OPENING UP S OUT F***UPupside of failure AB Entrepreneurs explore the
CONNECTING TECH
IN OTTAWA
VOL. 1, ISSUE 4
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016
OPENING UP ABOUT F***UPS Entrepreneurs explore the upside of failure
OPENING UP S ABOUT F***UP Entrepreneurs explore the
upside of failure
T DOPE WORDS STRAIGHWDF THEIR OWN IN UNDING the word out ON CRO CEOs embrace blogs to get shares its dos and don’ts
REALITY? AWhat’sNEW happening with VR in Ottawa
Wipebook
CONNECTING TECH IN OTTAWA
VOL. 1, ISSUE 4
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016
OPENING UP ABOUT F***UPS
Entrepreneurs explore the upside of failure
IN THEIR OWN WORDS STRAIGHT DOPE CEOs embrace blogs to get the word out ON CROWDFUNDING Wipebook shares its dos and don’ts
AWhat’sNEW REALITY? happening with VR in Ottawa
“If you’re changing the world, you’re working on important things. You’re excited to get up in the morning.” – LARRY PAGE, CEO OF GOOGLE
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EMBRACING F---UPS Global movement comes to Ottawa, changes attitudes about failure BY STEPHEN KARMAZYN
In Ontario, we are relying too much on government money. We’re not paying enough attention to what the core of entrepreneurship is about. Mistake No. 1 is to confuse government money with customer money. That is a terrible thing to do. TONY BAILETTI, DIRECTOR, CARLETON TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
itself pivot to become a more welcoming environment in which to discuss failure – in other words, more like Silicon Valley. Still, he thinks the local scene is changing. His main takeaway from failure? Never give up. “It takes a decade to build an overnight success,” he says. As for the high failure rate, Tony Bailetti, director of Carleton’s Technology Innovation Management program and the Lead to Win program, thinks it’s more of a problem for startups that haven’t passed what he calls the “first wall.” He defines this as companies that are still pre-revenue. Bailetti believes the success rate for businesses beyond that “first wall” will be
much higher. Whatever statistic you believe, everyone agrees that starting a business is hard. “In Ontario, we are relying too much on government money,” says Bailetti. “We’re not paying enough attention to what the core of entrepreneurship is about. Mistake No. 1 is to confuse government money with customer money. That is a terrible thing to do.” Bailetti says that not all dollars are created equal, and that a quick customer dollar is not the same as a government dollar, which often takes a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy to attain. “I love government programs,” he says, “but they take time, it’s a distraction (and not a) substitute for customer dollars.” Bailetti also bemoans the myth of “supermen entrepreneurs.” “You can’t do it alone. You need people who are smarter than you are, and different than you are.” Bailetti calls for diversity of skills in a startup, what he calls a “complete brain team.” But at F---Up Nights, talking about failure isn’t necessarily about learning. “You can learn from the mistakes of the presenters,” Connell says, “but I don’t think that’s the point of the event. It’s more about being comfortable, addressing failure and talking about failure.” Connell wants people to share their stories to show a more realistic business community. “All these overnight success stories, very often there are five to 10 things that didn’t work out before. For us, it kind of acts as therapy for the speakers, but for the attendees it says, ‘OK, here are some very smart, talented people and they f---ed up.’ “It’s cool, it happens.”
