2006 New Ventures BC competition Hydro Sustainability prize winner Energy Aware Technology is front cover news in the August edition of BC Business magazine. Energy Aware’s President and CEO Janice Cheam is profiled and interviewed in an article titled Is Small Business Bad for BC?.

Energy Aware was conceived as part of an entrepreneurship course at UBC, and Cheam admits that at first she never intended to turn it into a real company. Instead she applied for jobs at Vancouver’s biggest consulting firms upon graduating in 2006. But her early experiences with Energy Aware kept coming up in the interviews, and after a particularly in-depth three-hour session, she recalls, her interviewer pulled her aside and levelled with her. “When we did our one-on-one, he was like, ‘I don’t think what we can offer you is going to be on par with what you’ve already just experienced.’” It was a classic moment of self-discovery, and Cheam quickly called up her old classmates and convinced them to help build a real company.

In the well-written piece Cheam talks about Energy Aware’s early struggles which included two problems common to most new entrepreneurs: obscurity and lack of funds. Be sure to have a read.

This week the BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) announced the finalists for the 2010 Technology Impact Awards (TIAs) and a past New Ventures BC competitor is among them.

2006 second place prize winner Terraprobe Geoscience is one of three finalists in the Most Promising Pre‐Commercial Technology category and is up against Icron Technologies Corporation and Whitenoise Laboratories (Canada) Inc.

Under the awards theme of ‘BC’s Mark on the World’, the 2010 finalists reaffirm British Columbia’s status as a global leader in technology areas such as wireless and RF technologies, clean energy technologies and innovative software solutions.

Winners will be announced on June 8th at the Technology Impact Awards Celebration, to be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre.  Tickets are available online.

RFind tags big clients around the world

Manufacturers around the world are beginning to catch on to RFind Technologies’ radio-frequency identification tags for tracking assets in real time.

RFind, the 2006 first-prize winner, secured a Canadian patent in 2009 for its wireless tag-to-tag communication technology, which lets manufacturers track inventory in warehouses, plants and outdoor lots.

“When a vehicle rolls off the assembly line into a parking lot, it can take a while to find it again among a thousand others that look exactly the same,” says CEO Sharon Barnes. “Unless it has an RFind locating tag.”

That’s why Volvo Group is using RFind’s technology. Ditto for two of North America’s top auto manufacturers.

The tags are also finding favour with companies such as Delhaize Group, which is a major European grocery chain, Calgary Transit and a mid-western U.S. aluminum manufacturer.

“With our technology there’s no need to invest in huge infrastructure, run wires or develop expensive retrofits,” explains Barnes. “Just stick RFind’s tags to the asset—it really is that simple.” The tags then communicate with reference tags placed elsewhere in a facility that wirelessly communicate with a server to determine where the item is located.

The Kelowna company has raised $2 million in equity financing and a further $1.5 million in debt. Barnes expects to turn a profit by this fall.

RFind, which manufacturers its product in B.C., has increased its staff from four in 2006 to 12 today, with plans to hire three or four more employees this year.

Highlights over the past four years:

• Employee growth:  4 to 12
• Investment: $2 million in equity, $1.5 million in debt
• Acquisition of Canadian patent
• Market value: five-fold increase

This month’s BCTIA Impact event is full of New Ventures BC connections – not really a surprise considering the topic: Start-ups that are Built to Last.

Even after identifying a unique business opportunity and commercializing a product, a lot of dedication and talent is required for an organization to secure its future.

Our guest speakers Janice Cheam, President and Co-founder of Energy Aware Technology Inc., David Helliwell, Co-founder of Pulse Energy, and Jonathan Bixby, President and CEO of Strangeloop Networks Inc. have demonstrated significant potential in their early stage companies for sustainable long-term growth.

Come hear how they got to where they are today and how they plan to lay a path of success well into the future.

The Impact monthly speaker series features the winners and finalists from the the BCTIA’s 2009 Technology Impact Award (TIAs). This month features the winner and finalist of the “Most Promising Start-up” award category.

Both Energy Aware (2006) and Pulse Energy (2008) were past  New Ventures BC competitors and Jonathan Bixby sits on the final jury.

Start-ups that are Built to Last is on November 17th from 5:00pm to 7:30pm at the SFU Segal Graduate School of Business. Register online.

The BCTIA hosted their annual Technology Impacts Awards (TIAs) at the new Vancouver Convention Centre tonight and they were a sold-out affair.

Sierra Wireless was named Company of the Year and recognized for a phenomenal year that included developing the world’s first data devices for the HSPA+ standard, further penetrating the M2M market with the acquisition of Wavecom S.A., increasing their BC-based employees to 250 and, for the first time in company history, surpassing half a billion dollars in annual revenues.

The highlight for fans and followers of New Ventures BC was when 2006 finalist Energy Aware Technology picked up the award for Most Promising Start-up.  Co-founders Janice Cheam and Lauren Kulokas accepted the award and acknowledged the New Ventures BC competition in their speech.

All three finalists in the Most Promising Start-up category had a New Ventures BC connection. Finalist Pulse Energy is a subsidiary of Small Energy Group, a finalist in the 2008 NVBC competition and Strangeloop Networks is headed by NVBC presenter Jonathan Bixby.

Energy Aware Technology helps improve demand-management energy conservation using an In Home Display (IHD) that communicates with the utility’s smart meter to continually monitor and notify residents of their power usage and associated costs.

nextMEDIA Banff is finished searching for the hottest emerging digital properties across Canada and has announced the finalists for their “Digital Hot List” for the nextMEDIA Banff Conference on June 5 – 7th.

The competition was open to content portals, social media groups, websites, newsletters, blogs or any digital media property that can demonstrate a loyal and growing fan base that provides a tantalizing vehicle for advertisers.

2008 New Ventures BC competitor Protagonize has been named one of five nominee finalists and could be named the Hottest Canadian Emerging Digital Brand

As as result, Protagonize’s Nick Bouton is receiving a half price pass to nextMEDIA Banff where he’ll get face-to-face time with advertisers actively looking for partners, as well as extensive promotional opportunities with nextMEDIA and the recognition as one of Canada’s hottest digital properties.

Congratulations to Protagonize!

The BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) announced the finalists for the 2009 Technology Impact Awards today. Marking the award’s 15th year, the 2009 finalists reaffirm British Columbia’s status as a global leader in innovative software solutions, mobile communications, and energy conservation technologies.

Among the nominees is 2006 New Ventures BC competitor and finalist Energy Aware  Technology Inc. in the “Most Promising Startup” category.

The TIAs are broken into three distinct groups: Technology Awards, Company Awards, and Personal Recognition Awards. This year’s finalists in the Technology and Company categories are:

Excellence in Product Innovation

• Nokia
• Sophos Inc.
• Strangeloop Networks Inc.

Best Application of Technology

• ACL Services Ltd.
• Maximizer Software Inc.
• Sempa Power Systems Ltd.

Most Promising Pre-Commercial Technology:

• Heart Force Medical Inc.
• MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates (MDA)
• Switch Materials

Most Promising Start-Up

• Energy Aware Technology Inc.
• Pulse Energy Inc.
• Strangeloop Networks Inc.

Emerging Company of the Year

• Avigilon Corporation
• Elastic Path Software Inc.
• Nexterra Energy Corp.

Company of the Year

• PEER 1
• Sierra Wireless

Team of the Year

• Mixpo
• TELUS

Winners will be announced on June 17th at the Technology Impact Awards Celebration, at the new ancouver Convention Centre, where more than 700 celebrants will extend well-deserved recognition and congratulations to the leaders who are helping to build and drive British Columbia’s economy.

Terraprobe Geoscience Corp. took second place in the 2006 New Ventures BC competition. The Burnaby company uses non-destructive Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) to detect conduits, rebar and other structural elements embedded in concrete, and to locate buried utilities. The technology can also measure corrosion in rebar buried in concrete.

The company has grown to 14 employees and is now profitable, with sales of more than $1.2 million in 2008.
“We’re doing really well,” says company president Csaba Ekes. “Our market share is growing, we can afford better people and better equipment and we’re doing more research and development.”

He says the firm is stretching the possibilities of its technology to try to find ways to detect targets that currently aren’t possible, such as finding deterioration in underground water and sewer pipes. “There’s a tremendous need for this,” says Ekes, “because currently there is no reliable way to inspect the aging buried water and wastewater infrastructure.”

Earlier this week over at GigaOM’s earth2tech blog, Katie Fehrenbacher singled out 2006 NVBC competition finalist Energy Aware and their PowerTab as one of 10 monitoring tools bringing smart energy home .

Thanks to funds from the stimulus package and renewed attention to energy savings, 2009 is the year companies are planning to launch wireless energy dashboards that will sit in your home, monitor energy data from your electricity meter and let you know if you’re being an energy hog.

This year is particularly important to these mostly young companies, as President Obama has pledged to help utilities install 40 million more smart meters (basically digital meters that create a 2-way connection with the power grid and the utility). Smart meters installed at homes can unleash data about the fluctuating price of electricity throughout the day, enabling consumers that have energy management tools to shift energy consumption to the time of day when power is cheapest.

Founded in 2005, the Vancouver-based Energy Aware team has developed the PowerTab, a wireless energy display that collects current energy price and usage from smart meters. Demand response company Comverge distributes the device in North America, and the startup has raised close to $2 Million in funding from angel investors in the Pacific Northwest.