There is a lot of exciting change on the horizon for the Accelerator Centre, and as we begin to execute on our strategic growth plans, venturing into new space and expanding our programming, we are also excited to share some updates about the growth and evolution of the AC team.
As we evolve as an organization, we have also found the need to develop the AC team. In that regard, we’re pleased to announce that Joani Gerber has accepted a new role as VP, Operations with the AC. In her new role Joani will be focused on oversight of facilities planning and management, coordination of human resource processes and policies, management of the Stratford Accelerator Centre, and a number of related accountabilities.
Joani brings over 10 years of accounting, entrepreneurship and Government programming experience and has been a highly valued member of the AC team as our Director, Operations at the Stratford AC campus for the last two years.
Joani holds a degree from Wilfrid Laurier University and certificates in Accounting and Human Resource Management from Fanshawe College. She spent over 10 years supporting entrepreneurship in Stratford, St. Marys, and Perth County working with the Stratford-Perth Centre for Business and the Perth Community Futures.
We’re excited to have Joani as part of the AC team in this new role and look forward to sharing more great news with you in the near future!
The Accelerator Centre is excited to announce that brand strategist and marketing pioneer Alan Quarry has joined the AC as Brand Architect.
Alan will spend every Wednesday working with AC Clients as a sounding board, helping to develop and execute their brand strategy. Alan’s presence is an excellent complement to our team of AC mentors, all of whom are dedicated to helping the brightest startups build and scale their businesses.
Alan will also work with the AC’s leadership team, consulting on our own brand as we execute our strategic growth plans in the coming year.
For those unfamiliar with him, Alan is a gifted brand architect and brings to the AC a formidable level of experience. He serves as the Chairman of a 100 plus person team focused on helping Quarry Integrated Communications clients build their business.
Alan has served as director of the Institute of Canadian Advertising and is a past president (twice) of the Trans Canada Advertising Agency Network. He teaches fourth-year Marketing Communications and MBA courses at Wilfrid Laurier University, was an instructor for three years in University of Windsor’s Executive MBA program, and also the WLU Entrepreneur In Residence in 2010, 2011 and 2013.
We’re thrilled to have Alan as a part of the AC team as we continue to grow and work to develop the next generation of leading Canadian technology companies.
AC Clients and Grads shine at the annual innovation showcase
Every year OCE Discovery, one of Canada’s leading showcases for cutting-edge technology, brings together over 3000 innovators, partners, and supporters to talk about big ideas, new trends, and the latest advancements in tech entrepreneurship.
The Accelerator Centre had a centre stage footprint as part of the Made in Waterloo Region booth along side our local partners at UW, WLU, Cowan Insurance, Square, TEN, and Communitech.
It was also exciting to see so many AC Clients and Graduates showcased at the conference, getting a well-deserved spotlight on their innovations, including:
Video series looks at why entrepreneurs are choosing Waterloo
Today the City of Waterloo launched a five-part video series, entitled Why Waterloo, aimed at explaining Waterloo’s growing appeal.
“There is a buzz about our city and we all feel it,” said Mayor Jaworsky during this year’s state of the city address. “Whether we are long-time residents, established community leaders, young students…or youth about to embark on their post-secondary journey, we all know that Waterloo is the place to be.”
In the series, a selection of local businesses spanning different industries are asked to share what being in Waterloo means to their organization. Common themes like talent, collaboration, support and quality of life are prevalent throughout the series.
We’re excited that the first installment showcases the Accelerator Centre. Watch as Paul Salvini, CEO and Shane Pegg, VP Strategic Initiatives answer the global question: Why Waterloo?
Having just received $8 million in funding from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southwestern Ontario to support AC JumpStart, and an additional $200,000 over four years from Waterloo city council, the AC is set to expand; supporting more clients, more graduates, and making a bigger impact in the community. For more information about the Accelerator Centre, visit acceleratorcentre.com.
For more information about the city’s economic development initiatives, visit wearewaterloo.ca.
How iKlyk Dental is changing the future of dental software
Feda Bashbishi, CEO, iKlyk Inc.
A trip to the dentist was all it took to spark Feda Bashbishi’s inventive mind, changing his career path in 2014.
Feda left California back in 2004, feeling his life needed a transition and looking to advance his career in software development.
After moving to Waterloo from California, Feda landed a job at a company that provided secure payment solutions for the financial services sector. Back then, the organization was shipping out thousands of CDs with software updates to customers.
Coming from a technical background, Feda immediately saw an opportunity to improve efficiencies and pitched the idea of moving the company away from the desktop application to a web-based application.
There was a mixed reaction when Feda pitched such a large scale change; some saw the value, but many were hesitant to implement a transformational shift. But Feda proved his concept by demonstrating the cost effectiveness of web-based vs. desktop, and in the end, they implemented his proposal.
