Innovation + Job News

When Yonge Street first wrote about Liberty Village-based solar startup Morgan Solar in 2010, it was big news that the company had secured $5 million in seed capital and landed a top-notch CEO. The innovative energy creators have grown since then, so much so that this month they announced they had raised an additional US$28.8 million in venture capital. The financing will expand Morgan Solar's production of its revolutionary Sun Simba lightweight panels, and expand its sales efforts.

Among the investors is Enbridge, the large natural gas utility, which has invested $10 million (US$9.8 million). According to a statement from Enbridge VP Chuck Szmurlo, this is the energy giant's first investment in solar technology.

"We’ve been excited for a long time about the potential for solar electricity, and we’re now pleased to help advance innovative ideas that will help reduce costs and enable the increasingly economic deployment of this emissions-free energy source. We look forward to playing a role in Morgan Solar’s growth."

The announcement caps a big year for Morgan Solar on the capital front. In May the company announced it had raised US$16.5 million.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Emma Hemmingsen, communications manager, Morgan Solar Inc.

A Toronto-based startup founded by Ryerson alumni now offers the world's largest online database of distilled spirits. Daniel Donlonv of Distilus says the company now offers listings for more than 1,300 spirits from more than 100 countries.

Founded in 2009 by Marco Molinaro and business partner Nick Ajram, the company is currently in the process of rolling out a 2.0 version of its online catalogue. Donlon writes by email that one of the latest features of the site extends an innovation Distilus had previously offered only to Ontarians.

"When a user is looking to purchase a particular spirit, they can locate it on our site, determine the volume that they are interested in purchasing, and then view the LCBO locations nearest them that currently have it in stock. This feature has, however, just recently expanded to have universal appeal."

Now the site allows users all over the world to find beverages for sale in their own country. "Regardless of what country you live in, when you are viewing a product on the site, you will be able to find the retailers nearest you (sometimes in neighbouring countries, if it's not available in your home country) that carry that spirit, as well as pricing information that will be displayed in your home currency," Donlon says. "Also, if the option is available to you, you will be able to place an online order for the spirit and have it delivered to you by visiting the retailer's website."

Two years in, Donlon says the company has employed technological tools to create a worldwide virtual office. "We all use technology to communicate with one another to make our dream live, despite the fact that we live so far apart and are in different time zones.... Our dream of impacting the international liquor scene is becoming a reality."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Daniel Donlon, Marketing Intern, Distilus

Brampton Civic Hospital last month became the first community hospital in Ontario to employ an around-the-clock "intensivist" physician, who will provide care in the hospital's new eight-bed Surgical Intermediate Care Unit.

The unit will serve patients who need more care than is available in a regular ward but not intensive care, according to a statement by BCU executive VP Liz Buller.

"Positioned solidly between the care received on the wards and the most intensive care levels, [the intermediate care unit] gives additional support to address the needs of surgical patients," says Buller.

An intensivist is a specialist in critical care like that typically available in intensive care units. The first-in-Ontario intermediate care innovations are part of an ongoing expansion of Brampton Civic Hospital that includes adding operating rooms and capacity in orthopedic and general surgery units.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Harpreet Hansra for Brampton Civic Hospital

Since launching in 2010, the Toronto-based home décor "flash sales" site Homesav.com has attracted more than 100,000 registered members. The first-year success, the company announced this fall, has drawn $1.2-million in financing from angel investors including the founding families of both Shopper's Drug Mart and ELTE.

Homesav.com will use the capital to grow its team—they are currently hiring for 10 positions—and launch initiatives to expand the company's reach.

