Thirty Under Thirty
Women rule in our sixth annual celebration of the province’s top young business leaders. See for yourself starting on
Need a reminder of how much B.C. has going for it? Take a look at the 30 Under 30. In the sixth edition, our winners more than live up their predecessors’ high standards. As always, they hail from a wide range of industries, professions, and educational and social backgrounds, with ambitions as big as their origin stories are inspiring. Whether they pursue profit or not, many use their roles as leaders and entrepreneurs to improve the lives of others.
In a big change from previous years, though, 18 of the 30 Under 30 are female. They include several representatives from the tech sector—a sign that women are gaining ground in a field where they once had few opportunities. Ladies and gentlemen, we know you’re going places, but please stick around. Your province needs you.
CHARL E S ( CHARL I E ) GRINNE L L CEO RIGHTMETRIC DIGITAL AGE: 28
LIFE STORY: A month and a half after enrolling at UBC on a football scholarship in 2008 with plans to go to law school, Charlie Grinnell injured his back in a car accident. The West Vancouver native dropped out of school and began making action sports videos that ended up online. Needing to learn more about Internet marketing, he completed certificate courses through New York State's Syracuse University, SFU and UBC. That led to six months at Invoke Media, the agency that spawned Hootsuite; almost three years in Toronto working on Red Bull Canada's digital marketing team; and just under a year at Red Bull's global headquarters in Austria.
When his girlfriend returned to Vancouver in 2017 because she couldn't get a visa to stay in Austria, Grinnell followed. He got a social media job at clothing retailer Aritzia but realized he wanted to do his own thing. In March 2018, he and partner Evan Knight started Rightmetric, which analyzes data associated with online marketing to guide strategy in business functions from finance to HR.
BOTTOM LINE: In 2019, RightMetric plans to increase staff from seven full-time marketers and digital strategists to 10 to 15 and annual revenue from mid-six to more than seven figures. Clients include the Canadian Hockey League, Lululemon Athletica and Red Bull. – F.S.
SARAH S T EWART Founder ARC APPAREL TECHNOLOGIES AGE: 29
LIFE STORY: Sarah Stewart named her Vancouver store, which sells sustainable women's clothing, after Joan of Arc. “Women are warriors trying to do everything, have the career, friendships, families, and try and make the world a better place,” she says. “So Joan of Arc just really resonated with our brand.”
Born in Calgary, Stewart moved to B.C. with her family when she was 12 and grew up in Richmond. Travelling in Bali made her realize how what we eat or wear can affect someone on the other side of the world. The BCIT grad launched Arc Apparel in 2017
after volunteering for Vancouver's Eco Fashion Week increased her awareness of the garment industry's role in pollution and worker exploitation.
Stewart started off selling online across Canada before expanding shipping to the U.S. Having tested the waters with two successful pop-up stores, in February 2018 she opened a shop in Gastown that turned a profit its second month. Typical customers are professional women aged 18 to 36, as well as costume designers for productions like A Million Little Things and The Good Doctor. Because sustainable and ethically sourced clothes can be pricier than fast fashion, Arc Apparel's Laterpay program allows customers to pay in four instalments using their credit card.
BOTTOM LINE: Revenue more than doubled in 2018, to $360,000. Stewart plans to open a second store this year if she can find the right location. – F.S.
STEFAN IE GR IE SE R Co-creator SHINE BOOTCAMP Director of marketing SPHERE AGE: 29
LIFE STORY: Born in Colorado to what she calls “ski bum parents,” Stefanie Grieser was always intrigued by the world of business. But she wasn't sure what that would look like as a career. A stint at a large Calgary insurance company didn't inspire her. Then came an entrepreneurship competition at Uvic, which she attended after a year on exchange in France. Her idea? A ski pass app, “not unlike what you see at places like Whistler now.”
Grieser won the competition (and $5,300), but more important, through the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business entrepreneurship program, she realized that perhaps the suit-and-tie set wasn't for her. “The professors were very cool, they'd bring in panels of industry entrepreneurs, and you'd meet them and make so many connections,” says the energetic Grieser. “And that's when I thought, That's it. I'm either starting a startup or joining a startup. I'm not going back to any kind of corporate setting.”
In 2012, she found herself in Vancouver at Unbounce, which creates landing pages for clients. When Grieser left after six years, she was head of global markets, partnership and events, and the company had grown from 15 to about 200 staff. She's now director of marketing at Sphere, an eight-person Vancouver startup that matches clients with business coaches via an app, and one of three founders of Shine Bootcamp, which holds three-week coaching boot camps for women in business.
BOTTOM LINE: Shine, which accepts 15 women for each boot camp, had more than 50 applicants for its latest edition. Grieser is also talking to some major technology companies about partnering with Shine. –N.C.