He saw a problem and knew he could fix it. It was a transition that reinforced his belief that you have to be customer focused, that every feature in a product must solve a problem for the customer.
During a check-up back in 2008, Feda noticed his dentist using a traditional desktop application to manage his practice. It sparked a conversation and Feda learned that his dentist wasn’t happy with the software – it took too much time to manage and didn’t offer the flexibility needed to run the practice the way his dentist wanted.
Feda dug a little deeper and found that most dentists were suffering with the same problem: outmoded software that didn’t allow them to protect the data of their clients, access their schedule remotely, and back up their data.
So why didn’t they just change to something better? Because there simply wasn’t a better option.
Feda however, had a solution in mind. He approached his sister-in-law Reem and pitched an idea about creating an online practice management solution that made it easy for dentists to manage their practice on a secure and accessible platform. Reem was already interested in starting her own tech company and had a considerable amount of experience from contributing to her husband’s dental office – it was a perfect match.
“We set out to build something that anyone could use,” said Feda.
With the combined skills of Feda’s MBA, M.Sc. Eng., and Reem’s PhD in Computer Science, they focused on creating something better, something that would make life for his dentist, and every dentist, easier. That’s how iKlyk Inc. was born.
iKlyk is a web-based application that offers dentists and their staff a reliable, innovative, and secure practice management solution for their daily use. With iKlyk, dental companies can protect patient data; access their data anytime, anywhere; track transactions which minimizes embezzlement; and automatically update their software, meaning the product is always up-to-date.
Feda and Reem already had a considerable background in both Business and Tech. However, they wanted to immerse themselves in an entrepreneurial community, learning from peers in a similar position and gaining access to mentors who could help shape their business model.
“You need the expertise, you need people who are hands-on, who can help lead you in the right direction and we get that at the Accelerator Centre,” said Feda.
“Our vision for iKlyk is to set the standard in providing the best practice management solution for dental offices to ultimately provide premium patient care,” said Feda. iKlyk strives to be the number one solution for dentists looking to take their practice management software to the next level.
iKlyk is about to launch their first beta product and they’re confident that the dental community will embrace their solution.
It’s difficult to identify a problem, but developing and implementing a business solution is even harder. It requires initiative, leadership and a dedicated team.
The AC’s Andrew Jackson helps select the winners of the Big Ideas Challenge
A company that uses smartphone technology to improve vision care in India was among the big winners at a pitch competition designed to elicit big ideas in health and well-being. EyeCheck, a for-profit vision-care company, won mentorship and access to AC Pathfinder, a market validation platform developed by the Accelerator Centre, at the inaugural Big Ideas Challenge for Health and Wellbeing at the University of Waterloo this week. It uses smartphone technology and proprietary hardware to provide much-needed vision assessment in India with just two pictures.
Tania Del Matto of St. Paul’s GreenHouse, Rachel Friesen of EyeCheck and Andrew Jackson of the Accelerator Centre.
The other winning pitches consisted of ways to address mental health issues among students, heart-friendly meal delivery and meaningful leisure for older adults, and support for breast cancer survivors. They each received the grand prize of a term’s stay in St. Paul’s GreenHouse, the first and only live-in campus-linked accelerator in Canada focused on social innovation and entrepreneurship.
“The Big Ideas Challenge for Health and Wellbeing was intended to encourage undergraduate students to develop innovative interventions, for which the primary purpose is to improve the quality of life of individuals or communities,” said Tania Del Matto, director of GreenHouse.
“We’re proud to partner with St’ Paul’s to encourage social innovation”, added Andrew Jackson, VP, Client Services at the Accelerator Centre. “It’s encouraging to see a group of young entrepreneurs building businesses aimed at addressing difficult challenges.”
About the winners:
• Marlena – Committed to meaningful leisure for older adults of all abilities by creating books to meet the needs of older adults with Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other conditions.
• Panic, Anxiety, & Stress, Support (PASS) kit – A first aid kit for mental health and wellbeing to address the increasing incidence of mental health issues among students.
• Heart Helpers – A non-profit, heart-healthy meal delivery program that offers older adults at risk or living with cardiovascular disease a simple, inexpensive way to reduce their risk factors by modifying their diet.
• Node– Offering smart, beautifully designed, custom-fit compression sleeves for breast cancer survivors suffering from lymphedema.
The Faculty of Applied Health Sciences is hosting the program in partnership with St. Paul’s GreenHouse.
Eventastic, an AC Graduate specializing in online ticketing, launched their new event management platform today.
The innovative site offers features that tailor to user-experience and functionality.
“The new platform offers customizable event websites, that are faster and simpler to create, with additional E-Commerce security,” explains Eventastic’s President, Randy Bird. “However, the pièce de résistance is the all new SaaS model that allows users to drive revenue, data, or donations through their company and events!”