The site offers high-end designer home furnishings at drastic discounts—the company says specials are as much as 80 per cent off the retail price—for a limited time. Currently handling more than 100 orders a day, Homesav.com just this week launched a month long "pop-up store" initiative with local new condo real estate listings site BuzzBuzzHome. The promotion will offer hand-picked items for sale to BuzzBuzzHome's users for one month, with new items being released for sale each week. Homesav.com says the partnership is an opportunity to extend its reach further into customers in the new condo-buying market.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Amanda Parker, public relations and media manager, Homesav.com

Founded in 2006 by Toronto entrepreneurs Alan Lau and Ivan Yuen, the mobile e-reading app company Wattpad, has a written an exciting story for itself this year.

"The easiest way to explain the concept is that it's like YouTube for books," says marketing coordinator Pamela Odina by phone. "People can share their own stories. We've got partnerships with some major publishers, there's a real mix of content."

That mix now extends to more than 1,000,000 free titles, and continues to grow. As does the company. This summer, Wattpad added their 1,000,000th registered user, and have added another 300,000 since then. But Odina says even those numbers don't tell the bigger story. "Many of our users are not registered, they're just reading. We get 7-million visitors a month."

On the heels of that success, the company announced $3.5 million in financing in September and moved into new office space near Yonge and Sheppard. Odina says the company is currently focused on building its team to develop more products and platforms. From the two founders five years ago, the company started the year with six staff and just hired number 11 this month. Odina says they plan to add another nine or so staff over the next year.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Pamela Odina, Marketing Coordinator, Wattpad

Designer Adam Schwabe began 2011 by launching Rocket Radar, a transit application for mobile devices that gives real-time next-vehicle information to Toronto Transit Commission subway and streetcar riders. His team added bus information to the service midway through the year. And last week they launched the service in four US cities: Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco and Davis.

"We've gotten a good reaction here in Toronto, and next week we're starting to reach out to users and media in those other cities to start promoting them," says Schwabe.

Thus far, the transit applications have been a side project for Schwabe and the two developers he's been working with from the beginning. For these US cities, a new part-time member was added to the team. "He's a package designer, and we've added a more real-world aesthetic to the design."

The newly added locations, which soft-launched about a month ago, were a natural fit because the transit services in those places provide data on the same platform the TTC does. "The technology was the same, so it was relatively easy for us to go to them."

In the short-term, Schwabe will be focusing on enhancing and expanding the functionality and reach of this batch of Radar apps. In the long term, adding more cities—New York, for instance—is a possibility.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Adam Schwabe, Founder, Rocket Radar

Toronto's Massive Damage brings an interesting twist to the world of zombie-apocalypse video games. Its first title, Please Stay Calm, has its brain-eating action take place wherever the user is. Using GPS technology and Foursquare's platform, the game is placed right at a mobile device's location.

"Basically our whole company is based on location-based gaming, using the real world as a playground for the game," says co-founder Ken Seto.

The launch of the mobile title in Canada in September and the US and the rest of the world in mid-October was the coming out for Massive Damage, which attracted $325,000 in angel funding on the launch. Seto says the free title (paid users get premium options) has been downloaded 166,000 times, with almost 10,000 daily users as of the end of November.

Seto says the staff has increased to eight employees from the two founding employees. They continue to hire, and expect to build the team to about 20 employees over the next 12 months.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Ken Seto, Co-founder, Massive Damage

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.

Toronto-based medical imaging innovators Tornado Medical Systems will receive $750,000 in financing from the provincial government's Health Technology Exchange (HTX) to commercialize its innovative breast cancer medical imaging technology.

In announcing the investment, HTX said the investment will help create jobs while allowing sharper diagnoses in breast cancer cases. Tornado's "world-class medical technology" should cut down the need for need for repeat surgeries.
 
The company was founded in 2009 as a partnership between Toronto's Sentinelle Medical Inc. and the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute. Headquartered in Toronto, it now has offices in Thunder Bay and Ithica devoted to developing diagnostic medical imaging tools. By the start of this year, the company had grown to employ 20 people, and launched a wave of new hiring in February. The company is currently hiring more than 11 new staff, and is expected to continue growth as it commercializes its technology.
 