SHE L BY MANTON Co-founder and executive producer BOLDLY CREATIVE AGENCY AGE: 27
LIFE STORY: Shelby Manton doesn't have a background in film, at least in the traditional sense. But the Uvic commerce graduate did have experience chasing her older brother, Geoff Manton, around White Rock with a camera, filming anything they could find. Manton thought she'd left that life behind when she went off to university, but it came roaring back when she decided to partner with Geoff, who has a film degree from SFU, and their friend Sebastien Galina to form Boldly Creative Agency.
About 80 percent of the production company's business is making commercials for or with advertising agencies. Manton contends that Boldly is reinventing the film production industry because it's so lean. “We try to look at other solutions, so we're just a little more crafty with how we approach production problems,” she says. “Because a lot of the time in the industry, people say, Oh, just throw a bunch of money at it and it'll go away. But there's always a solution, and it doesn't have to be money that solves it, just some creative thinking.”
BOTTOM LINE: The three founders have another full-time staff member, plus freelancers they call upon. The company, which hit about $2 million in revenue in 2018, recently moved into a new studio in Vancouver's Mount Pleasant. Manton hopes that Boldly will release its first feature film this year. –N.C.
HANNAH BERNARD+ SAMANTHA ELLIS
Co-founders ROOTS + ARDOR AGES: 27 + 28 LIFE STORY: Samantha Ellis and Hannah Bernard refer to meeting at a charity event as “serendipitous.” UBC grad Ellis was working in social media, and BCIT alum Bernard was doing freelance video. “We just immediately clicked,” Ellis says. “And it wasn't long before Hannah was like, We've got to do something together.” The result was social media force Roots + Ardor (“roots” because both are originally from the Prairies and it's a reminder to stay grounded, and “ardor” because of their enthusiasm). At first, all they had were their origins and their passion. “When we started, Hannah and I were literally the company; we were videographer and photographer,” says Ellis. Adds Bernard: “We'd be walking in, sweating, like, OK, done this shoot; now have to go to the next shoot.” The hard work paid off. Since landing their first retainer client, Macdonald Realty, five months after incorporating, the duo have more than held their own in the competitive Vancouver PR industry.
But perhaps more impressive is the firm's insistence on giving back, something that has its roots in the founders' meet-cute. Taking on pro bono clients is a regular part of doing business (for charities like Backpack Buddies, One Girl Can and Raw Beauty Talks), as is holding monthly “Ment-her-ship” events to connect with the community (proceeds go to One Girl Can, which helps build schools in developing countries). “We've been really passionate about working with brands that we mesh with, as far as our personalities and our whole groundwork of social consciousness,” Bernard says.
BOTTOM LINE: Roots + Ardor has four employees and some 25 clients on retainer. –N.C.
ME L IS SA Q U INN
Director of corporate strategy LEFT TECHNOLOGIES + RIGHTMESH AGE: 28 LIFE STORY: Returning to her hometown of Langley after completing a BBA at SFU'S Beedie School of Business in 2015, Melissa Quinn took a maternity leave HR contract that turned into a much bigger job. At Maple Ridge–based Left, she quickly moved into corporate development with the tech outfit, which had worked in the web domain name business but was turning its attention to blockchain and cryptocurrency.
The company's Rightmesh division has built a software-based mesh networking platform that lets people communicate with electronic devices even if they aren't connected to the Internet. The spark for this technology: while working with its team in Bangladesh, Rightmesh saw “the need to connect the 3.9 billion people who lack the human right to connectivity,” Quinn says.
Rightmesh, whose initial focus is on remote regions and developing countries, is incorporated in Switzerland. As Quinn explains, that nation was a friendlier host than Canada for its 2018 initial coin offering, which raised US$30 million. “My long-term hope is that they'll come to us and we can be an example for how other companies can do it right,” she says of Canadian and global securities regulators.
BOTTOM LINE: Since Quinn arrived, Left has expanded from 15 to about 50 employees in Maple Ridge, with another 100 in Bangladesh. Last year, the company finished 16th in Deloitte's annual ranking of the 50 fastest-growing Canadian tech firms and 101st in its Technology Fast 500 list for North America. In 2017, Left won B Corporation certification, which recognizes high social, environmental, transparency and legal accountability standards. –N.R.
BRENNAN FITZGERALD
Executive director HASTINGS CROSSING BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION AGE: 24 LIFE STORY: When Brennan Fitzgerald's family moved from their native Halifax to Morinville, Alberta, the then-19-year-old decided to introduce himself to the town's 10,000 or so people like any young person would, by running for council. “It was election year, and I've always been involved in my community, and really interested in service and contributing,” Fitzgerald says. “So I went in as the youngest candidate in the election, and one of the youngest running in the province at the time.” He received 801 votes, good for sixth in a seven-seat council race with 19 contestants. “I think I gave voice to a lot of social and environmental issues that weren't necessarily reflected by other members of council and on councils regionally because you're in
rural Alberta,” he maintains.
