In front of a crowd of 450 guests, including Mayor Stephen Mendel - who passed along his encouragement to the entrepreneurs in the crowd, Datagardens, received the Fast Growth Award. Geoff Hayward, President and Founder of Datagardens based in Edmonton, walked away with an awards package valued at $90,000 and the two runners’ up Simple Solar (from Okotoks), and Tagle (from Calgary), received over $38,000 in prizes.
Datagardens enables a single information technology administrator to build a flexible, secure and cost effective virtual data centre spanning many centres around the world. Patented technology enables offices to share data, servers, software, storage and a single administrative environment even when separated by thousands of kilometres.
“Participation in the TEC VenturePrize competition has been surprisingly important to our company’s development. We registered for the competition in the fall of 2007 when DataGardens was no more than a concept, “said Hayward. “Since then we have grown to a staff of 12, brought our product through to beta trials with industry leading multinationals, filed a patent application, and raised more than $2 million of financing.”
“The mentorship we received from TEC VenturePrize in addition to the feedback we received from judges, screeners, and workshop facilitators has been instrumental to our growth. Winning the competition was merely icing on the cake.”
This year’s competition was exceptional in leveraging the support of volunteers, with 100 people providing their time, effort, and expertise.
IdleTime, the winner of the Student Business Plan Competition Award of $6,000, offers a unique proposition that is attractive to those who have temporary staffing needs (buyers) and those have spare time or idle time (service providers). It is an electronic marketplace which will empower both buyers and service providers to find/post jobs in real time and at market rates. Using internet and cellular technologies jobs can be matched literally within minutes, this is unique in today’s staffing environment. The runners up for the Student Business Plan Competition Award, MountainFlix and BlackFire Technologies, each received over $2,000.
“The TEC VenturePrize Student Business Plan Competition was a valuable experience to both my academic and professional careers. It gave me the opportunity to apply all the skills and experiences I gained in the classroom and through extra-curricular activities, while completing my undergraduate degree at the University of Alberta’s School of Business,” said James Matsuba, Founder and CEO of IdleTime. “It also provided valuable feedback to the strengths and weaknesses of my business plan which will be used during the startup phase of my business. I’d recommend it to any student who is interested in starting their own business and have an idea they’d like to develop.”
The TEC VenturePrize Student Award is supported by the Alberta Ingenuity Fund through the Ingenuity Enterprise, and Western Economic Diversification Canada.