Tag: ac client

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AC Client Apartmint Brings Renters and Landlords Together

By Joe Lee
Market Research Analyst
MaRS Discovery District

Are you looking for a place to live in Toronto? Perhaps renting an apartment or a condo?

If you are in this booming rental market, you know three things:
•Prices are outrageous;
•Reasonable units can be snapped up within 24 hours;
•The process of renting is horrific.

As someone who is currently in this market, nothing has stuck out to me more than how badly the rental process is. Encountering fake Craigslist listing? Check. (No “Sandy”, you cannot have my credit card information via email.)

Clicking on an apartment listing in Etobicoke even after you’ve restricted the search to downtown Toronto on Kijiji? Check. (And I love Etobicoke!)

Being interrogated by the landlord while you’re viewing her rental unit? Check. (Yes, I have a job. Thank you. Yes, I really do.)

AApartmint logo resized Waterloo Accelerator Centre startup called Apartmint believes that it has found a better way – by bringing the entire rental process online for renters and landlords together. Founded by Margaret Cichosz, Davy Chiu and Ignacio Mongrell (full disclosure: they all graduated from University of Waterloo’s Master of Business, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program like myself), Apartmint has recently expanded its services in Toronto this month.

Read the full blog here.

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AC Client BioSensive Technologies introduces Ear-O-Smart, the world's first smart earring

While the wearable technology market continues to grow and mature, the space has had a persistent image problem. Consumer wearables have largely focused on athletic wristbands, with critics suggesting that for women, who outnumber men among prospective buyers, alternative offerings have been largely relegated to glammed up versions of fitness trackers—with the “glam” often coming from overtly girly designs.

If wearables are going to succeed among consumers, and not just gym-goers, they need to become more fashion conscious. Look no further than Apple Watch, which seems to be embracing fashion by offering distinct collections and customizable straps. Google’s recent “strategic reset” of Google Glass also points to an issue the entire industry is dealing with—if the wearables aren’t “cool” enough to wear every day, mainstream adoption will be tricky. However, following successful wearable tech-fashion collaborations such as Tory Burch’s Fitbit collection, jewellery is now poised to have its wearables moment.

We Are Wearables Toronto, one of the largest wearable tech meetups in the world, will host a panel of experts specializing in digital culture, fashion and wearables to discuss developing and designing wearables for women.

The event will feature Ear-O-Smart, touted as the world’s first smart earring (it can monitor your heart rate, calories and activity level). Ear-O-Smart connects to your smartphone with Bluetooth, allowing you to monitor a wide range of fitness data. Most importantly, fashion is a fundamental part of the company’s product.

To read an interview with Ear-O-Smart CEO and AC Client Ravinder Saini, click here.

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AC Client Apartmint launches new rental platform connecting landlords and tenants

A new Waterloo startup company linking landlords and tenants plans to give both sides the chance to praise — or trash — each other.

Apartmint, founded by three University of Waterloo graduates, lists rentals across Waterloo Region on its platform at apartmint.ca. Tenants can use a map-based search, connect with the landlord and pay their rent online.

Soon, landlords and tenants will be able to leave online ratings and reviews.

To read the full article, click here.

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AC Client LiveApp's phone application gives the London Knights video edge

Dale Hunter worships at the altar of the Hockey Video gods. Many of his Knights skaters spend a lot of time staring at their smartphones. Thanks to some London-bred ingenuity and a Waterloo-based mobile marketing firm called LiveApp, the two pursuits have merged.

Shortly after the win in Kitchener Tuesday, every Knights player had the ability to watch his own shifts from that game on his own mobile device — and if they had questions, they could ask one of their coaches instantly.

“If you want to look at a shift, you don’t have to go through the whole game,” over-age defenceman Dakota Mermis said. “They’re right there (in your personal folder) on the London Knights app. It’s not forced down our throats, and if you’re down on yourself, you don’t have to go see all the bad plays you made. You can watch the good ones and bring your spirits up a bit.“It’s in your control.”

