small businesses : Innovation + Job News

It's a distinctly modern annoyance when cellphones run out of juice. Today we rely so heavily on our mobiles that a dead battery can scupper meetings, disrupt dinner plans, and overturn after-school carpool arrangements.

Toronto startup DanTeb Enterprises aims to help the battery-drained by installing mobile charging stations at select locations across Toronto in the coming months.

The idea came about, co-founder Laura Miller explains, in the most ordinary of ways. She was on the phone with her father, who was telling her a story about a friend of his who had come across a mobile charging station while travelling in Mexico -- and as he was telling her that story, her own phone ran out of power.

DanTeb officially launched with a pilot this past summer with stations at the CNE. Things ran smooth enough between visitors to the Ex and convention attendees, Miller says, that they've quickly moved on to their next phase: installing five or six stations in the PATH underground mall downtown, and a total of 20-25 stations across Toronto this quarter.

The stations use MicroPulse charging technology, which allows for fast charging. The point isn't to charge a phone back to full battery, explains Miller, but to give it enough power in a short time to allow users to make a few calls and survive on standby until they're back at home or work. Users can access the phone while it charges or check out the station's touchscreen, which will come with some apps and advertisements. Those ads will provide revenue for the startup.

DanTeb is currently supported by the Ryerson Digital Media Zone and the university's new urban energy business incubator, i-CUE. Miller says the two-person operation will hopefully ramp up to about a dozen staff within the next six months. In addition to a strong sales team, she'll be looking to bring on engineers and technical experts. She hopes that soon the charging stations, which right now are imported from Spain, will soon be built locally.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Laura Miller, Co-founder, DanTeb Enterprises

Technology news site Techvibes has just unveiled the finalists for 2012's Canadian Startup Awards with Toronto startups snagging more spots than any other city. 

The finalists this year were selected from "well over 1,200 nominees," writes Techvibes president Rob Lewis in a blog post announcing the shortlist. It's a list, happily, that features many Toronto startups, and includes several you might have learned about here on Yonge Street.

Among them are photo sharing site 500px, which has seen exponential growth in its staff over the past year, and also made its first acquisition, Algo Anywhere, in 2012; Wave, which makes cloud-based apps for small businesses; and data sharing platform Hubba, which helps retailers and brands tell their stories more effectively.

Techvibes introduced the awards, in conjunction with consulting firm KPMG, just last year. Toronto-based e-reading company Wattpad won that inaugural award, after more than 11,000 votes were cast.

You have until midnight on Friday, January 25 to cast your ballot.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Techvibes

It was nearly two years ago that Yonge Street first told you about B2B marketing company Influitive. The company was just getting ready for the beta launch of its advocacy-based platform, and like all startups, nobody was quite sure how things would go.

Very well, it turns out. Just before the holidays, the company announced that it has closed $7.3 million in Series A financing. The funding is coming from Hummer Winblad and Relay Ventures, along with some support from existing investors, and will go towards further development of the company's platform. They are also hiring: at 18 staff members now, Influitive currently has four positions they are trying to fill, and anticipate further hiring later this year.

Influitive, headquartered in both Toronto and San Francisco, is making its name with AdvocateHub, a marketing platform which relies on customer reviews, referrals, and engagement. Companies encourage their best customers to sign up; those participants then become advocates for the companies and brands they like, and in return those advocates receive benefits from the companies they've recommended. The idea is that these recommendations can be especially trusted because the advocates are motivated by receiving services from the very companies they are endorsing -- and why would you go to the trouble if you didn't think those services were valuable?

The company is clearly on a roll: as the Financial Post reports, they closed an earlier round of funding—$3.75 million—just four months ago.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Influitive

"I've always been an entrepreneur my entire life," says Donny Ouyang, "I started when I was 12."

Like many young entrepreneurs, he quickly found himself more intrigued by his extracurricular activities than anything in the classroom. "Because of that I didn't spend a lot of time learning," Ouyang says. And then, after a pause: "School... wasn't my thing."

