TECHOPIA 20160620

THE TALK OF THE TOWN Chatbots the latest trend in artificial intelligence

CONNECTING TECH IN OTTAWA

VOL. 1, ISSUE 5

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

THE TALK OF THE TOWN Chatbots the latest trend in artificial intelligence PAGES 4-5

HISTORIC FRONTIER

Museum CEO looks to future PAGE 3

INNOVATION NATION?

GAINING ASSENT

Feds urged to revamp strategy PAGES 7-9 Firm fights its way to the top PAGES 10-11

SYSTEM UPDATE

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MUSEUM SPACE Science and Tech CEO looks to new frontiers

Change is in the air at the Canada Museum of Science and Technology. The museum’s main building, which closed in 2014 due to mould in the walls, is undergoing an $80-million revitalization and will reopen in late 2017. Earlier this year, the federal government approved $156 million for a new collection and conservation centre to house the museum’s 300,000 artifacts.

Alex Benay, 35, is at the centre of it all. The president and chief executive of Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation, which also operates the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, is a leading proponent of museums stepping outside their traditional walls and into the digital world.

TECHOPIA spoke with Benay, one of the Ottawa Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 recipients this year. The interview has been edited for length.

LT.-GEN. MICHAEL J. HOOD, CANADA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MUSEUMS CORP. PRESIDENT AND CEO ALEX BENAY AND MP KAREN McCRIMMON, PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE MINISTER OF VETERANS AFFAIRS AND ASSOCIATE MINISTER OF NATIONAL DEFENCE, AT AN EVENT TO MARK THE ARRIVAL OF CANADA’S OLDEST HERCULES AIRCRAFT. PHOTO SUPPLIED

Science and Tech it’ll be amazing, but we don’t want to lose that.

TECHOPIA: You’ve said museum attendance as a measure of success is outdated. What are some other, more up-to-date ways to measure success, in your view?

BENAY: Well, we still measure attendance.

fantastic; it just wasn’t in the cards. And we feel confident in the site that we have.

We have 20-plus acres of land to grow on.

A science park outside doesn’t exist in Ottawa, but seems to exist in other major cities like Vancouver or Calgary. So why not look to create something for youth in the area? Let’s face it: it’s an area that needs this kind of space.

TECHOPIA: After several years of asking for it, the federal government finally approved the funds for a new collection and conversation centre in this year’s budget: $156 million over three years.

How much of a game-changer was that?

BENAY: It’s everything. The museum

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investment was important, but this is at par with that, if not greater.

One is we get to have all of our staff in the same building. A lot of the corporate staff are spread out. We have 19 buildings to manage, so we have 65 per cent of the national museum portfolio infrastructure to manage.

From the collections perspective, it’s going to be a purpose-built facility.

This is going to be state-of-the-art. We’re going to be co-housed with the National Gallery and the Canada Conservation Institute. We’re trying to make as much of it open to the public as possible. We are trying to create some digital research labs in partnership with post-secondary institutions and incubators like Invest Ottawa and DigiHub from Shawinigan and others.

We are committed to opening a large part of this by March 2018. It’s extremely aggressive.

I think the word I officially want to use is “awesome.” The unofficial word may be “absolutely chaotic and crazy.” But we’ll get it done.

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

Aviation and Space has had some of its best years in history, in terms of attendance. But there are so many other almost two years. What has surprised factors. We’re a national institution that you the most about the gig so far? happens to be in Ottawa. What are we doing with youth in Iqaluit? What are we BENAY: After six or seven weeks on the doing to engage in Victoria? In St. John’s? job, we closed Science and Tech. That We just signed an MOU with the was probably the biggest “what the Smithsonian Channel to help produce heck” moment. We had always been televised documentaries in science and the underdog museum in the national tech and to get Canadian content out capital, and I kind of liked that, but we in the world. That’s just as important as found a whole other level of underdog. attendance in Ottawa. The agriculture But the thing I found the most and food museum is going to be at the surprising is how this group’s been able Stampede in Calgary this year. to turn this around into something Is attendance important? Absolutely. absolutely amazing. We’ve completely We want to have the best local experience redefined the meaning of the word “place” in the institution for us. The place that we can. But the point is, we have a is not Lancaster Road or the Aviation and local, national and international role as an institution. It’s a much, much broader Space Museum or downtown. “Place” is mandate than just getting visitors in the world. If you’re at a tech company or at an export company, people understand the door. So that’s what we’re looking at: what is that new value proposition that. If you’re in the museum space, you for a cultural institution in today’s don’t always think about it that way.