Deciding not to run again in Morinville, Fitzgerald moved to Vancouver, where he became executive director of the Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association in February 2018. “There's this perception everyone has of it being a dark and dirty place,” he says of the Downtown Eastside. “But there's also a lot of interesting businesses and community groups and public art and lots of awesome stuff going on. So really what I want to do is bring about a shift in people's attitudes to the area.” BOTTOM LINE: The Hastings Crossing BIA, which Fitzgerald runs on his own, comprises more than 850 businesses. –N.C.
JASMINE MOONE Y
Owner and managing partner BANTER ROOM Partner and director of marketing and events HOTEL BELMONT AGE: 29 LIFE STORY: Whitehorse, Yukon, is a place you either leave and never go back to or you never leave, says Jasmine Mooney of her hometown. She moved to Vancouver in 2008 to study marketing and communications at BCIT, switching the following year to Vancouver Acting School.
As an aspiring actress, Mooney was working in restaurants to make extra money when one of her patrons, Pacific Reach Properties president and CEO Azim Jamal, suggested she start her own establishment and offered to fund it. She approached her friend Ted Wilkie, then– general manager at the Parlour, to partner with her. The pair wrote a business plan, found a location on Mainland Street in Yaletown and opened Banter Room, a 90-seat restaurant with a 50-seat covered patio, in April 2017.
BOTTOM LINE: Banter Room, which has a staff of 70, earned $4.65 million and a 22.8-percent profit in fiscal 2018. Mooney and Wilkie have repaid their investors and are looking for a second location. They're also partners with Azim Jamal on a new venture, Hotel Belmont (a former Comfort Inn), scheduled to open in May at Granville and Nelson streets in Vancouver. – F.S.
ALEX DE CH ANT
Founder and CEO CELL CLINIC AGE: 29 LIFE STORY: You know how it goes. Guy meets girl while studying abroad, falls in love, follows her back to her hometown of London, England, and…well, that's where this takes a turn. Alex Dechant moved from Lethbridge, Alberta, to the U.K., and when he couldn't get a job on a two-year visa, he started a company called Apple Tree that fixed iphones and other Apple products. Dechant left England when his visa ran out. He sold Apple Tree (which still offers smartphone repairs in Canterbury) in 2014 and brought a similar idea back to Western Canada.
So Cell Clinic was born, growing to two locations in Vancouver and one in Surrey, where the head office is located. The company's 22 employees fix cellphones of all kinds and sell used ones. Of course, success breeds imitation. “A lot of break-ins, lot of negative online review stuff,” Dechant says of how competition has manifested itself in the business. “[ The reviews are] mostly fake; we try to go, Oh, we're really sorry about this, but it does appear to be fake.”
BOTTOM LINE: Dechant's stores earned gross revenue of more than $1.5 million in 2018. He's in talks with a couple of major phone makers about partnerships in the used-device space, and is starting another company that will put electronics recycling at the forefront of its mission. –N.C.
RACHEL CHASE
Co-founder and CEO ZENNEA TECHNOLOGIES AGE: 24 LIFE STORY: A childhood friend with a sleep disorder set Rachel Chase on the path to entrepreneurship. “He didn't find out until he was 25 that he had obstructive sleep apnea,” says Chase, who grew up in South Surrey and earned a bachelor of business administration from SFU'S Beedie School of Business, concentrating in finance, management information systems, and innovation and entrepreneurship. “He was always told that he was a bit slow, when in fact he was just very tired,” she explains, pointing out that sleep apnea in children is not only common but also difficult to diagnose because it doesn't involve snoring.
After researching obstructive sleep apnea and chronic snoring, Chase and Zennea Technologies co-founders Nell Du and Oliver Luo developed a device to treat the conditions. It will be the first clinically proven medical device approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use when a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine would not be prescribed.
Zennea uses neuro-stimulation technology that externally activates cranial nerves to contract the main dilator muscles of the tongue and reduce upper airway restrictions.
BOTTOM LINE: With its medical device navigating the FDA'S clearance process, Zennea, which has one employee in addition to the three co-founders, is completing pre-clinical testing so it can begin a clinical trial this year with 30 to 40 people. The company plans to enter the U.S. market in two to three years, pending clearance from the FDA, and then turn its attention to China's and Japan's medical device markets. Zennea is funded through Creative Destruction Lab and San Francisco's SOSV Hax portfolios. – F.S.
