Portfolio Rising Stars

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Invest Ottawa is a one stop shop for start ups through emerging knowledge-based growth companies looking for programs and services to guide entrepreneurs. We are entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs. Since 2007 the team has provided services to over 750 companies, and helped to leverage over $100 million of investments. Invest Ottawa has now named their 2012 Portfolio Rising Stars, just some of the “ones to watch”.

360pi
ActivDox
Anystone Technologies
BDR Technologies
FormVerse
Fusebill
Gnowit Inc.
Granite Networks Inc.
MB Foster
Netcelerate Corp.
NeuroQore Inc.
RideShark
SageTea
Secure City Solutions
Titan Building Products
Valydate
World Bio-Fibre Technology
Zighra Inc.

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360pi

360pi analyzes billions of data points, provides retailers with real-time pricing intelligence
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Retailers face two big challenges: consumer price sensitivity and price transparency. To achieve higher margins and increased sales, retailers need to overcome these barriers. 360pi Corp. is a leading provider of retail price intelligence (the pi in 360pi) solutions. Clients get actionable insights into their competitors’ prices and product mix, then, armed with this data, these retailers optimize their pricing strategies to increase revenue, volume and margins.

With many competitors, thousands of products, and prices changing every day, retailers find it hard to stay on top of collecting pricing data. 360pi makes the massive volume of price information manageable.

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ActivDox

ActivDox solves and secures mobile document management for enterprises and government
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Version control and the management of documents are strategic requirements for business-critical communication. Thriving companies need active documents to be timely and up-to-date. ActivDox Inc. transforms dated, static electronic documents into secure, shareable and complete documents, while solving the problem of mobile security and version control.

In contrast to strictly mobile applications, the ActivDox scalable solution manages documents via the convergence of tablet devices, wireless communications and public or private cloud computing. Founded in 2011, ActivDox solves document management problems for enterprises and government. The current ActivDox service specifically serves the growing adoption of Apple Inc.’s iPad in the enterprise.

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Anystone Technologies

Anytune app unleashes the guitar warrior or opera singer within
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What do an opera singer, a bag piper and a wanna-be guitar warrior all have in common? They’re all using Anytune, the best-selling music learning app from Ottawa-based Anystone Technologies Inc.

“Our business is focused on enhancing audio and video users’ learning experience with mobile technologies,” says Anystone Technologies CEO Tony Wacheski. “Online education is exploding and it includes audio and video content. We provide tools that enhance the learning experience by allowing users to increase the rate of consumption to save time or reduce it to improve comprehension. We want to revolutionize the consumption of media content.”

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BDR Technologies

Multi-billion dollar biodiesel industry set to benefit from BDR Technologies continuous reactor loop process
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BioDiesel Reactor (BDR) Technologies Inc. is a clean technology company that develops and markets membrane reactor production systems for the multi-billion dollar global biodiesel industry. Conventional biodiesel producers face a number of challenges:

Rudimentary reactor technology that often fails to deliver quality commercial applications
High cost of feedstock oils
High pre-treatment, conversion and operational costs

BDR Technologies addresses all three challenges. The company’s reactor technology can improve the economics of biodiesel facilities by significantly reducing capital and operating costs, improving flexibility to process low-cost feedstocks, and by improving yields of biodiesel of a quality that exceeds international standards.

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FormVerse

Enterprise email gets a brain with FormVerse
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Forget the attachment. Drop the laundry list of cc’d recipients. Relax about data leakage. FormVerse Inc.’s patented Active Structured Email™ is poised to transform enterprise email from an information deluge into a goldmine of data, organizational structure and intelligence.

“This isn’t e-mail as you used to know it,” says FormVerse’s CEO and President Kirk Deininger. Instead, FormVerse is an advanced application engine that uses Active Structured Email to turn Microsoft Outlook into a framework for automating and streamlining key business processes, from travel requests to mission critical strategic decisions. The key is FormVerse’s ability to integrate customized forms into the email interface.

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Fusebill

Fusebill speeds cash collection for SME subscription companies
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As businesses from online digital media to insurance companies convert to subscription-based services, many are wishing someone would take over the new e-mountain of accounting.

From a fortune cookie manufacturer to an e-signatures company, this wish is coming true with Fusebill Inc. The Ottawa-based company is emerging as a leader in providing subscription-based Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with efficient, customized, automated billing services.

