Innovation + Job News

In 2010, we reported that University of Toronto spinoff company Xagenic had secured just over a million dollars in funding to move forward with commercializing its nanotechnology-based diagnostic test. It was about half of the funding the company attracted that year.

Last week, the company got another big boost towards bringing its test—which could help screen for cancer and other diseases—to market, as it closed a $10-million funding round led by Montreal's CTI Life Sciences Fund. The arrangement will see two CTI partners join Xagenic's board.

Dr. Shana Kelley, the founder and CTO of Xagenic, founded the company based on her research at the University of Toronto. In a statement, she said the investment would help "establish Xagenic as a world leader offering rapid, on-demand diagnostic tests." She says these tests should both lower costs and improve care.

Kelley, responding to question by email, said that the funding will allow Xagenic to add some members to its team of 10 over the next year, and will also finance clinical trials.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Shana Kelley, CTO, Xagenic

When Upverter officially launched its web-sharing software for hardware design at the prestigious Demo conference in fall 2011, the company went from 500 Beta users to 1,500 users in a single day. Now they're up to 3,500 "early adopter" users, says company co-founder and CEO Zak Homuth, as they plan to launch a second version of the software this spring.

In a nutshell, the product can be described as "Google Docs for hardware," allowing designers and engineers to collaborate on the web while designing machines and other real-world objects. "Building real things is really hard and it costs a lot," Homuth says. "We're trying to make that easier."

Homuth and his two co-founders were friends and roommates as engineering students at the University of Waterloo, when they decided to try to solve some of the field's problems by introducing the kind of team-sharing software that had already been introduced to office functions and software design. Homuth says the field of industrial design software was well-established and can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and perhaps because of its maturity as a software sector, it has been slower to see innovation.

The company got an early boost through a Silicon Valley residency at the Y Combinator incubator, but came home to Toronto to establish itself. "We came back for the talent," Homuth says. "The money goes three times as far, and we're hiring the same guys as the companies in the Valley hire, from the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto, but we're offering them the city environment that they want, that feels like home."  The company has raised three rounds of funding so far, and expects to raise more revenue for a broader marketing push after the new version is launched this spring, likely in April.

Homuth says his team has grown from the three original founder to seven staff now, and expects that after the spring launch, the team will double in size.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Zak Homuth, Founder and CEO, Upverter

Cisco is out recruiting 100 graduate-level engineering staff right now as part of a five-year expansion of R&D at its two Toronto locations and its location in Ottawa.

"We'd like to bring in as many people as quickly as we can," says Paul Howarth, the company's director of strategic initiatives. "We're out on campus now, hiring up to 100 people for this year."

In a recent announcement, the provincial government heralded its investment of $25 million in Cisco under a memorandum of understanding signed last year. The agreement will see 300 new jobs created in Ontario—a doubling of Cisco's R&D staff—with roughly half of those new hires working in the company's Scarborough and Liberty Village offices, according to Howarth. The move is a bounce back for Cisco, which had trimmed its Canadian workforce by five per cent last year as it focussed on its core activities in response to the global economic downturn.

Howarth says that the investment from the province is a key factor in the multinational company's decision to expand here. The favourable corporate tax regime alongside Ontario's stable economy are also factors.

"Aside from that, the key thing is access to talent. Toronto is a hotbed for software development. It may not be well known as such, but it is," he says, citing the concentration of top-tier universities in the area.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Paul Howarth, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Cisco

Richmond Hill's iSign has been offering its patented software to retailers since before 2008—and the company went public in 2009. But it had a coming out of sorts in its GTA hometown late last month. "We've demonstrated this product at shows all across North America," says founder and CEO Alex Romanov. "We must do 10 shows a year, but I think the DX3 show last week was the first time we've ever really done a show in Toronto."

Romanov said the product was well received at DX3, Canad's premier trade show dedicated to digital marketing, advertising and retailing. iSign's product allows retailers to use Bluetooth and wifi to send advertisements and offers to shoppers who are in close proximity to their store. Romanov says that the units contact phones within a 300-foot radius, ensuring that discounts are being offered to people in a position to make an impulse buy.

