Vineyard Networks a Winner – January 2012 Update

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. (more…)

Solegear gearing up for growth – December 2011 Update

When Solegear Bioplastics Inc. entered the BCIC-New Ventures Competition in 2010, the company had just started to commercialize its newly invented high-performance bioplastics: Polysole and Traverse.

Poplysole, which is made from plants and is non-toxic and compostable, can be used for making products ranging from personal care products to durable packaging to toys. Traverse, made of recycled virgin plastic combined with natural fibers such as wood, rice husks, hemp or bamboo, can be used to manufacture injection-molded products such as deck chairs, automotive parts and electronics. (more…)

Supercharging the economics of electric vehicles – December 2011 Update

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). (more…)

Quadrogen Power Systems won the 2010 BCIC New Ventures third prize and the BC Bioenergy Network Prize and went on to sell its first Integrated Biogas Clean-up System (IBCS) to a high-profile project at Orange County Sanitation District’s (OCSD) wastewater treatment plant in California.

Quadrogen’s system removes the contaminants found in biogas created from the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter such as sewage, manure and green waste. The result is an ultra-clean gas that can then be used for power and heat generation.

Quadrogen’s president, Alakh Prasad, says his company competed against six large, established U.S. companies to install a system at OCSD for cleaning the biogas from a wastewater digester so that it could be used in fuel cells to generate power, heat, and hydrogen. (more…)

Four years after winning first prize in the 2007 New Ventures BC competition, Augurex Life Sciences Corp. is on the brink of huge opportunities.

The Vancouver company has just completed clinical studies proving that its patented biomarker test for Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) identifies patients who have early onset of the disease. Researchers involved in the clinical tests say it captures an additional two out of every 10 patients with early-onset RA who are missed by other tests. They say this is hugely beneficial because the disease can cause irreversible joint damage within two years of symptom onset.

Augurex is now in the midst of negotiations with diagnostic companies around the world to commercialize and distribute the test. It measures a newly discovered protein that is elevated in the blood of patients with RA but is relatively absent in healthy people and those with other types of arthritis and autoimmune conditions.

Norma Biln, CEO of Augurex, says the test could become a disruptive technology in terms of advancing patient management and possibly changing the course of the disease.

“Our next challenge is to ensure there’s a successful uptake of the product,” says Biln. “You can launch it, but you need to ensure it’s properly promoted, since the test uses a novel protein that most people have never heard of.”

Augurex still has five employees and contracts out its research to Canadian research organizations. To date, the company has received about $4.5 million in funding from shareholders and government.

Now, Biln hopes to use the funds from impending commercialization agreements to pursue four more applications based on the same novel protein, for which several patents have been filed.

Two of the new patents focus on measuring the patient’s own immune response to the novel protein. The other two patents focus on therapeutically targeting the protein to eliminate it from the patient’s body, potentially treating RA.

“When we started, we had no idea where this would take us,” says Biln. “It took a lot of hard work and creativity to make these other discoveries and learn about where we could move things forward.

“It has turned into a much bigger opportunity than we expected.”

2010 2nd Prize winner Solegear Bioplastics announced partnerships this week with the University of British Columbia and Ecole Polytechnique to support the research and development of additional innovations in bioplastics. The partnerships will enable Solegear to work with the chemical and biological engineering departments at these institutions to innovative the bioplastics space.

“Solegear’s Polysole and Traverse bioplastic materials are already demonstrating that they can replace and, in some cases, outperform traditional petroleum-based plastics. While we are pleased with this initial success, we remain committed to innovation and to expanding our commercial opportunities,” said Solegear CEO, Toby Reid. “By partnering with these leading institutions, we are ensuring that we can access the kind of thinking that will help us to not only stay on the leading edge of our industry, but to continue to move towards tangible, climate-focused solutions that have significant returns for the Canadian economy.”

1st place: Reef Safe Fish: A closed loop waste-recycling technology that filters fish waste and then combines it with fertilizer to produce fish food onsite. Since the end of the competition in February 2011, the creators have hired an additional two staff and are preparing for growth. They were also a finalist of the 2011 VIATeC ‘Emerging Tech Company’ award.