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Gnowit Inc.

Gnowit CoreAlerts beat Google Alerts in reliability, real-time delivery and relevancy
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Gnowit Inc. offers a stable of products to perform complete media monitoring management. CoreAlerts based on powerful core technologies is a real-time media monitoring and analytics solution with a public BETA launched in October 2012.

Gnowit’s scaleable solutions are aimed at individuals, NGOs and other organizations as well as corporations that need to monitor the Web to perform brand management, crisis control, opportunity identification and strategy direction.

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Granite Networks Inc.

Ottawa’s first Tier 3 data centre cuts risk of a system failure for clients to once every one million years
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Protecting computer networks and the data stored inside those networks is a key facet of our modern economic fabric. Mission critical servers must be up 24/7 and must no longer be stuffed in a cupboard or under a desk. Companies need to analyze ever-increasing amounts of data to gain improved insight and decision-making. This requires more complex computer systems and a 21st century data centre.

“We have come to market with our $15 million Tier 3 data centre as more companies realize the advantages of this kind of facility. Companies must store, manage and access data and we enable all of those functions,” says Rainer Paduch, CEO of Granite Networks Inc. The firm was founded in the Fall of 2011 and in the Spring of 2012 opened Eastern Ontario’s first Tier 3 data centre. Granite Networks expects to reach annual revenues of $10 million in just a few years.

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MB Foster

MB Foster delivers highly scalable data access in mission-critical environments worldwide
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As one of Ottawa’s most established IT companies, MB Foster Associates Limited (MB Foster) was founded in 1977, just two years after Microsoft Corp., to help companies integrate computers into daily operations. The firm rapidly evolved into dealing with the data on computers and ensuring it was accessible and could be moved without being destroyed.

“If you can’t access your data or if it is lost when systems are upgraded, that represents a huge loss to an organization. MB Foster enables organizations to strategically capitalize on their IT infrastructure data and applications,” says founder and CEO Birket Foster. Every day hundreds of thousands of users from Global 100 companies and government organizations use MB Foster solutions that run on tens of thousands of servers. The company’s team has developed software solutions that integrate with all operating systems. “We specialize in highly scalable data access in mission critical environments,” says Foster.

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Netcelerate

Netcelerate ensures business communications come through loud and clear
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Netcelerate Corp., a full-service business communications solution provider is a recognized leader in Ottawa’s technology startup communities. The company was selected in 2011 to provide communications solutions to Invest Ottawa, the incubator for small business that delivers programs and initiatives to increase entrepreneurial momentum, wealth and jobs in the National Capital Region. Anticipating mobile technology’s sky-rocketing adoption, Invest Ottawa needed Netcelerate’s innovative solutions to accommodate its rapid growth.

Established in 2003, Netcelerate is a leading North American provider of affordable and scalable telecommunication systems, hosted and managed voice and data services, managed IT services, Internet connectivity and mobility applications.

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NeuroQore Inc.

NeuroQore’s improved approach to TMS could soon have patients smiling again
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As a medical engineer, NeuroQore Inc. founder and CEO Mehran Talebinejad likes problems for one reason: it’s an opportunity to find a solution. As a case in point, he notes that of the 40 million people diagnosed each year with depression in North America and Europe, only a third achieve full remission with only pharmaceuticals.

“That’s a huge problem,” says Talebinejad, and it is also a major market opportunity for the innovative company’s patent-pending Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) technology.

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RideShark

RideShark’s transportation management system steers users toward sustainable travel, away from driving solo
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The keys to increasing sustainable travel options in the future are in the pockets of those with access to sustainable travel options, tools and resources. RideShark Corporation’s transportation management system helps people choose among many sustainable options for their dayto- day commutes or one-time trips.

RideShark is a secure, mobile, web-based transportation mobility management system used by public and private sector clients globally to simplify flexible transportation choices such as carpooling, transit, cycling, walking and teleworking. Founded in 2006 by Ottawa-based engineers, Sharon and Tom Lewinson, RideShark incorporates up-to-the-minute, state of the art technology, security and mapping features.

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SageTea

SageTea™ is transforming words directly into programmer-free software applications
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Don’t be lulled by SageTea™ Group’s corporate name. This Ottawa-based software developer is energized by the vision of providing businesses with software solutions with the ability to do more, for less, and sooner than many could imagine possible. And it’s doing it with SageTea™, a patent pending next-generation technology that’s turning text into money-saving computer software — no programmers required.