It's perhaps especially fitting then that Ouyang has just launched what he describes as the world's first market-driven tutoring platform, called Rayku. He's hoping not only to find success with his startup, but to help students like him who have had bad experiences both at school and with traditional tutoring.

Rayku's idea is simple: tutors sign up to provide online assistance to students via the site's whiteboard and other digitial services, and are rated by their students as they go. The higher they rank—in theory, the more effective they are—the more they can charge.

Currently Rayku is focused on high school and first year univerisity students who need help with math. Ouyang plans to expand in a number of directions: first to other areas of the curriculum (science, essay writing), then to other levels of complexity, and then to a broader range of subjects—everything from standardized test preparation services to financial advising.

The startup has raised $400,000 of investment so far, and is "hiring aggressively," says Ouyang. He hopes to add two business development positions and two engineers to Rayku's staff by January.
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Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Donny Ouyang, Founder & CEO, Rayku

It was only a few weeks ago that we told you about BufferBox, a new network of parcel pick-up stations had just launched in the Toronto area. With a growing list of stations—they're up to about 14 in Toronto and Mississauga and have more going in by the end of the year—and a contract with Metrolinx to help target commuters, things seemed promising for the new startup.

And now, they are looking even more exciting. BufferBox has just announced it has been acquired by Google. Neither BufferBox nor Google would confirm the financial details, but TechCrunch is reporting the purchase price was in the neighbourhood of $17 million.

BufferBox services are free until year's end. When paid service begins they expect they'll be charging $3 or $4 per delivery. The goal is to have approximately 100 stations in the GTA by the end of 2013. Google, meanwhile, is likely looking for a challenger the Amazon Locker parcel delivery program (which is not available in Canada), and is hoping that BufferBox can expand and scale quickly.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Brad Moggach, Sales & Marketing Director, BufferBox; TechCrunch

"While nearly all high growth technology startups have historically emerged from no more than 3-4 startup ecosystems, namely Silicon Valley and Boston, this trend appears to have reached its end. Simultaneous with a global explosion of entrepreneurship has been an explosion in the rise of new startup ecosystems around the world, and a newfound maturity in others."

So begins a new report from the Startup Genome called the Startup Ecosystem Report (available for free online, though registration is required). And among those ecosystems that are currently flourishing: Toronto, which ranks the highest in Canada on the report's index, and eighth in the world. (Vancouver is right behind us in ninth; more surprisingly Waterloo is further behind, at sixteenth.)

All cities in the index are compared to Silicon Valley (which predictably is the benchmark first-place ecoysystem) across a variety of metrics. While we are similar to Silicon Valley in terms of our level of ambition, our technology adoption rates, our sector mix and mentorship support, one key area of difference, according to the report, is that "startups in Toronto receive 71% less funding than SV startups. The capital deficiency exists both before and after product market fit."

While that may sound like grim news, it actually provides a very useful roadmap for future growth. The report goes on to conclude that the current under-investment in Toronto-area startups "presents a large opportunity for investors. Moreover, "policy makers can help closing the funding gap by attracting late-stage venture funds through tax breaks and incentives, and investor-friendly policies."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Startup Ecosystem Report

There is a certain honesty about the startup social platform Wantster: refreshing, useful or perhaps abrupt, depending on your point of view.

Wantster, in a nutshell, is a platform where you collect photos of things that you want, and can share them with others. Conceptually it's not unlike Pintrest, which allows you to collect and share images of things that you like—though Wantster cuts to the chase by forcing us to admit that the things that we like are also often the things that we covet.

It will strike some as crass, perhaps—and others as an incredibly helpful time-saver during the holiday shopping season. (The company's tagline: "Create lists of the things you want and follow others to see what they want for any gift giving occasion." No Santa snail mail required.)

