Polar Mobile featured in the Toronto Life October 2010 Magazine.

1. Why bother with a boring
office job when you can share
code at networking parties,
design games for smartphones
and sell your idea for a fortune?
Meet the army of tech geniuses
who are turning Toronto into
Download
the new Silicon Valley
My By
K atrina
App
Onstad
PhOtOgraPhy
By
daniel
ehrenwOrth

2. Peter KieltyKa and
Jeff Brenner
NuLayer makes Crowdreel,
an app that collects and
categorizes photos uploaded
onto Twitter. Photos
processed: 100 million.
November 2010 toronto life 43

3. A 20-something dressed in
jeans and a T-shirt enters a stern, early-20th-century brick build-
ing near King and Yonge and gets on an elevator. He stands beside
suits who spend their days plying commercial real estate and
trading securities. The man-boy stops at the sixth floor and enters
a cloud blue–coloured lobby, pulls a magnetic security card from
the wallet in his jeans and swipes his way in. He removes his ear
buds, drops his backpack at his desk and picks up a bagel in the
kitchen, passing the room with the ping-pong and foosball tables
and another room with the staff Xbox. Then he returns to his desk
and becomes one face in a sea of young, so-nerdy-they’re-cool
Michael Cera types, though many of these Michael Ceras are
Asian, and a few are female. They sit at rows of computers organized
by platform, like a really cliquey junior high lunchroom at the
world’s smartest school: there’s the BlackBerry row. Android.
IPhone. The room reverberates with chatter that sounds, to an
outsider, like the kind of talk on a TV medical drama that makes
no sense but communicates urgency through tone: “Fleshing out
amar Varma
and sundeeP madra
Extreme Venture Partners
has invested in 14 tech start-ups,
including Xtreme Labs (makers
of apps for Urbanspoon,
dictionary.com and the NBA)
and software developers
J2Play and BumpTop.
Staff: 250.
$35 million for BumpTop, another Extreme start-up. BumpTop’s
founder, a U of T graduate named Anand Agarawala, had a simple
but brilliant idea: a touch-screen app for tablet computers that
imitates a real-world desk. His program can make the usual 2-D
desktop graphics appear amusingly 3-D; with your finger, you can
arrange objects in piles and even pin them to walls.
Extreme also runs Extreme University, a training program for
young entrepreneurs who want to prove they have what it takes
to execute a tech idea that will attract investors or get bought for
millions. Three teams of two to four people are selected for each
12-week session. Extreme gives them each $5,000 in seed money,
and in exchange the company owns a piece of the project. The
students work next to seasoned veterans—many only in their
20s—and attend a speaker series of business world rock stars who
drop by to share their insights. “Mike McDerment was here,” one
young developer told me during my visit, sounding like a 12-year-
old girl who had just met Justin Bieber. (McDerment is the CEO
of a Toronto-based on-line billing company called FreshBooks
the photo imaging…test for download…integrated platform…” with 1.6 million users.)
Extreme Venture Partners is one of the most innovative com- One team in the training program is led by Shaharris Beh, a
panies remaking Toronto as a high-tech epicentre. It’s a new kind bass-voiced 26-year-old former VJ from Malaysia. He’s working
of hybrid business that houses both the investors and some of on an app called Sunrank that aggregates popular opinions: if you
the tech companies in which they invest. The idea is to fund the desperately need to find out whom the masses determine to be
talent, pass on the knowledge that will see them prosper, and history’s Coolest Rock Chick, you can find a top 10 list immediately,
increase the chances of a huge payday. Two hundred and fifty based on the users’ opinions of Joan Jett. Beh got the idea when he
people work here. Two years ago, there were 25. Two years from was watching the spread of iPhone fever. “I kept thinking, OK,
now, the plan is to have 2,500. yeah, everyone knows what the number one phone is,” he told me,
Extreme has had good fortune with the 14 companies it’s invested “but what’s the second most popular phone?” He’s devoted to
in so far. The biggest in the current portfolio is Xtreme Labs, which Google’s Android and hates Apple. “I’d rather slit my wrists than
builds apps for smartphones. Its apps for BlackBerry (10 million use something that hipsters buy to express their ‘quirky, unique
downloads and counting) include NBA Game Time, where basket- identities and personalities,’ ” he says.
ball fans feed on live scoring and video highlights; Urbanspoon, Another team is building an app and a Web site that designs
which lists the best restaurant near where you’re standing; and the perfect date, offering advice on wine bars and relationships
dictionary.com, the biggest word definition app out there. Another through your phone. “We used to be called cheapdateideas.ca, but
investment, a company called J2Play, created a popular framework we’re rebranding,” says Will Lam, who is 28. With the air of an
for multi-player games and was bought out by Electronic Arts last inventor pulling back the curtain to display his latest brainstorm,
year for a rumoured $2 million. Google is said to have paid he says, expectantly, “It’s getdateideas.com now.” Lam left a full-
44 toronto life November 2010

