Uncategorized – Page 6

October 6, 2015

Sociavore Preps for January Relaunch

by Peter Moreira

This article originally appeared on Entrevestor.com

When Sociavore launches its new platform in January, it plans to have a product whose ease of use and strategic advantages will attract restaurateurs across North America.

Originally launched under the name MyLocal, Sociavore is a marketing and customer relationship management tool designed specifically for the restaurant industry. The goal, as the company’s tagline says, is to fill restaurant seats with happy customers.

“It helps to bridge the gap between offline and online and takes that restaurant experience that they spend so much money creating and puts it online,” said Founder and CEO Thusenth Dhavaloganathan said in an interview Monday at the Waterloo Accelerator Centre, where his team works.

Dhavaloganathan’s parents own a restaurant and he grew up surrounded by the restaurant trade. So he understands the business and the time constraints involved, and he has designed Sociavore to address the particular challenges of the industry.

He understand that owner-operators don’t have time or expertise to do make multiple social media posts and update their websites. So the site from the outset has let them just send out an email and the content automatically gets posted on Facebook, Twitter and the restaurant website.

The idea is that everything in the restaurant can easily be posted – the menus, the specials, photos of the food during preparation and once it’s ready to be served. And once the viewing public sees the posted, Sociavore allows them to book a reservation at the restaurant, as well as review it afterward.

Dhavaloganathan and two co-founders (who he eventually bought out) launched the initial product in 2013 with about 20 clients. The takeup was strong enough that Dhavaloganathan left his job with BlackBerry to work full time on his startup.

Today, the company has 120 to 130 clients, mainly in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Revenues have doubled in the past year and the company (with a staff of three full-time and one part-time) pretty well breaks even. Sociavore has never raised capital, and the team will assess whether it needs funding based on the success of the new platform.

Dhavaloganathan plans to launch the new company website with the Sociavore name on Monday, and will then launch the new platform in the new year.

The rollout of the new platform will concentrate strongly on Toronto. When they make a sales call, Dhavaloganathan and his colleague try to have the several components of the restaurant’s website and social media posts already uploaded on the platform. It makes for a more impressive sales pitch. But the company also hopes to reduce its cost of customer acquisition with the new platform so the personal sales call won’t be needed.

“That’s what the new platform is all about,” said Dhavaloganathan. “It will auto-generate the whole thing and we don’t have to get involved.”

He added that the ease of use should allow the company to scale across the country.

“If we can crack Toronto, we should be able to crack New York and Los Angeles and Montreal and Vancouver.”

September 28, 2015

AC Grad Nicoya takes top honour at Communitech Rev Centre Stage

With Silicon Valley ‘godfather’ Steve Blank looking on as a judge, Nicoya Lifesciences pitched its way to a $50,000 prize on Friday night, as the new Communitech Rev sales accelerator graduated its first cohort.

Two other companies among six who pitched, Bridgit and PiinPoint, took home $25,000 each from the Communitech Rev Centre Stage pitch event, in which Blank – creator of the Lean Startup movement and a leading thinker on how build scalable companies – posed some penetrating questions.

His queries, which often focused on specific business metrics, caught a few founders flat-footed, adding tension to the proceedings and leaving any math-challenged audience members scratching their heads.

Nicoya’s technology, which incorporates nanotechnology, biochemistry and optical sensors, makes particular types of scientific testing easier and quicker. It also promises to radically reduce the cost of certain medical tests.

Blank – who judged the pitches along with Carol Leaman, CEO of Waterloo-based Axonify, and Alec Saunders, Microsoft’s Principal Technical Evangelist in Canada – has written previously on the potential for significant disruption in medical research.

The judges also awarded Bridgit, a communication platform for construction projects, and PiinPoint, whose software helps retail businesses choose the best locations to open outlets.

The honour capped a particularly strong week for Bridgit co-founder Mallorie Brodie, who just three days earlier had pitched at the C100’s inaugural Venture North event in Toronto and won $15,000 for the company. Bridgit was among seven startups from the Toronto-Waterloo corridor who competed before a panel of Silicon Valley investors that included Ajay Royan of Mithril Capital Management.