Originally founded in 2006 in Vancouver, the company moved to Richmond Hill after becoming a partner with IBM's POS kiosk division. In 2007, iSign rolled out in 620 store locations in Singapore, and has since been expanding steadily in North America. Romanov says the company's biggest Canadian customer used to be Pinpoint Media, which operated displays in 5,600 Mac's Milk locations—until iSign purchased Pinpoint.

Romanov says the company has grown in the past 12 months to 16 employees from six. While he anticipates possible hiring in the near future, he says the company is more likely to expand through contracting. A pending three-year agreement with convenience and grocery-store display giant SelectCore will soon see iSign's technology in 7,000 locations across the US and Canada.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Alex Romanov, Founder and CEO, iSign Media

Less than one year after spinning off from the University of Waterloo and setting up office at the MaRS incubator's downtown Toronto office, Smarter Alloys has signed a development agreement that could change the shape of the orthodontics industry. The technology developed by Smarter Alloys founder, Dr. Ibraheem Khan, allows special alloys to remember multiple "shape memories." The process means such materials may be programmed to perform multiple functions.

The implications of Smarter Alloys technology extend to multiple industries, including printers and hard drives, automobile components and energy conservation. Last November, the company won the CleanTech North Innovator of the Year Award for its technology's potential to harvest wasted heat and reduce fossil fuel consumption.

The deal announced this month, according to a statement by Khan, "is poised to greatly improve the functionality of smart materials used in orthodontic applications.... We’re especially pleased with this agreement because our partner has a proven track record of taking innovation and converting it into improved dental care."

The announcement is the first of four to six development agreements that Smarter Alloys expects to announce this year, to accompany further growth. They recently hired a business development manager with the help of a $50,000 grant from MaRS and expect to double the size of their technical team. They also plan to open a manufacturing facility in 2012.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Chris Stevenson, Director of Communications, MaRS; Ibraheem Khan, Smarter Alloys

The Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation announced last week that it would help Scarborough innovators Pond Biofuels hire 10 new staff to demonstrate their technology. Pond takes industrial smokestack emissions and converts them into algae that can then be converted into diesel fuel. According to Pond, one tonne of algae can produce 100 litres of diesel, while the residual matter can be used as a coal substitute. The process cuts an industrial plant's carbon emissions while simultaneously producing fuel.

The process, with help from a grant from the provincial government's Innovation Demonstration Fund, is currently being piloted at a test with St. Mary's Cement in Bowmanville to convert smokestack emissions. Pond anticipates rolling out a full-scale plant in about two year.

In a statement, Pond CEO Steven Martin said that the collaboration with St. Mary's Cement and the provincial government would pay dividends that extend to other sectors. "Going forward, Pond's made-in-Ontario technology can be applied to other essential industries, like steel, power generation and resource extraction."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Andrew Block, Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation; Corporate Affairs, Pond Biofuels 

For 20 years, the non-profit group Evergreen has been working on its mandate to bring nature into cities. Their efforts gained their most visible expression over the past few years at the Brick Works, a reclaimed industrial site in the Don Valley that serves as a natural conservation area and educational centre, as well as home to a farmers' market. The focus has been very local. But lately the organization has been thinking much bigger, looking closely at "larger global sustainability issues related to cities," says Evergreen public relations manager Anthony Westenberg. That includes issues ranging from food supply and water use to building construction and land use.
 
In order to further the climate of green urban innovation—here and around the world—Evergreen opened the Centre for Green Cities last year at the Brick Works, which Westenberg describes as a sort of "MaRS for Sustainability." The centre serves as a place for entrepreneurs and researchers to showcase their work and connect with each other. They aim to study the best urban sustainability practices from around the world and to support and export the best innovations from Canada.
 