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was given the highest possible rating by the Carleton University Lead to Win incubator/ accelerator program. His venture was growing fast and seemed poised for success before it suddenly closed shop. “We did not calculate effectively how much runway we needed until we hit critical mass,” Moukarzel says. “We had enough funding to start the business, we had enough funding to grow it, but we didn’t have enough funding to … go to all the cities in Canada, which is what we needed to do to be at scale.” Moukarzel says his company needed bridge money from angel investors to sustain it until it could scale. When that didn’t materialize, the service was no longer financially viable. “During my experience with eCelery, I’ve learned more than I’ve learned in my entire 23 other years of my life,” he says with a laugh, adding he was pulling 80-hour work weeks when business was really cooking. “You grow on a whole new level. You start to see things in a different way. Starting a new business, which I will be doing quite soon, is going to be a lot easier now that I know some of the kinks and little details.” During that time, Moukarzel says he was wearing a lot of “different hats,” forcing him to do marketing, HR, pitching and otherwise running the business side of the company. Aydin Mirzaee also knows a thing or two about failure. While creating his biggest success to date, survey software company Fluidware, he pivoted several times before discovering a winning strategy. Fluidware was eventually purchased in 2014 by global software-as-a-service company SurveyMonkey. That storybook ending isn’t typical. Many experts predict that 90 per cent of entrepreneurs fail. That’s not exactly comforting for new entrepreneurs, but Mirzaee says you’ve just got to go for it. “It’s about jumping before you look to a certain extent,” he says, “because no matter how perfect the idea is, you’re going to fail. You’re going to have to pivot and pivot and pivot until you get it right. Sometimes people are waiting for the perfect business model or the perfect business that will be a $50-billion entity. As a result, they never end up actually acting. Or they’re afraid that because this idea’s not perfect, there’s a large chance of failure.” Mirzaee wishes that Ottawa would
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016
In business as in life, failure can be a dirty word. But if there is truth that you must fail before you succeed in business, why do so many entrepreneurs shy away from the subject? In an effort to truly embrace failure, there is now a global movement called F---Up Nights, where professionals gather and presenters openly commiserate by telling their stories of failure. “We were drinking mescal and we realized that we had all screwed-up businesses, but we had never shared those stories,” says Leticia Gasca, co-founder and director of F---Up Nights. “That was weird. We were talking about (our failures) for three hours. We ended up concluding that had been our most meaningful business conversation ever.” Two weeks later, F---Up Nights was born. Eight months later, the movement had spread to 15 cities. In 2015, three years after the company started, they were it was in 71 cities across the world. And now the event has officially gone viral with events in 144 cities and 53 countries. Ottawa is one of three Canadian cities hosting the event, along with Toronto and Calgary. Apparently, talking about failure is now in vogue. “Some of the best stories are about how something totally crashed and burned,” says Jason Connell, organizer of F---Up Nights Ottawa. “You can find any number of events where someone is willing to get up and say they hacked, they hustled, they did xyz and now they’re a huge success, but I don’t think it’s very often where you find an event where someone will stand up and say, ‘This really went to hell.’” F---Up Nights also fuelled the creation of the Failure Institute, which enlisted universities for the sole purpose of studying business failures. “We realized that there is almost no … quantitative research of business failure,” Garcas says. If you’re wondering about the results, the No. 1 identified reason for business failure is insufficient income – something that Ottawa-based Cyril Moukarzel knows all too well. The co-founder of eCelery, an online food service that delivered homemade quality foods to local doorsteps, Moukarzel
“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 the stuff — then you can do pretty well.” – MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO OF FACEBOOK
ALLAN WILLE KLIPFOLIO
BLOG ON Tech CEOs extol the virtues of regular blog writing BY CRAIG LORD
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016
Blogging is no longer just the realm of conspiracy theorists and teenagers with a celebrity crush. Tech companies and their CEOs have embraced the medium as an avenue to share some insight – and a bit of personality – with their networks. Allan Wille, CEO of Klipfolio, started penning a weekly blog last year. Return on investment might have been the
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original impetus for Wille to start blogging, but that was never the focus of his writing, he says. “Outside of the fact that yeah, content marketing is good for business, we needed to find something that was going to resonate and help our customers. So for us, what better thing to write about than our experiences?”
“Why it’s important to have guiding principles – and follow through on them” AUG. 28, 2015
“Improving the user experience was a conscious decision on our part. We knew – and our customers told us – that we needed a journey that was self-serve. And if I can count my recent experience as scientific proof, I’d say that in the last two and a half years there has been a 10-fold improvement in the time it takes to build a Klip. By defining your must-haves, by setting targets, and by motivating people to reach them, we’ve dramatically improved our product. We’re not done - not even close. It’s an ongoing process.”
