NBIF Invests In Two Moncton Tech Firms

By Alan Cochrane, Times & Transcript | link to original article (subscribers only)

Two Moncton tech firms, Foursum and SelectBidder, are launching new application products for golfers and car dealers with financial assistance from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.

Foursum, which is headed by CEO Matt Eldridge of Moncton, received an investment of $250,000 from the provincial foundation, along with support from other undisclosed investors.

“The funding allowed me to build the team and really move things along,” says Eldridge. The company formed in March of 2012 and the product went through 10 months of development. It is now available on the app store for smartphones.

Foursum is described as an all-in-one application for golfers, designed to enhance the way players experience and enjoy the game. Based in Moncton, this start-up company is developing a new golf brand positioned to help “socialize” and “gamify” one of North America’s favourite pastimes. The company will be launching their mobile app next May. The app for smartphones will include in-game scoring, game analysis, GPS, social gaming, leaderboards and the ability to earn, wager and redeem virtual points.

The company says the widespread use of smartphones, and the fact that there are 26 million golfers in the U.S. alone, points to potential for success in the $76 billion golf market. About 14 million of those are described as “core golfers” who play more than eight times a year and embrace new technology. The company says core golfers regularly use smartphone apps with GPS to measure the on-course yardage and improve their game.

The Foursum management team consists of Matt Eldridge (CEO), Adam McDonald (CTO) and Louis Melanson (VP Business Development), who are all passionate golfers. Eldridge is an entrepreneur who has been involved with PropertyGuys.com and more recently he founded and served as CEO for Lymbix. McDonald is a full-stack software web developer and former co-founder of Spheric Technologies, acquired in 2008 by Function1. Melanson has been a golf professional for 20 years, having been voted one of the top 50 instructors in Canada.

SelectBidder is a Moncton-based company headed by CEO Sean Liptay, who was general manager of Great Northern Auction Ltd, the largest wholesale public auto auction in Eastern Canada. The company received an investment of $200,000 from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.

SelectBidder has developed a proprietary platform designed to help new and used-car dealers lower costs and increase profits on their wholesale vehicle inventory. SelectBidder’s sophisticated mobile/web auction tool enables the efficient remarketing of vehicles without the high costs associated with physical auction houses. Through innovative product features, including Trusted Buyer Zones and a Second Look feature, Select Bidder is leveraging the hidden value of social networks to drive bidding and achieve true market value for sellers.

Since its inception, SelectBidder has been collaborating with automotive dealers and wholesalers to evaluate and improve the remarketing process. SelectBidder has signed up over 200 dealers and wholesalers, including over 40 franchise dealers making up the primary sellers on the system. Having learned that the franchise dealers are quick to adopt new methods of disposing of their used inventory, the company’s focus has been on selling to and supporting the buyers in the system, primarily used car lots and wholesalers.

Kevin Berry, COO, brings 20 years of expertise in the software business. Prior to opening T4Gs Moncton office in 2008, Kevin was an early employee at Whitehill Technologies, acting as VP Sales before their acquisition by Skywire and eventually Oracle. CTO Ken Bodnar has over 30 years’ experience as a software developer in government, defence, banking and retail. His strength is in large-volume transactional data, security and architecture.