Big bets. Big money. Big annoucements.


The federal government served notice as February came to a close that investment in Canada’s technology sector continues to be a cornerstone of its current mandate, laying out hundreds of million of dollars in funding for women entrepreneurs, cyber security and other digital initiatives in the 2018 budget.

A day after the budget was tabled in Ottawa, Navdeep Bains, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, dropped by Lazaridis Hall at Wilfrid Laurier University for a budget question-and-answer session, where he provided details relevant to a Waterloo Region audience.

Bains singled out Communitech’s Fierce Founders program for its role in helping to support female-led businesses and for focusing the government’s budget in that direction.

“Right now, we have 16 per cent women-led businesses in Canada; we want to double that by 2025,” Bains said. “Initiatives by Communitech, for example, really will help us achieve those targets. We want to be very ambitious, but we recognize that we don’t have all the ideas, and we want to really support great initiatives.

“Communitech does great work in promoting women founders and more businesses led by women, and that’s what we want to see more of,” he continued. “That’s why we made those specific investments in the budget.”

Even as the tech community was digesting the many initiatives of this budget, the reverberations from last year’s budget were still rippling through the ecosystem. The day after Valentine’s, the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor received news that it had been chosen as one of five “superclusters” slated to share $950 million in federal funding to drive innovation and growth, money that had been heralded in the 2017 federal budget.

The corridor bid, known as the “Advanced Manufacturing Supercluster,” was driven by a coalition of 140 partners and led by Guelph-based auto parts manufacturer Linamar Corp. It included the University of Waterloo, Communitech and local companies like Miovision and Thalmic Labs. It will receive up to $250 million.

Cash, on the barrelhead


While the government was busy priming the tech sector pump, so too was the private sector. Several firms with Waterloo Region ties announced significant venture capital deals, including Indigo Fair, which raised US$12 million and SkyWatch, which raised CDN$4 million.

Waterloo-based Descartes Systems Group, which makes logistics and freight broker technology, acquired a New Jersey software company called Aljex for US$32.4 million, continuing a string of recent acquisitions.

And Shopify, the Ottawa-based online store platform with a large footprint in Waterloo, reported better-than-expected fourth quarter revenue of US$222.8 million, an increase of 71 per cent from a year ago. Shopify additionally said it’s considering moving into voice-enabled e-commerce, allowing shoppers to make purchases by talking to an internet-connected home device.

There was some money on tap at Communitech, too: A Toronto-based startup called Ratio.City, which makes a mapping and analysis tool for real estate developers, won the Fierce Founders Bootcamp pitch competition, capturing the $100,000 grand prize.

And while we’re talking money, The PwC MoneyTree report said that venture capital funding for Waterloo Region companies reached $182 million in 2017, lower than in the record high in 2016 of $256 million, but higher than in any other year since. There were 16 deals in 2017, the largest being a $100-million round by eSentire.

Tech for Good...


Vidyard CEO Michael Litt created a stir with an unvarnished, honest column for Fast Company about mistakes he made as he built his company, specifically with respect to gender. He also addressed the criticism he has received as he works to address the issue. Said Litt: “I’d rather stay true to my values and my team than curry favor with an old boys’ club.”

In a similar vein, Kiite’s Joseph Fung and Donna Litt (who is married to Michael) talked with Communitech News about how they have purposefully built gender equality and diversity into the DNA of their company.

And Ali Asaria, CEO of Tulip Retail, announced that he is donating 80 per cent of his company shares to a charitable fund to be controlled by his employees to help address income disparity.

It’s timely that these themes – all falling under the umbrella of “tech for good” – are emerging as we move closer to True North Waterloo, the May 29-31 conference being hosted by Communitech that has a tech-for-good mandate. Speaking of True North, be sure to catch the profile that appeared in Inc., last month, about journalist and entrepreneur Sarah Lacy, who will speak at the event.

Tales from the Tannery...


The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, or WSIB, launched its innovation lab at Communitech early February. Not long afterward, the Waterloo Economic Development Corp, or WaterlooEDC, acknowledged it was moving into the Tannery, too, and staff and furniture began arriving at month’s end.

Aeryon Labs’ former CEO Dave Kroetsch dropped by the Tannery, delivering a Pizza with the Prez chat about his journey with the Waterloo drone-maker and his decision to step down as CEO and take on the role of Chief Technology Officer. Meanwhile, Aeryon announced it was creating a spin-off called Aeryon Defense USA, which will focus on the U.S. military and government market.

Civic forum


The City of Kitchener, which maintains an innovation lab at Communitech, has been working on the digital divide file recently. The city’s Director of Technology Innovation, Dan Murray, says city staff has been conducting a review of city-owned, public-access computers and Wi-Fi and will report to council later this year to develop policy tools to reduce the effects of digital exclusion.

Kitchener has also completed the installation of 16,000 smart sensors, part of its street light replacement project. The sensors are part of a narrow-band network that the city will use for smart-city applications.

To the west, the City of Stratford has partnered with Waterloo tech companies eleven-X and FoxNet, as well as Canada’s Open Data Exchange (ODX), based at the Communitech Data Hub in Waterloo, on a smart parking project designed to provide real-time information about parking availability.

And to the east, the City of Guelph has doubled down on its partnership with Kitchener startup Alert Labs, increasing the rebate it offers on Alert Labs’ “Flowie” water monitoring hardware from $50 to $100.

Alert Labs, by the way, is a graduate of the University of Waterloo’s Accelerator Centre – which reached the No. 4 position in a world ranking of accelerators linked to a university, compiled by UBI Global, a Swedish-based data and advisory firm.

Movers and shakers


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in San Francisco in early February, where he met with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, touting Toronto as the place Amazon should establish its much-coveted second headquarters. A decision by Amazon to locate in Toronto would reverberate all along the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor. Trudeau’s visit was an opportunity for Bloomberg to write a piece exploring how Canadian innovation is faring under the current Prime Minister.

Trudeau’s visit coincided with an announcement by software developer Salesforce that it would to inject $2 billion into its Canadian operations, joining a growing list of big U.S. companies beefing up their Canadian footprints, including Uber, Alphabet (Google’s parent) and Facebook.

But Facebook, it turns out, has also attracted the ire of the Canadian Prime Minister. News emerged in February that Trudeau warned Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg last November to fix its fake news problem or it would face new government regulation. Fake news will be one of the issues tackled at True North Waterloo.

In other news

    • Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic, Waterloo Mayor Dave Jaworsky and Communitech CEO Iain Klugman made the case for expanded two-way GO Train service between the region and Toronto at a pre-budget consultation with Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa held at the Kitchener Public Library.
    • Waterloo software firm Axonify was named Business of the Year for companies with more than 50 employees at the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce gala. Waterloo’s Oculys Health Informatics Inc., which was recently selected to participate in the Lazaridis Scale-Up Program, received the Innovation Award.
    • And speaking of community giving, Zubi was one of the organizers at Pitch In!, an event where seven local tech leaders advocated for their favourite charities, described in a Waterloo Record column by Luisa D’Amato.


– This edition of the roundup compiled by Craig Daniels