthy startups 500px, Shape Collage and Teamsave—have seen seven companies "graduate" to their own office spaces and have created 357 new jobs, plus 48 direct jobs supporting the Zone at Ryerson.

The growth, Schneider says, builds on the DMZ's mandate. "The Digital Media Zone will continue to play a key role in Toronto’s new digital economy by fostering young innovators... to help keep the world’s best talent here and contributing to our economy."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Lauren Schneider, Media Relations, Ryerson DMZ

Mississauga's Seawell Networks recently announced the closing of a $5-million Series B funding round, which Seawell VP Andy Beach says will finance the video software company's rapid growth.

"We're at a stage where we're expanding the company to get into the market in a larger way," Beach says. "This funding will allow us to do that."

Seawell was founded in late 2008 to help solve some problems for network operators with delivering video to various devices. Seawell's technology allows operators a system to provide video with a better user experience, and gives them more control over various elements of the streaming process, including the display of ads.

The company has grown, Beach says, from about 20 staff to 28 in the past 12 months, and expects to hire another 10 to 12 in the coming year, including sales and marketing staff and developers.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Andy Beach, VP Marketing and Product, Seawell Networks

About 18 months ago, SurfEasy founder and CEO Chris Houston was looking for a product that would help him maintain privacy as he conducted business online from various different computers. "I found some things that you could hack together if you followed all 38 of the instructions," he says, "and I found some enterprise-level solutions for large businesses." What he didn't find was a simple plug-and-play way for regular people to protect their information. In an age where more and more business is conducted in the cloud or otherwise online. This struck him as an opportunity.

His attempt to fill that gap in the market launched at the high-profile CES show in Las Vegas last month. "It was fantastic," Houston says. "We got a great reception from potential distributors and potential partners." The product is a USB key that contains its own browser. Plug it into any computer and you can access your own customized browser with your own passwords, cookies and bookmarks stored on it. Unplug the key, and all the information travels with you.

The concept has very quickly attracted financing, first from two private venture capitalists, and then from the MaRS-affiliated provincial government Innovation Accelerator Fund. "We're pretty well funded now, and we're ready to take this thing out to market," Houston says.

The company, only officially incorporated a year ago, has already grown to 10 staff, "most of them development focused." Houston says that over the next six to 12 months, he expects a "big growth spurt." New staff are starting this month, more new positions are being advertised now, "and we've got more new positions coming."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Chris Houston, Founder and CEO, SurfEasy