4. JOsh daVey
and daVe seniOr
Burstn makes a program
that enables smartphone
users to instantly upload
photos to social media sites
and to follow the photo feed
of friends. In the first month
after its release, it was
downloaded more than
1,000 times.
Kunal guPta
and michael russO
Polar Mobile’s 40 staff
develop apps for more than
150 companies, including
Sports Illustrated, Time, CNN,
CBS and the Food Network.
Their apps have been
downloaded six million
times and counting.
time position in the fraud investigations unit at BMO to perfect his Toronto, while Madra, who is 32, works out of Extreme’s office in
app. One of his two partners, 30-year-old Matt Read, quit his job Palo Alto, building a bridge between these budding Toronto
developing insurance rating software at the Markham company companies and potential venture capitalists and buyers in Cali-
Camilion Solutions; the third partner, 27-year-old Irene Kuan, one fornia. (The two men, proudly frugal despite their recent suc-
of the few women in the office, is a journal- cesses, crash on each other’s couches when
ist on leave from the news agency Reuters, they travel.)
making the leap from old media to new. they’Ve grOwn uP in the “Semiconductors cost tens of millions
“Three years ago, we never would have to develop, but apps can be made for very
left our jobs. It would have been completely shadOws Of the BilliOn- little,” says Varma. He wears white linen
stupid,” says Read. “But now you see your pants and loafers, and speaks in a languid,
friends out there taking risks, and you
don’t want to get left behind.”
dOllar cOnquests By the relaxed voice. “All you need to build an
app is a computer and creativity.”
“The whole city is enrolled in Entrepre-
neurship 101,” Kuan adds. liKes Of thOse PuBescent In Toronto in the late ’90s, pre–tech
crash, there were a handful of tech com-
That enthusiasm, harnessed by the panies as revered as Extreme. Those
right kind of audacious investors, has the faceBOOK fOunders. nO start-ups also had offices containing foos-
potential to make many people very, very ball tables and gaming rooms, and manag-
rich. But tech ventures have no guarantee wO nder t he y ’re qui t t ing ers who insisted that work wasn’t just
of return, and Toronto is not known as a work, but an extension of one’s rec room.
city of risk takers. Had the young people their day JOBs and BecOming Yet even then, the high-tech moniker was
in this room been born 10 years earlier, more rightfully applied to Waterloo, home
many of them would have gravitated toward tech entrePreneurs. gOOgle of RIM; Toronto’s techies mostly congre-
jobs on Bay Street. Instead, they believe gated in consulting and marketing, help-
our city’s long-delayed future as a high- was Just a few PeOPle in a ing other companies get big, but rarely
tech hub has finally arrived. In universi- starting their own shops. When the money
ties, think-tanks and private companies, garage 12 years agO. why disappeared at the turn of the century,
and tucked away in their parents’ houses, the consultants were the first to go. After
young developers are making this bet not nOt them? the crash, software developers went in-
necessarily—or not only—because they house, retreating to banks and manufac-
have dollar signs in their eyes, but because they have been living turers. No one spoke of foosball anymore.
inside their own private tech boom their whole lives. Then, two years ago, Apple opened its on-line app store. At first,
no one knew whether the public would pay money for apps. Now
Amar Varma and Sundeep Madra, the founders of Extreme, met BlackBerry and Google’s Android have their own stores, too. An
while working in Silicon Valley in the semiconductor industry. app can be anything—news, weather, GPS, goof-off game—and
They returned to Toronto in 2007 because they saw a city of untapped there’s an appealing inborn democracy in the app world: anyone
talent and a global hunger for a new, cheaper kind of tech. Varma, who can build one can submit it to Apple, where it’s reviewed and
who is 34 years old, now spends roughly three weeks a month in then posted. Today, Apple displays more than 250,000 apps. Any-
November 2010 toronto life 45