We do a lot of things digitally now with world? If we’re not at least having these conversations, then I would argue we’re the collection to increase our outreach. almost archaic by default.

We do video games that are in over 170 countries. We’ve been able to put our public programming in vehicles and TECHOPIA: You just launched take it on the road from Montreal to consultations for a year-round science Toronto to Sudbury, you name it. We’ve been able to slowly use 3D printing as an park in the green space next to the outreach mechanism across the country. museum. What’s your vision for that?

Considering everything that happened, that’s really good for us. When we reopen BENAY: Being downtown would have been

TECHOPIA: You’ve been in this job for

We’ve completely redefined the meaning of the word “place” in the institution for us. The place is not Lancaster Road or the Aviation and Space Museum or downtown. “Place” is the world. If you’re at a tech company or at an export company, people understand that. If you’re in the museum space, you don’t always think about it that way.

“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

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Bots just became this huge door that gave us access to over two billion users combined on all those networks. Conversational commerce is this next big branch of commerce that we see being developed, and it creates huge opportunities for marketing, for delivering and ordering goods.

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04 MICHAEL GOLUBEV, CEO OF OTTAWA-BASED 3DPRINTLER, SAYS CHATBOTS WILL SOON BE SO PREVALENT PEOPLE WON’T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO CALL A 1-800 NUMBER FOR ASSISTANCE. PHOTO PROVIDED

HOPEFULLY THIS DOESN’T GO TO TORONTO’S HEAD TECHOPIA.ca

CHATBOX REVOLUTION? Ottawa companies early adopters

service providers. Golubev has described the company as “Kayak meets TripAdvisor for 3D printing services, on steroids.”

3Dprintler launched a chatbot-enabled 3D-printing search engine earlier this year, which it presented at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in Brooklyn last month.

“Bots just became this huge door that gave us access to over two billion users combined on all those networks,” Golubev said in an interview. “Conversational commerce is this next big branch of commerce that we see being developed, and it creates huge opportunities for marketing, for delivering and ordering goods.”

By conversing with the bot, users can

BY MICHAEL WOODS the rising popularity of messaging apps compare prices for local 3D printing and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence services, place orders, track purchases The days of dialing 1-800 numbers and speech recognition have helped them and leave reviews, all without leaving the could soon be over, thanks to the latest become the hottest new tech trend. messaging app of choice. (It’s available on trend in artificial intelligence – and Ottawa At its F8 conference earlier this year, Facebook Messenger, Kik, Slack and Skype, companies are embracing the craze head- Facebook announced it was launching among other services). on.

Messenger Platform, a new chatbot On average, there’s a 56 per cent better The rise of chatbots means people can service. It has been a hit with developers conversion rate using the chatbot than order food, hail an Uber, buy a plane ticket so far. using the website, Golubev said. or even apply for a job by chatting with a “I think it just requires a little bit of “It’s such a different environment,” he bot on a messaging platform. awareness, and Facebook is creating it,” said. “It’s almost like chatting with your Part of the thinking is that younger, said Michael Golubev, CEO of Ottawabuddy, and he’s helping you convert the more tech-savvy customers are more based 3Dprintler. “In a year or two, people file and get the best price.” inclined to use a chatting service than call won’t even remember what it was like In April, Shopify announced it was an actual person for help. to call some toll-free number and be on building commerce bots for Facebook Chatbots themselves aren’t a new hold.”

Messenger. A day later, it acquired the phenomenon; they have been around in 3Dprintler, founded in August 2012, privately held startup Kit CRM, a company one form or another since the 1960s. But helps connect customers with 3D printing that helps businesses communicate with

of conversational commerce

their customers through chat.

“We believe messaging apps are the gateway for the internet on mobile, and conversational commerce represents a huge opportunity for Shopify,” Craig Miller, Shopify’s chief marketing officer, said in a statement at the time.

