Waterloo Region Tech

May 10, 2016

Waterloo firm charging ahead with electric vehicle stations

Waterloo Region Record

WATERLOO — The Ontario government is leading the charge, so to speak, to expand facilities for electric vehicles.

By next March, a network of nearly 500 charging stations will spring up at more than 250 locations across the province — in cities, along highways and at workplaces and condo buildings.

Six of those stations will join three already in place at the Waterloo headquarters of FleetCarma, a company that produces a connected-car platform with a focus on electric vehicles.

FleetCarma’s in-car dongle — a small piece of computer hardware — gathers driving and charging data from electric vehicles, and can communicate with smart-charging stations that allow utilities to adjust the charging speed to accommodate broader demands on the power grid.

“For us, it’s really a chance to refine and showcase our smart-charging system,” said FleetCarma chief executive officer Matt Stevens.

The company has conducted demonstrations in such places as Germany, the United Kingdom and California. “It’s really nice to be able to showcase this at home,” Stevens said.

The government is footing the capital and installation costs of the $20-million charging station project — adding the six 7 kW chargers at FleetCarma’s building on Northland Road will cost just over $61,000.

“Part of this is going to be having a living lab,” Stevens said, adding his new stations could be installed by the end of the summer.

The charging stations will be available free of charge to FleetCarma employees. Currently, three of the 25 employees drive plug-in vehicles.

The public will also be able to access the stations at a cost of $1 per hour of charge. At least one station will be available at all times for the public and will deliver a full-speed charge.

Two types of stations are being installed in the provincial project — 213 will be level three or fast-charging stations that can charge many electric vehicles to about 80 per cent capacity in about half an hour, while 280 (including the ones at FleetCarma) will be level two stations that can charge most vehicles from empty in about four to six hours.

“Getting 213 fast-chargers in there dramatically changes the landscape for Ontario,” Stevens said. “This program will actually make owning a full electric possible.”

It’s estimated there are more than 18,000 electric vehicles on the road in Canada.

While plug-in hybrids have the flexibility of falling back on a gasoline engine once their batteries are depleted, all-electric owners don’t have that luxury and need to be thinking of their vehicle’s range and charging availability.

Right now, there aren’t many fast-charging stations in place in Ontario, Stevens said.

Adding charging stations at workplaces is also incredibly important in getting more electric vehicles on the road, he said. But charging vehicles can add considerable demand to a business’s power supply, and that’s where FleetCarma’s smart-charging technology comes in.

Vehicle owners can indicate when they need a charge to be completed by, and the charge can be portioned out accordingly. Moderating this electricity use can keep a business’s peak demand charge down and it can help utilities better manage demand on the grid.

“We want to make sure that electric vehicles aren’t making the grid less reliable, but actually making the grid more reliable,” Stevens said.

FleetCarma was founded in 2007 and was originally known as CrossChasm. Its connected-car technology has been sold in 23 countries and the company counts fleet operators, leasing companies, researchers and utilities among its customers.

March 17, 2016

AC Grad TextNow Wants to Fix Canada's Broken Wireless Industry – But the Big Three Won't Let Them

By Jacob Serebrin

TextNow is a Canadian company, but its low-cost cellphone plans are only available in the United States.

That’s not because TextNow doesn’t want to offer them here, but because it can’t.

“We have a team of almost 80 people here in Waterloo, Ontario,” says Derek Ting, TextNow’s CEO. “One of the biggest conversations, that comes up every day, is ‘when are we going to bring our service to Canada so we all can use it’ and, so far, it has not been encouraging news.”

TextNow is a mobile virtual network operator. It buys access to wireless networks at wholesale prices, and then re-sells that access to its customers. In the U.S., TextNow buys access from Sprint, the country’s fourth-largest wireless carrier, but in Canada, it can’t find a wireless carrier willing to sell it access.

