Innovation + Job News

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

Yonge Street has reported on the explosive growth of technology company ViXS twice in the past year, and the good news has continued flowing for the company. Just last week, ViXS was named one of the top tech companies in Canada and its CEO, Sally Daubs, was named a top female entrepreneur by the prestigious Deloitte Fast 50.

Last month, the provincial government announced an investment that will help ViXS develop a new energy-efficient media processor to power multimedia devices including set-top boxes, TVs and digital recorders. The devices will help stream content to mobile tablets and smart phones.

The investment will help ViXS create 107 new jobs in Toronto. "We're positioning ViXS as an ahead-of-the-curve leader in digital media delivery," Daubs said in the announcement. "Through this investment, we can increase our world-class employee base, expand our global presence and support the GTA's ever-growing ICT cluster development."

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

When Global financial fund administration company Apex Fund Services announced the opening of its Toronto office just over a year ago, managing director Peter Hughes declared he saw "significant potential for growth" in the Canadian market.

Just last week, Glen Murray, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, announced that as part of the government's efforts to "secure our position as a global financial services hub," the province would invest in the company, helping finance an expansion of its Toronto operations. The expansion, which will lead to 50 new hires in the Apex Yorkville office, will see new or expanded risk reporting and administration services offered by the company to Canadian clients.

Hughes said in the release that Apex was helping to "put Canada firmly on the map as one of the world's fastest growing financial centres."

Canadian managing director Alex Chapman said that Toronto appears ripe for growth, one year after he and his company located here. "As a global company, Apex sees Canada to be a key location for the expansion of its personalized services for fund managers—domestically and internationally."

Parent company Apex Bermuda has 23 offices around the globe administering funds and asset classes over $16-billion.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Andrew Block, office of the Minister of Economic Development and Trade; Alex Chapman, Managing Director, Canada, Apex Fund Services

Innovative Vaughan-based health and fitness company Newtopia will get an injection of almost $250,000 in capital to launch its service more broadly across the continent, thanks to the federal government's Economic Development agency, it was announced last week.

The company's approach is to use what founder Jeffrey Ruby calls an innovative "breakthrough in personal genetic testing" to come up with a personalized health and fitness coaching program for clients. Newtopia's services are delivered to clients live online through portals on the web and through mobile devices. Clients also get access online to real-time video chats with their coaches. The service was launched commercially in January of this year after two years of beta testing. Ruby says the company has seen between 20 and 30 per cent client growth each month. As for results, Ruby claims 80 per cent of clients report acheiving their weight loss or health goals and maintaining that success for six months. The service launched commercially in the United States in September.

Ruby says that since January, the company has grown from 18 to 25 staff—including both full-time employees and consultants. He anticipates adding an additional 10 to 15 new coaches to the team over the next year. The injection of funding from the government will help finance broader market deployment of the product—and not strictly because of the money itself. "It's a real credibility marker," Ruby says, "that the government of Canada is behind this approach."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jeffrey Ruby, Founder, Newtopia

HRCarbon, a Toronto-based consulting and education firm specializing in carbon management, will soon be partnering with Ontario colleges to help companies in Canada and around the world lower their carbon footprint and, as founder Jay Parmar says, better engage in "climate risk management."

Under a program announced this month, the company will partner with Durham College to develop software to help companies assess and manage their transportation-related carbon emissions. And in a separate partnership that is awaiting announcement by a government agency, according to Parmar, HRCarbon will help develop a course to see 180 students—drawn from existing professionals such as accountants and lawyers— obtain certification as Greenhouse Gas Inventory Quantifiers, in project management and in LEED certification. Parmar points out that HRCarbon is currently the only firm in the world offering education that leads to CSA certification for Greenhouse Gas Inventory Quantification.

Founded four years ago, HRCarbon discovered that in its early consulting meetings, up to 80 per cent of time was being taken up simply explaining the concept of climate change risk management. So they established educational courses on the subject targeted at corporate clients. Since then, the company has established offices in the US and UK and offered its services around the world.

Parmar says the future is bright for the industry. "Every job out there is going to have sustainability embedded in it. And companies will need professionals who understand the risk metrics associated with it." Just as accountants have always helped companies manage their financial risks, he says, they will need to track, measure and manage the risks associated with their carbon footprints. That will become increasingly important as more countries introduce carbon taxes.

Parmar says the company expects to do some hiring over the next year, but cannot say exactly how many new staff will be added. However, he points to still another growth area. "We've partnered up with the CSA and Cushman Wakefield to develop green business standards through a registered Carbon Neutral Program," he says. That program will be launched in July.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jay Parmar, founder, HRCarbon

Whether it's fights over bike lanes, road tolls, transit plans or the so-called "war on the car," the topic of transportation is never far from the forefront of Toronto's civic debate. Understandably so, considering that Toronto suffers the longest commute times in North America.

"Whether it's business leaders or poverty activists, commuters or seniors, everyone in the GTA wants better transportation options," stated Julia Deans, CEO of the non-profit agency CivicAction, in a recent release. "It's time we find a way to agree on how we can all help to make this desire a reality."