Also pitching at Centre Stage were Blitzen, whose process automation software targets businesses; Set Scouter, a platform for connecting film producers with shooting locations; and Aterlo Networks, which helps online television viewers in less-populated areas to overcome limited Internet service. Communitech corporate partners Deloitte and Christie sponsored the event.

Given Rev’s focus on building scale and getting companies to $100 million in annual revenue as quickly as possible, all the companies detailed how they planned to reach significant revenue milestones.

September 23, 2015

Clearpath Announces Shift Into Self-Driving Vehicles For Industry

Canadian robotics manufacturer releases new warehouse robot with GE Ventures as strategic investor and GE as first customer.

(Kitchener, ON, Canada – September 23, 2015) Clearpath Robotics, a global leader in field and service robotics, today announced its first self-driving warehouse robot: OTTO. The announcement was made at RoboBusiness 2015 in San Jose, California. OTTO is designed for intelligent heavy-load transport in industrial environments and delivers improved throughput and decreased operating costs.

Introducing OTTO – The Self-Driving Vehicle for Heavy-Load Transport

Modern factories and warehouses need to be reconfigurable, responsive, and efficient to survive. Designed to address these conditions, OTTO uses the same underlying self-driving technology popularized by the Google self-driving car. The system delivers dynamic and efficient transport in increasingly congested industrial operations. Traditional material handling systems require costly and rigid changes to infrastructure, cannot adapt to a changing environment, and are not safe for collaboration with warehouse personnel. OTTO does not rely on external infrastructure for navigation, making implementation hassle-free and highly scalable. It can transport 3300 lb loads at speeds up to 4.5 mph, while tracking along optimal paths and safely avoiding collisions.

“North American manufacturers are constantly under pressure to find new ways to gain an edge against low-cost offshore competition. Traditional automation is saturating. But what about the more complex tasks too difficult or expensive to automate?” said Matt Rendall, CEO and Co-Founder of Clearpath Robotics. “We created OTTO to reinvent material transport and give North American manufacturers a new edge.”

Applications for OTTO include moving pallets in a warehouse or cross-dock, and for kitting or assembly line delivery. OTTO units are currently deployed in five test facilities, the first of which belonging to GE.

Partnership with GE

GE has collaborated with Clearpath on service robot development since 2013 and recently became one of Clearpath’s first OTTO customers. Today Clearpath also announced GE Ventures has become a strategic investor in the company for an undisclosed sum.

“We believe robotics will drastically improve the industries that GE serves,” said Ralph Taylor-Smith, Managing Director of GE Ventures. “We look forward to further partnering with Clearpath and exploring the role large-scale service robots may play for us and for our customers in the future. This Clearpath investment from GE reflects a deepening of the industrial partnership in advanced manufacturing and field service operations with self-driving vehicles and service robots.”

“GE is one of the world’s most powerful and innovative brands,” said Rendall. “We are honored to partner with GE and we look forward to shaping the industry with them.”

A video of OTTO and a webinar invitation to learn more about the technology is available here:

http://www.clearpathrobotics.com/introducing-otto/.

About Clearpath Robotics

Clearpath Robotics Inc. develops self-driving vehicles for industry. The company provides hardware, software and services to enable self-driving vehicle development, deployment and fleet operation. Clearpath works with over 500 of the world’s most innovative brands in over 40 countries, serving markets that span manufacturing, logistics, mining, agriculture, aerospace and defence. Clearpath is an award-winning company with recent awards, including Robotics Business Review Top 50 Company, Edison Award for Innovation, Business Insider Top 40 under 40, and Canada’s Top 100 Employers. Visit Clearpath Robotics at www.clearpathrobotics.com.

September 23, 2015

Kik adds executives: plans to double workforce

Waterloo-based Kik announced two all-star additions to its executive lineup today.

Jae Kim, former head of strategy and operations at the U.S. headquarters of Line, the Japanese messaging, will manage Kik’s growing U.S. operations and the roll-out of services on its popular mobile messaging platform. He will be based in Los Angeles.

