VATION STATshopIOforNstartups INNO iew Yards facility one-stop Bayv
CONNECTING TECH
IN OTTAWA
INNOVATION STATION
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
VOL. 1, ISSUE 6
Bayview Yards facility one-stop shop for startups GROWTH IN OTTAWA. PHOTO
BY MARK HOLLERON
ATION OTTAWA’S INNOVATION ST
FORMER NORDION CEO STEVE
WEST, WHO CO-CHAIRS THE
INNOVATION CENTRE AT BAYVIEW
YARDS, AND ICBY EXECUTIVE
New entrepreneurship hub
WARD DRIVING FOR nt of auto tech QNX at forefro
PAGE 3
DIRECTOR RICHARD QUIGLEY
SAY THE MUCH-ANTICIPATED
FACILITY WILL HELP SPUR ECONOMIC
rtunities, backers say PAGES 8-9
will open a world of oppo
TAKING FIVE startup fest 5 key lessons from
PAGES 4-5
MERGER MANof IA M&As The ins and outs
PAGE 11
CONNECTING TECH IN OTTAWA
VOL. 1, ISSUE 6
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
FORMER NORDION CEO STEVE WEST, WHO CO-CHAIRS THE INNOVATION CENTRE AT BAYVIEW YARDS, AND ICBY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR RICHARD QUIGLEY SAY THE MUCH-ANTICIPATED FACILITY WILL HELP SPUR ECONOMIC GROWTH IN OTTAWA. PHOTO BY MARK HOLLERON
OTTAWA’S INNOVATION STATION New entrepreneurship hub will open a world of opportunities, backers say PAGES 8-9
DRIVING FORWARD
QNX at forefront of auto tech PAGE 3
TAKING FIVE
MERGER MANIA
5 key lessons from startup fest PAGES 4-5 The ins and outs of M&As PAGE 11
SYSTEM UPDATE
Subscribe to TECHOPIA’s weekly e-mail newsletter at techopia.ca
— SPONSORED CONTENT —
The Wow! factor is alive and well Kanata North’s pedigree, talent are driving semiconductor success
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
Kanata North remains on the cutting edge when it comes to the next generation of semiconductor technologies. And why wouldn’t it be? That pedigree is rich and runs deep, all the way back to Bell Northern Research and the old Mitel Networks. Take GaN Systems, co-founded eight years ago by CTO John Roberts and President Girvan Patterson. Their resumes, and those of others on the management team, are a who’s who of the big local names in the industry through the ’90s and the 2000s. That’s no accident. GaN’s potentially game-changing gallium nitride switching and power conversion portfolio was prototyped in the National Research Council of Canada’s own test foundry acquired from Nortel Networks. When it came time to build and expand GaN’s team, the founders had no problem finding a great pool of proven local talent from which to draw.
TECHOPIA.CA
02
Heritage of the area But it isn’t just talent – a corporate culture that fosters open creativity has also carried over from those old days. “That’s a heritage of the technology sector here that’s still alive and well,” Patterson said. Sidense Corp. is another thriving player that’s taken advantage of
creative culture and talent to grow its global clout in the vast market for embedded non-volatile memory. Its team pedigree includes Chipworks, MOSAID Technologies, Mitel Networks and ATMOS Corp. The company has been snapping up good memory people wherever it can find them. “If you’re a good circuit designer, you’re going to find employment here,” said Tomasz Wojcicki, VP of Customer Engineering Support. Even semiconductor multinationals that set up shop in Kanata North are looking for more than just another satellite office. They’re looking for a specialized local team to tackle hard problems no one else can. Rocket science Take Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited. TSMC has grown over the past two decades from a startup in chip manufacturing into the world’s largest independent foundry. Roughly half of the chips found in mobile phones today are manufactured at TSMC. TSMC’s Ottawa team works on next-generation memory compilers, high-speed interconnects, and perhaps most impressive of all, test systems that are embedded on the chip itself. “We have here one of the top
groups in the world that is working on stuff that no one else has ever seen,” said Cormac O’Connell, Director of TSMC’s Ottawa Design Centre. “We’re literally doing rocket science here.” • Ottawa’s semiconductor industry (and you might even say Canada’s) began in 1969 when Nortel Networks forerunner Northern Electric created Microsystems International Ltd. (MIL). MIL produced one of the world’s earliest microprocessors, the MIL MF7114, and a series of early microcomputers using this chip. • MIL was also the place where future serial entrepreneurs Terry Matthews and Michael Cowpland met. The rest, as they say, is history. • Today’s chips can contain 10 billion devices, where a single atom out of place can have a
Learn more about why Kanata North is fertile ground in which to grow successful companies and find great talent, from semiconductors to software-as-a-service, at www.serioustechliveshere.com
dramatic impact on performance. What’s on a chip these days needed a whole server room 20 years ago. • GaN Systems’ gallium nitride compound chips replace conventional siliconbased electronic switches that just can’t meet spec for speed, temperature, voltage or current. Efficiency-improving applications range from high-performance auto engines and industrial to making your TV even thinner and getting rid of that brick on your laptop power cord. • As an independent foundry for hire, TSMC makes chips for fabless electronic
companies so they don’t have to spend billions to set up their own foundries. This enables them to build products and compete against the likes of Samsung or Intel – companies that can afford to fabricate their own chips used in their branded system products. • Sidense Corp. is making waves with what might seem like an old, quaint technology – onetime programmable memory. But that supposed “limitation” provides one significant benefit – a tough layer of added security as more and more devices become connected through the Internet of Things.