As the CEO of a smaller business that primarily caters to small and mediumsized enterprises, Wille says he has been in the shoes of his clients – his prospective readers – and has a unique opportunity to share that perspective. “I didn’t know what the benchmarks were for growth. I didn’t know how to go about hiring senior staff. I didn’t know how to go about bringing in venture capital money. A lot of these experiences, I think, are really valuable for our own audience,” he says. He will often write about his management style, something notable that he encountered in his week, or about some of Klipfolio’s growing pains. The ideas aren’t hard to come by. Wille says that most CEOs are already thinking about the business 24-7. It’s just a matter of putting the words on the screen. “The difficulty comes in editing and actually getting it done. This is where I have some help,” he says, reflecting on the role his team plays in bringing his ideas to fruition. Beyond connecting with readers, there have been unexpected benefits to writing a regular blog for Wille. As the CEO of a rapidly growing company, he says the majority of his employees actually read his posts and that serves as a great internal communication mechanism. Additionally, Wille has found his blog acts as a chronicle of Klipfolio’s advances. The high times, the lows and how they got to where they are today – it’s all bundled
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CRAIG FITZPATRICK PAGECLOUD
“Just the Beginning …” NOV. 27, 2015:
“I always have mixed feelings when I see this little startup’s Version 1 getting compared to the giants ... WordPress, Wix, Squarespace. It’s both flattering and frustrating at the same time. We are 15 months old. This is just the earliest of expressions of our vision for the web. They are each almost 10 years old, with hundreds of developers. We have seven. But we are growing fast, thanks to the wonderful response and support from our paying customers. And we are in this for the long haul. We too see this as an ecosystem. With third-party developers, widgets, plugins and places where others can create and share their wares. It won’t take long before we catch up on that front.”
in various blog posts. “It’s the same reason people keep diaries. It’s a nice way of capturing that blip in time and your thought process when it happened.” There are a few things that have helped Wille achieve success with his blog. Keeping posts short and simple makes it readable – leave the jargon in the boardroom. Having a regular cadence to his posts and thinking about when his audience is going to be reading is also crucial. “Every Saturday morning we publish this blog … and we’re finding that’s when people are in a receptive mood. They’re sitting down with their coffee and they actually read the post. It’s an uncluttered time,” he says. That’s also what surprises Wille about his blogs: people actually read them. He didn’t expect the gratifying and positive responses that have come since he started sharing his posts. He recalls a comment just a few weeks ago: “Allan, Happy New Year! Do me a favour: keep posting blogs.” That people actually care about what he writes, Wille says, is pretty awesome. TECHOPIA has gathered a few excerpts from our favourite Ottawa CEO bloggers. Read them here and then check them out online. Let us know on Twitter at @TechopiaOTT who your favourite local bloggers are!
ELI FATHI
KIRK MUNROE
EFEI
“My Business Rules Blog” OCT. 29, 2015
Name: Andrea Girones Personal Injury Lawyer wa tta O er, rtn Pa m Fir Title: ers Company: Girones Lawy WHAT IS GIRONES LAWYERS? Girones Lawyers is Eastern Ontario’s leading law firm for personal injury and medical malpractice. Its award-winning team works with individuals and families who often cannot afford to hire a lawyer on an hourly basis. They are hurt, unable to work and are suffering physically and financially. Girones instead works on a contingency and deferred fee basis – clients don’t pay a dime until a financial resolution is achieved in their case. The Ottawa office works throughout Eastern Ontario, from Pembroke, to Belleville and the Quebec border. The firm also has offices in Timmins, Sudbury and Toronto. WHAT IS AN INTERESTING FACT ABOUT GIRONES LAWYERS? The firm is a family business, launched by Andrea’s father, Lorenzo. He has practiced law for 45 years and has been recognized as one of Canada’s top personal injury lawyers. In 2007, Lorenzo was awarded the H. Bruce T. Hillyer Award from the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association for “advancing the rights of individuals through the use of trial advocacy.”
“Mind Blown in China – Week 1 Recap”
While Andrea runs the Ottawa office, Lorenzo heads up the Timmins office. But father and daughter often work together on malpractice cases.
NOV. 14, 2015
“You need someone who you can trust and work well with to run these complex cases,” Andrea said.
“Travelabulous was recently selected into the Chinese Angels Mentorship Program (CAMP) … Masha and I were thrilled and excited to be selected to the firstever cohort for the chance to work with other great entrepreneurs, access to and learnings from the world’s largest market, and mentorship and business partners from China’s best entrepreneurs and technology leaders. So, one week ago, we jumped on a plane for Beijing and the start of this unknown adventure.”
HOW IS GIRONES LAWYERS INVOLVED WITH THE SENS? The firm has long been a Season-seat Member, to treat staff and clients alike to a fun night out, and to support the local team. Tickets are also donated to various local charities for fundraising raffles. Each year, Girones rents a suite during a game to host its Christmas party for the families of its team. As a Season-seat Member, Girones takes advantage of perks like family skates on Canadian Tire Centre ice, and opportunities for the kids and grown-up hockey fans alike to meet and mingle with their favourite players. “It’s a great family friendly experience,” Andrea said.
