Vancouver-based Octothorpe Software has come a long way in two short years.

In 2008 they entered the New Ventures BC Competition but did not progress past the second round. This year they have been engaged by the competition to assist with decision analytics as well as continuing to improve New Ventures BC’s decision process.

Does this mean that decisions on what companies advance in the competition will be made by software systems?

Not quite. As Octothorpe Software founder and CEO Peter Tingling explained during a phone interview, “software doesn’t make decisions, people do.”

New Ventures BC Executive Director Bob de Wit explains the role of Octothorpe in this year’s competition best. “At New Ventures BC it’s critical that our jury process be transparent and defensible so that the companies entering our competition know where they stand relative to other companies at their stage of corporate development. Over the past few years the number of companies — and the judges required to review them — has more than doubled and the jury process has become more complicated. Octothorpe has dramatically improved our ability to deal with uncertainty, reduce the impact of biases between judges, and most importantly, provided more information to the companies entering our competition by more clearly identifying their strengths and weaknesses.”

To expand on that, Octothorpe’s role this year has been two-fold.

First, they conducted workshops with this year’s judges to educate them on the potential biases that creep into decision making. According to Tingling, there are a large number of biases that people bring to the table without even realizing it and the goal was to reduce or mitigate these biases upfront.

While there are more than 3 dozen identified biases that can be reduced using specific techniques, Tingling gives an example that American Idol fans will be familiar with – the Simon Cowell problem. “The basic problem is this: You have a group of judges. One is a “tough” judge. They tend to give average candidates a low rating and “good” candidates a rating equal to other judges average ratings. The net result is that when multiple judging is used that ranking can become inverted. Good cases are excluded and poor cases can advance. It is equivalent to working for a tough boss who rewards the top 5% of their employees while easier bosses reward a weaker 10%.”

Second, they’re analyzing the judges data on this year’s competitors and providing feedback to both the competition organizers as well as the competitors themselves.

According to their website, Octothorpe is a Decision Sciences Company. Octothorpe’s intellectual property is in decision theory and they pride themselves in incorporating leading edge research and industrial best practices. They have a US patent on their unique approach and several PhDs in decision theory on staff that have conducted award-winning research on decision processes.

Octothorpe’s founders have decades of experience working with Fortune 500, government, pharmaceutical, games and sport organizations. Their most recent accolade was for their study tracking the role of wealth in innovation in the National Hockey League which was presented last month at the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada 2010 conference and was awarded Best Paper in the Sports and Tourism Division.

As with any competition where there is money at stake, transparency around the judging process is imperative.  Octothorpe is in the business of better decisions and there is no doubt that this year’s competitors will be better off for it.

Singular Software Catches Eye of Video Editors

Singular Software finished in the top 10 in the 2008 NVBC competition and then began selling its digital video-editing product to video editors. Called PluralEyes, it’s a plug-in for existing video-editing programs. It overcomes the difficulty of synchronizing multi-camera shots and audio clips of the same event, turning these arduous and time-consuming edits into a quick task.

The company has since launched three more similar products, including DualEyes, which won a Mario award for ‘most promising technology’ from TV Technology magazine in April 2010. PluralEyes also won the DV Magazine ’Best of Show’ award and was placed in the EventDV ‘Winners Circle’ for the NAB Show 2010.

Founder and CEO Bruce Sharpe says sales have grown rapidly since he began selling the first product online in May 2009. He has since hired six employees and expects to add more this year.

The company remains self-financed and is already profitable. “Everyone who uses the product loves it,” says Sharpe. This year he plans to capture far more of the approximately seven million prospects worldwide who use editing software compatible with his plug-ins.

After two rounds of financing that raised more than $1 million, 2008 winner Saltworks Technology has begun commercializing its innovative saltwater desalination technology into global markets.

CEO Ben Sparrow says the firm’s Thermo-Ionic™ energy-conversion system is more energy-efficient than other leading desalination technologies because it uses up to 80 per cent less electrical/mechanical energy. It is also ideally suited for treating waste saltwater from other desalination plants, an important feature for inland desalination.

BC Hydro’s Powertech Labs proof-tested the technology and the company is currently operating a seawater pilot plant on the Vancouver harbour. This project was supported by the National Research Council of Canada and Sustainable Development Technology Canada. With support from the BC Innovative Clean Energy Fund, Saltworks has also built and tested a solar thermal plant near Penticton, B.C. to confirm its thermo-ionic process with low-grade solar thermal energy.

Saltworks, headquartered in Vancouver, has grown from two employees to 10 and plans to hire an additional six employees this year. The firm’s core technology is manufactured in Vancouver.

Highlights over the past two years:

• Employee growth:  2 to 10
• Investment: more than $1 million
• Market value: 10- to 15-fold growth

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.