No matter your perspective, some good news in terms of the local startup scene: Wantster, which launched in April, has just closed $4 million in financing. The investment comes from Evanov Communications, an independent radio broadcaster which operates several stations in Toronto (among them the multilingual AM530 and Proud FM 103.9) and several more across the country.

Wantster's frankness may be tapping into something: the company says that "well over" 500,000 wanted products have been posted since the launched. While the company's co-founders haven't divulged what how they plan to use the investment, it seems that at least some of the arrangement includes using the old-media radio stations to develop interest in the new-technology digital platform.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Wantster

Steve Cosman was out travelling in Peru with some friends, and ran up against a very ordinary, very modern problem. Everyone had photographs of their trip, but they couldn't easily exchange them. It's a glitch many of us encounter on our own, even—without adding other people into the mix. We have photos on camera memory cards, on our phones, uploaded to our Facebook profiles, on old computers we haven't thrown out yet, all images we want to keep, often taken at the same time, but none of them in the same place or accessible in the same way.

Enter MyShoebox, a Toronto start-up that launched less than a month ago and has already racked up more than six million uploads.

MyShoebox is, as its name suggests, a virtual shoebox—a place where you can upload all your photos from any camera or device, search and flip through them easily, and store them securely. It's a way for people "to be able to unify their photo collections" to prevent them "becoming fragmented over multiple devices," explains co-founder Kalu Kalu. He and Cosman started MyShoebox in the hope of helping us make better use of our images as technologies multiply. The app is available for Windows, Mac, iOS and Androd operating systems, and provides free, unlimited storage for photos up to a certain resolution (1024 pixels). A pro version costs $5/month, allowing users to store photos at full resolution.

With several thousand people signed up already, MyShoebox is "definitely looking to hire," Kalu says. In particular, their current three person team is looking for engineers.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Kalu Kalu, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, MyShoebox

As more and more of us live in cities, the challenges of maintaining urban environments multiply. The Centre for Urban Energy at Ryerson University is dedicated to studying some of these issues, ranging from renewable energy sources that are scaled for cities to building techniques which reduce our need for energy in the first place. To help develop the community of people working to address these challenges, the CUE has just launched a new accelerator program: i-CUE.

The Innovation Centre for Urban Energy is a business incubator—essentially an innovation lab within the centre—that will provide support for up to 10 projects at a time. Ryerson students and faculty, and members of the community at large, are all able to apply. The goal is to provide those with a "mature business idea" some tools to help get it off the ground, says executive director Dan McGillvray, which can mean anything from guidance for writing government grant applications to help overcoming technical challenges.

If a proposed project fits within the centre's scope and makes a convincing case, i-CUE will offer three months of free lab support to develop a business plan. If things are moving well, you might get another three months, McGillvray says (albeit with a bit of "pain" in the form of paying to offset some of the lab's costs). On the other hand, "you might be asked to go." It is, he says, "a fail fast model... It's not a lab where you will live forever; it's a lab where you will graduate out... into another location—[because] now you're business."

Four companies are currently being incubated at i-CUE. Among them is one project led by Ryerson students aimed at educating the public about energy conversation, and another developing public charging stations for mobile devices.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Souce: Dan McGillivray, Executive Director, Innovation Centre for Urban Energy

Every year leaders from the venture capital, communications and media industries gather for the Canadian Innovation Exchange, a one-day forum dedicated to the country's innovation economy. (This year's CIX takes place in a couple of weeks—at the MaRS Discovery District on November 27.) And every year, a panel of experts selects the CIX Top 20—leading technology-based companies who are showcased at the forum. This year's list has just come out, and there's good news for local entrepreneurs: about half the finalists are Toronto-based companies.

Finalists are divided into two categories: information and communication technology, and digital media. Among the Toronto finalists in the first category are B2B marketers Influitive, audience engagement platform Viafoura and consumer goods software makers Nulogy.