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016
“The concept of eating the elephant one bite at a time centres around the idea that when facing a big activity, that may even seem insurmountable, it is important to break it down to manageable smaller tasks and address them on a priority basis, one task at a time. Breaking the large task into smaller chunks provides a number of added benefits as the subtasks can be distributed among members of the team. This in turn could facilitate adding an external resource with the required talent, and it may lead to increased productivity as the team witnesses progress and success.”
TRAVELABULOUS
… w a l f o e l u The r and hockey
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“If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.” — FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
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LEFT TO RIGHT: MITCH ROBINSON, PRESIDENT AND COO; STEPHANE CHARBONNEAU, FOUNDER AND CTO; TIM UPTON, FOUNDER AND CEO; CHARLIE PULFER, FOUNDER AND VP. PHOTO BY MARK HOLLERON
TITUS celebrates 10 years keeping your data safe Ottawa firm charts its future in mobile and cloud security
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016
T
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en years ago, TITUS was a threeman security consulting firm in a small office near Kettleman’s bagel shop on Carling Avenue. Today, it’s an international data security and governance company, serving enterprise customers such as Dell, Intel and NATO. TITUS is coming off a record year for sales, revenue and profit. The team has grown to more than 130 employees in Ottawa and at regional offices in the U.S., Europe and Australia. Another 65 positions will be filled this year. TITUS has definitely made its mark on the international security software industry, while keeping its roots firmly in Ottawa. “Sometimes entrepreneurs feel they have to sell their soul and move to Silicon Valley to play on the global stage,” said Founder and CEO Tim Upton. “But we’ve been successful in becoming a top-of-the-line technology company from Ottawa because we’ve been able to find top talent right here with the dedication and loyalty that’s
important to our business.” TITUS now occupies the eighth floor of the Adobe Tower on Preston Street. As a nostalgic throwback, you can still find in this office “Kettleman’s Corner.” This bright lounge area is meant to encourage impromptu brainstorm sessions, celebrate birthdays, host charity events and even feature international cuisine from the talented individuals who work for the company.
TAPPING INTO A GROWTH MARKET
After a decade of being privately held and profitable, TITUS is now considering venture capital (VC) financing to help accelerate its growth. “We are still a bit of a hidden gem in Ottawa,” said Charlie Pulfer, Founder and VP. “We’re not a household name because we never had a VC round. We always funded ourselves through our growth and our sales. It’s only now that we’re considering VC
investment to really expand and accelerate our growth.” TITUS’s information classification technology has become an essential tool for many organizations to identify and protect every piece of critical business information. The company has built a base of three million users worldwide. “From Ashley Madison to Target, data breaches have become an unfortunate reality of modern business,” said Stephane Charbonneau, Founder and CTO. “Information can now be monetized quickly, increasing its value. Companies need to protect their brand and reputation, and effectively secure their customer information. TITUS helps organizations identify what information they have, where it is, and who has access to it so it can be protected.”
NEW OPPORTUNITIES IN MOBILE, CLOUD
TITUS sees some big market opportunities
before it, including the shift in data storage and collaboration to outside the traditional firewall. This has left high-value data to spread everywhere, Charbonneau added. “Files with personal employee information, customers addresses and payment details, legal contracts, design schematics and intellectual property and trade secrets are now all over the place, from the biggest servers to an individual smartphone,” he said. “We want to help our customers effectively manage their risks around data security and privacy on premise, in the cloud or over a mobile device.” To expand its capabilities in mobile and the cloud, TITUS is making greater investment in talent with the right technical expertise, as well as senior experience in all departments. It expects to grow its headcount by 50 per cent by year end.