APPLE ENLISTS SHOPIFY TO EXTEND ITS DIGITAL WALLET TO WEB TECHOPIA.ca the infrastructures are speaking the same language? This is what might take time to implement.” KPMG identified another hurdle in its report: you’re not getting into a self-driving car until you’re 100 per cent sure it’s not going to drive off a cliff. There will most certainly be early adopters when autonomous drive is ready for public streets, but QNX recognizes consumer hesitance in handing over total control of the car. Malfunctions aside, an insecure OS could open the door to the hacking of self-driving cars. (You wouldn’t want to be David Hasselhoff if KITT from Knight Rider suddenly went rogue.)
FINDING AN OPENING On the other hand, that’s also where Wall sees the opportunity to establish QNX as an industry leader. Wall knows that safety and security of the self-driving car will be paramount, but he is adamant that QNX can become the OS of the autonomous vehicle. He sees its platform as the steadfast “glue” in the car that will connect autonomous drive systems from a variety of developers. KPMG also found the eventual adoption of autonomous drive would dramatically reduce accidents, predicting that nearly 80 per cent of crashes could be mitigated with controlled-vehicle technology. That’s thousands of lives (and billions of dollars) saved.
SLOW – BUT CONSTANT – ACCELERATION
JOHN WALL, VICE-PRESIDENT OF ENGINEERING AND SERVICES AT QNX. PHOTO PROVIDED
QNX IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT TECHOPIA talks to John Wall about autonomous driving and where QNX fits into the journey BY CRAIG LORD
SETTING THE PACE “We see the role of QNX as providing a safe and secure platform and all the necessary plumbing to connect these systems together,” says John Wall, vice-president of engineering and services. The systems, he says, need to come together to form a world of self-driving cars. To move independently of a driver’s control, cars will need to understand the world around them. To this end, QNX is developing object recognition technology so that a car can read a stop sign, for example, or recognize an adjacent lane. On top of that, the company looks to enable cars to actually communicate with driving infrastructure, and even with other cars (collectively, V2X).
ROADBLOCKS
DRIVING LOCAL ROADS Wall is glad his team is taking on this ambitious work in Ottawa. While QNX has arms all over the world, having headquarters in Canada’s capital has meant access to a pool of talent from some of the best software companies in the world. “From a software talent base, I don’t know that I’ve seen a place that’s much better than Ottawa.” Whether it’s led by an established leader in QNX, or a sudden push from a California juggernaut, it seems the road to autonomous driving runs through Ottawa.
03 TECHOPIA.CA
Cars need to talk to each other to avoid collisions. Makes sense, right? Well, there’s a bit of a snag, says Wall. “I think probably the largest challenge is, how do you make sure all the vehicles and
From a software talent base, I don’t know that I’ve seen a place that’s much better than Ottawa.
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
The autonomous driving industry is revving up, and Ottawa seems primed to lead the pack. QNX Software Systems is the leader of the city’s automotive software industry. The developer of automobile clusters, telematics and infotainment OS became a BlackBerry subsidiary in 2010 and now acts as the Waterloo giant’s automotive arm. QNX reached a milestone this summer with its acoustics software shipping in more than 50 million systems across 20 automakers, and the release of a new platform for instrument clusters. This success hasn’t gone unnoticed in the industry. Apple recently picked up Dan Dodge, the founder and former CEO of QNX, with speculation that he will be part of the company’s own autonomous drive ambitions. “Project Titan,” as the top-secret initiative has been dubbed, has led Apple to establish a Kanata presence across from QNX. The next 10 years will be pivotal for the future of autonomous drive. A report from KPMG earlier this year stated the auto industry was primed for the self-driving
revolution. “Everything, from how we move goods to how we move ourselves around, is ripe for change,” it read. And QNX wants to drive that change.