“We’ve kind of hit a brick wall with that,” says Ting. “We tried diligently. We went through a 12-month process with Rogers and at the end they said no.”

Ting says he thinks that Canada’s big three wireless carriers are “kind of in a pact to keep the market sealed from guys like us.”

It’s a different story in the U.S., where every major cell phone provider sells mobile network access on the wholesale market.

“The reason they do it is because of the competition, they truly compete with each other. They’re not in some pact to close the market off,” Ting says.

And that means incumbents win and consumers lose, he says.

“The Canadian consumer is the one who gets screwed in the end,” Ting says.

TextNow uses software to switch everything a phone sends and receives – including calls and texts – to WiFi whenever it’s available, allowing it to cut down on the amount of network time it uses and charge lower prices than incumbent providers.

While Ting says he’d like there to a market-based solution to the problem, he thinks any changes in the market will have to come from the federal government.

“Other countries either have perfect competition, like in the U.S., or when they don’t have perfect competition, the regulators mandate some sort of allocation of spectrum to smaller players,” he says. “We don’t, and as a result, we have the most unaffordable market.”

There is a precedent in Canada, incumbent cable and phone companies are already required to sell wholesale access to their wired networks.

But last month, the CRTC, rejected an appeal by a group of MNVOs to expand that regulation to cover wireless networks on the grounds that it would disincentivize incumbent carriers from making investments in their networks.

Ting doesn’t buy it, he says similar regulations have been implemented in countries like Germany with no impact on network quality.

“Long-term, the ideal situation, is the CRTC stops siding with Telus, Bell and Rogers and starts thinking about regulation that benefits Canadians as a whole, not just the interests of the big three,” he says.

That change, though, will likely have to come from politicians, instead of regulators and there’s no sign that will be coming any time soon.

March 15, 2016

Waterloo startup uses drones to inspect all buildings

By Terry Pender

WATERLOO — Workers inspecting the outside of a highrise taped a camera to a broomstick to get photos of the structure around the corner of the building.

They worked from a platform that dangled on ropes from the roof, a so-called swing stage, to complete the mandatory visual check of the building’s exterior for cracks, shoddy work and other defects.

Filip Sobotka was working nearby with his father’s construction company and he could not believe his eyes.

“It is just insane. We are dangling humans off the side of a building,” Sobotka says. “That is the best we have come up with so far.”

His father wondered if robots or drones would not do a better job.

“That was the eureka moment,” Sobotka says. “We just thought: ‘There has to be a better way.'”

Sobotka launched a startup based in the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo called FTD Highrise Inspection Inc. that uses drones to take detailed pictures of outside walls, balconies, windows, railings, ledges, bays and the decorative mouldings at the tops of buildings.

“The drones are just a natural fit for this,” Sobotka says. “This is a good opportunity.”

The startup was already generating revenue before it moved into the Accelerator Centre in the David Johnston Research and Technology Park one year ago. The company also is hiring an engineer, a software developer and a machine-learning specialist.

“I like to say: ‘We are not just an idea, this is working, we are doing buildings,” Sobotka says. “We have done 25 to 30 buildings to date.”

Those buildings are across Southern Ontario, including in Waterloo, Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Guelph and London.

There are about 4,000 tall buildings in the Greater Toronto Area that require regular inspections, says Sobotka. There are about 60 in Waterloo Region. New York City is the big market, though, with 700,000 tall buildings.

“We will be there eventually, but we want to hit our stride here,” Sobotka says.

Operators of drones used for research or work, regardless of the size, must file a Special Flight Operations Certificate with Transport Canada’s Civil Aviation Office. The application must include contact information and describe how, when and where the drone will be used. The application must spell out how the operator plans to handle any safety issues.

Sobotka says Highrise Inspection won’t put a drone in the air if the winds are higher than 15 km/h and it never deploys one near airports. The company also notifies everyone in the building ahead of time to allay concerns about privacy. Sobotka notes that having a drone fly past a window is probably less invasive than having workers taking photos from a swing stage.