CivicAction has partnered with the University of Toronto's Cities Centre, the Canadian Urban Transit Association and the Pembina Institute to organize a two-day symposium on transportation entitled Toronto Talks Mobility. The event will gather some of the most accomplished experts on transit from the GTA and around the world with visiting mayors to discuss our transportation options.

Speakers include Mayor Naheed Nenshi of Calgary, transit expert Bob Stanley and George Hazel, author of the book Making Cities Work. Also on the bill are local planning experts Ken Greenberg and Paul Bedford, as well as transit experts from Calgary and Vancouver.

The event takes place Wed., Nov. 9 at Toronto City Hall and Thu, Nov. 10 at Artscape Wychwood Barns. Registration is open to the public through event pages here.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Rebecca Geller, CivicAction

When Artez Interactive launched its service helping charities with online fundraising 12 years ago, the business was new and the concept untried. 

"When we started we never would have imagined how big it would become," says CEO and chairman James Appleyard. "Our first year, a charity we were working with raised $50,000 online and they were delighted. This year we've raised $100 million online for charities around the world."

The Toronto for-profit company has built an empire innovating for nonprofit clients, and now has offices in in the US, the UK, Australia and around the world. Recently it continued its tradition of pioneering when it was the first company to launch a fundraising application on Facebook's new Open Graph platform.  Open Graph allows third-party websites to publish user activity to Facebook, increasing the ways sites connect to Facebook.

Appleyard says that when the company helped define the concept of online fundraising at its launch, back in 2004, it developed a software product that could be customized and used by all charities. It has been refining and building on that same product as the online world has grown and evolved. "We invented the electronic tax receipt," he says, "and now those are used everywhere in the world. We invented the personal fundraising page, the first framework for fundraising on the iPhone and Android phones and now we're first to the table with Facebook Open Graph." Appleyard says the immediate future for the industry involves continuing to make fundraising easy across the "multi-channel online world... so that if you're a supporter, you can fundraise equally well using whatever tool you're using."

He says the constant innovation has led to constant growth for the company—at 50 staff, Appleyard says it's fair to say they've doubled the number of employees in the past three years. Artez has 10 open positions now, and expects to add another 20 new employees over the next 12 months.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: James Appleyard, CEO & chairman, Artez Interactive

PowerStream, an electricity distribution utility jointly owned by the cities of Markham, Barrie and Vaughan, has become the first company in the 905 and the first electricity company in Ontario to have two different buildings certified LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold.

In announcing the new green credential at the company's south operations centre in Markham, president and CEO Brian Betz said the recognition was a tribute the company's commitment to "innovation and forward thinking."

The facility is home to more than 150 staff, about a third of the company's workforce. Among the sustainability innovations that earned the facility recognition were 16.5 kilowatts of solar energy generation capacity, along with a host of conservation features including a white roof to keep the building cool, drought-resistant landscaping to lower water usage, and heating and air-conditioning systems the company says are "free of harmful gases."

Markham mayor Frank Scarpitti, chair of PowerStream's board, says that the efforts put into the building show the company's dedication to innovative social and environmental consciousness. "This building's achievement of LEED Gold certification is consistent with PowerStream's corporate vision," he said in a statement, "committed to the environment and sustainable growth."

PowerStream's head office in Vaughan was certified LEED Gold three years ago.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Eric Fagen, PowerStream Inc.

Toronto mobile application developer MobileFringe, a player in the business-to-business retail market for three years, has entered the consumer app market with its location-based discount program, Push a Deal.

Company co-founder and CEO Steve Sorge says the application offers discounts to people at businesses near their current location, and is more accessible to small retailers and food service companies than popular group-buying platforms.

"The feedback we were getting was that the group-buying model only worked for certain kinds of businesses, and for many retailers, the deep discounts and fees were unsustainable," says Sorge.

His software, he says, allows companies to offer smaller discounts of 10 to 15 per cent. MobileFringe will take a 25 per cent commission on the discount. Companies pay fees soley based on redemptions--sales made. That fact, plus the location-based nature of how it "pushes" alerts to customers' phones, make it very attractive for smaller businesses. "It's set up to be a long-term strategic tool in the mobile space for a lot of these companies that do not have the budget to create their own apps."

MobileFringe was founded in November 2008 and has established itself as a developer-for-hire in the retail industry, especially serving shopping centres. In the lead up to launching their first consumer application this year, they've hired four new employees, bringing their staff to 10, and moved from their "typical early-stage office" of 800-square-feet into a new 2,400-square-foot office. 

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Steve Sorge, CEO, MobileFringe

Toronto-based software company Wave Accounting, which sets out to offer completely free software to small business owners, recently received an investment of just over $755,000 from the federal government's economic development agency, FedDev Ontario. "Anybody in a startup is going to sometimes have to focus on keeping the wolves at bay," says company spokesperson Rob Maurin. "This investment allows us to play in a more strategic way, developing the business with an eye to long-term growth and profitability instead of trying to monetize as quickly as possible."

