TECHNOLOGY
Rewind, for example, which backs up data for online storefronts and services such as QuickBooks, has scored nearly $100 million in fresh equity in 2021 alone. Meanwhile, online bug detection platform Noibu saw its revenues soar nearly 600 per cent year-over-year in 2020. “If you look at their platforms and their market opportunity size, there’s a whole whack of Shopifys in there,” Flick says. “Hopefully those create some new areas and markets for us.” Quain agrees, pointing to GoFor and fellow Ottawa-based delivery startup Trexity as examples of local businesses catering to the other end of the e-commerce chain that are coming into their own. “We’re sitting in the shadow of the Shopify mafia,” he says. “Where’s a better place in the world to figure out the next tech-enabled e-commerce software company?” At the same time, Flick and Quain say Ottawa is poised to help drive innovation in another one of technology’s next great frontiers: autonomous vehicles. Some of the industry’s biggest players, such as Accenture, BlackBerry QNX, Ericsson, Microsoft and An autonomous pod from Aurrigo parks near a mobile dummy at Ottawa's newly rebranded Area X.O Nokia, are working with local firms SmartCone, SMATS autonomous vehicle test track. PHOTO BY DAVID KAWAI Traffic Solutions and others to test high-tech sensors, drones and other smart-city infrastructure at Area X.O, a 16-kilometre network of roads in the city’s south end. While Flick is bullish on self-driving cars, he thinks Ottawa has the potential to carve out a lucrative niche as a drone development hub. “To me, I think drones are going to be just another part of society like planes and cars,” he says. “There’s so much to be done there.” With features such as mobile dummy test targets he way Nick Quain sees it, anyone looking to to live and work downtown. “They’re Ottawa-based that simulate real-world interactions between driverless chart the future of Ottawa tech simply needs to software companies.” cars, pedestrians and cyclists as well as farmland where track the flood of venture capital into the city As even a casual observer of the local tech scene the latest in self-driving tractors are put through their since the start of 2021. knows, Ottawa’s evolution from a hardware to a paces, Area X.O could put Ottawa in a prime position to While other businesses across the region were software town didn’t happen overnight. The shift steer the future course of AV tech, Quain says. reeling from the pandemic, a new generation of really began more than a decade ago and “It really is a smart city playground,” he says. “It’s not software firms in sectors that were barely accelerated as Shopify steadily grew into an just there to test how a vehicle can speak to a network.” on local entrepreneurs’ radar during e-commerce behemoth, inspiring a new The next few years will also see a rapidly emerging Ottawa’s original telecom boom – areas generation of tech visionaries to launch new crop of female founders make their mark on like e-commerce, cybersecurity, their own software enterprises. Ottawa tech, Quain adds. logistics and health-tech – have Their efforts are now bearing fruit, Initiatives such as SheBoot, a bootcamp for women attracted the kind of eye-popping VC with investors pouring more than half founders, and Backbone Angels, an early-stage VC fund deals not seen since those heady days a billion dollars into local startups over backed by past and present Shopify executives that’s of the late 1990s and early 2000s. the past 12 months. Quain and others aimed at startups helmed by women and non-binary “You’re starting to see the believe it’s the start of a trend that will founders, are helping to narrow the yawning gender transformation becoming complete of only accelerate in the years to come. gap in a traditionally male-dominated industry, he says. Ottawa becoming a software town,” “The funding is there, the About one-third of the companies in Invest NICK QUAIN says Quain, the vice-president of incubators are there,” says Ottawa’s accelerator program are led by venture development at Invest Ottawa. Jason Flick, who sold his women, up from 10 per cent a few years As head of the local economic Kanata software firm, ago. Quain expects the number of development agency’s incubator and scaleup programs You.i TV, to Warner Media last year for female tech leaders in Ottawa to keep for the past four years, Quain has had a front-row seat more than US$100 million. “I feel like rising as women-led startups such to witness the rise of a new kind of tech startup. now we’re back to the heyday of lots as Growcer, Heirlume, Vaultt, Welbi These aren’t your father’s budding unicorns. Unlike of startups.” and others inspire other would-be the hardware companies that fuelled the dot-com Surveying the local tech landscape, entrepreneurs to take the plunge. boom two decades ago, these startups – think last-mile Flick likes what he sees. “I’m looking forward to seeing that delivery provider GoFor or online health-care platform Shopify shined a spotlight on balance out in the years ahead, and I Fullscript – specialize in software that’s underpinning an e-commerce, triggering a wave of think that’s just going to accelerate increasingly interconnected world in which the internet new local companies aimed at solving with things like SheBoot and Backbone JASON FLICK touches every aspect of our daily lives. pain points for a new class of online Angels right in our backyard,” he says. “They’re not telcom, Kanata-based companies,” merchants. Already gaining traction All in all, Flick says, the Ottawa tech Quain says, noting Silicon Valley North’s centre of before the pandemic, those startups have seen their industry’s best days are still to come. gravity has shifted from its traditional base thanks growth shift into overdrive amid the pandemic-fuelled “We’ve got momentum now,” he says. “We have so to an emerging group of young founders who prefer e-commerce boom. much going for us.”
Tracking Ottawa's evolution to a 'software town'
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