BUILDING COMMUNITY SPIRIT
The founders all agree that the key to building a great team is to ensure the workplace culture is fun and inclusive. It begins with a strong focus on community involvement and team-building events. “We’ve always been a pretty flat organization that takes the emphasis off hierarchical divisions and encourages innovative thinking,” said Mitch Robinson, President and COO. “People can get to know each other through social activities outside of the usual work day.” This includes supporting local charities
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such as Trips for Kids Ottawa, Toy Mountain, Cornerstone Housing for Women and Daffodil Month for the Canadian Cancer Society, as well as fundraising through the Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival. Even the founders get out of their comfort zones with dance and airband performances at staff events (think Meatloaf’s Paradise by the Dashboard Light). The annual holiday party sees TITUS fly in its sales staff from around the world. “We’ve worked hard to preserve that entrepreneurial spirit that brought us here,” said Robinson. “We encourage our employees to generate ideas that management will then support.” For example, staff can take part in TITUS FORUM, an in-house business competition that gives everyone the chance to contribute and develop new ideas to help drive innovation and impact the company’s bottom line. Software Development Manager Matthew McCormick has been along for most of the ride, having joined the company nine years ago. Even then, the passion of the team was a big draw. “I had never met a group of people who cared so much about what they were building, and I wanted to be a part of it – they made me want to be a part of it,” he said. “Naturally a lot has changed over the years, but that overriding passion is still here. In engineering, we hire based on cultural fit as much as technical skill. The culture here is what makes TITUS great, and makes it easy to recruit great people.”
AVID CYCLISTS FROM TITUS ENJOYING AN EARLY MORNING RIDE THROUGH GATINEAU PARK
LEARN MORE
In June, TITUS will host FOUNDATIONS 2016 in Ottawa. This exclusive thoughtleadership conference brings the world’s top IT, security and compliance professionals to the nation’s capital. To learn more about TITUS and new career opportunities, please visit www.titus.com
CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS “Classification is and will continue to be a cornerstone of our information security policies, and TITUS solutions help us to reinforce security policy with all of our employees on an ongoing basis.” - Canadian Department of National Defence
TITUS EMPLOYEES BUILDING BIKES TO BE DONATED TO TRIPS FOR KIDS OTTAWA
07 TITUS TEAM READY FOR THE OTTAWA DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL
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“TITUS allows NATO to extend our information protection program to mobile information, helping us to ensure that sensitive information is being effectively protected across the organization on any device.” - NATO
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016
“It is a fine balance between our need to protect information, and sharing information with those who require it to do their jobs. TITUS was the first solution we found that would engage end users in the protection of information and help educate them so they make better decisions on how information is handled.” - Dell Inc.
EACH YEAR, TITUS EMPLOYEES DONATE GIFTS TO CORNERSTONE HOUSING FOR WOMEN
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” — RICHARD P. FEYNMAN
VR TREND GETS REAL Virtual reality is making its mark on industries
from health to entertainment, and Ottawa firms are ready to cash in
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016
BY STEPHEN KARMAZYN
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The virtual reality revolution is coming. Predicted to be worth around $5 billion this year, the industry is set to balloon to as high as $70 billion in four years, according to a TrendForce study. That’s a lot of headsets. Whenever new technology comes along, many will dismiss it as a gimmick, and VR certainly faces its fair share of naysayers. But they dismiss it at their own peril. From health to entertainment to porn and everything in between, VR is set to be the next big thing in tech, many industry observers say. Prof. WongSook Lee of the University of Ottawa, an expert on VR, believes it, calling virtual reality “one of the industries of the future.” She believes that unlike the original VR of the ’90s like Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, the technology has finally caught up with the developers’ imaginations. “Now the head-mounted display has become a lot more practical than before,” she says. Issues such as dizziness and the weight of the headset have been fixed. This generation is more ready for VR because it spends much more time in front of video screens than previous generations, Lee says. Ottawa is not far behind on jumping on the VR bandwagon. SimWave, an offshoot of the military simulation developer SimFront, is a Kanata-based company developing 4D exhibits for museums across Canada. 4D is the term for interactive media that employs other senses, whether it’s generating smells as you watch a cooking show, creating the feeling of the ground shaking beneath your feet when a tyrannosaurus appears on screen or being hit with virtual gusts of air to simulate a windy day. Think the D-Box at movie theatres. “We had these Oculus Rifts (virtual reality headsets) and we started exploring the idea of developing a similar environment that would recreate the soldiers’ PTSD issue for treatment,” says SimWave CFO Adam Caithness. “From the PTSD world we started talking about history … and museums. Kids don’t want to just come in and read plaques anymore. That’s not cool. Looking at the artifact in the display case lasts all of five seconds. So the virtual reality stuff came in.” With the 150th anniversary of Canada’s confederation coming up in 2017, SimWave saw an opportunity to get