In the wake of all this activity, the Centre for Green Cities has just launched a website to share knowledge and information at cgc.evergreen.ca. Staff are beginning to populate the site now (one of the first links posted was to a piece by yours truly). They've also started a series profiling innovative individuals and organizations, starting with electric car company Better Place, which Yonge Street covered last year, and lighting technology company Fifth Light Technology.
 
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Anthony Westenberg, Public Relations Manager, Evergreen

"We were all talking, and someone brought up a pap test," says Jessica Ching of a conversation in her industrial design class at OCAD. "No really likes going, and it's a problem. This is something that's potentially life-saving, yet people hate it. That's a shame." That observation led Ching and her business partner Evan Moses to found Eve Medical, a Toronto medical device startup that aims to improve health outcomes for women.
 
Since incorporating in 2010, the two-person company has attracted a series of small but significant sources of encouragement and funding, including grants and loans from the provincial Ministry of Innovation, winning the MaRS Up-Start contest and the Martin Walmsley Fellowship for Technical Entrepreneurship.
 
Eve Medical's first product is HerSwab, a device that allows women to collect their own samples to test for vaginal infections such as chlamydia, gonorrhea and, especially, HPV (human papillomavirus). The last is important because the presence of certain strains of HPV can indicate a high-risk of cervical cancer, and diagnosing cases more easily could lead more women into screening for the life-threatening cancer. The device allows women to overcome the significant barrier of needing to visit a clinic for an intimate and sometimes invasive test administered by a doctor.

Ching says she hopes to have the device finalized by next month, after which a launch to market—likely in Europe first, partly because getting regulatory approvals there is easier—will follow.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jessica Ching, CEO, Eve Medical
 

After launching its microvideo social networking platform in September, Toronto startup Keek got a shot in the arm late last year when it attracted $5.5 million in financing. The concept is simple: it takes the status update stream format of Twitter, but replaces the text-based messages with YouTube-style short videos (up to 36 seconds) that can be posted from Android and iPhone mobile devices or from desktop computers.
 
"The youth of today clearly want to use video for both communication and entertainment," said Keek founder and CEO Isaac Raichyk in launching the product last fall. "We've created a platform that provides users with a fun new way to connect and share their lives."
 
Based at Yonge and Eglinton, the company has grown to about 30 employees since launching in early 2010. With the new capital in hand and a mission to constantly refine and build out its platform, it continues to grow its team. 

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Miranda McCurlie, Manager, Public Relations and Marketing, Keek Inc.

Toronto's QA Consultants predicted big demand for on-shore quality assurance testing when it opened its Test Factory on Sparks Avenue in North York last July. And big demand is what QA Managing director Brian Grieve says they have found.

"The amount of revenue and number of clients we've acquired through the facility over the past six months has been growing by leaps and bounds," he says. "We've seen 80 per cent growth over the past six months."

Grieve says the staff, which was at 12 when the Test Factory launched, has grown to 85, and the company has launched a training program to "immerse recent university graduates in QA over a three-month period." The company is just now filing its first patent. "I remember standing and looking at my old office and thinking it was so quiet. It gets a little loud now," he laughs.

He expect it to get louder in the near future, as Grieve's business plan calls for roughly doubling the client base over the next six to nine months, "and we expect to double staff, too." He's not worried about where to house all the new people. Their 60,000-square-foot facility can comfortable fit 600 employees.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Brain Grieve, Managing Director, QA Consultants

A venture capital investment of $23 million landed by Toronto mobile company Fixmo in late 2011 has already seen the company add 10 staff members, according to Fixmo chief marketing officer Tyler Lessard, bringing the total staff to 50. He says they will continue to grow their staff over the next six to 12 months as the company gears up to develop a broader global profile (they have postings for multiple positions up now).

Founded in 2009, the company originally set out to provide personal data security to users of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, through a set of software tools. But the mandate changed somewhat in 2010 when Fixmo partnered with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to commercialize the intelligence agency's internal integrity monitoring system.

"Fixmo was chosen for that partnership because of our record of success in the field of mobile security," Lessard says.

