Portfolio

Whirlscape develops predictive keyboard for Will.i.am’s wearable Puls cuff

October 17, 2014
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

Whirlscape, makers of the Minuum keyboard, have developed a small, predictive keyboard for Will.i.am’s wearable Puls cuff. The company is a graduate of the UTEST program‘s first cohort.

The Puls, announced by the musician and entrepreneur on Wednesday, October 15, 2014 at the Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, is expected to be released in time for the 2014 holiday season.

The Puls announcement and Whirlscape’s involvement were covered by Mashable.

Mashable’s Karissa Bell describes how Whirlscape’s keyboard integrates with the Puls:

Puls uses a small predictive keyboard that fits in the very bottom section of the screen. The keyboard was developed by Minuum, the Y Combinator-backed company that has also developed keyboards for Android Wear and Google Glass.

MaRS Innovation joins new financing round for AvidBiologics Inc.

September 29, 2014
Susanne Staer
Formation Biologics

TORONTO, Sept. 29, 2014 — AvidBiologics Inc., an oncology drug development company, today announced the closing of a financing round. The company is founded on antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) technologies co-developed with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC).

Led by Lumira Capital, the financing round included MaRS Innovation (MI), MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF), Rosseau Asset Management, and the company’s founding investors.

This announcement was covered by Dow Jones: Private Equity and Venture Capital and by Canadian Private Equity.

Today’s financing builds on prior support from the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP), Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation’s Business Accelerator Program (MRI-BAP) and other Canadian life science development organizations.

“This financing round enables us to rapidly advance our lead ADC into clinical trials,” said Ilia Tikhomirov, President and CEO. “We would like to thank the NRC and all of our partners for their support as AvidBiologics transitions from a discovery-stage to a development-stage company.”

**Dr. Raphael Hofstein**, president & CEO, MaRS Innovation.

“The high quality pre-clinical package and exceptional leadership team, including pioneers in the development of ADCs, position the company for a successful transition towards clinical development,” said Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MI. “The cooperation among funding organizations, such as those involved in this financing, represents the strengthening foundation on which commercialization within Toronto’s start-up community can be successfully realized. We are glad to be part of this financing syndicate that supports one of Canada’s leading life sciences companies.”

Kaypok, MI’s director of intellectual property quoted in the Financial Post

September 26, 2014
Susanne Staer
Kaypok Inc.

Article focuses on importance of intellectual property protection for small businesses

StacyIvanchuck8791 — **Dr. Stacey Ivanchuk**, director of intellectual property for MaRS Innovation.

Dr. Stacey Ivanchuk, MaRS Innovation’s director of intellectual property, was quoted in Denise Deveau’s article, “Intellectual property protection is a game small businesses can’t afford to lose,” for the Financial Post on September 26, 2014 regarding the importance of protecting intellectual property for small businesses.

Here’s an excerpt:

Stacey Ivanchuk, director of intellectual property for MaRS Innovation in Toronto, says that protecting a startup’s technology is important especially from an investor’s perspective.

“One of the first questions investors will ask a company is, what is your IP position? To them it’s something they can talk about as an asset and shows that you are distinguishing yourself,” [Dr.] Ivanchuk said.

Ivanchuk said businesses run the gamut from doing nothing to protect their ideas to filing for patents on every idea that comes out of a brainstorming session. “Too early is not good because it can be a waste of money if the proof you expected down the road doesn’t happen,” she said. “But if you wait too long someone might beat you to the punch.”

The article also quotes Atul Asthana, CEO of Kaypok, a tech start-up in the text analytics space spun out from York University in partnership with MaRS Innovation:

In the high tech world especially, it’s not always easy to determine whether something should be protected or not, according to Mr. Asthana. “You have to be able to enforce it. If you do it poorly, you will be giving your ideas away and spending a whole bunch of money. It can become a real cat and mouse game sometimes,” he said.

University of Toronto’s entrepreneurship programs to share over $3 million from province’s Campus-Linked Accelerator Program

UTEST among the four U of T entrepreneurship programs to be funded through Ontario’s CLA program

The University of Toronto will receive $3,056,000 in funding over two years from the Ontario government to increase its training and support for student entrepreneurship.

