Month: September 2013

Grizzly RUV Merits “Best New Product or Service of the Year – Industrial Products & Services”

Clearpath Robotics announced that it was named the winner of the Gold Stevie® Award for “Best New Product or Service of the Year – Industrial Products & Services” in the 10th Annual International Business Awards. Clearpath’s new product to be recognized for the Gold Stevie is their most recent robotic platform, Grizzly Robotic Utility Vehicle (RUV). See Exchange Magazine September 2013 Monitor Section

International Business Awards (IBAs) are one of the world’s top premier business award programs. The Stevie Awards, nicknamed the Stevies for the Greek word “crowned,” were created to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and working people worldwide.

More than 3,300 nominations from organizations in over 50 nations and territories were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories, including Most Innovative Company of the Year, Management Team of the Year, Best New Product or Service of the Year, Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year, and Executive of the Year, among others. The Stevie Award winners were selected by more than 250 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process this year.

“The 2013 International Business Awards are noteworthy for featuring the best collection of entries we have ever received,” said Michael Gallagher, president and founder of the Stevie Awards. “The judges have been unanimous in their comments about the quality of achievements, and the expertise with which they were portrayed, in the nominations we received this year. We extend our most heartfelt congratulations to all of this year’s Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award winners.”

Clearpath Robotics introduced Grizzly RUV in March 2013. The autonomous vehicle is engineered to handle harsh, dangerous environments. With four high-torque motors, rugged 26″ all-terrain tires, class-leading ground clearance, a solid steel chassis, 48V at 400Ah of power, and a base weight of 1450lbs, it is ideal for industrial applications, particularly in agriculture, mining and defense.

“We are honored to be recognized by the International Business Awards and congratulate all of the nominees and fellow honorees for their achievements”, said Matt Rendall, CEO of Clearpath Robotics. “Grizzly Robotic Utility Vehicle is the first of its kind in the industry and the team here at Clearpath is beyond excited for their acknowledged accomplishment – Grizzly would not have come to fruition without the dedicated, awesome team of engineers that stand behind it.”

Details about The International Business Awards and the list of Stevie Award winners are available at http://www.stevieawards.com/pubs/iba/awards/408_2219_24132.cfm. The awards will be presented to winners at a gala awards banquet at the W Hotel in Barcelona, Spain on 14 October 2013.

Staying Secure Online

TitanFile Inc., the developer of a secure collaboration and document-sharing system, has unveiled new features for its product, including the TitanFile Secure Deposit Box, which makes it even easier and safer for clients to receive communications.

Based in Halifax and Kitchener, TitanFile began two years ago as a secure document-sharing platform and launched a new version last autumn that stressed ease of use and flexibility so it could operate seamlessly with other products on any device.  The company is now enhancing that most recent version by adding new features.

The big advance is the Secure Deposit Box, which gives client organizations a web page that serves as an online repository for their files and messages.  Rather than having clients with sensitive, time-critical messages send their correspondence and files as emails, which can end up in a spam folder, the deposit box ensures that all messages end up in a secure place, where they are organized and viewed only by the appropriate people.

What’s more, TitanFile is also introducing a feature that allows people to access files in TitanFile channels (including the deposit box) without registering.  That means TitanFile users can initiate contact with their clients, collaborate and share documents with them, without requiring that they go through the bother of registering.

“The Secure Deposit Box reduces the number of steps (needed to communicate) and makes it easier for our clients to initiate contact with their customers,” CEO Tony Abou-Assaleh said in an interview.  “It was driven by the demand of our clients.”

He added that clients have various requirements in terms of security and often have to apply different levels of security to one document, depending on whom they are sharing it with.  The new TitanFile features allow them to tweak the application easily to suit their needs.

The other features in this release include:

• Blind Carbon Channel – This lets the TitanFile client see all conversations and files being shared in a specific channel but denies such a privilege to other people accessing the channel.
• Safe Notification – This allows clients to use TitanFile to send emails that have been stripped of all private content to protect confidential details. This feature helps organizations comply with regulations by keeping sensitive information out of potentially unsecured email accounts.
• Open Invitation – This function allows the TitanFile client to easily add or remove people from a channel, allowing greater flexibility when collaborating.

Safe Notification and Open Invitation are available to all subscribers, while the other new features are open only to enterprise subscribers.

Co-founded by Abou-Assaleh and Milan Vrekic (now the executive director of co-working space Volta in Halifax), TitanFile raised $250,000 in seed funding from Innovacorp in 2011, and last year raised more than $800,000 from Innovacorp, the First Angel Network and private investors. It also borrowed about $400,000 from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency last year.

Abou-Assaleh said TitanFile will likely raise money again later this year, though it has not set a target yet.

TF Commercial vimeo from Volta on Vimeo.

Kik has raised a $19.5M Series B funding round, the company revealed today, led by Foundation Capital and including RRE Ventures, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures.  The Waterloo-based messaging app company will be using the funding to help continue to support its growth, and the new injection of cash comes at a crucial point for the company as it sets its sights on broader platform ambitions with the recently introduced Cards feature.

I spoke with Kik CEO Ted Livingston about the funding, and asked him specifically about what he thought of WhatsApp’s announcement from last week that it was now larger than Twitter in terms of active monthly users.  Kik, which recently crossed the 50 million user milestone and is adding on new ones at a rate of about 200,000 per day, is far behind WhatsApp in terms of its user base, but Livingston said Kik is much more focused on the long-term goal of what comes next for a messaging app than its most direct competitor.

“There are two sides to it. On one side, they’re massive, they’re killing it, no question they’re bigger than Twitter.  There never was a question in my mind that they’re bigger than Twitter,” he said.  “But when asked about being a platform, [CEO Jan Koum] just completely dismissed it.  He said it wouldn’t be good for WhatsApp’s users, and that the company wants to focus, but also knowing that Kakao has had incredible success doing just that.”

The take on the messaging space that WhatsApp seems to be taking is a little reminiscent of when BlackBerry essentially ignored the iPhone and the launch of the App Store, Livingston says.  Kik, by contrast, seems to be making a larger bet that a model based around turning a messaging app into something more, with the inclusion of its Cards (HTML5 apps within an app which will soon be opened to outside developers), will ultimately lead to a richer experience that results in more lasting long-term growth.

Kik’s choice of investment partners this time around also reflects its larger goals around building a platform and using that to explore monetization options.  Foundation Partners, a new investor for Kik, was chosen precisely based on its strength in those areas, Livingston tells me.

“What’s great about Foundation is that obviously it’s a great firm, and a lot of those involved have been entrepreneurs, and they’ve done like Chegg, Netflix and Pocket,” he said.  “But Anamitra [Banerji] who handled this investment and just became a partner, was employee number 30 at Twitter, first product manager and created and drove all their monetization.  So he’s basically the perfect guy for what we want to do.”

Kik is a growing player in a rich and diverse field, but like WhatsApp and others, the time has come for these companies to emerge and prove they have monetization plans that work, if they aren’t looking for an easy exit.  This funding will help as Kik begins to mature its own platform goals, which so far seem to be catching on with its existing users.