The company, headquartered on Yonge Street near King, soon opened a Virginia office and acquired Conceivium to offer a "holistic range of mobile integrity management software."

2011 saw rapid growth as the trend towards "bring your own device" policies in corporations has led to increased challenges for IT departments, who now need to secure data across a range of operating systems and software brands used by their employees. As the mobile age evolves, Lessard sees the demand for these services continuing to grow as they expand beyond North America and broaden the range of products they offer.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Tyler Lessard, Chief Marketing Officer, Fixmo

Jeff Brenner, CEO of Toronto startup Pressly, says that the company was born out of two core perceptions. "It comes out of our belief that the battle for publications on touch devices is going to be fought on the web, through browsers, more than through native applications. And the web today is really broken on those devices—it's build for a click and scroll desktop environment."

That led Brenner, through his company Nulayer, to build a platform that allows publishers to automatically optimize their websites for the touch-and-swipe world of tablets. The platform, launched a few months ago with the Toronto Star, is very low maintenance for publishers, who need only drop an RSS feed into Pressly to let the platform do its work.

The innovative approach and the success of the Star's launch recently led Startup North to proclaim Pressly one of the Canadian startups to watch in 2012. The company already provided much to watch at the tail end of 2011. Over the holidays, they launched with the tablet-optimized retail site logicbuy.com, and just this week prestigious UK business magazine The Economist launched an entirely new publication on Pressly.

Brenner says that within the next two to three months, he expects the company to launch its self-serve platform for smaller publishers. So far, the Pressly team has grown to 10 staff members, Brenner says. He expects that number to grow. "I can tell you the rate we've been growing the past few years is to double every year, and I expect that to pretty much continue on into the future."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jeff Brenner, CEO, Pressly

Ryerson University's Flybits research group, a team working in the school's Digital Media Zone, recently won a "Golden-idea" award for a head-mounted computer display designed for police and security officers.

"Police need access to information, and we usually give them a walkie-talkie," says Dr. Hossein Rahnama, the research director of Ryerson's DMZ. Officers typically need to stop what they are doing to call in requesting or relaying information before returning to the situation at hand. "With head-mounted displays, when they need information, they look at a small screen in front of their eyes and see maps, sensors, etc."

The idea was developed in partnership with the Swedish company Appear, for a challenge developed to find solutions for Motorola's Golden-i wireless headset. "This is a great achievement, showing how effective European and North American partners can work together," Rahnama says.

Such tools may be the future of computing, and not just for police. "This is the post-tablet future of computing," says Rahnama. "Right now, everyone is moving to tablets, but after that, the new generation will be wearable computing."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Dr. Hossein Rahnama, research director, Ryerson Digital Media Zone

The Academy of the Impossible, a new "open source social enterprise" that aims to provide new educational opportunities will officially open its Junction Triangle office and educational space with a party December 16. The project was created by executive director Emily Pohl-Weary and director Jesse Hirsch using a small grant from the Atkinson Foundation and support from Hirsch's organization Metaviews.

"I've been running this writing group, Parkdale Street Writers, since 2008, and we've been camping out in other people's spaces—the library, the community centre—and we were looking for a home," says Pohl-Weary. "Jesse Hirsch does a lot of talks and workshops on media and technology and he was looking for a place where he could turn two-hour workshops into longer-term learning and action. So the Academy of the Impossible is a space for those, and we're hoping we can incubate ideas and projects for students and members."

Pohl-Weary describes the model for the school as collaborative: "The people who use it will be creators and shapers. It more like a conversation, or a learning network, than a lecture."

The Academy launches with nine faculty members, including Hirsch and Pohl-Weary, but the executive director says that the innovative arts, cultural and social project is a labour of love for all of them. As time goes on, some of the programs will generate revenue, she says, and a fundraising strategy will emerge.

The December 16 opening party runs 5pm to 9pm at 231 Wallace Ave.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Emily Pohl-Weary, executive director, Academy of the Impossible