into the 4D exhibit market and land the lucrative government contracts that come with it. Along with a VR scenario involving a train that is set to debut at the Canada Science and Technology Museum when it reopens in 2017, SimWave has also developed a Vimy Ridge simulation. The Vimy scenario demo takes place inside a six-foot square box while the user wears an Oculus Rift headset. Once in the program, users are assailed by cold as they march across the desolate battlefield of Vimy, the ground shaking beneath them as artillery is fired off. The entire scenario, when complete, will run five minutes and feature simulations that include climbing a ladder out of a ditch and putting on a gas mask. SimWave hopes to have its booth installed in museums across Canada in 2017, the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Caithness doesn’t believe VR stops at historical re-enactments. Whether it’s exploring the moon, watching a sports game or being treated by a doctor, she says the industry is set to explode. And speaking of the health sector, the Ottawa Hospital has been taking advantage of VR for years in its Rehabilitation Virtual Reality Lab. Known as CAREN, short for ComputerAssisted Rehabilitation Environment, the lab is not a headset but rather a mobile platform topped by a treadmill set in front of a wrap-around wide screen with 12 surrounding infrared cameras to track movements as small as two millimetres. This is definitely not your grandpa’s rehab facility. “How we think of VR is that we’re changing the sensory inputs,” says Courtney Bridgewater, the VR lab’s operator, “so that we will go from the bottom up and rebuild their brains so they can go in the real world and function.” This includes helping patients with everything from concussions to spinal injuries. The patient is fastened to a harness and then experiences one of the simulations either provided with the rig or created in house by engineers like Bridgewater. The simulations vary, with some examples including a rickety bridge and a busy bus, the platform speeding up and tilting as necessary to match what’s happening on the screen. “The idea of any sort of rehab is you are trying to create a change in the brain so that people can relearn whatever function
TOP TO BOTTOM: KANATA-BASED SIMWAVE IS DEVELOPING VIRTUAL REALITY EXHIBITS FOR MUSEUMS, INCLUDING A VIMY RIDGE SIMULATION THAT IS SET TO BE INSTALLED IN MUSEUMS ACROSS CANADA IN TIME FOR THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FAMOUS WORLD WAR I BATTLE IN 2017. THE FIVE-MINUTE SCENARIO WILL INCLUDE SITUATIONS SUCH AS CLIMBING OUT OF A DITCH AND PUTTING ON A GAS MASK. PHOTOS SUPPLIED
they’ve lost,” says Bridgewater. That allows for simulated environments the patient otherwise couldn’t experience in a safe and monitored space, she says, adding this leads to faster recovery times. But that’s not to say that CAREN is perfect. “It’s not really plug-and-play,” says Bridgewater. “That’s why they hired an engineer. Because sometimes stuff just doesn’t work. In some ways it’s very intuitive, and in some ways it’s not. There are bugs,” she adds with a laugh and a nod, so as to say those bugs aren’t uncommon. She is also doubtful of how effective VR will be in the rehabilitation sector of health, since each patient’s case is unique, requiring modifications in the software for each person. “The cookie cutter, user-friendly stuff,
is not the (right stuff) to really get the benefit. There’s a human component that really needs to be in there … for VR to treat patients,” she says. While she does allow that as more developers get their hands on the tech more apps will be developed, she says it will be difficult to produce mass-market, user-friendly VR for rehab use. CAREN itself isn’t exactly cheap. It carries a price tag of about $1.5 million to $2 million, depending on the services, parts, labour and other add-ons that are purchased with the machine. Another potential obstacle for VR is the focus on hardware. “One of the big issues facing VR right now is the hardware side of the industry is exploding,” Caithness says, “but the content for that hardware, that’s where we need to go. We need more people making content … that people can use.” Still, virtual reality technology had a strong presence at the most recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where some even dubbed it the year of VR. As with any new technology, there’s always the chance it won’t catch on as expected (the augmented reality Google Glass, for example), but with VR, the opportunities seem endless. Whether you’re training for combat or surgery, watching a live concert or travelling back in time, VR seems like it might be one of the next groundbreaking techs of our generation.