The funding is part of the Campus-Linked Accelerator Program (CLA), announced today by Reza Moridi, Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation, and Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities.

“Fostering the entrepreneurial spirit among students is a key component of Ontario’s Youth Jobs Strategy, through programs that help transfer their ideas and skills to the marketplace while creating rewarding careers,” said Minister Moridi. “By partnering with colleges and universities to support entrepreneurship, we are ensuring our province’s business leaders of tomorrow are getting the support they need to succeed today.”

With this funding, U of T will continue to build on its long track record of success in this area by expanding the entrepreneurship opportunities it offers to students, primarily through its four principal accelerators: The Creative Destruction Lab (Rotman School of Management), The Hatchery (Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering), The Impact Centre (Faculty of Arts & Science), and UTEST (The Innovation and Partnerships Office, produced in partnership with MaRS Innovation).

The CLA program provides critical funding that enhances the support U of T and MaRS Innovation offer to our current UTEST companies,” said Kurtis Scissons, co-director of UTEST. “It also allows UTEST to expand to work with a greater number of student entrepreneurs in computer software, and is a catalyst for other UT CLA’s to combine their entrepreneurship efforts in a synergistic, complimentary way.”

Xagenic’s Shana Kelley named to Globe and Mail’s Top 12 Canadian Innovators

September 23, 2014
Susanne Staer
Awards

Dr. Shana Kelley, co-founder of Xagenic Inc. and a professor of biochemistry at the University of Toronto, has been named to the Globe and Mail’s Top 12 Canadian Innovators list.

The contest solicited nominations from across Canada that were assessed by a panel of judges. According to the Globe, the contest “recognizes talented Canadians who not only have great ideas, but also turn them into reality.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Another innovator who is taking on the traditional way of doing things is Ms. Kelley, a winner in the Health category. Ms. Kelley, a University of Toronto professor and founder of Xagenic, developed a lab-free molecular diagnostic platform that can test for cancer and infectious diseases in the field, with results that are available in 20 minutes.

It’s a product, says Mr. [Dan] Debow, [senior vice-president of emerging technologies at Salesforce] that is in line with a bigger trend that’s happening in health care: the decentralization and democratization of diagnostics.

BioPrinter engineering team wins Canada Dyson Award

September 22, 2014
Susanne Staer
Awards

This story appears courtesy of our colleagues at U of T Engineering News.

The printer was developed by (clockwise from top right) University of Toronto students Arianna Mcallister and Lian Leng; former student Boyang Zhang and University of Toronto associate professor Axel Guenther. (Photo courtesy of the James Dyson Foundation)

While some of us are using the new power of 3D printers to make smartphone cases and chocolate figurines, two engineering students from the University of Toronto are using them to print functional human skin.

On September 18, Arianna McAllister and Lian Leng were named the Canadian winners of the 2014 James Dyson Award for their invention, the PrintAlive Bioprinter.

This story was covered by CBC News and BBC News. The BioPrinter team is working with MaRS Innovation to commercialize their technology; read the news archive.

This 3D skin printer won four U of T engineers a $3,500 Canada James Dyson Award and a chance to compete for a $60,000 international prize (photo courtesy of PrintAlive and U of T news).

The machine – created in collaboration with Professor Axel Guenther, alumnus Boyang Zhang and Dr. Marc Jeschke, head of Sunnybrook Hospital’s Ross Tilley Burn Centre – prints large, continuous layers of tissue that recreate natural skin.

Minuum launches iOS 8 keyboard, expanding product to Apple users

September 18, 2014
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

Whirlscape, a graduate of the UTEST program’s first cohort (co-managed by MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto), has launched their little keyboard for big fingers to Apple users.

The software, released to coincide with Apple’s iOS 8 launch, is part of Whirlscape’s larger efforts to develop typing solutions for wearable devices, including smartwatches, Google Glass and other applications.