While developers have flocked to Facebook’s new platform, the road to a chatbot-dominated commerce world won’t always be smooth.

When Microsoft’s Twitter chatbot “Tay” was released in March, it soon started spouting racist and sexually-charged messages in response to other Twitter users. Microsoft blamed a “co-ordinated effort by some users,” and the bot was taken down 16 hours after it launched.

But as messaging platforms continue to gain popularity and the technology improves, chatbots will certainly become more ubiquitous.

Golubev has a vision of the near future when everyone has a phone with a 3D scanner built in and local micro-factories manufacture 3D-printed products. That’s when he thinks the consumer side of 3Dprintler will take off.

But until that happens, the company is targeting the business-to-business market.

“The biggest thing we hear right now from Fortune 500 companies is they want to be involved in 3D printing, but they don’t understand how,” he said. “Until the market fully matures, that’s where the money is.”

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

05 TECHOPIA.CA

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he biggest changes in Canadian securities law in a decade have taken place in the past year. The onus is on public companies and their officers to keep up to speed and avoid running afoul of securities laws.

A lot has changed in the compliance requirements and reporting obligations for a public company and its officers – just in the past year. The OSC is making it easier to raise capital, but, on the other hand, it is also taking fresh steps to penalize wrongdoing.

The most commonly talked about change relates to crowdfunding. In January, Ontario became the fifth province to have a program that allows start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to raise capital through equity crowdfunding. But crowdfunding is just the tip of the iceberg.

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Security holder prospectus exemption (Feb. 11, 2015).

Listed issuers can access capital from their current shareholders more easily.

Shareholders can access the often “sweetened” private placements of listed issuers that were previously for the most part only available to the small number of investors able to take advantage of the accredited investor exemption.

Family, friends and business associates (FFBA) prospectus exemption (May 5, 2015). This replaces Ontario’s much narrower founder, control person and family exemption and increases investment opportunities for investors who are closely related to a corporation but who would not have qualified under previously existing exemptions.

Amendments to the rights offering prospectus exemption (Dec. 8, 2015). The

new rights offering exemption is designed to be faster and more efficient but it is only available to reporting issuers other than investment funds.

As a result, the rights offering exemption changes the capital raising potential of both reporting and non-reporting issuers, but in very different ways.

Offering memorandum (OM) prospectus exemption (Jan. 13, 2016). This allows business enterprises, particularly SMEs, to benefit from more costeffective access to capital from investors than was previously permitted under Ontario securities law.

The forthcoming whistleblower program, expected this year. This will provide monetary incentives for individuals to report alleged insider trading, accounting and disclosure violations and registrant misconduct. The program is also expected to entice companies to self-report wrongdoing to the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC).

“The OSC is cracking down on people who try to fly by the seat of their pants and end up running afoul of securities regulation,” said Tim McCunn, a partner with the Business Law Group at PerleyRobertson, Hill & McDougall LLP/s.r.l. with a focus on corporate and securities law.

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DAY ON THE HILL Bringing small business owners, public servants and politicians together

BY MICHAEL WOODS

The federal government’s muchanticipated innovation agenda took centre stage at Ottawa’s Shaw Centre early last month.

The event was Startup Canada’s third annual Day on the Hill, a 1,500-person gathering geared toward bringing small business owners, public servants and politicians together.

Activities included so-called ‘policy hackathons,’ during which entrepreneurs worked with ministers to tackle policy challenges such as women in entrepreneurship, social innovation and disruptive tech in government.

The 50 meetings with cabinet ministers and members of Parliament, policy hearings, panels and other events centred around the theme of Canada’s innovation agenda.

Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains is leading the Liberal government’s development of an innovation agenda by next year’s federal budget.

Here are four ideas and recommendations for the federal government that emerged from the gathering:

OVERHAUL CANADA’S PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

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The feds are being urged to overhaul their procurement strategy to better support small businesses owned by indigenous, women and ethnic minority entrepreneurs.

Startup Canada suggests a program that adopts elements from the U.S. 8(a) Business Development Program, which helps socially and economically disadvantaged entrepreneurs compete in the marketplace.

“Most small businesses cannot compete for these government tenders,” Startup Canada CEO Victoria Lennox said. “They’re just not to scale.”

