BCIC-New Ventures’ 25 round-three competitors are working on their Round 3 business overviews for submission on August 3rd.
Competition judges will announce the 10 finalists on August 31st but in the meantime let’s have a closer look at the Top 25. Here’s Part I – five randomly selected companies from the Top 25.
Diacarbon Energy (Burnaby)
Diacarbon Energy provides technology to convert waste biomass into value added products in small to medium sized renewable energy plants, so called Biomass Refineries. The refinery process is centered on a thermo-chemical process called pyrolysis, meaning “fire decomposition” that involves the heating of biomass at specific temperatures and under oxygen-free conditions. Under these conditions, raw biomass (wood fibre, agricultural residues), or biomass wastes (manure) are spontaneously converted into three fuel types: Liquid bio oil, solid biochar and synthesis gas (mixture of combustible gases). The liquid bio oil can be used in boiler or low rpm diesel generators, whereas the biochar can be used as a soil conditioner, or as a clean replacement for coal. The combustible gases (syngas) produced by the system are collected and used to fuel the Biomass Refinery units; the entire system is a closed loop with low emissions and hot water as the only waste.
CapTherm Systems (Coquitlam)
CapTherm Systems has developed a revolutionary cooling application that they believe could be the successor of liquid cooling. It is a next generation heat and mass transfer solution based on the “multiphase” concept, a technology that passively wicks a coolant in hot electronics, and is capable of removing up to 10 times the heat produced by today’s high-end semiconductors. This will solve a multitude of thermal challenges in high-power electronic devices, and has multiple military and space applications, but will have the biggest impact in the development of electric vehicles. Their current focus is on datacenter cooling. 30 per cent of the power cost in the average datacenter is cooling, and about $12.9 billion is spent annually to cool the worldwide server base. CapTherm’s solution can offer up to a 30 per cent increase in energy efficiency. CapTherm’s plan is to eventually replace a majority of the traditional liquid/water cooling applications with this newly emerging technology.
Awesense Wireless (Kelowna)
Awesense helps utilities reduce energy loss and increase profits through line measurement sensors. The problem is that a significant amount of energy is lost in the distribution of electrical energy due to antiquated infrastructure and non-commercial losses, such as power theft. This results in a profit loss for the utility which directly affects the consumer rate payer. On average, a utility has avoidable losses per 100,000 homes of $3 million. The Awesense system consists of mobile wireless smart sensors that can be quickly deployed within the distribution grid to help identify key areas of electrical loss. This information is passed on to the Awesense senseNET software suite for post processing where an analytics engine helps utility managers and engineers make the right decisions about mitigating losses and increasing grid efficiency.
GreenScene AgriTek (Langley)
GreenScene AgriTek is cleaning up used horse bedding with a new technology that reclaims the bedding’s wood component so that it can be reused as eco-friendly bedding, free from pathogens, mold spores and odors. It is the first processing system of its kind in North America. Horse farms, equestrian centers and racetracks have limited disposal options for their used horse bedding, and a shortage of good bedding material available. Their system can recycle and reuse the used bedding over 35 times to reduce costs by 33 per cent. In addition to aiding the equestrian industry, this process helps the environment and improves sustainability.
Left of the Dot Media (Maple Ridge)
Established in 2010 and located in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Left of the Dot was created to provide Domain Name portfolio holders with an alternative to domain parking for the very best names in their portfolio. Domain Parking revenues have been plummeting year-over-year since 2008 and the asset holders have seen multi-million dollar drops in annual earnings because of it. The Domain Holders have a desire to build out many of the names within their portfolios, but they don’t have the ability and expertise to build or manage the resulting web-based business.
The domain names that are managed by Left of the Dot are all high-quality, million dollar domain names that when built out on the Left of the Dot platform, turn into multi-million dollar businesses. This is achieved by leasing out sub-domains and websites direct to end users (e.g. Luxury.Villa.com or Tours.Oahu.com) while building real businesses onto the primary domain name itself. This not only increases the amount of monthly, recurring revenue for the asset holder, but it builds a real web-based business that is now valued at a much higher multiple than the asset itself.