S TAC E Y WA L L IN
Co-founder and COO NUMINUS AGE: 29 LIFE STORY: Health is a recurring theme in Stacey Wallin's career. In 2012 she co-founded Lifebooster, a tech company that helps employers assess and address workplace injury risks. It evolved from Smartfit, an employee wellness solution that won Wallin's team a prize at SFU'S Beedie School of Business, where she obtained a BBA with a concentration in innovation and entrepreneurship.
In 2016, seriously ill herself, Wallin stepped down as Lifebooster CEO. The following year she joined the BC Tech Association, where she led the department that helped entrepreneurs increase revenue from $1 million to more than $50 million. “I wanted to use my entrepreneurship experience and my finance background to maximize the good that I could,” she explains. Wallin was an investment adviser at several firms, most recently Mackie Research Capital, from 2009-16.
Last summer, she and co-founder Payton Nyquvest, who also has a finance background, began a new venture. It formally launched in February as Numinus. The company's mission is to legalize pathways to alternative therapies using psychedelic plant substances and neuro-tech to treat substance addiction and mental health issues.
BOTTOM LINE: Numinus is acquiring a clinic in Vancouver and building a facility in Squamish, expected to be operational by mid-2019, with domestic expansion planned for 2020. Partners include the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies Canada, Salvation Botanicals and the UBC department of medicine. Addiction expert Gabor Maté and ethnopharmacologist Dennis Mckenna are advisers. – F.S.
WILL SON CROSS
Co-founder and CEO PATTERN LABS AGE: 26 LIFE STORY: Willson Cross calls his latest venture a startup lab. Launched late last year, Pattern Labs is a Vancouver-based fund that tests consumer technology ideas in industries from travel to home services to food. “We will build an enduring company around the winner, and that's a product that will improve the lives of millions of people,” Cross says.
The Vancouver native attended New York University's School of Professional Studies, dropping out after his third year to join Shoes.com back in his hometown in 2016. Before the e-tailer went bankrupt, he left his job as a product manager to co-found Gofetch.ca, an online platform offering dog walking, daycare and other services. The company, which raised $3.4 million in funding and grew to some 45 employees and more than $1 million in annual revenue, was acquired by pet-tech player Future Pet Animal Health last spring.
BOTTOM LINE: Pattern Labs, which employs about a dozen people, has closed a pre-seed funding round led by Silicon Valley investors. –N.R.
ANDREW H A NSEN
Founder and CEO SITE MARKETING PARTNERS AGE: 27 LIFE STORY: Rather than follow his dad and his twin brother into medicine, Langley-raised Andrew Hansen earned a business administration degree from Trinity Western University in 2013. Soon he was an operations manager for the resources and transportation division of Vancouver-headquartered construction giant Ledcor Group. In 2016, he left to become VP business development with Surrey-based marketing firm Agency Media.
Hansen noticed that no agency specialized in the industrial market, which he defines as “blue-collar”– everything from construction to mining. So last spring he launched Site Marketing Partners, using his construction network to land some clients. Specializing in an industry he and his team understand gives Surrey-based Site a big advantage over other firms, explains Hansen, who bills the company as a hybrid marketing agency, management consultancy and investment firm. “We can step into any construction client and we'll know their business,” he says. “We can walk in there and we can shoot a video the next day.”
BOTTOM LINE: At any given time, Site has 25 to 30 clients, most of them on retainer. B.C. customers include Frazer Excavation, Ledcor and construction software startup Sitemax, and the 10-employee company sees opportunities in Calgary, Edmonton, Seattle and Toronto. Site is also building a fund to help clients with matters such as mergers and acquisitions, Hansen says. –N.R.
CICELY BELLE BLAIN
CEO CICELY BLAIN CONSULTING AGE: 25 LIFE STORY: When Cicely Belle Blain launched her Vancouver-based diversity and inclusion consulting business early last year, she quickly attracted customers, thanks to connections she had made as an activist. Changing attitudes helped, too: “My clients are from so many different industries, and it's great to see how people value building more inclusive workspaces and more respectful environments,” says the co-founder of a local chapter of Black Lives Matter.
Blain grew up underprivileged in Southeast London, where at 15 she joined forces with other young residents to secure an $8-million national grant for a local leisure centre that now offers employment training and other services. After winning an International Leader of Tomorrow Award to study at UBC, she earned a BA in modern European studies and Russian in 2016.
She often advises organizations that have tried to become more diverse and inclusive but aren't sure how, partly because they lack the tools to measure results. There's some denial in Canada about the discrimination that women and people of colour still face at work, Blain argues: “It's systemic issues that we have to recognize that have historically held certain people back.”
BOTTOM LINE: Blain has worked with more than 50 clients. In B.C., they range from UBC and Vancouver Coastal Health to Electric Company Theatre and e-commerce outfit Elastic Path. She has customers in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, South Korea and the U.K. –N.R.