Alim Dhanji, tasked with scaling Kik’s workforce and culture, will assume the role of Chief People Officer, based in Waterloo.

“What really drew me and the rest of the team to them was the fact that they were great culture fits – humble, hardworking and team players – which is extremely hard to find when hiring for senior roles,” Ted Livingston, Kik’s CEO, said in a news release.

Kik’s recent raise of $50 million from Tencent, the holding company of China’s WeChat, created a need for new high-level executive roles to advance the company, now valued at more than $1 billion, to the next stage.

Doubling Kik’s workforce from the current 110 in the next year will be quite the job, but Dhanji sounds ready to take it on.

“My experiences have really been about scaling an organization, both organically and through mergers and acquisitions, and working with leadership teams to build the right capabilities within the organizations,” Dhanji told Communitech News. He has held senior executive roles at Citigroup and KPMG, and most recently was a senior vice-president at TD Bank Group.

Scaling culture is a stumbling block for many high-growth companies as they transition from startup to full-fledged company.

“Our emphasis is on making sure we continue to foster collaboration and communication in all our offices,” Dhanji said.

Some tactics include HR programs that “help unify our culture” and the continuation of Friday standup meetings, which connect all Kik offices via video conferencing, but Dhanji said it ultimately comes back to recruitment.

“We’re a knowledge-worker organization; we don’t produce widgets that you can get on a shelf, and so for us it’s really about finding the best talent and finding talent that fits within our culture,” he said, adding that people are a competitive advantage.

And Waterloo Region is a great first stop for talent.

“Waterloo continues to be a really core area to attract the best talent,” he said. “We have just been enjoying exceptional talent from the university, but also Waterloo [Region in general], given that it is a hub for tech talent.”

Kik will be looking elsewhere as it rounds out its teams in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Although Dhanji has his work cut out for him, he’s looking forward to the new opportunity.

“It’s really a compelling product and it’s exciting the potential that Kik has to accomplish in the West what WeChat has accomplished in the East.”

September 17, 2015

Magnet Fornensics Welcomes New Vice President and General Manager

AC Graduates Magnet Forensics announced Neil Condon (right) as the new Vice President and General Manager, Magnet Forensics USA. “I’m thrilled to have Neil on the executive team to help us accomplish our mission of impacting people’s lives by uncovering the truth and empowering others to make a difference”, said Adam Belsher, CEO at Magnet Forensics. “Neil is passionate about serving the law enforcement community by bringing them innovative digital forensics solutions to help them combat both traditional and cybercrimes that impact society.”

Neil has over 25 years of experience in information technology. For the past 10 years, he has worked for digital forensics companies in federal government-facing roles. In his most recent position at Nuix, Neil was responsible for designing and implementing the US public sector strategy. His experience also includes similar roles at AccessData and Guidance Software, where he was responsible for a number of departments, including sales, marketing, field technical services, quality assurance, and software products for the US government. During his time at Juniper Networks, Neil was a civilian advisor to the Office of Cyber Security & Communications within the United States Department of Homeland Security, and served as a member of the Industry Executive Subcommittee for the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Council (NSTAC).

“It’s great to be part of an innovative organization like Magnet Forensics”, said Neil Condon. “I look forward to working alongside our customers to help them accomplish their missions.”

September 14, 2015

Sober Steering named as Top Ten Startup of the New Automotive Industry

AC Client, and soon to be Graduate, Sober Steering was named one of the Top Ten Startups of the New Automotive Industry today by the LA Auto Show’s Connected Car Expo Advisory Board.

Sober Steering, the world’s only touch based alcohol interlock, has developed groundbreaking technology to prevent drunk driving. Its sensors, inserted directly into a steering wheel of a vehicle, have proven that alcohol can be detected at the palm of the hand in less than five minutes after initial ingestion. If alcohol is detected above a preset limit, the vehicle is immobilized. Random retests ensure the driver maintains sobriety while en route. Its Zero Tolerance System is designed for fleets like school buses, coaches, hazmat, and construction vehicles.