The new platform was developed to improve customer experience, and increase awareness of the many services and features Eventastic offers. The design and functionality align with the high standard Eventastic has set within the event industry.
“Over the last year, we’ve been developing, at great expense, this user-centric platform; it wildly surpasses our beta platform. We’ve been ready to launch for weeks but waited. We weren’t going to launch it until it was perfect,” says Bird. “Perfect being defined as automatic in simplicity.”
Since its soft launch in 2014, Eventastic has graduated from the Accelerator Centre, relocated into its own local office, and has hosted more than 10,000 worldwide events on their site, from small parties to large conferences in unique venues, proving that this new event website is just one of Eventastic’s many successes.
Steve Fyke, the AC’s Design Strategy Mentor, on the importance of human-centred design
When it comes to creating a great product, Steve Fyke, the Accelerator Centre’s newest mentor, finds himself saying the same thing almost every day: you can’t trust your intuition.
“Intuition is based on personal experience,” says Fyke. “What you see as intuitive isn’t necessarily the same for other people. If someone else has a very different set of experiences, they won’t have the same sense of what’s intuitive.”
With over 15 years of mechanical, industrial, and design strategy experience, he knows his stuff. Fyke has led a number of advanced research and development projects, most of which looked at integrating emerging technologies into existing systems to improve user experience.
It was during this research that he started to see a major flaw in how many people approach design: they tend to develop new technologies and figure out what problem they’re trying to solve afterward.
“It’s more important to focus on solving a problem from the beginning,” says Fyke. “I started to change my approach by looking at how I could apply new or existing technologies to human problems. Then I’d build a solution based on what I learned.”
So what does good design look like?
“There’s no question that it’s important to have a solid engineering foundation when you’re developing a product,” he says. “But I’ve found that the more you focus on what people need the more likely you are to design something that people enjoy using.”
That’s why he encourages companies to take a human-centred approach to product development: find the human element in a problem and create a compelling story to clearly explain how the product will solve that problem.
“I was impressed with Steve’s approach right away,” says Andre Bodo, CEO of Kineris Inc. “He’s challenged us to think from the patient’s perspective; to see how our product will be part of their life.”
Kineris, a current AC client, is a medical device design firm, dedicated to improving patient care through technology. Their user-friendly SmartBrace™ encourages recovery by allowing patients and care providers to track progress and set goals.
“Working with Steve has enabled us to streamline our product and increase our efficiency,” adds Bodo. “Most significantly he’s helped us to design a product that tells a story of recovery rather than one of injury.”
Fyke believes that stories are integral to designing a product because people relate to them. “You can create a product that is technically well designed,” he says, “but if you can’t tell the customer how it helps them, they’re not going to want it – they can’t see it fitting into their lives.”
The trick is to tell a story that’s not quite complete – a story with a few holes built into it. “Sometimes people will use your products in ways you never expected. By leaving the story mostly complete it lets your customers fill in the holes with their own experience. That way, instead of your story, it becomes their story – people start to tell their story about your product, and that’s powerful.”
At the end of the day, it’s about solving problems and learning new things for Fyke, which is what makes the AC a perfect fit. “I love exploring, learning, and solving problems – mostly solving problems, it’s my favourite thing in the world to do.
“The AC is ideal because it allows me to jump between projects that are at different stages of the development spectrum. Because I have a broad technical background, I can help clients with the design of a product or help tweak their product so that it fits a human need. This allows them to tell that compelling story and get potential customers engaged.”
Seventeen early stage companies to benefit from critical seed capital injection and world-class mentorship
The Accelerator Centre® (AC) is proud to announce its first AC JumpStart cohort, the first group of companies to benefit from the $8M funding program, announced January 15th in conjunction with the Federal Economic Development Agency (FedDev Ontario), and partners Conestoga College, the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University.
Companies joining the first AC JumpStart Cohort are:
Each member of the AC JumpStart first cohort will receive $30,000 in seed capital (to be matched by the recipient firms), mentorship from experts in finance, sales, marketing, human resources, technology and product development, access to market research and connections to investors, with services to be delivered over a 12 month period.
This is the first of three cohorts of companies to participate in the program in 2015, followed by two cohorts annually through to the end of 2018.
In total, it is expected that 180 companies will participate in the AC JumpStart program over the next four years.
Start-ups participating in the 2013 AC JumpStart pilot program have created 212 new jobs in Waterloo Region, have generated $3.1 million in combined revenue and are expected to raise $5 million in private investment.
There is a lot of exciting change on the horizon for the Accelerator Centre, and as we begin to execute on our strategic growth plans, venturing into new space and expanding our programming, we are also excited to share some updates about the growth and evolution of the AC team.
The Accelerator Centre is excited to announce that brand strategist and marketing pioneer Alan Quarry has joined the AC as Brand Architect.