Wall suggests that autonomous driving won’t happen all at once. He sees semiautonomous, or assisted, driving as the transitional step that will win over drivers. Technologies such as park assist and blind spot monitoring, already featured in many vehicles, can help to build consumer confidence. Phasing in smart sensors that can help you to make a lane change safely, for example, is the kind of baby step that can make a driver more comfortable with eventually taking their hands off the wheel entirely. “I think it’s going to be gradual. I really see a large timeframe where you’re going to have assisted driving that’s going to, every year, year over year, improve the safety of the vehicle before people start watching TV in the car,” says Wall. QNX is focused on developing this transition with its “glass cockpit” concept. Sitting in the front seat, a driver should have a clear view of the car’s instrument cluster and infotainment system. This means you can assess speed, upcoming navigation commands, communicate distractionfree with the back seat, and more – all this without ever taking your eyes off the road.
“I think as a company, if you can get those two things right — having a clear direction on what you are trying to do and bringing in great people who can execute on Follow TECHOPIA on Twitter @techopiaOTT or like us at Facebook.com/techopiaOTT the stuff — then you can do pretty well.” – MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO OF FACEBOOK
GET SOCIAL
TOP 5 TECH LESSONS Key takeaways from Montreal startup festival BY JACOB SEREBRIN
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
The Montreal International Startup Festival is now one of the top events for aspiring and proven Canadian tech entrepreneurs, attracting about 2,000 people every year. For the hundreds of startup founders who attend the event, it’s a chance to network, learn some lessons from successful entrepreneurs and maybe meet potential investors. As its name suggests, the event, which takes place outside in Montreal’s Old Port, has a festival atmosphere. It’s a little more casual than your average business conference, but it’s serious when it comes to the content. Here are some of the key takeaways from the festival:
TECHOPIA.CA
04
2. THERE’S ONLY ONE SILICON VALLEY
“I don’t understand the obsession with trying to become Silicon Valley – I think that’s silly,” Shopify CEO Tobias Lutke told the audience during his talk on the festival’s main stage. He says there is only one Silicon Valley and that startup ecosystems in other places should focus on their own strengths – because if they try to be something they’re not, they’ll just be a poor imitation of the original. His colleague Finkelstein says he sees that happening. “I think what Canadians have started 1. BEING A STARTUP ISN’T ABOUT SIZE doing is, rather than looking at all the — IT’S ABOUT MINDSET reasons that their particular cities aren’t “I think a startup is actually much more good, they’re looking at what they have that of a mentality than it is a number of no one else has,” Finkelstein says. “I have a people thing, or how much revenue you relationship with a group of ambassadors have,” says Harley Finkelstein, the COO of that can introduce me to anyone I need in THE MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL STARTUP FESTIVAL HAS BECOME A TOP DESTINATION FOR ASPIRING ENTREPRENEURS. PHOTOS PROVIDED Ottawa-based Shopify. any country because I live in Ottawa.” He says Shopify still has a startup While Finkelstein says he sees a tech mentality even though it’s a publicly renaissance happening across Canada, traded company that dates back a decade. it’s particularly notable in Ottawa because “One of our core philosophies is ‘Act the city was hit so hard when the dot-com like owners,’” Finkelstein says. “If everyone bubble burst in 2001. feels like Shopify is their baby and Still, Lütke says Silicon Valley might be everyone feels like they’re the founder of worth the occasional visit. It can be a good Shopify, even though we have more than place to think big, he says. 1,000 people, we get the best result.” A big part of that, he says, is staying 3. EVEN IN THE MODERN WORLD, THE TECH “scrappy.” BUSINESS IS STILL ABOUT PEOPLE “We’re a group of guys and girls who really spend their time experimenting with Technology may be able to connect people things. Stuff that works, we scale and stuff like never before. A lot of the startups at that doesn’t, we shut it down,” he says. the festival are taking advantage of that One way Shopify maintains that with their products, but meeting people “scrappiness” is by holding quarterly “hack in-person is still important. days,” where employees can work on any “When you come to a place like this, project they want – provided it could help the biggest thing you’re getting is you’re the company – for two days. reconnecting with folks you already know It’s a way for the company to and developing new contacts. Business is experiment with new and sometimes all about random collisions,” says Manu outside of the box ideas, while boosting Sharma, the co-founder of Ottawa-based morale and giving employees a chance to AirLoop, which offers a loyalty program for work with new colleagues. small businesses.
HOPEFULLY THIS DOESN’T GO TO TORONTO’S HEAD TECHOPIA.ca I think a startup is actually much more of a mentality than it is a number of people thing, or how much revenue you have. HARLEY FINKELSTEIN COO, SHOPIFY
A casual meeting can “suddenly turn into a possibility, an opportunity,” he says. “It’s the connections, the people you meet and there’s always something to learn from people sharing their wisdom.” Networking opportunities are also what drew Felipe Izquierdo, founder of Ottawabased Welbi, to the festival. “It really is all about the people that I meet, the connections that you build, the network, that’s definitely the No. 1 reason that I’m here,” says Izquierdo whose startup develops software that turns existing wearable devices into healthmonitoring tools.