FIONA MORRISON
Founder and owner WOLF CIRCUS JEWELRY AGE: 28 LIFE STORY: The name inspires curiosity, and so does its creator. Fiona Morrison was a second-year student at Uvic's Peter B. Gustavson School of Business when she learned how to wire-wrap crystals from YouTube. She started selling her creations to friends and local boutiques under the moniker Wolf Circus. “I was really into wolves, and had this wolf head ring from another designer I was really into,” the Victoria native admits, shyly. “And then I put `circus' next to it because my dad told me that if I start anything in life, it's going to turn into a circus, just because of my personality. I'm always on the go, playing sports, running around, always travelling–that slightly scatterbrained mentality.” Morrison wrote her final entrepreneurship business plan for school on the endeavour, moving to Vancouver in 2014 to run it out of a Railtown manufacturing space.
BOTTOM LINE: Wolf Circus has 11 employees and sells its products at retailers worldwide, including Simons and Blue Ruby. The company topped $1 million in revenue last year. –N.C.
JUAN O R R EGO
Co-founder and CEO CUBOH SOFTWARE AGE: 22 LIFE STORY: At 22, Juan Orrego is a serial entrepreneur. Growing up in Barranquilla, Colombia, he sold ice cream door-to-door at the age of five. When he was 17, he moved to B.C. to get a Bcomm at Uvic and started an online jewelry business, paying his youngest sister to make deliveries back in Colombia. His two sisters have since joined him in B.C.
Orrego started Cuboh Software as an analytics software firm for restaurants in 2017 because he couldn't find a company to do an entrepreneurial co-op with for his degree. The following year, he rejigged it with the help of a new co-founder, Sinan Sari, who had worked for online food ordering and delivery service Just Eat and had a strong tech background. Cuboh is now a subscription service that helps restaurants streamline online ordering, menu and inventory management, and point-of-sale order transferring by combining meal delivery applications like Doordash, Grubhub and Skipthedishes on a single interface.
BOTTOM LINE: Cuboh, which was on track to grow from eight to 11 employees by March, expects annual recurring revenue to reach US$1 million in 2019, with a goal of US$5 million in five years. – F.S.
ALICIA CLOSE
Founder and CEO WOMEN IN TECH WORLD AGE: 28 LIFE STORY: Alicia Close has loved math since she was a child, when her father, a self-employed financial adviser, would have her solve tough problems during car rides. Close, who was born in North Vancouver and raised near Toronto, earned a BBA from Wilfrid Laurier University, majoring in finance and international business. She began her career in 2011 at mutual fund firm AGF Investments in Toronto, working with international clients on the reporting side. “What I always look at and lean toward is looking at the data to see how it can help and how it can make an impact,” Close says.
She returned to Vancouver in 2015 to join global identity and business verification outfit Trulioo, helping to build its data team and managing customer support. The following year, she and Elena Yugai founded non-profit advocacy group Women in Tech World (Witworld) and launched Women in Tech Week, which grew to seven cities in 2017. The event was a success, but Close saw a knowledge gap: data about female participation in the tech sector was from the U.S. “[I] wanted to focus on understanding what was happening in Canada to support women further,” she recalls.
So in late 2017, Witworld assembled more than 150 volunteers, and Close and COO Melanie Ewan embarked on a national tour in a 1991 Winnebago. In two months, they held community conversations with some 1,600 female and male Canadians. “It's such a wide landscape but quite a small tech community,” says Close, who also works as a data consultant.
BOTTOM LINE: Last October, Witworld released Canada's Gender Equity Roadmap, a report focusing on the five major barriers faced by women in tech, the resources available to them and an action plan for change. It followed that study with a similar report for B.C. This year, the group will launch virtual peer-to-peer mentoring for women across the country, and there are plans for a Netherlands tour. –N.R.
VALERIE SONG
Co-founder and CEO AVA TECHNOLOGIES AGE: 26 LIFE STORY: Everyone and their sister wants what Valerie Song is cooking, and she has no problem making them wait so the product is as good as it can be. Since Song drew up the designs for AVA (Automated Vertical Agriculture) Technologies' flagship invention,
the AVA Byte, in 2016, the attention has been non-stop. The indoor garden–a small device that looks like a mini-speaker and automates plant care– earned her not just a top-three finish in last year's Pitch for the Purse competition run by the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, but $2 million in funding from Vancouverbased Vanedge Capital, which had a representative in the audience.
Of course, the AVA Byte was supposed to hit the market last winter. “We're super open about the setbacks,” concedes the UBC Sauder School of Business grad about her creation, which she says combines the organic quality of Whole Foods with the convenience of an espresso machine. “Running a business that is based on hardware and software and the Internet of Things, we didn't consider all the things that could potentially go wrong or that we'd need a little more budget for. But as a result, it's going to be a way better product and have a lot more features than we originally promised.”