WHAT’S HAPPENING Stay up to date with TECHOPIA’s calendar of events at techopia.ca
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Early actions for startups to protect your interests
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Understand what others, including your competitors, have established rights to or are trying to establish rights to
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Establish agreements from the very beginning for employees, founders, subcontractors and, most importantly, for any person working on product development to clearly define the company’s ownership of any IP generated; confidentiality agreements are critical and always avoid verbal agreements
Simple Google searches can avoid selecting company and product names that will clash with existing businesses; your lawyer can also search trademark databases and corporate registration systems to confirm availability of proposed names
Patents can protect processes, products, systems as well as physical appearance / function and can cover hardware, software, apps to (ideally) block competitors completely or force them to more expensive, less elegant solutions, but obtaining them takes time so starting early helps
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While you can file patent applications yourself, there are pitfalls that can destroy or limit your rights; so it is critical to engage early with professional support
Not all IP requires immediate expenditure, but some events can be absolute and catastrophic in patents so engage professional assistance early to be clear about potential issues and understand what may or may not be protected about your invention or concept; for example, outside of North America, disclosing an invention before filing an initial patent application destroys the ability to secure an enforceable patent
Social media is now more important than a killer domain because there are so many domain extensions; secure these yourself: company name and product name in all social media; for a couple of hours of time spent registering, you can save a lot of pain
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If you’re a startup or tech company with IP related questions, contact Adrian C. O’Donnell, a patent specialist in the Perley-Robertson, Hill & McDougall Business Law Group. He can be reached at 613.566.2858 or aodonnell@perlaw.ca.
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016
Be conscious of the fact that information will become accessible immediately to clients and competitors about your actions in most instances, for example, when you incorporate, apply for trademarks, establish domains, secure government contracts, establish yourself on social media
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THE STRAIGHT DOPE Kickstarter success story Wipebook shares its list of dos and don’ts
BY CRAIG LORD
his successes – and even a few failures – when it comes to crowdfunding.
TECHOPIA: Why was crowdfunding an
FRANK BOUCHARD WIPEBOOK
Frank Bouchard, one of the founders of Wipebook, knows a thing or two about crowdfunding. His first run at Kickstarter had a modest goal of $4,000, but he ended up raising more than $400,000. A subsequent campaign raised more than $100,000. In about a month’s time, Wipebook will be launching another campaign for its latest iteration of an erasable notebook. TECHOPIA asked Bouchard to give us the straight dope on
attractive option for Wipebook? BOUCHARD: I think the No. 1 factor was it was really a last-ditch effort for us to validate our product in a very lean and inexpensive way. We thought the platform has a lot of visibility because of the community that constantly checks the new products that are happening. For absolutely no money, we could make our own little video, post it up online, and get some feedback from that community. It ended up working really well for us.
TECHOPIA: How did you promote it? BOUCHARD: The biggest one that we had, we actually didn’t promote it whatsoever. It really just grew organically, virally. We posted it on a Friday morning and we saw
Investing in tomorrow’s talent Hydro Ottawa harnesses the energy of youth
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ydro Ottawa has made the list of Canada’s Top Employers for Young People three years running. Why? Because it recognizes the need to invest in a new generation of talent. This investment spans the entire educational journey, beginning with in-school programming for elementary students about electrical safety, conservation and careers. Hydro Ottawa also offers programs and internship opportunities for students at the secondary and post-secondary level. Most notable is the company’s partnership with Algonquin College in the delivery of a two-year Powerline Technician diploma program. The learning continues when these students go on to become a Hydro Ottawa employee. Whether they’re working in one of five trades apprentice programs or contributing to the company as a summer or co-op student, all young workers at Hydro Ottawa know that their professional development matters and that they can make a difference early in their careers. Youth involvement matters so much that the President and Chief Executive Officer personally chairs a Youth Council.