The Minuum product launch for iOS was covered in TechCrunch, The Next Web and Mobile Syrup, among other tech blogs, and was mentioned in articles dissecting iOS 8’s overall improvements for Apple users (see Yahoo Tech, Mobile Syrup and Digital Trends).

Whirlscape releases Minuum version 2.11, teases for iOS 8 launch

September 3, 2014
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

Whirlscape, graduates of the UTEST program, made tech headlines last week by releasing a teaser of Minuum, their one-line, mobile keyboard for wearable devices, running on an iPhone.

The announcement and teaser gif were covered in TechCrunch, SlashGear, MobileSyrup and AndroidGuys, among other tech outlets.

From input, the Minuum blog:

We’ve embraced the design philosophies of iOS to refine Minuum into an elegant typing experience centred around our incredibly powerful autocorrect.

Robert Bosch Venture Capital leads $3.75 million Series A round for Flybits

August 20, 2014
Susanne Staer
Flybits

Toronto start-up to advance context-aware mobile experience platform

TORONTO, Canada (August 20, 2014) — Flybits Inc., a Toronto start-up that has created a context-aware experience development platform for mobile environments, has closed a $3.75 million Series A financing. Led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC) and Trellis Capital Corporation with participation from MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund and Ryerson Futures, Inc., the investment will advance the company’s product development and international growth in the United States and Europe.

This announcement was covered in the National Post, TechVibes, Fortune Magazine‘s Term Sheet Blog (Dan Primack), BetaKit, Yonge Street Media and PEHub.

Since spinning off from Ryerson University in 2012, Flybits has raised a total of $4.05 million to date, including a seed round from MaRS Innovation. Flybits technology has been used in developing smarter cities, connected stadiums, smart corporate campuses, shopping malls, conference venues and even fashion shows. The company also concurrently incubated its technology at the Ryerson Digital Media Zone in Toronto and Vodafone Xone in Redwood City, California.

“Flybits is RBVC’s first investment in Canada,” said Luis Llovera, managing director of Robert Bosch LLC based in Palo Alto, California. “The company has demonstrated a unique and innovative approach in building foundational technology to deliver Contextual Mobility Services for both display-driven devices and for the emerging Internet of Things applications. Flybits’ strong roots in tangible and high impact R&D, their ability to predict the required infrastructure for the industrial Internet and their global entrepreneurial ambitions were some of the reasons we were attracted to this company.”

“Involving high-quality investors such as Bosch and Trellis demonstrates the potential in our unique approach to designing Intelligent Mobility Solutions that are intuitive and scalable,” said Dr. Hossein Rahnama, CEO and founder of Flybits. “In particular, having Bosch as a strategic investor means we leverage their global expertise in software automation, connected communities and sensor technologies as we support new and existing international customers, and scale and develop both our team and our products.”

“Recognizing the Flybits’ platform potential to create next-generation mobile experiences at an early stage, MaRS Innovation worked closely with Flybits to launch the company and secure initial market traction,” said Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation.

UTEST graduate CoursePeer announces partnership with the Western GTA Summit

August 13, 2014
Susanne Staer
CoursePeer

CoursePeer’s social collaboration intranet solution successful in amplifying members’ and citizens’ collaboration and engagement

TORONTO, Aug. 13, 2014 — If you run a community-led group to discuss key issues facing over 1.4 million people, how do you help them to do the best collaboration possible? What’s the best way to capture and retain their feedback?

After seven years of successfully holding the Western Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Summit—an annual meeting co-chaired by the mayors and business leaders of Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon and Oakville to discuss issues of significant importance to the Western GTA—the Summit’s task forces decided to further enhance their members’ means of collaboration and knowledge retention by adopting an innovative technology platform.

This announcement was covered in Mississauga News, InsideHalton.com and the Brampton Guardian.

CoursePeer, a University of Toronto and MaRS Innovation start-up providing learning and collaboration solutions for enterprise and government, began a successful implementation at the Summit in January 2014.

“I find the program very intuitive, accommodating and simple to use. There is a bit of a fraternity building among the regular users,” said Peter VanSickle, co-chair of Brampton and president of the Brampton Downtown Development Corporation.