4. DON’T BE AFRAID TO COMPETE — EVEN IF THE ODDS SEEM LONG Shaun MacLellan, a student at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, says he wasn’t sure what he would get out of the Montreal festival. In fact, he didn’t decide to go until the last minute. It ended up paying off for MacLellan, the founder of YouCollab, a startup that connects YouTube content creators. His startup ended up coming third in the festival’s main pitch contest. It received a $35,000 investment and an invitation to the attend the Next 36, a mentorship and networking program for young entrepreneurs. Still, it wasn’t easy. MacLellan says he was around the 120th entrepreneur – out of more than 200 – to pitch the judges.
5. INVESTORS WANT TO SEE REAL PRODUCTS AND REAL TRACTION “In general what we’re looking for is functional product, early customer usage and revenue, hopefully some semblance of a team,” Dave McClure, the founder of 500 Startups, a Silicon Valleybased venture capital fund and startup accelerator, told the audience during a talk at the festival.
He says his firm, which has more than US$200 million in assets under management and has invested in 1,300 startups, wants to see real metrics before it makes investments. “I don’t want to know that you or your mom think your product is awesome, I want to know that your customers think your product is awesome and the objective evidence of that is that they’re using and paying for it,” he says.
— SPONSORED CONTENT —
Ranzure Networks Getting Set to Move the Mobile World into 5G
I
ntroducing the new kid on the tech block; Ranzure Networks. Ranzure , seed funded by anchor investor Mitel Mobility, is a growing new company focused on bringing 5G to the planet. 5G mobile technology is focused on enabling operators to meet the demands of an ever more mobile world.
the capacity of current mobile networking solutions at a fraction of their costs. Ranzure’s solution is unique in that it can be deployed as an underlay, without disturbing the operator’s legacy 4G network.
“Ranzure’s revolutionary approach to mobile networking is going to give mobile operators globally a cost effective mechanism to meet the performance challenges that they face as they move forward into the ever-more-mobile world of IT we live in” says Terry Mathews, Mitel chairman
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
05 TECHOPIA.CA
Ranzure may be a young and aspiring company, but its founding team (Erik Boch, Pardeep Kohli, Ashok Khuntia) have plenty of successful history in the technology start-up game. They’ve started several new companies that have successfully made their way to IPO or acquisition;
• Spatial Wireless (now Alcatel) • Mavenir Wireless (now Mitel Mobility) • DragonWave So what is Ranzure’s focus? “Ranzure is developing 5G Cloud RAN technology which changes the way mobile networks are deployed and the services that they can deliver to the mobile world” says Erik Boch, co-founder and CTO of Ranzure. Mobile networks have been going through an evolutionary process over the past few decades … 2G…3G….now 4G …. Each bringing small incremental improvements. There comes a time where a new coat of paint isn’t the solution …. It has to renovated. “Ranzure’s solution is a revolutionary new way in which mobile networks will be built and how they’ll delivery nextgeneration ultra-high capacity services to our mobile devices” says Pardeep Kohli, co-founder and Ranzure’s CEO. Ranzure is currently growing its R&D operations to fuel the development of revolutionary Cloudbased SW and highly deployable, auto-configuring micro basestations that will deliver 1000 - 10000X
TECH-FLIX
Updated local and national video posted weekdays at techopia.ca
Supporting Your Technology Business From Development to Deployment and Beyond
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
As a cutting edge business, you need growth strategies as innovative as you are. As the fastest growing national accounting, tax and business consulting firm in Canada, MNP has the same entrepreneurial spirit and mindset as you. Whether you are looking to establish a new business venture, increase profitability, expand into global markets or structure your business for optimal value, MNP has the in-depth expertise, knowledge and industry leaders to help you create opportunities not just for today or tomorrow, but well into the future.
TECHOPIA.CA
06
Contact Mike Dimitriou, CPA, CA at 613.691.4242 or michael.dimitriou@mnp.ca
QNX REACHES 50-MILLION MILESTONE FOR UNITS SHIPPED TECHOPIA.ca
APPRENTICESHIPS: An old yet new approach to entrepreneurship education Post-secondary institutions across Ontario are embracing entrepreneurship education at an unprecedented rate, according to a recent report by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. Beyond the notion of starting new businesses, entrepreneurship education benefits students in many diverse ways, including the development of critical skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity. These are skills that are increasingly in demand by both public and private sectors. The University of Ottawa Entrepreneurship Hub is adopting its own unique approach to entrepreneurship education through a learning-by-doing model that has a long and successful history in the trades: apprenticeships. The apprenticeship model of entrepreneurship education is described in more detail in the following interview between Luc Lalande, the executive director of the University of Ottawa EHub, and students Jocelyn Courneya, Miriam Saslove and Melina Kokkinos from the Faculty of Arts. All of these students are experiencing apprenticeships as part of a student-led venture named the “Digital Storytellers Guild” (DST Guild).