Investing in people It’s this kind of engagement that brought Budget Officer Ahsan Rai to Hydro Ottawa. He first worked for the company as a summer student, where he was given the opportunity to make the most of his education in the internal audit and risk management function. Rai then took a full-time position after graduation in 2010. “The organization takes great interest in its employees,” he said. “Regardless of your educational background – whether it’s engineering, trades, IT, accounting and finance, marketing or human resources – Hydro Ottawa is a place where you can truly build a career.” Sasha McCulloch has been working for Hydro Ottawa for a year and had previously completed a 16-month co-op with the utility as part of her university studies. She is now completing Hydro Ottawa’s Engineering Intern Training and Development Program, which will help her obtain a Professional Engineer designation. “I decided to work for Hydro Ottawa because of the support you receive during your transition from university to the working world,” she said. “From day one, Hydro Ottawa has been committed to
Hydro Ottawa Budget Officer, Ahsan Rai, says the organization takes great interest in its employees. helping me grow professionally.” “Hydro Ottawa also stands out as an employer because giving back to the community is such a vital part of its culture,” McCulloch added. How can your organization tap into the next gen? To date, 16 per cent of Hydro Ottawa’s total workforce is under 30. During a
recent survey, eighty-five per cent of students who had worked for the utility said they would return if given the opportunity. The labour market is undergoing its greatest demographic shift since the Second World War. What steps is your organization taking to ensure it has the talent it needs to prosper in this new reality?
Like my new telephone, my computer works just fine, my calculator is perfect, but Lord, I miss my mind! — AUTHOR UNKNOWN
We made a lot of really stupid mistakes on the first one that ended up being very, very good for customers. We really didn’t expect to have like 8,000 customers. We thought we would have maybe 20 customers. So we were saying five dollars, international shipping, anywhere in the world. Our product was in a range where it was $20 to $25, so it was pretty affordable for someone to try something new out … That created a snowball effect. It was tough for us because we had not calculated what anything would actually cost, and I’m actually surprised we made it out alive.
right away the traction it was getting … We raised our goal in the first 24 hours. The subsequent campaigns after the fact were very different in nature because it wasn’t just a brand new, novel idea. We really had to mechanically try to push the product. We really relied heavily on e-mail campaigns. We pinged the database of people that we already had. Talking to other people that have had successful crowdfunding campaigns, e-mail seemed to be the No. 1 way to actually get people to back your campaign.
TECHOPIA: Where does crowdfunding fall short?
BOUCHARD: It has a lot to do with what your product is and who are the community of people who are going to be looking at it. It really is a sales channel per se and you have to look at what your typical customer is going to look like on each platform and see if your product is conducive for those people. For example, we had someone ask us for crowdfunding advice and they had a product that was a giant constructiontype drill for manufacturers. And it’s kind
of obvious that the people on Kickstarter are more of the trendy, techy people who are looking for cool, innovative things and that type of product may not be conducive to that channel. It may not be that somebody’s idea is bad, but it may not the right channel for that product.
TECHOPIA: They were both incredibly successful, but why was the first campaign more lucrative? BOUCHARD: We made a lot of really stupid mistakes on the first one that ended up being very, very good for customers. We really didn’t expect to have like 8,000 customers. We thought we would have maybe 20 customers. So we were saying five dollars, international shipping, anywhere in the world. Our product was in a range where it was $20 to $25, so it was pretty affordable for someone to try something new out …That created a snowball effect. It was tough for us because we had not calculated what anything would actually cost, and I’m actually surprised we made it out alive. But the second campaign, we really wanted to put some buffer in there. So we increased the shipping, we increased the cost of the product, and that deterred some people. Just make something that seems like a really great deal to the people you’re trying to attract. Whether or not you can make that happen is a different story!
TECHOPIA: Any other key things to keep in mind when deciding to crowdfund? BOUCHARD: Customer support is something we totally underestimated. Especially if your campaign is doing really well, you have something like 8,000 customers that are constantly personally messaging you, asking for updates, changing their orders, and that’s a resource that we totally underestimated. So just keep that in mind to have resources for that if ever the campaign does really well.
So what are the takeaways? •
• • •
Make sure your product is conducive to the crowdfunding market – a trendy bunch! E-mail should be your primary marketing channel. Keep customer support in mind in case you end up with a hit. Don’t make the deal too good, because the crowd will take advantage!
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OPENING UP S OUT F***UPupside of failure AB Entrepreneurs explore the
CONNECTING TECH
IN OTTAWA
VOL. 1, ISSUE 4
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016
OPENING UP ABOUT F***UPS Entrepreneurs explore the upside of failure
OPENING UP S ABOUT F***UP Entrepreneurs explore the
upside of failure
T DOPE WORDS STRAIGHWDF THEIR OWN IN UNDING the word out ON CRO CEOs embrace blogs to get shares its dos and don’ts
REALITY? AWhat’sNEW happening with VR in Ottawa
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