BOTTOM LINE: Vancouverbased AVA Technologies and its staff of seven hope to drop 5,000 AVA Bytes this spring, with another 20,000 units hitting stores later in the year. The company has been in talks about partnering with Amazon.com and Best Buy Co. –N.C.
ALEX WAN
Co-founder and managing director PERIPHERY DIGITAL AGE: 29
LIFE STORY: Since growing up as the “token Asian guy” in Tsawwassen, Alex Wan has capitalized on his knowledge of East and West: “I always found myself enjoying educating my friends on Chinese culture, which is a natural precursor to what I do now.”
Wan, whose family immigrated to B.C. from Taiwan when he was five, never planned to be an entrepreneur. After earning a BA in communications from SFU, he did stints at a couple of e-commerce companies but didn't like working for someone else. When he and some friends tried to start a business bringing Western goods to China, they ran into regulatory roadblocks. To make money, the group picked up contracts marketing real estate to Chinese buyers.
Those efforts spawned Periphery Digital, which launched in late 2016. Besides Wan, the sole remaining co-founder is director of operations Marjo Ruokamo. The Vancouver-based agency, which creates campaigns that help Western-branded businesses reach the diverse Chinese-speaking community, also offers insights into how those consumers think and behave. Knowing where they communicate online is important; for example, most Lower Mainland residents from mainland China use Wechat rather than Facebook or Instagram.
Thanks to Ottawa's current spat with Beijing, Wan has seen social media platforms in China pull back on promoting Canadian tourism. “But everything else, I'd say, from real estate and brands, it's business as usual.”
BOTTOM LINE: Periphery now has 10 staff, and in its second year, revenue was well over $1 million. A few of its clients: Flyover Canada, Rennie Marketing Systems, Tourism New Brunswick and Uber Eats. Within three and five years, respectively, the company hopes to have offices in Toronto and China. –N.R.
CARL TONE E
Vice-president, consolidation and coastal operations SPEEDEE TRANSPORT AGE: 29
LIFE STORY: For much of his life, Carlton Ee, whose Malaysianimmigrant father founded Burnabybased Rolls Right Trucking in 1976, had no interest in trucks. “What I did actually have a passion for was third-party logistics and supply chain management,” he says. Ee earned a BA in English literature and philosophy from Mcgill but decided against pursuing law as originally planned. He joined the family firm, working in the warehouse and customer service before starting a division that specializes in transportation to areas outside Metro Vancouver in 2014. Two years later it merged with another arm to become Speed Ee Trucking Ltd. dba Speedee Transport, with the “ee” representing the family name. Speedee's biggest customers include Best Buy Canada, Coca-cola Canada, Loblaws, Pepsico, Sobeys and Walmart Canada.
BOTTOM LINE: The company has some 80 staff in Burnaby; 15 drivers and three office staff in Nanaimo; and five drivers and two office staff in Kelowna, plus contract drivers. – F.S.
MIA FIONA KUT
Founder and CEO LUNA NECTAR ORGANICS AGE: 28
LIFE STORY: Interested in herbs and self-care as a child growing up in Richmond, Mia Fiona Kut took a course in alternative medicine at SFU while getting her BA with a major in communications. “That reignited my spark, and I fell back in love with it,” she says. When her younger sister experienced side effects from a chemical eyelash-lengthening serum, Kut decided to create a natural alternative. She made the first iteration herself, then hired a chemicals consultant to ensure the serum met Health Canada standards.
In June 2017, after a year of product testing, Kut launched Moon Boost Lash & Brow Enhancing Serum, which uses only natural ingredients and is PETA- certified vegan and cruelty-free. It was one of 10 eyelash-growth serums recommended by Women's Health magazine.
BOTTOM LINE: With the help of two employees and two contractors, Kut produces and ships Luna Nectar products from a facility in southeast Vancouver. They can be purchased online and at 35 retailers in Canada, the U.S., Singapore and Saudi Arabia. In 2018 the company sold more than 110,000 units and earned $300,000 in revenue. – F.S.
KIA RA LE BLANC
Chief product and creative officer SAJE NATURAL WELLNESS AGE: 29 LIFE STORY: Kiara Leblanc has been unofficially working for Saje Natural Wellness since she would ride her tricycle to her parents' first store in Lonsdale Quay. Back then, her role mostly involved stocking shelves or wrapping holiday gifts at the essential oils and skin-care products retailer. In 2010, after a stint in acting school at the University of Essex in England, Leblanc convinced Saje co-founders Jean-pierre and Kate Ross Leblanc to let her run the company's social media. The trend of monetizing platforms like Facebook and Twitter was just taking off.