DST GUILD: Apprenticeships have a long history of success in occupations — often referred to as the trades — characterized by technical proficiency of tools. Why did you believe it had potential application to entrepreneurship education?
DST GUILD: Outside of student associations,
LUC LALANDE WITH STUDENTS FROM THE ‘DIGITAL STORYTELLERS GUILD’ AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA. PHOTO PROVIDED
LALANDE: When I first joined the University of Ottawa in June 2014, I spent considerable time talking to students about the meaning of entrepreneurship. It became clear to me then that many young people on campus identified entrepreneurship as something that primarily interested business students. Following this train of thought, entrepreneurship education was synonymous with taking a business course if not an outright business degree. My challenge, therefore, was to find a way to engage students in a way that fostered an entrepreneurial mindset and behaviours without students having to, first, feel
they needed to take a business course or degree and, second, start a business. In order to reach more students beyond the business school, I needed to change the “language” that is typically adopted in describing entrepreneurship education. The famous quote from management guru Peter Drucker sums it up best: “Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.” Another deep influence in adopting the apprenticeship model of “learningby-doing” was my involvement with the global maker movement and more specifically maker education. I was intrigued by the constructivist learning paradigm pioneered by Seymour Papert,
MILIEU CODING PATH TO A BETTER GOVERNMENT BY CRAIG LORD
LEE-MICHAEL PRONKO AND LUISA JI, CO-FOUNDERS OF MILIEU. PHOTO PROVIDED
to implement a neighbourhood study in Kitchissippi. The goal was to find out how residents felt about potential developments before proposals headed to committee and before zoning amendments were already underway. “We want to foster a culture where residents are inputting their sentiments or are sharing their visions ahead of time, so they can shape their neighbourhoods,” says Ji. This is the philosophy of Milieu in a
LALANDE: I do. Especially for those fulltime students who are simply not ready to launch their own ventures but nonetheless wish to learn to think and behave more entrepreneurially. Apprenticeships while in school are a terrific way for students to gain valuable skills and experience before they graduate. And getting paid for it at the same time!
nutshell: Open democracy is better when more voices count. A problem with true open democracy is that if you try to hear everybody’s voice, it takes too long. For a single city, it would take long hours to sort through the hundreds of comments from residents and come to a reasonable conclusion. Or, better yet, you could break it all down into data. Milieu aims to use tools called cognitive APIs (application programming interfaces) to analyze feedback from public consultations and break down whether residents approve or disapprove of a project, or how ideas make them feel (sad, anxious, angry, happy, excited). Cognitive API tools offered by IBM and Microsoft can crunch thousands of comments and present the information right back to your app for a small fee. Milieu data analyst Trevor Deley says this technology is what makes the public consultation app so exciting. “You can know, in real time pretty much, what the public sentiment about a project is. You can capture the community,” he says.
07 TECHOPIA.CA
For co-founders Luisa Ji and LeeMichael Pronko, connecting residents with their city and developers is a fulfilling goal. The two Carleton University graduates were inspired to create Milieu when they walked together through the streets of Ottawa and found vacant lots and developments slated where neighbours weren’t consulted. “We talked to a lot of angry neighbours,” Ji says. “We wanted to dig deeper into why this was happening.” That inspiration coincided with the City of Toronto holding an urban planning and policy competition. A first place prize there pushed the two to found the business. The next boost came from Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper, who gave the group a $5,000 grant from his office’s budget
internships, and volunteering, it is very hard to find “hands-on” experience in communications as a university student. Becoming a part of digital storytellers allows for guidance and mentorship within the fields that interest you, while at the same time giving you the ability to manage your own projects and be creative. This program allows you to take risks, build your portfolio and take responsibility unlike other student learning experiences. And here is a question for you, Luc. With so much emphasis on campusbased incubators and accelerators, do you think the idea of “apprenticeships in entrepreneurship” will catch on?
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
On a Saturday afternoon, in a small, crowded living room in Ottawa, a group of entrepreneurs are trying to code their way to a better democracy. Milieu is aiming to change the discussion around public development in a massive way, but it’s starting small. The 16-person team was just accepted to the City of Guelph’s Civic Accelerator program. Starting in September, the group will be embedding with the city to overhaul the way Guelph notifies and consults with residents about development proposals. The startup is developing a web and mobile application that quantifies public sentiment on proposals and gives residents an organized voice in neighbourhood intensification.
one of founding faculty members of the MIT Media Lab. The core tenet of his constructionist theory of learning is that people build knowledge most effectively when they are actively engaged in constructing things in the world. I imagined that Papert’s model could be applied to entrepreneurship education by way of apprenticeships. Practice-based entrepreneurship, I thought, would be the next best thing to actually starting up your own venture. I’ve got a question for you. As undergraduate students in the public relations and communications program in the Faculty of Arts, you are among my first “subjects” experimenting with this apprenticeship model of entrepreneurship education. What has been your experience so far?