Sober Steering is set to Graduate from the Accelerator program at the AC Client Showcase this week.

Also named as a Top Ten startup were:

Driversiti
Capio
Elio Motors
Getaround
High Mobility
HopSkipDrive
Nebula Sytems
TriLumina
Quanergy

September 9, 2015

Kik’s new QR codes can do more than just add friends

Even though QR codes never really took off in the United States, they’re overwhelmingly popular in Asia.

Messaging apps like Snapchat have made them ‘cool’ again and Kik wants a piece of the action.

Today it’s announcing Kik codes, which are a new way to add friends, get straight into group conversations and talk to brands.

Kik’s new codes can be scanned by quickly pulling down on the friends list in the app, which opens the built-in scanner — when you add someone using their code, they automatically add you back too.

It’s even more useful for getting you straight into a group conversation without the hassle of needing to be added by someone else. All you need to do is scan the code and you’re in.

Those QR codes are smarter than most, though, when it comes to working with businesses.

Each code can have data embedded in it, such as the location it was scanned at, which is passed along to the business at the other end. That allows a bot to quickly message the person back with a relevant deal, like a pizza coupon, based on their location.

Businesses can customize the data stored in each code, but Kik codes can’t be visually customized like Snapchat’s because the company believes they need to be recognizable and functional before it explores that.

The company announced earlier this year that it has 200 million active users but has now grown to 240 million and more than half a billion messages have been sent to bots. These new QR codes are an enticing way to extend that network further.

Kik codes are available today in the company’s updated apps.

September 4, 2015

Digital Governance Group launches TowneCrier

AC Momentum client Digital Governance Group announced today the release of TowneCrier, their flagship political engagement tool.

TowneCrier has been created for the voters, candidates, the Parties, and the Third Parties in the current election and after. Their platform aims to give these groups an effective polling tool.

Instead of leveraging telephone polls, TowneCrier sends an email or mobile notification directly to the voters of a specified riding. They decide how to rate, when to respond and have the time to evaluate the poll beforehand. These ratings are returned in real time and can include Big Data Analytics.

TowneCrier.ca is a platform that does the opposite of “Ye Olde Towne Crier”. That Towne Crier told people what the King’s wishes were, this TowneCrier informs the candidates and party of the values and the wishes of the voters.

Learn more at www.Townecrier.ca.

August 20, 2015

Pervasive Dynamics Aims to Improve Stroke Rehabilitation

AC Client partners with UW Research to create wearable technology to aid stroke recovery

The University of Waterloo and Pervasive Dynamics will develop and test wearable health technologies that can improve stroke rehabilitation as part of a new partnership aimed at transforming the health of older adults.

The joint research initiative, the first partnership between Waterloo and the Canadian developer of medical devices, will be part of the new Advanced Aging ResearCH Centre (ARCH) at Waterloo.

“Advanced wearable sensors are the next generation of personalized health care,” said Professor Bill McIlroy, of the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at Waterloo and head of ARCH. “They enable us to gain insights that are just not available through off-the-shelf products.”

The new devices will allow researchers to extract sophisticated data related to a stroke victim’s cardiovascular and nervous systems, balance and gait, and generate tailored diagnostic reports to improve physical and mental rehabilitation.

The new partnership will also explore the development of other wearable health technologies for older adults.

“From the management of chronic disease, to fall prevention and mobility strategies, health wearables have the potential to make a huge difference for the elderly,” said Muhammad Khan, founder and CEO of Pervasive Dynamics, and an alumnus of the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology program at Waterloo. “If we can get technologies like these in the hands of the public and practitioners we can significantly reduce the impact and burden of an aging population on the Canadian health-care system by providing clinicians with more data on which to base health-care decisions.”

By 2030, one-quarter of the Canadian population — close to 8 million people — will be over the age of 65. Stroke is the third major cause of death in Canada, with approximately 50,000 Canadians suffering a stroke each year. More than 20 per cent of older adults will take serious falls, costing the health-care system $2 billion in related costs annually.