“My mom said, `A whole person just to run social media and commerce? I don't have the budget for that,'” the younger Leblanc recalls. “And I said, ` Well, I'm almost free, so I'll work for 12 bucks an hour, three days a week.' And I absolutely fell in love with the opportunity we had. We always had great products, but to be honest, the outside was a bit Gaia Garden, hippy- granola-looking.”
Saje is now one of the largest wellness brands in the country, and Leblanc isn't stopping there. “There's endless room for growth,” she says. “The natural wellness space is becoming bigger and bigger; the category in general has doubled year over year over year. We're only in North America right now; I absolutely see us as a global brand in the next five years, and I want to play a really big part in it.”
BOTTOM LINE: Saje has 52 stores in Canada and 19 in the U.S., more than 150 employees and gross annual sales of about $100 million. The company has seen a 1,547-percent growth rate in the past five years. –N.C.
TAYLOR ROSS
Founder and CEO TDR ELECTRIC AGE: 29 LIFE STORY: Some people contemplate for years about what they'll do after high school. The day he graduated, Taylor Ross got a call from a family friend who owned an electrical company. He started work the following Monday. The Pemberton native then spent some time in the North, plying his trade in places like Fort Mcmurray, Tumbler Ridge and Fort Nelson after completing an electrical apprenticeship at Thompson Rivers University. It wasn't long before he got the itch to launch his own business. “I just started building a website, kind of developing it, and when I came home I would work some smaller jobs out of the back of my truck,” Ross recalls. “One day I just decided to go for it and quit.”
BOTTOM LINE: That was in August 2015. Since then, Vancouverbased TDR Electric has grown to 19 employees and five service vans that roam the Lower Mainland. The company did more than $2 million in sales last year and has made a dent in the electric vehicle market: it's one of Tesla's top partners in the region for charging station installations. –N.C.
KAREN LEE+ TANYA LEE
Co-founders LEZÉ THE LABEL AGES: 28 + 29 LIFE STORY: “Lezé is just like saying lazy but in a fancy way,” says Karen Lee. She and Tanya, friends who share a last name as well as a business, co-founded Lezé the Label last year to produce comfortable women's clothing that can go from the office to the gym. “We're kind of in the workwear category but made with leisure characteristics,” Tanya explains. The pair were introduced by a mutual friend because both wanted to host a charity event. After raising funds for the Salvation Army through a food-tasting charity called Operation: Full Kettle in 2016, they began producing compact wedding planning agendas.
Karen immigrated to B.C. from Hong Kong when she was a year old and grew up in East Vancouver. Tanya moved here from Taiwan when she was nine. There her family still operates Tobimax Textile, which oversees the production and export of Lezé garments. They were shipped from Hong Kong, but half the inventory recently started being dispatched from a warehouse in Richmond.
Lezé clothing is made from a blend of recycled plastic and used coffee beans, and has moisturewicking, anti-odour and anti-wrinkle capabilities. The company's goal is to recycle a million used water bottles in the next three years and eliminate all single-use plastics from its manufacturing processes.
BOTTOM LINE: Since launching in 2018, Karen and Tanya Lee have collectively raised US$365,000 through crowdfunding platforms. Within three months of opening
Lezé's e-commerce store, sales grew by 300 percent, to US$30,000 in monthly revenue. The company, which has five part-time employees, has sold more than 6,000 pairs of pants. – F.S.
MAXWELL WEBSTER
Co-owner and director of business development HASTINGS OVERLAND AGE: 27
LIFE STORY: Maxwell Webster got the idea for Hastings Overland when he took a break from work in 2016 to spend six months touring Russia, Asia and the Middle East. “I kept finding myself gravitating toward overland travel– renting vans or rickshaws or motorcycles,” says the Nanaimo native, who started his first business, a dogwalking service, when he was six and co-founded a clothing company at 18. “I realized this was an underserved market in B.C.”
Before launching what he calls an adventure business first and a rental company second in early 2017 with two vehicles, Webster earned a Bcomm with a major in entrepreneurship from Uvic's Peter B. Gustavson School of Business. Realizing through his time in the co-op program that he knew little about running a company, he decided to learn by working for other entrepreneurs, including two years as project coordinator and development analyst with Victoria's Jawl Properties.
Vancouver-based Hastings Overland provides off-road-capable Jeep Wranglers with rooftop tents, tailgate kitchens and camping gear. Webster and co-owner Cory Koesdibyo also organize custom experiences for clients, starting with a survey to gauge their adventure profile. “With our bookings, we usually will create them an outdoor trip plan,” says Webster, who stresses environmental responsibility in those plans and in manuals supplied with the vehicles.