BETTER SOFTWARE CEO DELIVERS STREETSMART, INSPIRATIONAL MESSAGES TECHOPIA.ca receptionist will ask key questions to understand an entrepreneur’s immediate needs and know where to direct them to their first point of contact. In some cases, it may be an outside organization, such as one of Ottawa’s business improvement areas. However, the Innovation Centre is equipped to help entrepreneurs with several programs and workspaces, including: MadeMill: An advanced additive manufacturing space and advanced digital media lab, this is a workshop for designing, prototyping, testing and production that allows companies to take an idea and see if it can be developed into a scalable product; Incubation and meeting space; Accelerator programs offering a suite of technical and business programs, services and support; A global cybersecurity program and other sector-specific expertise; Foreign direct investment, trade and economic development expertise, programs and resources; Education and training opportunities.
INNOVATION CENTRE MANAGING DIRECTOR RICHARD QUIGLEY AND THE CENTRE’S CO-CHAIR, FORMER NORDION CEO STEVE WEST, CHECK OUT THE FACILITY DURING A RECENT TOUR. PHOTOS BY MARK HOLLERON
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OTTAWA’S NEW INNOVATION CENTRE
TECHOPIA.CA
08
The multimillion-dollar transformation of a 75-year-old city maintenance garage into a hub for entrepreneurship and innovation is nearly complete. Later this year, the Innovation Centre at Bayview Yards will officially open its doors, bringing together many of the city’s economic development programs and business support services under one roof. Proponents hope it will also become a focal point for entrepreneurship that will create jobs and help startups grow faster. Ahead of its opening, TECHOPIA spoke with the chair of the Innovation Centre’s board, former Nordion CEO Steve West, as well as managing director Richard Quigley about what the city’s business community can expect to see at Bayview Yards.
WHAT IS IT? In a nutshell, the Innovation Centre at Bayview Yards aims to be a onestop business shop to accelerate and build companies. It’s aimed at being a collaborative place that houses startups, entrepreneurship experts, economic development programs, educational workshops and other business support services under a single roof. “It’s different from anything that’s existed before in Ottawa,” West says. Located inside a renovated and repurposed 46,000-square-foot former public works garage, the Innovation Centre is within walking distance of the Bayview Transitway station west of the downtown core. The core premise is that having entrepreneurs, advisers, investors and
professional service providers in a single building will lead to “happy collisions,” or impromptu conversations and networking that wouldn’t happen if all those people were located in separate facilities across the city.
WHAT’S INSIDE? The Innovation Centre is a place where early-stage entrepreneurs can learn what information and assistance they need to grow. Some companies may need help developing a prototype of their product, for example, while others may need to sharpen their sales pitch or learn how to break into a foreign market. An entrepreneur walking through the Innovation Centre’s doors for the first time will be greeted by a concierge, Quigley says. Much like a medical professional would triage a patient, the
WHO WILL BE INSIDE THE INNOVATION CENTRE?
The city’s lead economic development agency, Invest Ottawa, will be leaving its current home in Little Italy to become the Innovation Centre’s anchor tenant. Invest Ottawa will be bringing its core programs, including the GrindSpaceXL startup accelerator and its global marketing division, to Bayview Yards. The city’s largest post-secondary institutions – Algonquin College, Carleton University, La Cité and the University of Ottawa – will have a presence, as will organizations such as the Ottawa chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and the Ontario Centres of Excellence. Industry associations such as Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters will also be represented and will draw on the Innovation Centre’s resources when their members need prototypes or certain forms of expertise.
WHY IT’S NEEDED West describes the Innovation Centre as a “beacon.” Even if an entrepreneur doesn’t know what exactly is happening at Bayview Yards, they know where to go. “The city has many things going on, but they are often (geographically) disparate,” West says. The Innovation Centre will also be a central focal point for international companies considering an expansion to Ottawa, says Blair Patacairk, Invest Ottawa’s managing director of investment and trade. “When we go out and start talking about why (companies) should come to Ottawa, we (talk about our) great talent, technology and universities. Now, we’ll have all these things in one place,” Patacairk says. “That cuts the time for them to enter the market and get their product up and running.”