Among the rising stars in the digital media category are liveblogging company ScribbleLive and e-commerce platform Shopcastr. We profiled Shopcastr just a few months ago, when they closed $1 million in new funding.

The other Toronto CIX Top 20 are:
·         Sitescout, which helps small businesses manage their digital advertising;
·         Language learning tool PenyoPal;
·         Employee engagement platform Employtouch;
·         Jibestream Interactive Media, which develops digital wayfinding systems (including 3-D directors for Pearson airport).

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Canadian Innovation Exchange

Every so often—and especially at this time of year, when many of us are ordering presents and holiday gear—you come home to one of those annoying notices flapping on your door. Missed delivery.

To help shoppers (and the businesses trying to send them their goods) avoid that frustration, a new network of parcel pick-up stations has just launched in the GTA called BufferBox. There will be eight stations in Toronto by the end of this week, with several more elsewhere in the region. Another 10 are expected by year's end, with the goal of expanding nationwide.

To use the service, someone signs up with BufferBox and selects a home location—one of the pick-up stations that have been installed—and then provides that address to a company when ordering items for delivery. When the parcel arrives, BufferBox puts the package in a locker within the station, and then sends you an email with single-use PIN, which you use to open the box and retrieve your item.

The initial set of locations is geared to commuters and transit users: in its first partnership, BufferBox is working with Metrolinx and has installed parcel boxes in five GO stations (Union, Clarkson, Burlington, Oakville, and Port Credit). Three other parcel stations are in 7-Eleven locations, and in the near future, BufferBox also hopes to announce a supermarket partner.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Brad Moggach, Sales & Marketing Director, BufferBox

"Just a year ago, Ontario’s Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress... published a report that quantifiably demonstrated that in per capital GDP, measured in comparison to 16 other large states and provinces in North America, Ontario ranked 15th. A lack of innovation combined with lower productivity is a significant problem for everyone—especially in Ontario. No amount of handwringing will solve it. No amount of cheerleading should make us believe we are doing better than what we really are. And no amount of naysaying should stop us from tackling this problem head on."

Stark language from Anne Sado, president of George Brown College, who addressed the Empire Club earlier this week. She was there to present findings from a new George Brown study called Toronto Next: Return on Innovation, which surveyed more thn 300 Toronto-area employers to learn more about the state of innovation locally. Sado wasn't just interested in describing problems, however—she was much more interested in proposing some solutions.

There are reasons to be hopeful that the situation can change. For starters, the issue isn't a lack of funds. Companies have the money; they are just risk-averse. "GTA businesses are more interested in productivity than innovation or creativity," said Sado, suggesting that what we need to effect is a cultural shift in our understanding of what innovation is, exactly, and why it's so important.

At George Brown, she explained, they defined innovation as "the process of creating social or economic value from something that already exists"—a contrast with the businesses they surveyed, which defined innovation in terms of novelty (creating new processes or products or thinking in new ways). Because of this definition, Sado believes, those businesses don't see any strong or direct links between innovation and productivity—most new inventions both cost a lot and fail, after all—and thus they don't value innovation enough.

In her speech Sado emphasized that one major key to advancing innovation is collaboration, and especially collaboration between post-secondary institutions and the private sector. This both facilitates the development of those iterative improvements, and mitigates some of the concerns about risk, since various parties can each contribute in their areas of expertise, and work together to improve products before they are brought to market.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Anne Sado, President, George Brown College

When one thinks of cutting-edge retail, Canada's trusty old mail carrier service doesn't easily come to mind. (Do you even remember the last time you bought stamps?)

It's not just anecdotal, the sense that we're relying on Canada Post less than ever—in 2011 the services registered its first annual loss in 16 years, ending up more than $250 million in the red. As with many older institutions, Canada Post is trying to navigate the digital era, and figure out how it can sustain itself through these changing times.