“ARCH is focused on facilitating advances in therapies to slow down the trajectory of aging and reduce the risk of age-related injury and disease,” said McIlroy. “If we hope to reduce the impact of an aging population, we need to start now.”

In May, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research awarded ARCH $1.3 million for a variety of diagnostic and measurement tools. The first of its kind in Canada, the facility will house the most comprehensive collection of equipment focused on aging in the country.

August 19, 2015

Kik valued at $1-billion

Messaging app gets $50M investment from China’s Tencent

Canada has another unicorn – a startup valued by private investors at $1-billion. Waterloo, Ont.-based chat app Kik joins the rarefied ranks of Shopify and others to become one of the few Canadian companies to garner the label following a $50-million (U.S.) investment from Chinese Internet giantTencent. The company said the investment brings its total valuation to $1-billion (Canadian).

Kik’s messaging app is immensely popular with 13- to 24-year-olds in North America and has 240 million registered users. Tencent is the $200-billion Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. arch-rival and owner of WeChat, a Chinese social messaging platform that Kik has aspirations to become. It’s a strategic partnership to help the startup win mobile messenger supremacy, and perhaps put Waterloo, home of BlackBerry Ltd., back on the map.

Mobile chat apps are central to today’s smartphone-governed lives and increasingly offer more than just chat functionality. Many Asian messenger apps have already evolved, such as Kakao (South Korea), Line (Japan) and WeChat (China). Recognized as the most sophisticated in this space, WeChat allows users to do things such as browse e-commerce stores, read the news, pay bills and order taxis or takeout, all alongside the app’s core messenger and social-media functionalities. In a nutshell, it’s the all-encompassing app, the platform within a smartphone.

And Kik is set on becoming something just like it for North American users. Last November, Kik founder Ted Livingston published a piece on the Medium website titled The Race to Become the WeChat of the West. It’s a race the company is intent on winning, which is why in April the company hired well-known Silicon Valley investment bank Qatalyst Partners to help it find the right partner – Tencent was a natural choice.

“What they are doing in China is what we want to do in the West, and they said they could help us do that,” Mr. Livingston said. “It was really a mutual coming together.”

Although the company is not yet profitable, its collects revenue from brands that sign up for accounts on the app, Mr. Livingston said. The high valuation is not rare for companies in the mobile space, where much of the value is tied up in the so-called network effect – the idea that by building a massive number of users first, revenue will follow.

The funding will be used primarily to grow the Kik team and to expand offerings on the app, and is not a precursor to a sale. “This is just a straight financial investment,” Mr. Livingston insisted. “There’s no strings attached; it’s an investment as a venture capitalist would make, but we will benefit from the informal advisory and sounding board Tencent will be for us.”

The money and advice will certainly be much needed in this so-called race, which, while still early, has already whittled out other contenders.

“It’s about building a chat ecosystem, with all these services from food to shopping to games … that live and exist and grow on top of the core chat,” Mr. Livingston said. “And I would say the only two companies that get this in the West are us and Facebook.”

Boris Wertz, founder of Version One Ventures and a long-time watcher of the chat-app space, believes Kik did well by knowing early on that it would be a platform, although even with the lead “it’s difficult to out-Facebook Facebook,” he added. “[Facebook has] so much scale and funding and on top of that is running a very aggressive product with Messenger. Kik needs to find a large enough niche to build its platform around.”

So far, Kik’s niche has skewed young (the company claims about 40 per cent of U.S. teens use the app), which is a benefit in terms of capturing the future market, as well as helping shape user preferences and habits early on. “It’s with youth that we see the opportunity to build an ecosystem; we are not trying to get them to switch services, but to adopt services.”

Nevertheless, whether North American users will embrace this next-generation chat app still remains to be seen. “Sure, people look at WeChat and think, ‘How cool that you can get all these products and services,’ but it might well be because there was no bigger social network that took off in China,” Mr. Wertz noted. “Can it work as well where you have very strong social networks already in place?”