The Winter Olympics in Sochi proved to be not only a win for Canadian athletes, but also for a Waterloo Region tech company. Since the beginning of February, Dejero Labs has been in Russia, setting up and securing their mobile broadcasting technology. If you watched the Games, chances are you’ve seen footage from their devices.

During the Games, we visited Dejero’s headquarters in Kitchener, where jet-setting founder and Chief Technology Officer Bogdan Frusina took an afternoon off, before heading back to Russia, to explain his cutting-edge platform and devices, and share his Olympic experience.

Since 2008, Dejero has been creating innovative tools to simplify digital storytelling and reporting. The company’s wireless products are changing the way broadcasters in the field deliver live, breaking news to viewers. Bulky, area-restrained microwave trucks are no longer a necessity thanks to Dejero’s technology.

Now, broadcasters can be completely mobile. With the Dejero Live + platform and 20/20 transmitter, a highly-portable box, they can create a wifi hotspot to record and broadcast live, high-quality video from virtually anywhere using cloud-based management.  Without traditional restrictions, journalists can now report in the midst of inclement weather, natural disasters and crowded events.

Customers around the globe including CBC, The Weather Network, Sky News and CBS have been able to report live from extremely challenging locations, such as floods in Canada and the United States, the Boston Marathon bombing and the London and Sochi Olympics.

While we’re proud of our athletes, we can also take pride in knowing that what we saw was possible thanks to a local tech company. Here, Bogdan shares his biggest lessons from startup success, and why local community is so important to a growing global brand.