The kids have been using this video room on-the-go platform for nearly a month-and-a-half. Former Western Mustangs forward Steve Benedetti, an employee of Anil Mehta’s LiveApp company and assistant coach of the junior B London Nationals, used his Junior Knights minor midget team last season as a trial run for this idea.

To read the full article, click here                                                                                                                                                            .

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Bonfire Interactive, Eyedro Green Solutions, and Plasticity Labs Graduate from the Accelerator Centre

Waterloo (Ontario), CANADA, Thursday, December 11, 2014 – The Accelerator Centre® (AC), an award-winning centre for the cultivation of technology entrepreneurship located in Waterloo, Ontario, today announced the graduation of three technology startups, Bonfire Interactive, Eyedro Green Solutions and Plasticity Labs from its internationally recognized Accelerator Program.

Trusted with more than $3 billion in public spending decisions, Bonfire Interactive is the easiest, simplest and friendliest way for purchasers to accept and evaluate supplier quotes and proposals as part of an RFx process. The company was founded by Corry Flatt, a serial entrepreneur with a passion for building products and companies from the ground up.

Eyedro Green Solutions is a software and electronics design company making electricity usage easy to understand. Co-founded by Trevor Orton and Nick Gamble, Eyedro provides consumers and businesses with simple solutions for monitoring their electricity use in real-time.

How does happiness drive performance? This question, and their own life-changing experience drove co-founders Jim Moss and Jennifer Moss to create Plasticity Labs, a company dedicated to helping global organizations connect their employees, measure emotional intelligence in real-time, increase engagement and create the happiest, highest performing workplaces. The company recently closed a $2.1 million financing round led by Fibernetics Ventures.
“Today’s graduates are all exceptional companies with significant market traction in their respective industries and we are delighted to celebrate their achievements to date,” says Paul Salvini, CEO of the Accelerator Centre. “Our focus and mission here at the AC is to equip entrepreneurs with the knowledge and skills they need to not just get a business off the ground, but take it to the next level of sustainability. I’m proud to say that our Accelerator Centre graduates are responsible for building tomorrow’s tech sector success stories.”
About the Accelerator Centre

The Accelerator Centre® (AC) is dedicated to building and commercializing technology start-ups. The AC provides an essential combination of mentorship, educational programming, professional office space, networking, and access to funding, with a goal of building successful companies. Over a two- to three-year period, we help entrepreneurs move from start-up to scale-up, accelerate their time to market, and attract customers, investment and revenue.
Since 2006, the Accelerator Centre has developed and nurtured over 130 early-stage technology start-ups, creating 1100+ new jobs, and generating more than $350 million in revenue and funding. Forty-three companies have graduated from the Accelerator Centre, and more than 85 percent of these companies have remained in Waterloo Region.

For more information visit www.acceleratorcentre.com.

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Discovery Channel's How It's Made showcasing AC Client TeTechS

Lights, camera, action! It was an extra exciting “Hollywood” kind of week here at the Accelerator Centre, as we welcomed the filming crew from the Discovery Science Channel’s How It’s Made program to our Waterloo facility.

tetechs The How It’s Made team was in town to spend the day with Accelerator Centre Client, TeTechS, documenting how to manufacture and assemble a terahertz vision sensor system – specialized technology that leverages terahertz light to find previously undetectable objects and defects in advanced manufacturing processes.

The final assembly of the TeTechS terahertz vision sensor system was filmed right here at the AC.

The program is expected to air in the Spring of 2015. We’ll be sure to keep you posted as we learn more.

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AC Client Plasticity Labs' inspirational story featured in The Toronto Star

In September 2009, Canadian professional lacrosse player Jim Moss was training for the new season by running up a mountain.

Just 48 hours later, he couldn’t walk.

Moss and his wife Jennifer, who was seven and a half months pregnant, were told that Jim had contracted a rare auto-immune disease and would lose all use of his legs.