Dr. Stefan Larson, CEO of Tornado, said in a statement that the HTX funding would fund more technological development as well as clinical trials for the technology.
 
Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Stephanie Evans, Operations Manager, HTX; Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre

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

Earlier this year, we reported that pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline was ramping up its Canadian presence by expanding its Mississauga facility and adding 70 new staff. On Nov. 10, the company announced that its expanded footprint in Canada would also include a significant investment in research, with the launch of its $50-million GSK Health Sciences Canada Innovation Fund.

In the announcement, the company said the investment dollars would spur the industry in Canada, helping to close the "innovation gap."

"We're excited by the prospect of developing even closer ties with leading research organizations across Canada to enhance opportunities for innovation and create new high-value jobs," said GSK president and CEO Paul Lucas. 

According to the company, the fund will provide direct investment to academic and research organizations involved in "early-stage research" in the health sciences sector, particularly academic and health institutions, translational research centres and start-up companies.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Anna Robinson, for GlaxoSmithKline

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

At the 2011 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards last week, Toronto entrepreneur Razor Suleman was recognized in the business-to-business category for his company Achievers.

Founded originally in 2002 as I Love Rewards, Achievers offers client companies employee recognition software that allows peers and supervisors to give each other rewards for excellence in the workplace. The software employs social media-style tools to allow employees a platform to work together achieve organizational goals, and offers real world rewards for excellence.

"There is a significant demand for results-driven recognition solutions that offer more than that of traditional service awards," says Sarah-Beth Anders of Achievers. "The same stagnant rewards programs have existed since the 1940s, but Achievers is revolutionizing the industry with results-driven recognition tied with meaningful rewards."

Over the past year, the company has seen explosive growth, expanding from its Liberty Village offices to open a US location in San Francisco after raising $24.5 million in capital, according to Anders. The company also has an office in Boston. Across the three location, Achievers now employs 160 staff—double the number they did last year at this time. "We hope to double our number [again] within the next year," Anders says.

"The awards our company is recognized with—including Razor Suleman’s recent win as E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year in the B2B category—builds our brand and authenticates our success," Anders says in an email. "Receiving public acknowledgement helps to make our business reign top of mind among customers and prospects, and leads us that much closer to achieving our mission to change the way the world works." 

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Sarah-Beth Anders, Achievers

For property owners, a key selling point of energy efficiency improvements has long been that more than just saving the environment, they'll also save money.

Now, an innovative new insurance policy offered by Jones Brown—developed with the Toronto Atmospheric Fund (TAF)—insures against the possibility that retrofits to building do not deliver on expected savings, allowing building owners to be confident they will be able to pay off financing secured to complete the renovations.

The Toronto Atmospheric Fund has long been a pioneer in self-financing energy retrofits, and saw a need for what they're calling the Energy Savings Warranty. Fund VP Tim Stoate says his experience has taught him that there are "lots of barriers" to going ahead with energy efficiency projects for building owners. Programs that take the financial risk away from building owners help fuel the process, allowing a win-win-win situation.

"There's no cost for the capital improvements [since they pay for themselves through energy savings], there's free cash flow from the savings over and above the cost, and there's no risk to the lender [such as a bank] because the savings are insured." says Stoate. All of that is in addition to the environmental benefit of lower carbon emissions in buildings. 

Stoate says this new policy is targeted at smaller owners of large buildings. Large institutions such as hospitals and universities already have access to similar policies because their credit is assumed to be rock solid. But condo boards, malls and owners of buildings such as Harbourfront Centre can now enjoy the same advantage—lowering their energy cost and actually earning a profit without putting up capital in advance.

In making the announcement, Jen Aitchison of Jones Brown estimated that the market for such a product extended to "tens of thousands" of building owners across the country. She said that building owners would not be the only ones whose fears are eased by the insurance, as it could provide banks and other lenders the confidence needed to finance large-scale building sustainability improvements.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Tim Stoate, VP Impact Investing, Toronto Atmospheric Fund