Vineyard Networks Canada, a 2009 BCIC-New Ventures competition Top 10 finalist, is now reaping international kudos for its network intelligence and deep-packet inspection technologies.

In December 2011, Vineyard Networks was the only Canadian company to receive a Red Herring Global 100 award, which recognizes the year’s most promising private ventures from North America, Europe and Asia. Previous winners have included Google, Skype and YouTube.

The Global 100 list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising companies and entrepreneurs. Companies were evaluated on criteria including financial performance, technological innovation, management quality, strategy, and market penetration.

In 2009, CEO Jason Richards was operating the five-employee company out of his basement in Kelowna. His product, a next-generation deep packet inspection engine for analyzing and identifying traffic flowing across the Internet, was still in development.

He joined the BCIC-NV competition for the networking, exposure and prize money.

“It was a great exercise,” he says now, “and we had a lot of fun doing it.” He appreciated the feedback from judges and says the networking was excellent. And while addressing the competition’s questions was an arduous process, he recommends it to other entrepreneurs.

“If you can’t answer the questions, then you should rethink the validity of your business plan,” he says.

Today, Vineyard’s 33 employees work out of a 15,000 square-foot office in downtown Kelowna. Last year, BC Business magazine named it among B.C.’s “Best Companies to Work for” in the “100 employees or fewer” category.

Vineyard has partnered with more than 30 leading network-infrastructure companies that are delivering solutions to over 100,000 end users in 200-plus countries.  In 2012 Vineyard will be releasing new versions of its core product, focused on the mobile telecom and lawful interception markets.

Richards says the company has been profitable since 2010 and started with the help of local angel investors. He expects to double revenues this year over last.

Since completing the 2009 NVBC competition as one of 10 finalists, REV Technologies Inc. has moved from an unheated shack with a leaking roof to a heated and custom-renovated 8,000-square-foot office in Vancouver.

REV entered the competition with four unpaid employees and a new product — REV Pack — an electric drive system for transforming gas-guzzling fleet vehicles into electric zero-emission vehicles.

Since then, the company has grown to 16 employees and moved on to develop a server-based network and software system that it hopes will ultimately manage the stored energy of millions of electric vehicles (EV).

Founder Jay Giraud likens it to smart metering for electric vehicles. REV’s real-time wireless network will manage the battery energy of fleet vehicles, aggregating and returning their unused battery energy back to the energy grid to smooth out the grid’s frequency spikes.

“Utilities themselves have huge fleets with very consistent drive patterns,” says Giraud. “This allows us to predict and optimize their energy use, using patent-pending algorithms, so that with real-time forecasting we can have 10,000 vehicles in a city as an aggregate source of energy. The utility would see these 10,000 vehicles as a single power plant.”

Giraud says that grid operators would pay REV for having the fleets’ EV batteries on standby, able to respond instantaneously to sudden changes in supply and demand. This could potentially return $2000-$3000 a year per vehicle, part of which would go back to the fleet owner.

“These savings would enable commercial fleets to adopt electric vehicles sooner,” he says. “We’re supercharging the economics of electric vehicles.”

REV has just completed a small four-vehicle pilot with a U.S. army base and has just been awarded a new contract for more vehicles that are fully networked and able to store renewable energy and then re-dispatch it into the army base’s micro-grid.

To date, REV has realized over $1 million in sales of its original REV Pack and its networked power-management system to the US Army via Honeywell Aerospace and SAIC, as well as to the City of Santa Monica and Burlington Hydro.

“In 2012 we’ll be continuing with new pilot projects, with vehicles running on our network,” he says. “More on that to be announced.”

REV has attracted just over $2 million in funding and is currently engaged in a series A fundraising, seeking $5-10 million from institutional investors in order to finish developing the network technology, build out the market and partnerships and round out the management team.

While there are only about 25,000 electric vehicles in the U.S. at present, predictions call for more than 100,000 by the end of 2012.

By 2020, says Giraud, electric vehicle networking is expected to be worth $40 billion.

“We’re developing for a market that doesn’t exist yet,” admits Giraud. “We’re skating to where the puck is going.”

Lungpacer Medical Inc., the SFU spin-off company that took third prize in the 2009 New Ventures BC competition, is gearing up for first-in-human feasibility trials of its therapeutic technology.

Lungpacer addresses significant issues associated with critically ill patients at risk of becoming dependent on mechanical ventilation. The technology includes proprietary intravenous electrodes that rhythmically activate the diaphragm muscle. This activation, or pacing, prevents the muscle from rapidly atrophying and speeds up the patient’s weaning from the ventilator.

Founder and SFU professor Andy Hoffer says that the Lungpacer^TM therapy will improve patients’ recovery times, reduce their stay in intensive care, and improve their health outcomes. It will also significantly lower hospitalization costs.

“If we save even one day of a U.S. patient’s time in the intensive care unit, that’s a $6,500 saving to their health care system,” he says, “and Lungpacer could help 400,000 U.S. patients/year who have difficulties weaning.”

As well, he adds, “Faster weaning from ventilators will give more patients access to these scarce devices, particularly during major emergencies such as flu pandemics.”

Since participating in the NVBC competition, Lungpacer has raised $245,000 in private financing from family and friends and $285,000 in contributions from the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program. As well, the prototype development received a Phase IIB $348,000 grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

“We’ve proven 21-day safety and stability of Lungpacer prototype devices and we’re preparing for first clinical trials in patients in 2012,” says Hoffer.