“I was losing my profession. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to walk again. We were just about to have a baby. I had lost 85 per cent of my salary, and we lived in the most expensive zip code in the United States,” he recalls.

In other words, happiness was in short supply.

And yet, Moss’s hospital bed became the unlikely incubator for an ambitious project to create happier, healthier workplaces.

As his recovery process began, Jim realized his mood was having a significant impact on his physical rehabilitation. He began taking notes on the small things that brought him joy during his convalescence. Although he had not yet realized it, he was tapping into the theory of neuroplasticity. Its premise: that positive behaviour can rewire the brain and body for the better.

A month later, Jim Moss walked out of hospital.

It was almost certainly not the sole reason for his rapid recovery, but Moss was sufficiently convinced by the science of gratitude to begin studying it in earnest. The couple returned to Canada, settling in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. And four years after Jim’s collapse, their company, Plasticity Labs, launched a product whose understated goal is “helping a billion people find what makes them happier.”

The office was a natural starting point.

“I’ve been in a workplace that was negative,” says Jennifer. “I had to constantly fight and battle being in a negative environment, and then try and bring positivity into the home. And it was very, very difficult to do.”

Enter the Plasticity app, which celebrates its one year anniversary this month. It’s described by Jim as a “mash-up of Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, with a shot of Survey Monkey.” It’s the first attempt in the world, Jim says, to combine a social platform with research-based analytics in a single technology

Here’s how it works: employees log-in to the phone app daily by rating their happiness on a scale of 1 to 100 and explaining the reason for their score.

Once inside, the app works like “a really positively focused Facebook stream.” Employees socialize online and share their successes — an exercise guided by the principles of neuroplasticity.

To read the full article click here.

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Interview with AC Client In The Chat

In the Chat aims to transform customer service within big brands with a second generation social listening platform that puts customers first.

With more than 1.3 billion Facebook users worldwide and more than 500 million tweets per day, social media platforms have become a dominant communication channel within our lives.

So when our flight is delayed several hours, or our phone fails to hold its charge, we as consumers now turn to social channels to voice our concerns and questions – with the hopes that the brands we interact with daily are out there listening.

However, the challenge that those in the hospitality industry, banks, telco providers, and retailers are facing is implementing a platform to identify these conversations. A platform where you can not only find and listen to these important signals within a sea of noise, but act swiftly upon that information to improve customer satisfaction, and drive new revenue.

It’s a daunting challenge to solve, explains John Huehn, CEO and founder of In the Chat. “The average telco in the US market needs to monitor an astonishing volume of information – up to 10 million posts a day related to their and their competitors brands,” explains Huehn. “There are tens of millions of people in the US today talking about their telecom providers every day. So how does a company effectively, efficiently and expediently decide which of these posts are of highest value? And perhaps most importantly, which of these customers need immediate attention from a customer service or sales representative?”

Huehn believes his company has the answer to that challenge.

To read the full article, click here.

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AC Client RENOMii featured on CBC News

It’s a problem that anyone who has ever renovated a house has likely faced – a final bill that’s drastically different from what was originally quoted, and no clue as where the extra charges come from.

Now, a Kitchener-based company is working to fix that problem with a new software program called Renomii (said Reno-me).

Scott Barker, the company’s CEO and co-founder, along with CFO Kara Smith, spent six years in the construction industry, most of that time as a project manager for a contractor. After a particuarly bad job experience, he thought up Renomii as a way to bridge the communications gap between clients and contractors, and pitched it to the Hyperdrive incubator at Communitech.

“It keeps both parties up to date, it keeps them both accountable for pricing and an approved changes that happen within the project itself. Our software basically allows them to have binding contracts every time a change has been made,” said Barker.

The original contract between the client and contractor is uploaded to Renomii and then the homeowner must confirm it. After that, every time a contractor makes a change, like different cabinet doors or a new countertop, they document the change in Renomii. The client and the contractor must sign off on it. At the end of a job, all of the requested changes are detailed, a move that helps protect both parties.

To read the full interview and learn more about the company click here.