NBIF Investees Take Home KIRA Awards

Photo by James West/Daily Gleaner

The ICT industry in New Brunswick showed off its best on Thursday at the 2013 KIRA Awards and NBIF was there as the evening’s Diamond sponsor. Bob Hatheway, chair of NBIF opened the evening pointing out that over 50% of the nominees have received support from the Foundation including Inversa Systems, Introhive, Smart Skin Technologies, Vimsoft, Total Pave, RtTech Software, PropelICT, Ali Ghorbani and Green Imaging. In his address he touched upon NBIF’s imminent expansion and a new funding mechanism that will be announced in the coming weeks for all New Brunswick innovators, both the new and the tried and true.

Canadian comedian and television personality Carla Collins took over as emcee for the night with a 20 minute stand-up routine that kept the audience in stitches.

Of NBIF’s portfolio, two companies took home awards. The first was Inversa Systems for Technological Advancement. Inversa got started after its founder, Jake Arsenault won NBIF’s $25,000 Student Entrepreneurship Prize in 2004. Since then NBIF has invested another $500,000 in the company. Inversa is the maker of an imaging technology that allows industry to see inside immovable strutures and systems without even touching them, essentially a CT scan for industry.

In his acceptance speech, Arsenault explained how the company’s technology is affecting a paradigm shift in the industry, to say that their technology is a world first, allowing companies to do something that they’ve never been able to do before. He pointed out that when looking at the Fortune 100 fastest growing companies, the who’s who of corporations making the biggest impact on the economy, 13% of them are there because they introduced a product that created an entirely new market. “That number might sound small,” Arsenault said, “but when you do a deeper analysis you’ll find that it’s these companies who are providing 75% of the increase in market capitalization for the entire list.” He ended by emphasizing how important it is to pay attention to opportunities that create new markets, no matter how small they are and no matter how long it takes, because it’s these companies, when successful that provide the most return for the economy and society.

The other NBIF portfolio company that took home a prize was one of its most recent investments, Introhive, for Most Promising Start-up. First incorporated in January 2012 with just four employees, the fast growing company now has a staff of over thirty people, and is on the road to cementing its place in the “big data” world. The company’s technology allows corporations to analyze millions and millions of employee communications and report who knows who and how they are connected both inside and outside of the organization. It’s designed to provide intelligence to sales staff and other internal stakeholders that points out who, if anyone, can make a “soft introduction” to a prospective client or collaborator.

Accepting the award was David Alston, who talked about how fortunate he feels to have been able to participate in the start up and success of four technology companies and build his career without ever having to leave New Brunswick. Born and raised in Sussex, he explained how it was just two weeks of computer programming training in grade 8 that ignited his passion for the industry, at a time when the Commodore 64 was all the rage. He continued by explaining that even today, most kids aren’t exposed to the creativity of computer programming until they reach university. “Just like watching a lot of TV doesn’t make you an actor, using a computer doesn’t make you a programmer,” he said. He ended by encouraging the government to seriously consider introducing computer programming to high school math programs, so that all students get a chance to work on the back end of what they use every day, and volunteered to do whatever it takes to make it happen.

Alston, one of the first employees at Radian6, which NBIF exited in 2011 for $9.25 million, explained the domino effect that ICT investments can bring to the New Brunswick economy. “A large number of our staff also come from other successful start-up companies right here in New Brunswick,” he said, “and it goes to show that when you’re successful building one you want to build another, and this is creating new jobs for new generations, and will continue to feed itself over and over again…it’s working.”