“This is a game-changer,” says SageTea™’s CEO David Long. “We can shorten the time to market for new software projects by 80 per cent, and for less than half the cost. For any company that’s contemplating a new IT project, I can show them a way to get the job done in months instead of years.”

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Secure City Solutions

Secure City Solutions communication and collaboration software improves interoperability and reduces costs
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Established in 2012, Secure City Solutions designs and develops software-based communications and collaboration products for the industrial, commercial, public safety and security as well as government markets. Secure City Solutions has engineered three products as an integrated software suite to support the varying needs of these markets.

c*COM establishes and controls audio communications from varying devices including, hand held radios, land lines, cell phones, SAT phones, IP phones and public address systems. The exchange is managed through a simple interface with customizable operator functions, such as record and playback.

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Titan Building Products

Titan Building Products make every deck builder look like a pro
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Richard Bergman knew there needed to be a better, simpler way to make beautiful decks. Now, the founder of Titan Building Products (TBP) is turning more than 20 years of experience into unique products that put the tools and know-how for constructing durable, attractive decks into the hands of North American homeowners and contractors.

“I want to empower the average person to be able to build beautiful decks regardless of skill set,” says Bergman, TBP’s President and CEO. “That’s the idea behind everything that we do. We make products that perform well, make a deck look and last better, and can be used by the average guy to help him look like a hero.”

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Valydate

Valydate helps multi-billion-dollar electronic manufacturers eliminate circuit board design errors
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Valydate Inc. offers an entirely new automated approach to schematic review and validation. On average Valydate’s tool reduces the hardware development cycle by at least one re-spin. A re-spin is the entire process from schematic design to production of a circuit board — which can span three months or more. The industry standard is two to four re-spins to complete a product. The elimination of one re-spin represents major cost savings.

Valydate began in 2010 with a management team well versed in the design and testing of schematics and boards. Valydate’s staff understands the challenges of designing world class, innovative electronic products. Clients benefit from the elimination of design errors and marginalities early in the hardware design cycle, when they have the least impact on time, quality and cost. Valydate’s clients include those in the telecom, defence and aerospace, and photonics sectors.

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World Bio-Fibre Technology

World Bio-Fibre Technology turns straw and other agricultural fibres into high quality boards
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“There is no such thing as waste, you just need to find a way to use it,” says Peter Jardine, CEO of World Bio-Fibre Technology Inc. In 2003, Jardine partnered with the Canadian “father” of strawboard, Gary Gall, to form World Bio-Fibre Technology. Gall had been behind Canada’s first strawboard plant in Manitoba that operated for seven years with very strong sales, yet the plant’s owner, Dow Chemical Inc., closed it in 2005 because it didn’t fit its core product line.

Strawboard is more environmentally friendly and is price competitive with plywood, MDF, chipboard and pressed wood. Jardine chose the Ottawa Valley for World Bio-Fibre Technology because of access to a former Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF) manufacturing plant that was sitting empty in Pembroke, Ontario. “This plant has one of the best production lines in North America,” says Jardine. Once financing is secured and after a six-month, $48 million dollar retrofit, the factory will convert 270,000 tons of straw into 155 million square feet of strawboard and employ 180 people, growing to 300.

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Zighra Inc.

Zighra solutions leverage mobile and crowdsourced intelligence to fight fraud
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Zighra Inc. builds solutions that leverage the potential of mobile technology and the crowdsourced intelligence of consumers. Zighra’s software products reduce costs associated with fraud in high-risk transaction environments such as mobile payments, banking and eCommerce.

ZfraudShield is a patent-pending crowdsourced mobile fraud intervention solution that detects and prevents fraud in realtime. The product allows simple, secure authentication of transactions and verifies the identity of the purchaser. This gives peace of mind to consumers, merchants and banking institutions because, with verification, fraud is minimized. ZfraudShield also empowers financial institutions to fight fraud and fraud-related costs, reduce call center costs and rebuild customer confidence. ZfraudShield also offers consumers the ability to flag a fraudulent transaction. As ZfraudShield accumulates alerts, it gets “smarter” and alerts all users to transactions to be avoided — this crowdsourced intelligence provides further security to the system.