The Globe and Mail recently published their latest annual ranking of Canada’s Top Growing Companies and the big list of businesses sprawls across sectors—from fashion to finance, construction to software, and everything in between.
Techcouver poured over the list to uncover Vancouver’s gems of entrepreneurial success. This storied batch spans a range of interesting technologies and exist on their journeys across various growth stages.
Let’s take a look.
Acuva Technology
A finalist for the Company of the Year – Growth Award at the 2021 BC Tech Awards and singled out by Techcouver as a homegrown B.C. startups to watch, Acuva is focused on providing access to affordable clean drinking water in as many countries as possible.
Acuva is a global leader in UV-LED disinfection system design for water, air, and surface disinfection. Alumni of the entrepreneurship@UBC program, the startup released its first consumer UV-LED water purification system in 2016.
“At Acuva, we believe everyone should have access to safe drinking water,” said Manoj Singh, President and CEO of Acuva Technologies. “Our products offer a safe and sustainable drinking water solution, removing the need to carry single use plastic water bottles.”
East Side Games
The Vancouver-based game development studio recently launched “Star Trek: Lower Decks – The Badgey Directive,” a mobile game available on iOS and Android.
The free-to-play game features storylines and characters from The Lower Decks, Star Trek’s first comedic animated series. It is part of a multi-year partnership with Paramount Consumer Products, utilizing ESGG’s Game Kit-Idle technology.
East Side Games is known for developing games from franchise-based intellectual property. Examples include Doctor Who and The Office.
Klue Labs
Klue is a competitive intelligence platform that enables product marketers to collect, curate, and deliver competitive intelligence across every department.
“Klue provides a lens into your competitor’s world, continuously updating and connecting dots to help you win more business,” the company explains. “It’s a new way to capture, manage, and communicate market insights from the web and across the company, in platforms you already use.”
Last year the AI-powered competitive enablement platform raised a huge Series B round led by Tiger Global with participation by Salesforce Ventures.
The startup won the Tech Culture of the Year Award at BC Tech’s 2021 Technology Impact Awards and was named one of Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures for 2021.
Launchpad Technologies
Launchpad is Vancouver-based provider of enterprise integration software and post-configuration support services.
They recently partnered with Seattle’s Avalara, a cloud-based tax compliance automation platform.
Launchpad Technologies was “Company of the Year” in the Growth category at the 2021 Technology Impact Awards hosted by the BC Tech Association and a finalist in the Export category this year.
Riipen Networks
Riipen, an online work-integrated learning marketplace, created Level UP to “make paid work experience and connecting with student talent more accessible for students and employers of all backgrounds.” It is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s Innovative Work-Integrated Learning Initiatives program.
“Close to 98% of employers in Canada are small businesses, for whom resources and funding are often limited,” explains Dave Savory, fellow cofounder of Riipen. “We want to expand access for all businesses who want to participate in paid internships and offer their mentorship to student talent.”
Level UP experienced a robust pilot year, having been oversubscribed sine its first month. Projects are 80 hours long, completed by students over two-to-eight weeks for small and medium businesses in Canada.
Riipen, a recent Technology Impact Awards Growth-category Finalist, launched in 2017.
Traction Guest
Traction Guest is a cloud-based visitor management solution that was born out of Traction on Demand, a cloud consulting and application development partner with Salesforce. It was acquired last year by ShieldCo, a PSG portfolio company focused on building the visitor management space.
Originally bootstrapped and incubated within Traction on Demand, Traction Guest was spun out as an independent company in 2015, was funded by a Salesforce’s $100 million Canada Trailblazer Fund in 2018, and completed a $17 million Series A financing round led by Bessemer Venture Partners in 2019.
The ShieldCo team believes that Traction Guest and Sign In App have the potential to forge the future of the industry and they are excited to partner with the respective management teams of Traction Guest and Sign In App.
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