Vancouver’s Rocket Builders announced their eighth annual Ready to Rocket 25 list yesterday naming 25 privately held BC companies that are “best positioned to capitalize on the 2010 technology sector trends that will lead them to faster growth than their peers”. The annual Ready to Rocket 25 list aims to predict the companies that will likely experience significant revenue growth, venture capital investment or acquisition by a major player in the coming year.

19 of the companies on the 2010 list are repeat Ready to Rocket recipients with 6 new companies being tagged as “Ready to Rocket” for the first time. Two former New Ventures BC Competitors made the list. 2003 2nd Place Finisher  Genologics Life Sciences Software was named to the Ready to Rocket list for the second time and 2008 2nd Place Finisher Pulse Energy, Inc (formerly Small Energy Group) was named for the first time.

In addition to the Ready to Rocket 25, Rocket Builders also announced its 2010 lists of “Emerging Rockets” which includes a number of New Ventures BC past competitors:

• LightIntegra Technology Inc. – 1st place in 2009
• Etalim – 2nd place in 2009
• Rapid Electric Vehicles Inc. (REV) – 2009 Top 10 Finalist
• Veridae – 2009 Top 10 Finalist
• Vineyard Networks – 2009 Top 10 Finalist
• Saltworks Technology – 2008 Winner
• Clarity Accounting – 2008 Competitor

BC Hydro and Pulse Energy announced yesterday that they have launched an online Venue Energy Tracker to monitor energy consumption for 2010 Winter Olympic Games sites within the cities of Vancouver and Richmond, the Resort Municipality of Whistler and Whistler Blackcomb. Pulse Energy was the 2008 New Ventures BC Competition second prize winner and originally called Small Energy Group.

Pulse Energy’s online Venue Energy Tracker marks the first time Olympic venues have collected and publicly reported on energy consumption during Games time. Each participating site will have a dashboard monitoring real-time energy consumption. The dashboard will help venue managers to make smarter choices about how and when to use electricity.

Olympic venues participating in the project include the Richmond Olympic Oval, General Motors Place, Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre, South East False Creek Community Centre, Whistler Blackcomb Roundhouse Lodge and Snowmaking Facilities and the Athletes Villages in Vancouver and Whistler.

Look for a live dashboard in real-time of the sites’ energy consumption at various Live Sites in February and at BC Hydro’s Power Smart Village or check out www.VenueEnergyTracker.com.

Business in Vancouver’s Curt Cherewayko profiled 2008 New Ventures BC Winner Saltworks Technologies in this week’s issue. In an article titled Vancouver company hopes desalination technology will generate liquid assets, Chereyayko learns more about Saltworks’ desalination process from Founder Ben Sparrow.

Ben Sparrow’s eureka moment occurred in the middle of the night in 2005 in a train-station bathroom while he was travelling from Beijing to Shanghai.

He was on a backpacking trip during a break from studies at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and had spent the night on a train mulling over how to use a thermodynamics law, in which the tension between two different concentrations of the same solution converts energy.

He applied the law to salt water and realized that the voltage from the ions of a hyper-saline solution could pull salt from a third water stream as the ions naturally move from a high to low concentration of salt water.

Four years later, Sparrow and his seven-person team at Vancouver-based Saltworks Technologies Inc. are making the final adjustments on a saltwater-powered battery that can desalinate water at a cost that the company says is up to 80% less than that of existing processes.

Read the rest of the article here.

Saltworks is in discussions with its first potential customers and has survived to date on roughly $2 Million in grants from provincial and federal technology-focused agencies, including B.C.’s Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) Fund and the New Ventures BC Competition Grand Prize in 2008.

Accorsing tothe article, Saltworks is looking to close a minimum $5 Million financing round in the next six months.

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.

2008 New Ventures BC Winner Saltworks Technologies is the subject of an article in the Economist this week titled Cheaper desalination: Current Thinking. The online and offline piece takes a closer look at Saltworks‘ fresh way to take the salt out of seawater.

THERE is a lot of water on Earth, but more than 97% of it is salty and over half of the remainder is frozen at the poles or in glaciers. Meanwhile, around a fifth of the world’s population suffers from a shortage of drinking water and that fraction is expected to grow. One answer is desalination—but it is an expensive answer because it requires a lot of energy. Now, though, a pair of Canadian engineers have come up with an ingenious way of using the heat of the sun to drive the process. Such heat, in many places that have a shortage of fresh water, is one thing that is in abundant supply.

Ben Sparrow and Joshua Zoshi met at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, while completing their MBAs. Their company, Saltworks Technologies, has set up a test plant beside the sea in Vancouver and will open for business in November.

Read the rest of the article online. Congrats to Sparrow and Zoshi on the amazing International coverage.

The second annual PICK 20 roundup of Canada’s leading Web 2.0 pioneers has been announced over at Backbone Magazine and eight of the twenty hail from British Columbia.

• NowPublic – Crowdsourced/participatory news gathering
• HootSuite – A Twitter toolbox that manages multiple Twitter profiles
• ThoughtFarmer – Intranet software which incorporates social networking features
• AfterCAD Online - Enables viewing and publishing complex data sets over the Web
• TeamPages – Website  creation and management service for amateur sports teams
• Clarity Accounting – Online accounting for small businesses and the self-employed
• Taglocity - Enterprise e-mail management and knowledge sharing
• Pixton – A site where people create, publish, share and remix comics

Of these BC-based Web 2.0 companies, you’ll recognize three from past New Ventures BC competitions. TeamPages was a runner-up in the 2007 competition and both Clarity Accounting and Taglocity were competitors in 2008.

Congrats to everyone on the list. It’s great to see BC so well represented as well as our New Ventures BC alumni.

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.

Launch Party Vancouver goes for the 7th time this Tuesday, June 2nd at 6pm and it looks like there are only a dozen tickets left.

As usual, we will have a great line-up of start-ups for you to check out. Come mix and mingle with other entrepreneurs, investors and social mediarati and show some love for the Vancouver tech scene.

7 companies have been selected to demo at LPV7, a crop of promising startups that includes locals and a few “guest stars” from out of town as well.

Among the seven chosen to demo at LPV7 is 2008 New Ventures BC competitor Protagonize.

If you’re interested in attending, you should still be able to use Techvibes promo code in able to grab a free ticket. Head over to the registration page and plug “LPV7TVIBES” in the discount code box.

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 2009 VIATeC Technology Awards gala took place last week and the Vancouver Island Advanced Technology Council handed out awards across twelve categories. Congratulations to New Ventures BC 2008 competitor Dark Matter Labs.

They took home the award for Innovative Excellence which recognizes a company that has researched and designed an innovative service, process or product that is expected to revolutionize a sector, method of business or way of life.