WHO RUNS IT? The Innovation Centre is a non-profit
WHAT’S HAPPENING Stay up to date with TECHOPIA’s calendar of events at techopia.ca
Entrepreneur’s view Mona Hafez says she was listening to a venture capitalist’s presentation at Startupfest in Montreal this summer when she realized her business was missing something. The investor’s key message to entrepreneurs in the audience was to build relationships with would-be funders before they start searching for seed funding. “I haven’t spent the last few years cultivating relationships with investors,” says Hafez, the CEO of OrbitHub, which develops booking and registration software for sports clubs and community associations. Instead, her recent focus has been on developing a market-ready product. However, Hafez says that the Innovation Centre can help her firm fill that gap. OrbitHub was admitted to Invest Ottawa’s incubator in 2014 and will be moving to the Innovation Centre with the economic development agency this fall. Hafez says she’s optimistic that being located inside the new facility will help in her search for funding. “The Innovation Centre is going to be generating traffic like Invest Ottawa, but it will attract a broader community of investors, potential customers and other advisers,” she says. “If there are investors passing through the facility, introductions are going to be happening a lot more naturally.”
THE NEW 46,000-SQUARE-FOOT INNOVATION CENTRE AT BAYVIEW YARDS IS SLATED TO OPEN THIS FALL IN A FORMER CITY MAINTENANCE GARAGE THAT HAS BEEN COMPLETELY REMODELLED. PHOTOS BY MARK HOLLERON
agency with a board of directors that, in addition to West, includes Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, Windmill Development Group’s Jeff Westeinde, Deloitte’s Mike Runia, tech executive Jim Roche and development consultant Nancy Meloshe, among others. Quigley was named the centre’s managing director earlier this year.
HOW IS IT FUNDED? Some $38 million in public money and in-kind contributions have been pledged to the Innovation Centre, including: $15 million from the City of Ottawa in funding and donated real estate; $15 million from the provincial government for construction, design, engineering and other capital expenses;
and $8 million from the federal government. A spokesperson for the Innovation Centre said it’s too early to discuss its operating budget.
offer business hours at Bayview Yards once a month. Seasoned businesspeople are also invited to volunteer as mentors and coaches.
HOW CAN COMPANIES GET INVOLVED?
WHAT ARE THE MEASUREMENTS OF SUCCESS?
Members of the city’s business community are welcome to attend events or grab a coffee at the Innovation Centre’s cafe to network. There is also space available to rent. “It’s considered a public building,” Quigley says. “Companies that want to offer training or organize events should be calling and talking to us.” As another example, he said that service providers could rent meeting room space at the Innovation Centre and
The Innovation Centre has several internal targets, including helping to facilitate 335 new jobs in the Ottawa region and assisting 1,200 “entrepreneurs, innovators and firms” through programs supported by the federal government by December 2018.
WHEN WILL IT OPEN? A soft opening is planned for late autumn.
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
09 TECHOPIA.CA
CONNECTED ON THE GO Check out TECHOPIA newsfeed on your mobile device at techopia.ca
Université d’Ottawa
|
University of Ottawa
Andrew Todd Paralympic athlete — Canadian Rowing Team BASc in Chemical Engineering (’14)
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
Our heartfelt congratulations go out to Andrew for his participation in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio TECHOPIA.CA
10
Faculty of Engineering engineering.uOttawa.ca
MERGER WILL CREATE MICROPROCESSOR JUGGERNAUT IN OTTAWA TECHOPIA.ca AGILITY +
MEDIA MISER
= INNODATA
THE STRAIGHT DOPE: MediaMiser president explores the ins and outs of M&A Chris Morrison knows mergers and acquisitions from both sides of the table – buyer and takeover target. The president of Ottawa-based MediaMiser, which creates software and provides services related to media monitoring and analysis, played an active role in the acquisition of Agility from PR Newswire last month. The purchase allows MediaMiser to add 1,500 former Agility customers, 50 employees and annual revenues in the $5-million range. Over the years, MediaMiser has been part of four acquisitions, including its own purchase by Innodata. Here is an edited interview with Morrison.
TECHOPIA: How about pointers on bringing the deal to a close and dealing with all the last-minute legal niceties?
MORRISON: These are some of the most
TECHOPIA: From a MediaMiser perspective, what is the purpose of M&A activity?
MORRISON: One of the most difficult
MEDIAMISER PRESIDENT CHRIS MORRISON HAS BEEN THROUGH HIS SHARE OF MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS. PHOTO SUPPLIED
and opportunities that become available to others. Our most recent acquisition of Agility from PR Newswire was a direct result of this consolidation and represented an opportunity to double the size of our company overnight, add new products, and bring talented professionals into the fold – a rare triple play. The threat was if we were unsuccessful in our bid to acquire Agility, it would have been bought by another competitor, which would in turn make it more difficult to achieve our goals.
