Ottawa companies quietly lead the way in many areas. One firm, called Gametree, is on the leading edge of video gaming, another, You-i Labs, is helping many companies bring their mobile devices of all kinds into the age of touch sensitive screens.
Gametree is the brainchild of Transgaming, a company founded in Ottawa a decade ago. Its research team remains in the capital, but the company is now headquartered in Toronto.
Transgaming works with some of the major game-makers on many of the industry's biggest games. With Gametree, they are trying to catch the wave of change underway in how people access games. Gametree is a sort-of access portal that would be offered by a company like Rogers, with the consumer getting video games on demand
Gavriel State founded Transgaming and now works on the technical side.
"People like to get their games in all kinds of ways on all kinds of devices," said Gavriel State, founder of Transgaming. "That is what we do. We try to cover as many of those platforms as possible."
Transgaming is also trying to develop a way to enable games developed for PC's to be compatible with MAC's.
The next frontier for the company is to expand overseas.
"Canadian companies have to look to overseas markets to expand," said CEO Vikas Gupta, who just returned from a trade mission to Finland and Sweden. "This was my first trade mission and it won't be my last."
Gupta was joined on the trip by Jason Flick, CEO at You-i Labs.
"Ten days, 3 time zones, dozens of meetings but it was definitely worth it and something we could not do on our own," said Flick.
You-i Labs has software that can equip almost any device with a touch sensitive screen interface like the iPhone.
Flick believes this is going to be their breakout year.
"From a furnace controller to a phone to anything, that is where we see our market," Flick said. "Our first customer is going to launch a product using our software at the Consumer Electronics show in January in Las Vegas and I think it will be transformative."
You-i Labs has received some provincial investment money. Flick has won several awards as a new age CEO. The company also has several creative ad campaigns, such as sending out View Masters to showcase their new 3D technology. All of these things have opened up doors with many perspective clients
Flick says government help, such as the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation, has become key for new firms. Incubation is another way to gain success and he says young people are coming out of school with a strong entrepreneurial work ethic.
"It used to be kids come out of school and work for Nortel but now that has all changed."