Photos taken by the startup’s drones are stored on a platform that clients can access at any time. Building owners and managers get a complete visual record of their property, for insurance and maintenance schedules.

The software platform being developed by Highrise Inspection will use the visual data and algorithms to predict further deterioration. That information can be used for preventive maintenance and repairs before problems become more expensive to fix.

“That is a bit long-term, but we are working on it right now,” Sobotka says. “That will happen in a year or two when we will have a machine-learning aspect to it.”

Once he hires the rest of the team, Sobotka wants to focus on raising funds to grow the business.

“Then I can go to an investor and say: ‘Here is what I need your money for,'” he says. “And I have the team in place.”

Sobotka, 29, did a degree in commerce at McMaster University in Hamilton, but his family background is in construction. His father’s company, JB&FT Construction in Mississauga specializes in caulking.

Sobotka’s father came up with the idea for using drones to inspect buildings, and spent years trying to develop a business around it. A few years ago, Sobotka took it over to pursue it full-time.

“I saw the potential in this,” he says. “I am off and running with it, and it is exciting. It’s working.”

tpender@therecord.com

February 4, 2016

Pout Acquired by Everalbum

AC JumpStart Client joins Silicon Valley startup as they expand into Waterloo Region

The AC is excited to share that AC JumpStart Client Pout has been acquired by San Francisco-based Everalbum. The announcement was made this morning by Everalbum Co-founder Andrew Dudum.

“This acquisition is part of a company wide effort to build the most seamless, mobile first photo experience on iOS and Android,” said Dudum. “Today, we strengthen that ability by adding some of the best design and engineering minds to our team. Pout’s vision for a community of fashion conscious users was to help them explore their unique sense of fashion through photos. ”

Pout was created by engineer Laura Smith and designer Riley Donelson as a way of building and fostering a community of people who are passionate about beauty and fashion, allowing them explore, discover and share their experiences, styles and techniques through photos and videos. The app has already found great success, striking a chord with both users and large brands in the fashion industry.

Pout began in the University of Waterloo’s Velocity program, and subsequently joined the second cohort of Accelerator Centre’s AC JumpStart program to help grow and scale their business to a broader audience.

The acquisition process began when Donelson traveled to San Francisco to begin exploring and learning about funding options for Pout. He arranged lunch with a former University of Waterloo classmate, who invited Dudum to join them as another friendly connection. While his classmate had to cancel, Donelson and Dudum decided to go ahead with the meeting and quickly discovered many commonalities in their companies’ ambitions, passions, and experiences.

Everalbum is unique combination of a productivity-app and a cloud-storage solution, whose aim is re-imagine the experience of the family photo album; capturing, storing, and allowing people to share their memories.

Donelson and Dudum continued to stay in touch, and after a few months, Dudum mentioned Everalbum’s desire to establish a second office in Waterloo Region due to the strength of the ecosystem and the talent pool. Everalbum moved into Kitchener’s Lang Tannery building in November and talks about acquiring Pout quickly ensued.

“We’re proud that this acquisition continues our relationship with the Waterloo tech community, said Donelson. “Pout joins a list of successful startups emanating from University of Waterloo, Velocity, Communitech, and the Accelerator Centre. We’re excited to continue the movement started by our tech peers, like Google, Kik, and Shopify, in establishing a Canadian ecosystem which we are proud to be a part of.”

“We’re really excited to join Everalbum,” says Donelson. “From the beginning it’s been an amazing fit with Andrew and the team, and this will allow us to take Pout to a whole new level.”

Smith and Donelson will join the Everalbum team in Kitchener, working on getting to know the Everalbum team and continuing to grow the Pout community and brand on a global scale.

About AC JumpStart

AC JumpStart is a one-year funding and mentorship program designed to help companies accelerate their business growth. The program offers $30K in funding and $10K worth of mentorship from our team of in-house experts. Apply.