Gatineau-based Infoglutton in 2012, it was as simple as having met the founders at an Ottawa networking event and noting that both firms could benefit by working together in the future. In my experience, at least so far, the conversation always starts by getting to know the company founders and keeping everyone open to the idea that while you may be competitors now, you could achieve even more success by working together.
TECHOPIA: Any pointers on managing
TECHOPIA: How do you make the
what must be very complicated and delicate conversations, particularly valuation?
approach? How do you identify an M&A target?
MORRISON: While valuation can be the
MORRISON: There’s no singular approach.
TECHOPIA: And what about posttransaction? Everyone thinks it’s going to be a dream world, but it must be fraught with pitfalls.
MORRISON: Harvard Business Review estimates that over 70 per cent of all acquisitions fail. Some of the biggest companies in the world have made huge mistakes, but we’ve been fortunate so far with ours. It may sound sentimental, but at the end of the day it’s all about people. This is true of both new employees and customers you’ve acquired. As we speak I’m at LaGuardia Airport, heading back home after a four-day, off-site planning session with our new leadership team from Agility. Being able to sit down in person and discuss their concerns, the future, and how we’re going to effectively work together and win the market is critical.
11 TECHOPIA.CA
All four of our acquisitions have had completely different origins and approaches, but do have one thing in common: timing. When we acquired
single most debated topic on both sides of a deal, the reality is that most deals are driven by previous M&A activity in your industry. Investment banks and M&A advisers track and publish activity by sector, and include information on
valuable lessons I’ve learned in M&A, and you almost have to go through the process yourself to fully understand it. It’s definitely a case of expect the unexpected. But the most poignant advice we received, advice that has rang true in all our M&A activity, was given to me by our investment banker at San Diego-based Software Equity Group: “A deal is never done until it almost falls apart.” It’s a very complicated process that of course requires strong legal representation, but maybe even more importantly, open lines of communication between all parties to deal with inevitable last-minute (and often critical, make-or-break) issues.
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
things a company faces is acquiring new customers. Usually, this happens through either organic growth or acquisitions. While M&A activity must align with the overall goals of the organization and fill gaps in products and services, often the end result is acquiring a significant group of new customers or the ability to sell more efficiently into the marketplace. At MediaMiser, we’ve now been a part of four acquisitions (including being acquired ourselves in 2014), and each had their own specific purpose – often filling a technology or experience gap – but no matter the reasons, they all must support the growth of your company. But the decision also can’t take place in a bubble. You need to account for activity in your marketplace driven by your competitors, as well. Our industry – PR solutions for tracking and analyzing news – is undergoing significant consolidation, and there has been a breathtaking amount of acquisitions by some of the larger players (most notably Cision). When a larger player starts a “land grab” for market share, there are both threats
transaction values and the multiple paid on revenues or profits. There are always outliers like Microsoft’s $26B acquisition of Linkedin (a whopping 91 times earnings), but realistically most deals fall within a documented formula that can be researched from the outset. For any entrepreneur, I would highly recommend a book by Vancouver-based M&A advisor Basil Peters titled Early Exits. It’s a fascinating look into the M&A world from someone who was first an entrepreneur, then a venture capitalist, and now an M&A adviser.
VATION STATshopIOforNstartups INNO iew Yards facility one-stop Bayv
CONNECTING TECH
IN OTTAWA
INNOVATION STATION
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
VOL. 1, ISSUE 6
Bayview Yards facility one-stop shop for startups GROWTH IN OTTAWA. PHOTO
BY MARK HOLLERON
ATION OTTAWA’S INNOVATION ST
FORMER NORDION CEO STEVE
WEST, WHO CO-CHAIRS THE
INNOVATION CENTRE AT BAYVIEW
YARDS, AND ICBY EXECUTIVE
New entrepreneurship hub
WARD DRIVING FOR nt of auto tech QNX at forefro
PAGE 3
DIRECTOR RICHARD QUIGLEY
SAY THE MUCH-ANTICIPATED
FACILITY WILL HELP SPUR ECONOMIC
rtunities, backers say PAGES 8-9
will open a world of oppo
TAKING FIVE startup fest 5 key lessons from
PAGES 4-5
MERGER MANof IA M&As The ins and outs
PAGE 11
WE INVITE YOU TO AN E XCE PTIONAL FIVE-DIAMOND GOURMET EXPERIENCE Le Baccara offers French-inspired cuisine, where delectable dishes, vintage wines, courteous service and elegant decor come together in an unforgettable dining experience. Wednesday to Sunday from 5:30 p.m. PRIVATE SALON available for groups of 10 to 30 guests.
MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016
Free outdoor parking and WiFi
TECHOPIA.CA
12
casinolacleamy.ca
819-772-6210
18+