Startups breaking the mould

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This article was published 20/06/2017 (2494 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It used to be that new business startups would be undertakings that required founders’ sweat equity, limited capital and a tightly defined market.

But the top three winners at this year’s Manitoba Venture Challenge smash that model to pieces.

Catherine Metrycki of Callia, Mark Loewen of Fastnet Communications and Bryce Brousseau of Canada Plow have ambition, incisive understanding of their market and crackling skill sets that shatter that old-fashioned model.

They are all focused on national or international markets, all are rapidly expanding and all of them will require much more capital than their 20-something founders have access to.

If this is really the era of the startup, the winners of the eighth annual Venture Challenge continue to prove Manitoba’s young entrepreneurs are not being left behind.

In recent years, challenge winners have gone on to win national pitch competitions at the National Angel Capital Organization and the Canadian Finance Forum.

Jan Lederman, the CEO of Innovate Manitoba, said in the six years her organization has been running the event, about 80 companies have been through the program, which includes intensive boot camps to help companies prepare for investor pitches. Additionally, they have raised a collective $113 million of risk capital, including an average of $500,000 in their first 18 months.

In addition to the winners, two other promising businesses were pitched at the event on Tuesday — Brickstorming, founded by Kristen Klassen, a train-the-trainer program using “Lego Serious Play” method as mental health therapy and M3Aerial Productions, co-founded by Matthew Johnson and Trevor Lehmann, a certified drone pilot training and marketplace platform.

The winners are:

First place: Callia, founded by Catherine Metrycki

Metrycki has created what she says is the first luxury bouquet-in-a-box experience. Her online flower shop may be the only one of the 3,500 mom and pop shops across the country that package bouquets in stylish, ingeniously designed cardboard boxes.

But there is much more to the business than that. With only four bouquet selections available at a time (that depend on which cut-flowers are in season) the ordering process takes no more than six clicks of a mouse to complete.

With no bricks and mortar except some warehouse space and computer servers required, she can keep the cost of bouquets down to $49.99.

Metrycki started in September in Winnipeg and has already grossed $150,000. She’s up and running in Vancouver and Edmonton and launched this week in Calgary.

The online operation is set up to handle all sorts of subscription services, like a bouquet for all the major holidays or every two weeks to Lululemon shops in Winnipeg and Edmonton.

Also, by accessing flowers direct from the grower wherever possible, Callia ensures its flowers stay fresh longer than the inconsistent quality of traditional flower shops.

Metrycki, who already boasts a career as a marketing executive at Procter and Gamble behind her, knows how to leverage a strong brand in her efforts to create a much better experience in an outdated $7.6-billion floral gifting industry.

Second place: Fastnet Communications, founded by Mark Loewen

Even though the telecom business in Canada is overwhelmingly dominated by five large companies, Mark Loewen has already carved out a small niche in the apartment or condo-dwelling, cord-cutting millennial market.

Fastnet has laid its own fibre-optic cables that connect a handful of Winnipeg apartment buildings, which then connect more buildings with line-of-sight wireless connections from roof to roof. Offering service for less than two years he’s got more than 400 subscribers with several hundred more queued up to join in Winnipeg and Calgary.

Fastnet is fast both in terms of download speeds — Loewen says it’s 10-times faster than typical high-speed broadband — and also much quicker than mainstream telcos in installation with an automated process facilitated by pre-installed equipment that cuts installation down to minutes rather than days.

Fastnet is already connected to 13 buildings in Winnipeg with another four about to come up. Loewen is marketing Fastnet to building owners who can then include convenient, high-speed broadband as a selling feature to their tenants.

Loewen knows he’ll be almost continuously raising money for the next couple of years as he builds out the network connecting more buildings in more cities.

Third place: Canada Plow, founded by Bryce Brousseau

Brousseau has started the quintessential Winnipeg-business — high-tech driveway snow clearing.

Canada Plow doesn’t own a shovel. Brousseau has developed a Zamboni-type machine (that’s now manufactured for him in Germany) that uses anti-icing material that performs to such exacting specifications that he can confidently say it will clear a driveway in less than 20 seconds regardless of how much has fallen.

Using all sorts of digital technology and a very defined market — the service will only be offered in certain neighbourhoods with homes built in the last few decades — customers can know exactly when their driveway will be cleared and will be warned by an automated text ahead of time so that cars can be removed.

With patents pending and the Canadian rights to the anti-icing materials secured, Canada Plow is offering a service unlike any other. And for as low as $350 per winter, it’s much less than conventional snow clearing services.

Started in Winnipeg, the business has been up and running for two years and is also available in Edmonton, Regina and Saskatoon. A handful of mid-sized cities in southern Ontario are next on the list.

In the coming weeks Brousseau will take receipt of 16 new machines with updated design features.

With its community-specific target marketing, Canada Plow provides snow-clearing service to churches and religious centres in each of its catchment areas.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca