Startupville

Happy Global Biotech Week!

Global Biotech Week (GBW) is an annual week-long celebration of all things biotechnology and is an excellence tool for increasing awareness of the industry's global and economic significance.

GBW is particularly special for Saskatchewan because our province hosts over 30% of Canada's agricultural biotechnology activity and continues to develop in areas like genomics, plant-made pharmaceuticals and diagnostics.Saskatchewan has already made a huge impact in biotechnology and future big ideas are on the horizon!

We spoke with one of biotech's rising stars Iain Wallace, Co-founder of Proxima Research and Development, a local Saskatchewan startup that provides scalable and customizable scientific services with an emphasis on affordability and accessibility, about exciting innovations in biotech and what's next!

To learn about how you can get involved with local events during GBW which is September 25-29, visit globalbiotechweeksask.ca.

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Prairie Clean Energy is one of Saskatchewan's most exciting new cleantech startups because of its game-changing approach to providing an environmentally sustainable solution to agricultural waste.
Prairie Clean Energy recently received $180,000 from the Agtech Growth Fund to support the development of a technically viable pathway in Saskatchewan for producing and using flax straw pellets as industrial biomass fuel. This solution addresses the global biomass shortage and provides farmers with an economical and environmentally conscious way to use flax waste.
President & CEO Mark Cooper joins Startupville to talk about the company's aim to provide secure, renewable, sustainable, and abundant biomass fuel to customers around the world and how they can achieve it from right here in Saskatchewan.
This episode of Startupville is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan. 

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We spoke with Erin Pisko, Vice President of Intellectual Property Strategy with Innovation Asset Collective (IAC), a not-for-profit organization that helps Canadian companies leverage IP strategy to compete and scale. IAC's educational programming, funding opportunities and access to a patent pool with up to $10M to acquire patents and market intelligence makes it easy for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to secure ownership of their innovation and protect their edge and  control their data. With this access and Innovation Saskatchewan's recent partnership with IAC, Saskatchewan startups have another tool to compete and scale in a global market and become the next great SK tech success!

Prairie tech is going UP! 🚀
Uniting the Prairies showed yet again why it has become the Prairies' premier startup-focused tech conference for A-tier founders, active investors and tech leaders from across Canada and beyond.
We spoke with startup founders, tech leaders and global investors from across Canada to discover why Prairie tech is the next big thing!
Settle in for incredible insights and stories from our guests:

➡️ Yuri Navarro, Kanata Ventures
➡️ Kimberly Bennett, Co-Founder of Fidu
➡️ Grant Lahring, Co-Founder of Goodlawyer
➡️ Erin Pisko, Vice President of Strategy with Innovation Asset Collective
➡️ Tom McDonell, CEO of HazTrack Inc.
➡️ Serese Selanders, Founder and CEO of SolusGuard
➡️ Robert Irwin, Co-Founder and CEO at Village Wellth
➡️ Thamidur Rashid Taseen, Founder and Director of TRT Technologies Ltd.
➡️ Steve Karagioules, Founder of Pathfinder SBS

This episode of Startupville is brought to you by Co.Labs and Innovation Saskatchewan. Innovation Saskatchewan is a proud sponsor of UP and funder of Co.Labs.

Happy Canadian Innovation Week!

Yearlong Innovation Saskatchewan supports the incredible ingenuity of Saskatchewan's innovation ecosystem, and Canadian Innovation Week gives us a special opportunity to ensure the inspiring stories and phenomenal successes of the Saskatchewan tech sector and research community are shared beyond our provincial borders.

Today we're celebrating #InnovateForHealth by exploring the groundbreaking contributions of Saskatchewan-based research institutes and their significant impact on the lives of Canadians and people around the world.

Dr. Volker Gerdts, Director and CEO of Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO), talks about VIDO's role as Canada's centre for pandemic research and as a world leader in infectious disease research.

Patrick Odnokon, CEO of Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF), talks about SHRF's role in supporting health research and making it accessible to everyone in the province.

Dr. John Root, Executive Director of Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation, talks about how the Fedoruk Centre helps improves the health and well-being of our communities through nuclear methods and innovations.

The Startupville podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan and was recorded in our recording studio inside Collider Saskatoon – Saskatchewan's only tech and research co-working space.

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Siemens EDA, a segment of Siemens Digital Industries Software, is a technology leader in electronic design automation (EDA) software and hardware and their tools and industry-leading tech enable customers to embrace digital transformation to accelerate the pace of innovation. In 2017, Siemens acquired Solido Design Automation, a Saskatoon-based company that was the world leader in machine learning-based EDA software for variation-aware design and characterization.

On this episode, we talk with Siemens EDA Senior Director of Engineering, former Solido Vice President and local legend Jeff Dyck about his professional journey and how Siemens EDA has grown by more than 10x since we last spoke. We also dive into exciting topics like the future of AI, how to maintain startup growth and how to create a company culture that makes employees want to come into the office.

Buckle up folks, this is a good one!
 
The Startupville podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan and was recorded in our new recording studio inside Collider Saskatoon -- Saskatchewan's only tech and research co-working space.
 
“There’s going to be a whole bunch of applications that are going to emerge in the next few years. It’s happening incredibly quickly. A thousand new startups trying to use large language models for all kinds of verticals that have never been thought of before. If you can find a data set, you go and train it and see if that’s a cool thing, then figure out what you need to do to turn it into a product.” – Jeff Dyck on generative AI

Dark Horse Ag Ventures believes that agriculture is a community built upon innovation and dedication to the craft of feeding the world. Their mission is to simplify precision agriculture and make advanced agronomy applicable, easy to learn, and accessible. Through their platform, they address the struggles that farmers and agronomy businesses have collecting and processing data with the backing of acclaimed experts in digital agriculture and crop science to keep things simple.
 
On this episode of Startupville, we talk with Co-Founder and CEO, Tyler Lefley, about their experience going through (and winning!) the Co.Launch X cohort, how they are adopting existing and new technologies to make precision agriculture easier, what they’re looking forward to most in their next adventure in Cultivator’s Ag-tech Accelerator cohort, and so, so much more!
 
The Startupville podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan.
 
“The real treat [of operating in Saskatchewan] is having your immediate market right outside your front door. That’s tough to beat when you look at the experts and the expertise, and the willingness for fostering ag-tech companies.” – Tyler Lefley, Dark Horse Ag Ventures

Join us in the Startupville Thunderdome recording live at the 24 Hour Startup event at Cultivator HQ.

24 Hour Startup is hosted at Cultivator HQ in Regina, Saskatchewan, and brings together the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, lead designers, and makers, to pitch ideas, form teams, and build a minimum viable product (MVP) in 24 hours. Participants experience what its like in day-to-day startup life while building their company, but with access to some of the world’s top mentors, entrepreneurs and supporters who are ready to help them launch in their pitch to celebrity guest judges!

On this episode, we've condensed 24 hours into just under 40 minutes and features exclusive interviews with some of the celebrity guest judges as well as past and current participants. Get the full scoop on what went down during this year’s 24 Hour Startup by tuning in now.

We sit down with Danielle Gifford (Movement51), Dana Abdullah (Bell Ventures), Hannah Tait (past participant/winner), Zakiyyah Noorally (participant) and Jordan Lazaroff (participant).

This podcast is brought to you by Cultivator & Innovation Saskatchewan

“What I’m really excited for is just the diversity in teams that have come together and what they’re able to accomplish in 24 hours. It’s really, quite astounding, when you see all these ideas up on a wall, and then you actually see it conceptualize into a business model in terms of a target market audience and how they would actually generate revenue.” – Danielle Gifford, Movement51.

Selling seeds, chemicals and fertilizers to farms on the prairies was the primary goal of North Star Systems, and one of the biggest challenges was keeping clients’ product properly stocked.

In 2018, North Star Systems set out to create a solution for the distribution of product from manufacturer to retailer to farmer in the field. Now, their Saskatoon-based team of engineers manufactures Tattle Systems devices, a complete and closed system that connects the device to the user through any smartphone, app or tablet, creating an innovative, real-time remote monitoring and data solution that increases efficiencies, profitability, sustainability and more for their clients.

On this episode, we explore how finding the solution to a problem can lead to running a successful tech startup, how to keep employees engaged in today’s everchanging work environment, and how a non-tech agriculture expert can tap into the world of IoT with tech partners to work together on a fast scaling agri-tech enterprise.

This podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan & Martin Charlton Communications

“People love investing in technology if its going to help them, reduce their costs and make their lives easier, but you have to prove it. So show it, and constantly be a shower, and a promoter.” Curtis Kolibab, CEO, North Star Systems Inc.

This episode was recorded on July 5, 2022.