A new program would make it easier for businesses owned by women, indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities to bid for contracts.

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

BETTER SOFTWARE CEO DELIVERS STREET SMART, INSPIRATIONAL MESSAGES TECHOPIA.ca

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Government departments could also ensure major contracts awarded to large companies have a minority-owned company as a subcontractor.

BETTER ATTRACT AND RETAIN TALENT Startup Canada says the government needs to update economic immigration programs, such as the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and Express Entry, to bring more executive talent to Canada to help train startup founders.

New companies have difficulty bringing in new talent because of long processing times and administrative inefficiencies, Lennox said. That means they lose out on employees who don’t want to wait for months for approval to come to Canada.

Lennox also noted that Canada does a good job of training international students, but a bad job of keeping them here. Canada should look for ways to accelerate the permanent residency of international students trained here.

A NATIONAL WOMEN’S ENTREPRENEURSHIP STRATEGY STARTUP CANADA CEO VICTORIA LENNOX (ABOVE) SAYS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO OVERHAUL ITS PROCUREMENT PROGRAM TO MAKE IT MORE ACCESSIBLE TO INDIGENOUS, WOMEN AND ETHNIC MINORITY ENTREPRENEURS. PHOTOS PROVIDED

AMIKA MOBILE CEO SUE ABU-HAKIMA

MODERNIZE THE PUBLIC SECTOR

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Lobbying forms a small part of Startup Canada’s mandate. But since the Day on the Hill, Lennox said she has been booked solid with government officials eager to connect with the entrepreneurship community. “That was truly unexpected,” she said.

One of the messages she stressed is the need for the federal government to embrace an entrepreneurial culture to make it more nimble and foster innovation.

“It’s about public sector modernization; thinking like a startup and employing the latest technologies to create efficiencies like any company would,” she said.

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

There’s definitely some bias going on with how women are perceived in business, especially in tech. I’ve created hundreds of jobs and contributed well over $18 million to the Ottawa economy, and yet we still get treated as secondclass citizens. It’s astounding.

Spurring women-led entrepreneurship was a huge theme of the Day on the Hill.

Sue Abu-Hakima, the CEO of Amika Mobile, participated in several policy sessions. She called for a $100-million venture fund for women, since studies have shown eight out of 10 women are rejected for funding by banks.

“It looks like unless you have an intermediary male that the bank is comfortable with, they’re not going to fund you,” she said.

That’s despite women leading about half of all small businesses in Canada. In the United States, the rejection figure is much lower.

“There’s definitely some bias going on with how women are perceived in business, especially in tech,” Abu-Hakima added. “I’ve created hundreds of jobs and contributed well over $18 million to the Ottawa economy, and yet we still get treated as second-class citizens. It’s astounding.”

Lennox said it’s estimated that a 10 per cent increase in the number of women-­ owned firms over the next decade could result in a net economic gain of $15 billion.

“What we really need to do is doubledown on women entrepreneurship.”

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volunteer, but not long afterward became the company’s CEO. “If you were to ask me what do we need in Ottawa to build more businesses, I would say to you we need more Matt Whitteker,” Waitman said. “He is the reason Assent exists.”

Boxing, he said, is “kind of part of our DNA now.”

“It’s unique in the sense that you see a lot of icons and emblems being put into companies, you just haven’t seen any boxing rings,” Waitman said.

The ring is not just a symbol. It gets practical use, too.

“We’re not settling HR conflicts with boxing,” he said. “But we are using it as a stage. We are talking about the metaphors of going all the rounds and what it takes to be successful. We use it to announce wins, to talk to the company all-hands and so on.”

The $20-million Series A round is one of the largest ever raised in Canada, said Waitman. The compliance industry is not a new one, so what’s driving the sudden growth now?

He points to a few factors. The industry has been around for quite some time, but compliance has been done manually, he said. The compliance and the supply chain data collection business has generally not been what you call automated yet.

Another issue is that many senior experts well-versed in compliance information are retiring.

“It’s a bit of a demographic issue,” Waitman said. “That kind of trend of having your experts retire is terrible for these large organizations.”

Another is that data are spread all throughout companies. “You need a central repository of your data to be able to do the business analysis you need.”

The vast majority of software-as-aservice companies are built on highvolume businesses, Waitman said. But with compliance complexity increasing, Assent has risen rapidly by focusing on high-value clients.

“We are in the high-value, not highvolume, business,” he said. “What that means is we’re selling to the world’s largest corporations, and we’re selling large ACV, anywhere between $50,000 and $100,000 a year and up. If you’re going to do that, you need to deliver significant value.”

That’s why the company needed to raise money quickly.

“At our core, we are a data company, and data is the new oil,” Waitman said.

“We see the opportunity to be a data company with expertise and put it all together with automation.” manage their supply chain and product Cyril Cochrane, managing director compliance to make sure they’re meeting of growth and transition capital at regulations. Assent works with more the Business Development Bank of than 30 per cent of S&P 500 product Canada, said Assent was already growing companies. rapidly when they first met. BDC Waitman, the former CEO of Pythian, was comfortable with the company’s picked up boxing in his 40s and met subscription-based model, he said.

Whitteker at a local gym. Soon, they were “We knew that as Assent were adding sparring weekly and trading shop talk clients, those clients would generally be between punches. sticking for a long period of time,” he When Waitman decided to leave said. “So any revenue they were adding Pythian in August 2014, Whitteker was going to stay, and they were adding it invited him in to check out what Assent very rapidly.” was up to. Waitman started out as a He said the bank was comfortable

PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT Ottawa’s Assent Compliance raised one of the largest Series-A rounds in Canadian history last month.

What’s driving the company’s growth?

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

BY MICHAEL WOODS

TECHOPIA.CA

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For Assent Compliance, it all starts in the boxing ring.

The Ottawa company was founded by boxing aficionados Rob Imbeault and Matt Whitteker, two organizers of the Fight for the Cure charity boxing matches. Company CEO Andrew Waitman got involved through the ring.

Oh, and there’s a giant Olympic-sized boxing ring in the company’s new eastend office near St. Laurent Shopping Centre.

These days, Assent isn’t pulling any

punches. The decade-old company had about 25 employees two years ago.

Last month, it announced a $20-million equity investment, which it plans to use to expand its employee count from 165 to 265 people within 18 months.

“We made a decision that we had grown to a point where we could not organically grow for the ambition of the product and what the customers need,” Waitman said in an interview. “What is being asked of us to do is increasing quite significantly.”

The Ottawa-based firm helps clients

MERGER WILL CREATE MICROPROCESSOR JUGGERNAUT IN OTTAWA TECHOPIA.ca

FACING PAGE: JONATHAN HUGHES, ROB IMBEAULT AND MATT WHITTEKER GATHER IN ASSENT COMPLIANCE’S BOXING RING DURING THE GRAND OPENING OF THE LOCAL SOFTWARE FIRM’S NEW OFFICE. THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE: THE COMPANY’S TEAM GATHERS IN THE RING TO CELEBRATE THE NEW OFFICE AND ASSENT COMPLIANCE’S RECENT $20-MILLION FUNDING ROUND; CEO ANDREW WAITMAN, WHO JOINED THE FIRM AFTER MEETING WHITTEKER AT A BOXING GYM; WHAT WOULD A PARTY BE WITHOUT CAKE? PHOTOS PROVIDED

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ASSET COMPLIANCE CEO ANDREW WAITMAN

with Assent’s track record and the value proposition it offers its clients. He said BDC was also comfortable with the management team’s shared vision.

“All the things we liked were aligned,” he said. “Certainly the founders were young, very ambitious and extremely hard-working. Andrew does bring a level of organization and sophistication to the team, and the founders were just full of great ideas and energy.”

In keeping with the boxing theme, Cochrane likened Assent to Canadian boxer George Chuvalo, “who fought and went toe to toe with one of the world’s greatest 50 years ago.” Chuvalo fought Muhammad Ali in 1966.

“That’s what we’re trying to do with Canadian companies; help them compete on a global scale with the best of the world.

I think that’s what Assent can do here.”

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

We’re not settling HR conflicts with boxing.

But we are using it as a stage. We are talking about the metaphors of going all the rounds and what it takes to be successful. We use it to announce wins, to talk to the company all-hands and so on.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN Chatbots the latest trend in artificial intelligence

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