IBM, province pump money into startups

Big firms working with hubs like Communitech

WATERLOO — Francis Coral-Mellon pulls data from the internet about who is sharing videos from online marketing campaigns as he fine-tunes a content-creation platform that ensures his clients’ materials go viral.

“It matches the right audience with the right content,” said Coral-Mellon. He was speaking in an interview Wednesday during an event to officially launch a threeway partnership among Communitech, IBM and the government of Ontario. IBM is pumping $24.7 million into the startup ecosystem in the province while Queen’s Park is adding $22.75 million.

The objective: Encourage more people like Coral-Mellon to launch startups and create jobs. Coral-Mellon is co-founder of Viral 360, which is based in the Communitech Data Hub in Waterloo. It employs 10 people full-time, and another six on contract. Viral 360 uses bots that collect very specific data from the internet related to video-marketing campaigns.

The startup has developed technology that finds the individuals and websites that are viewing, liking, commenting on and, most importantly, sharing videos. It maps how video campaigns spread over the internet.

All of that data can be used to predict the success of a video-marketing campaign on the web before it is launched. Clients will know how much it is going to cost, and what results to expect, before the video content is released on the web.

Coral-Mellon’s team wants to fine-tune that platform so it predicts how many viewers will become buyers of the products or service in the video.

“Right now we are predicting, engaging and sharing, then eventually we will be able to predict conversion — you put X amount in, you get X amount out,” said Coral-Mellon.

In the same space as Viral 360 is the IBM Innovation Incubator. It will link the startups in the Data Hub to IBM’s artificial intelligence platform called Watson, cloud-computing resources and other expensive technologies.

“With a program like this we are trying to make it far easier for them to access, adopt and support the implementation of these very disruptive, emerging technologies like Watson,” said Allen Lalonde, the senior innovation executive for IBM Canada.

IBM’s investments in five technology hubs around Ontario, including the Communitech Data Hub in Waterloo, is about growing the startup ecosystem, which can help a big technology company such as IBM.

“If we can help grow markets, if we can help engage entrepreneurs and ideas and people and skill development in this broader ecosystem, we are building a market for ourselves going forward,” said Lalonde.

This is what economic development looks like in the 21st century. It attracted elected and nonelected officials, including Waterloo Mayor Dave Jaworsky, Waterloo MP and Government House Leader Bardish Chagger, who is also the federal minister for small business and tourism, and Kitchener Centre MPP Daiene Vernile, the parliamentary assistant to the provincial minister of innovation.

“Seven of the 10 largest tech companies in the world are doing research and development in Ontario,” said Vernile during her remarks.

She commended Communitech for partnering with IBM, and noted the region’s technology association has helped to launch 2,400 startups, creating more than 4,300 jobs.

While invited guests and elected officials mingled, Coral-Mellon was thinking about the importance of getting people to watch and then share video content on the internet.

“We are almost done development, we are ready to scale, we have good revenue from our pilots and we are very sustainable,” said Coral-Mellon. “So we are excited.”