Lungpacer Medical Inc. is presently seeking $1.75 million in seed financing for this next step.

In July, Lungpacer, which has five employees and several consultants, announced David Christie as its new president and chief operating officer. Christie has 23 years of experience as an executive leader in medical device companies and has introduced many new products to market.

Lungpacer’s other awards include the 2009 Emerging Technology Award from the BC Innovation Council and the 2010 LifeSciences BC Innovation and Achievement Award.

Last year’s inaugural GROW Conference in Vancouver was a huge success and it’s returning to the West Coast again this August 17-19th.

This year GROW Conference organizers are working with the Bootup Entrepreneurial Society to host a contest for startups called Launch@GROW contest.

The deadline for startups to enter the contest has passed but not too late to support past and present New Ventures BC competitors that have entered. You’ve got until July 16th to vote your favorite startup through to the Top 25 so that judges can consider them for selection into the Top 15.

The Top 15 will Launch @ GROW on the evening of August 17th and four of those startups will be selected to pitch live on stage the following day at the GROW Conference.

Check out the participating New Venture BC competitors below and vote for your favorite now.

2011 Round 3 companies

• Chatterblock
• FundRazr
• Warranty Life
• Wifarer

2011 Round 2 companies

• StoryPanda
• Foodtree
• MentionMapp

2010 Top 10 companies

• Jostle
• Tingle

2010 Round 3 companies

• Carrotlines

2009 Round 2 companies

• CrowdFanatic

Good luck to everyone.

One of the most serious challenges facing Integrated Circuit (IC) developers is reducing the time required to verify, validate, and debug ICs. Veridae builds next generation tools based on breakthrough, proprietary technology to solve these problems, and strives to be the undisputed leader in silicon system debug tools.

Incorporated in September 2009, Veridae Systems was established to build upon the knowledge from six years of research at the University of British Columbia.

Veridae’s mentor during the competition was Jim Derbyshire he is now their CEO. From today’s press release:

Tektronix has made a long-term commitment to grow an embedded capture business unit in Vancouver, BC.  “We’re excited to be part of the Tektronix team and to establish a business unit for the company in Vancouver,” said Jim Derbyshire, Veridae chief executive officer and mentor in residence at Simon Fraser University.  “This allows us to maintain our close ties to the local research community, which were instrumental in the founding of Veridae.”

Congrats to Derbyshire and the team at Veridae.

Vineyard Networks was a Top 10 Finalists in the New Ventures BC Competition in 2009.

The Finalists are evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and disruption into their respective industries.

After one final stage of judging, the 2011 Top 100 North America award winners will be selected and announced at a special Red Herring Forum award dinner on June 15th in Hollywood.

Good luck to Vineyard Networks.

Last week the BCTIA announced the finalists for the 2011 Technology Impact Awards (TIAs). Under the awards theme of BC’s Mark on the World, the 2011 finalists reaffirm BC’s status as a global leaders in clean energy and innovative software solutions, including mobile computing.

The finalists represent a broad range of technologies including enterprise, mobile and social media software; power electronics, imaging and microprocessor hardware, including quantum processing; and unique lighting and hybrid Stirling/Thermoacoustic devices. Their solutions can be found in a number of environments including healthcare, retail, financial services, research labs, telecommunications, green building and power utilities.

2009 2nd prize winner Etalim Inc. and 2011 competitor Secodix Corp. are the two finalists for the Most Promising Pre‐Commercial Technology award, so it’s safe to say that one of them is going to win this award.

Etalim is also a finalist in the Most Promising Start‐Up category.

Winners will be announced on June 9th at the Technology Impact Awards Dinner at the Vancouver Convention Centre-West. Purchase tickets at www.thetias.com.

GymTechnik was included in a video feature titled Sharing Music and Shaping Up as part of a series called Click – The world of technology across the BBC.

Check out the video here – GymTechnik is the second app featured.

“We’re honored and thrilled John agreed to help us steer this company as it begins producing state-of-the-art electric vehicles for fleets across the globe. He brings to REV an unparalleled amount of experience in powering vehicles with alternative fuel sources, in turn bolstering our organization’s efforts to become a leading provider of electric compact SUV’s and trucks,” said Gary Yurkovich, Chairman of REV’s Board of Directors.

Adding Wallace to the REV board is further evidence of the successful execution of their mission to become a cutting edge electric vehicle supplier guided by industry experts with decades of experience in the vehicle manufacturing industry.

Wallace was past CEO for Xantrex Technology based in Burnaby. Prior to his tenure at Xantrex, Wallace worked independently as a consultant in the alternative energy sector and served in various capacities at Ford for nearly 20 years.

While at Ford, Wallace led the company’s clean vehicle research and development efforts as the director of multiple areas, including Ford’s Electronic Systems Research Laboratory’s research staff, the Technology Development Programs, Electric Vehicle Programs, Alternative Fuel Vehicles, and Environmental Vehicles.

2008 2nd Place winner Pulse Energy and 2009 Top 10 finisher Rapid Electric Vehicles were included on the list of  fifteen privately-held companies that “are positioned to capitalize on clean technology and industry trends that will lead them to rapid growth and investment”.

Congrats to Pulse Energy and Rapid Electric Vehicles on the achievement!