BOTTOM LINE: For its third season, Hastings Overland has 10 Jeeps and is adding at least one staff member to its team of three, which includes the two owners. The company, many of whose customers are from Australia, South Africa, the U.S. and Western Europe, was recently accepted into Destination Canada's Canadian Signature Experiences program. – N.R.
MEREDITH ADLER
Executive director STUDENT ENERGY AGE: 29 LIFE STORY: After going to Argentina as an exchange student at 18, Nevada native Meredith Adler realized she wanted to work internationally. That brought her to B.C., where a BA in human geography at UBC led to an interest in energy issues and ultimately a communications assistant position at Vancouver-based think tank Clean Energy Canada. Within a couple of years she became community manager, then executive director of Student Energy, a not-for-profit that encourages youth involvement in the field.
In January 2018, Adler, who lives in Squamish and commutes to Vancouver a few days a week, launched Student Energy Chapters to teach university-level students and clubs to take action in any way their communities need, from holding information sessions to installing solar panels. Next up is the online Student Energy Leaders Fellowship program, starting in September, to provide skill-building and mentorship to students around the world. Participants will get expert advice in areas ranging from finance to building an energy system, receive hands-on coaching and complete a practicum project in a team.
BOTTOM LINE: With four fulltime staff, Student Energy has 50,000 members in more than 130 countries, and its energy literacy platform reaches three million people a year. The annual budget has grown from $288,000 in 2015 to almost $1 million. Student Energy Chapters has 30 chapters in 10 countries. – F.S.
MAT T HE W SEGAL
Founder and CEO LIPSI SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AGE: 24 LIFE STORY: What's an Ivy League economics grad to do? In 2016, Matthew Segal appeared to be headed for a career in investment banking after leaving Yale University, where he rowed First Varsity for four years. But several job offers later, Segal decided his heart wasn't in it. Back in his hometown of Vancouver, he also chose not to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, prominent developers Lorne and Joseph Segal–for now, anyway.
Instead, Segal got to work on an anonymous messaging app he had dreamed up at Yale because he was too shy to talk to a girl he liked. The result was Lipsi, created with a handful of software engineers in B.C. and Ukraine. The popular free app– 65 percent of whose users are female–has many uses, from personal exchanges to feedback on a product or service.
As Segal admits, sending messages anonymously online carries
a stigma. “Our mission has been to redefine anonymity and employ anonymity in an empowering and safe manner, and to be the first to accomplish this at scale.” To make its messaging safer, Lipsi has partnered with Perspective API, Google's antibullying software, which deploys AI to learn user habits and jargon.
Recently, Segal and his team have been creating messaging software that mental-health and LGBT support groups could use, via Lipsi or elsewhere. For him, retention is more important than cashing in by bombarding users with ads. “Whether it's Facebook or Instagram or Google, all these massive platforms have started by providing an amazing service, and monetization has always come second.”
BOTTOM LINE: Lipsi has about seven million users in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., roughly 350,000 to 400,000 of whom access the app every day. The company, which is developing its software in languages other than English, plans to expand into South America next. As of February, Segal was talking to several parties interested in buying Lipsi. –N.R.
L EVENT E MIH ALI K
Co-founder and operating partner YOUNG MOVIEMAKERS AGE: 29
LIFE STORY: It's easy to believe Levente Mihalik when he says he loves kids. When we reach him, the East Vancouver native is at the hospital, having just witnessed the birth of his first child, a daughter. He also spends nearly every waking moment surrounded by young folks. Mihalik taught robotics at Gladstone Secondary before his recent parental leave, and since he was a teenager he's devoted every summer (and many Saturdays) to running moviemaking camps for children aged five to 18 with long-time friend Matt Kennedy.
The pair officially started Young Moviemakers in 2014 after holding summer camps out of SFU for eight years. “We grew the program from 40 to hundreds of kids, and kids kept coming back and they loved it and they loved us,” Mihalik remembers. “But we realized that we didn't own any of the content we were making; even though we felt like we created it, it wasn't ours legally.”
Mihalik credits Templeton Secondary drama teacher Jim Crescenzo and his program for at-risk young men as a gateway to the industry. Thanks to Crescenzo, he was editing projects for money at 14 while some of his pals spent their time in more nefarious ways. “I have some friends who passed away from drugs or gang violence, things like that,” says the son of Hungarian immigrants. “But it made me realize how profound mentorship really is.”
Mihalik has proved himself something of a willing student. He's earned four degrees and diplomas so far: two from BCIT and one each from Capilano University and UBC.
BOTTOM LINE: Young Moviemakers works with some 700 kids a year at community centres and recreation spots in Metro Vancouver. The camps employ about 20 people, and the films made by students have won more than 100 awards worldwide. –N.C. n