One initiative: a new emphasis on retail services—that is, on helping retailers do their business. To mark some new successes in that field, last week Canada Post gave out its first ever E-commerce Innovation awards, to several Canadian retailers that "excel at giving Canadians what they value most in the online shopping experience." Among those winners: Toronto-based Rent frock Repeat, which will receive $10,000 in free shipping services, $20,000 in free marketing services and a Canada Post delivery truck wrapped with promotional information about their business. (A total of $1 million in prizes were awarded to five companies.)

"We're an online retailer that rents dresses instead of selling them," explans co-founder and CEO Lisa Delorme, who started the business with a friend in May 2011. They were both invited to a wedding, didn't want to spend money on dresses "that might only  come out of the closet once or twice." They came across a dress-rental company in the United States, but were quickly frustrated to learn that they didn't deliver to Canada. "We were tired of waiting for someone else to do it" locally, says Delorme, and so the two friends decided to start their own company here.

Like so many of us, Delorme also didn't consider Canada Post to be particularly innovative in the retail space. The awards, however, seem to mark a real attempt to take innovation more seriously—she was surprised at how well-produced the awards night was.

"I give them kudos that they're recognizing that there's a birth of online retailers," she says. "They see it as the future of Canada Post as well, so I think it's a kind of rebirth for them as well."

As for Rent frock Repeat, their current staff complement of three can't keep up with orders. Delorme says they will "definitely will be hiring" in the near future, likely including a director of technology as well as stylists and marketing staff.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Lisa Delorme, Co-Founder and CEO, Rent frock Repeat

The federal government is investing in a new support program for small- and medium-sized medical technology companies hoping to expand their reach.

MP Ted Opitz (Etobicoke Centre) made the announcement earlier this month: $990,000 is being granted to Etobicoke-based MEDEC, a medical technology association, to disburse to southern Ontario businesses in increments of up to $30,000 each. Those grants, says MEDEC-CMMA executive director Mary Palmer, will enable the recipients to grow by helping them increase their presence in foreign markets.

The program is officially called New Horizon; recipients will each receive cost-sharing grants for eligible expenses in export development. Those grants will be geared to small companies who have never exported their products before, or to those who have but wish to pursue new markets. Among the kind of costs this grant might cover Palmer lists: "hiring a foreign consultant to do a feasibility assessment... it could be use to help get their product registered, do marketing materials for the foreign markets." In short, everything from technical and operational elements to promotion may be included. The key, Palmer says, is to add "incrementality" to the companies' business plans—to add capacity and help them do more rather than to defray the costs of their current operations.

The grants are expected to lead to the creation of up to 30 new jobs, encompassing everyone from scientific and technological experts to operations support and marketing staff. Eligibility and selection criteria are online; an online application process is expected to launch by early November.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Mary Palmer, Executive Director, MEDEC-CMMA

Since its initial launch, Keek has seen more than six million videos uploaded to its platform; in August 2012, an average of 66,000 new videos a day were created. Rewarding that rapid growth: several new investment partners, who between them will be putting $7 million into the (so far free-to-use and free-of-advertising) video-sharing service.

If you're not familiar with it, an explanation by analogy: roughly, Keek is to YouTube as Twitter is to traditional blogging—that is, shorter, faster and with more back-and-forth conversation. Users create "microvideos" (maximum length: 36 seconds) called keeks, as a sort of status update, and can also communicate via private videos/keeks, similar to the "direct message" function on Twitter. "A keek," explains the company's FAQ whimsically, "by definition is a quick look, glance or peep."

"This new funding will allow us to keep the momentum going, accelerate product development, scale the infrastructure and expand globally," said Isaac Raichyk, Keek's CEO, in a press statement announcing the new investment, which follows on a previous round of $5 million in financing secured about a year ago.

Keeping it local, the three major partners in this round of funding are also based in Toronto, in addition to Keek itself: Canson Capital Securities, Pinetree Capital and Whitecap Venture Partners.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Isaac Raichyk, CEO, Keek