2nd place: SideStix:  An ergonomic, shock-absorbing forearm crutch that significantly reduces joint compression and the secondary injuries that often arise from using crutches. Since the competition ended, SideStix has improved their technology by incorporating carbon fibre (lightweight and highly durable), secured shelf space in several retail medical equipment stores and hospitals in Greater Vancouver and in May, faced another panel of judges on CBC’s Dragons’ Den. The segment will air this upcoming season.

3rd place: MemoryLeaf: An online memorial service where users can create a lasting legacy for their loved ones through photos, videos and stories posted in an engaging and elegant virtual environment.  Since the competition, the company has moved into the new Kamloops Innovation Centre, a full service accelerator which provides office, meeting and laboratory spaces for new and expanding tech entrepreneurs.

The BCIC-NVC: Regional offers $60,000 in prizes, including a $30,000 First Prize, $20,000 Second Prize and $10,000 Third Prize.  The competition is open to any BC person, resident or business located outside of Metro Vancouver with a technology-focused idea that has not yet secured significant financing from external investors.

Registration is now open. Application deadline: October 19th, 2011, 11:59pm. Visit www.newventuresbc.com/regional-competition for all seminar dates and complete competition information, including rules, timelines and registration form.

2008 New Ventures BC Top 10 company Primisyn has been acquired by Temenos, a market-leading provider of banking software based in Geneva, Switzerland. The acquisition took place late last month and the price was not disclosed.

Based in Delta, BC, Primisyn provides business intelligence (BI) and profitability solutions and services to the Canadian credit union market. Primisyn’s Simplus Enterprise Suite provides credit unions with business critical information to facilitate informed decision making and streamline business processes in every department across the organisation including finance, marketing, operations, human resources, and risk management.

Temenos will integrate Simplus into its existing BI solution, Insight, extending the product offering into customer analytics and enhancing the operational intelligence functionality.

The total acquisition price consists of an up-front consideration and further payments contingent on Primisyn achieving performance criteria.

Todd Winship, co-founder of Primisyn said “This is a very exciting event for Primisyn. Our product has enjoyed a broad acceptance and strong growth in the Canadian market, with seven of British Columbia’s top 20 credit unions as our customers. By uniting with Temenos we will contribute to a larger, very dynamic BI solution, to the benefit of our mutual and future customers.”

Since winning the BCIC New Ventures Competition in September 2010, Hiretheworld.com has grown from a kitchen-table enterprise with three employees to new office space in Vancouver’s Gastown for 18 employees.

Hiretheworld.com is a global service marketplace where businesses and individuals can hire, manage and pay remote freelancers or teams.

The company started up with a graphic design contest in which employers can solicit design ideas from around the world and pay for the one they like best.

Today, hiretheworld has expanded the concept to include an idea contest for generating creative writing solutions, a video contest, a viral video contest that generates social media analytics, and an employment platform where customers can hire individual experts from around the globe.

Co-founder Terry Beech says the employment platform grew out of employers’ interest in hiring the winners of their contests for further jobs. Hiretheworld.com’s top logo designer, for example, lives in Tunisia. After winning many of the design contests, he has built up an impressive portfolio and is in demand from employers all over the world.

“We handle all of the payment issues so that employers don’t have to worry about how to pay someone in Tunisia or India,” says Beech. “We also have a new hourly monitoring software that allows you to hire a workforce abroad and monitor them passively as if they’re working in your office.” The software tracks mouse clicks and web browsing and also takes random screenshots that track a remote worker’s time on the computer.

“What has motivated this company from the get-go is that we want people to be able to work from wherever they are with no geographical barriers,” says Beech. “As long as you have an Internet connection you should have access to the same opportunities as everybody else. Your quality of life shouldn’t be based on where you were born.”

Over the past year, Hiretheworld.com has raised $500,000 in a seed round of investment with Oxford University and Nicholas James Corporation of Vancouver.

“For the first six months after closing our initial round we were highly focused on development,” says Beech. “We are now in the process of ramping up our sales and marketing and are looking to gain further traction going into a series A growth round.”

Beech says sales in the first quarter of 2011 surpassed sales for all of 2010.

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.