Launched just over a year ago, in November 2010, the company offers full-service accounting software to small business owners and freelancers. The software produces business intelligence and reports suitable for filing tax returns and managing a business. Maurin says, "It's 100 per cent free, there's no premium features, no limit on transactions, no cap on the size of business." Maurin says founders Kirk Simpson and James Lochrie noticed that almost two-thirds of small business owners--those with fewer than 10 employees--use any kind of accounting software at all, and saw a huge potential market of 29 million such businesses across North America.

Wave makes its money by using aggregated business information from clients--while, stresses Maurin, vigilantly protecting their privacy and information--to offer them targeted deals from other companies. "Let's say we saw that 10,000 small business owners in Canada were each spending $120 a month with cell phone carrier A," he says. "We might go to cell phone carrier B and say, 'Can we facilitate an introduction, if you're able to offer these business owners a savings?'"

Wave is also developing other business software on a for-pay model--Maurin says they are launching payroll management software this month--that clients might fight useful to complement their accounting package.

In one year, the staff has gone from 7 to 21. Maurin says they are still hiring now. "I wouldn't be surprised if next year at this time our staff has doubled again," he says.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Rob Maurin, Director of Community and Marketing, Wave Accounting

The ClimateSpark Social Venture Challenge launched late last month, offering people with innovative green business ideas access to as much as $50,000 in startup funding. The challenge, run by the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, the Centre for Social Innovation and the Toronto Community Foundation, draws on a fund of $500,000 that can be awarded through grants and loans to the most promising business ideas.

Jason Wagar, manager of donor services and marketing for Toronto Community Foundation, calls it a method of "crowdsourcing green innovation." Within two weeks of the phase one launch, 26 business ideas were submitted.

"What`s interesting is that some of the ideas are fully developed business plans, and others are just the beginning of an idea, but a community of more than 200 people are sharing thoughts and suggestions," says Wagar. "So these ideas can be shaped by the city--by experts, potential clients, potential suppliers.... At the end of the process the community has done some of the due diligence for the investors."

The first phase, gathering ideas online, will last nine weeks. Then 10 finalists will present their proposals to expert advisors. Finally, the finalists will make their pitch to investors, who will decide on awards, grants, loans and investments.

"Ultimately," Wagar says, "we're hoping to see a cleaner environment."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jason Wagar, Manager of Donor Services and Marketing, Toronto Community Foundation

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

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

One of Canada's hottest startups is entering a rapid growth phase as it institutes the serious marketing phase of its business plan. That's according to gShift Labs founder and CEO Krista LaRiviere, whose company was named startup of the year in 2010 by the Canadian Innovation Exchange.

GShift's initial funding of $500,000 last year from the MaRS incubator in downtown Toronto was more than tripled this month by new injections of capital: a $1.1 million investment from GrowthWorks and $500,000 from the federal government's ministry of economic development. "We've now been able to invest into hiring engineers as well as really building out our sales and marketing team," LaRiviere says. "When we closed the round with GrowthWorks, we were six people. We're now 12."

For gShift, which has currently attracted roughly 200 paying clients since launching in beta in May 2010, marketing is a particular challenge, because its product is creating a new market category in search engine optimization strategy-management software.

"We founded the company because we knew the SEO space was ripe for automation--there wasn't really a product that allowed people to track all the different data points and apply business intelligence into a reporting engine.... We really need to shift how people think."

Right now, when businesses think of SEO, they think automatically of hiring a consultant. "They don't think, 'Let me buy some software.'" But LaRiviere says that as the complexity of digital marketing expands, it's only a matter of time before the utility of an easy-to-use system that automates and provides cause-and-effects results measurement will become obvious to all.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Krista LaRiviere, CEO, gShift Labs

"I started out to write a book about data literacy," says Pete Forde, co-founder and CTO of Toronto startup BuzzData, "to galvanize people to understand that data, as a democratic, free resource, could be used to create both good in the world and business value. That turned into a working principle." And that, says the web developer-turned-entrepreneur, turned into a company.

BuzzData, which had a soft launch roughly six weeks ago, sets out to allow people to share and work with data sets more effectively, improving on the traditional top-line presentation of spreadsheets and databases, while allowing direct and archived interaction between users. Already, with no formal marketing or advertising, the site has quietly attracted 1,800 core users to its free public version. These "data VIPs," as Forde calls them, are building a community the company hopes will demonstrate the utility of a premium collaboration product marketed to companies who work with data.

The project sprung out of a consulting job Forde and his firm Unspace were working on for an outside investor. He says their efforts began in earnest when a core team of three people, including co-founder and CEO Mark Opausky, started collaborating. Over the summer, BuzzData began hiring, staffing up its office near Queen and Spadina to employ 11 people. Their current staff size, Forde says, is expected to support the company as it scales up, with any future employment growth coming in customer support and logistics.

And the book? "You could say it's being written every day," Forde says. "There is still much to be written."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Pete Forde, co-founder and CTO, BuzzData