5. OliVer taBay, Jeff
zaKrzewsKi, trOy huBman,
ameet shah
Five Mobile’s 40 staff develop
custom software for such
companies as Rogers, Disney
and Sony Pictures. Their
BlackBerry apps for
The Score alone have been malgOsia and
downloaded more than JOhn PhiliP green
six million times. Learnhub is an international
social networking site that
helps students choose
between school programs,
prep for tests and plan
careers. Users: 430,000.
one who submits an app prays that theirs might follow the trajec- a day, seven days a week, is a gathering place for tech entrepreneurs.
tory of something like Tap Tap Revenge, a Guitar Hero–like game And at an OCAD building at Richmond and Duncan, a big, sunny
involving tapping and shaking the phone while avoiding falling office now houses four mobile start-ups in their own version of
arrows. Made by a Palo Alto company called Tapulous, Tap Tap Extreme University. Smaller colleges are beginning to offer train-
Revenge has been downloaded millions of times, contributing to ing in mobile development. MaRS, the tech innovation centre, was
its more than $1 million in sales a month an early partner of Sysomos. Everyone is
(split 70-30, with the 30 per cent going to inspired by Waterloo’s RIM, and many of
Apple). This past summer, Disney bought the wired generatiOn isn’t the city’s young programmers have passed
Tapulous for a figure said to be north of through the company’s doors.
$20 million. The two Tapulous CEOs are
now happily working for The Mouse’s
maKing tOrOntO a tech The critical mass of talent is encouraging
venture capital firms on both sides of the
mobile gaming division.
There are an estimated 200 mobile hOtBed Out Of ciVic Pride, border to sniff around the city. One of the
most prominent is Bridgescale Partners,
development companies in Toronto and a Silicon Valley–based fund with $160 mil-
another 750 companies that are launching But Because they genuinely lion to invest. Since setting up a Toronto
their own mobile divisions. Venture capi- office nine months ago, Bridgescale has
talists and angel investors have begun dOn’t recOgnize BOrders. invested in three Toronto companies:
jumping into the game. Part of this is a Rypple, Dayforce and BlueCat Networks.
monkey-see, monkey-do phenomenon, or, silicOn Valley is less a Place “It’s low-hanging fruit up here,” says the
more flatteringly, a halo effect: if investors Bridgescale partner Howard Gwin. The
see an invention like BumpTop bringing t h a n a s tat e O f m i n d, s O young Toronto companies, he says, “have
in $35 million, they want in on the next shown moxie, shown that they understand
BumpTop. Last summer, a company called why n O t s tay i n a l i Va B l e that model, shown the ability to grow; now
Sysomos, which makes software to ana- they just need leverage to get to maturity.”
lyze conversations on social media, was cit y w i t h e x c e l l e n t B a r s In August, Bridgescale spearheaded a
sold to the news service Marketwire for a $10-million investment in Dayforce, a work-
reported $35 million. “These kinds of and rel at i V ely che aP re al force management software company that
acquisitions loosen the purse strings,” has offices at Yonge and York Mills, as well
says Varma, who spends much of his time estate? as in Georgia.
pounding the pavement for capital. People in tech love to talk about “seed-
Some of the world’s most respected tech ing the ecosystem.” In Silicon Valley, inves-
schools are in or near Toronto, churning out talented programmers tors have been seeding for years: the guys who made millions in
by the hundreds. The majority of Extreme’s interns and employees the early days of Google and PayPal continually sink their money
come from the computer departments at Waterloo and U of T. back into start-ups. Toronto may finally be flourishing because
Ryerson’s new Digital Media Zone at Dundas Square, open 24 hours a few pioneers are following their lead. For instance, the birth of
46 toronto life November 2010

6. nilesh Bansal
Sysomos makes programs
for corporate clients that Ken and garry setO
analyze conversations Endloop created iMockups,
on Facebook and Twitter. a program designed
Bansal, with company for the iPad that helps
co-founder Nick Koudas, developers make their own
sold Sysomos to the news apps. It earned $100,000
service MarketWire last in the first four months
summer for a reported after its release.
$35 million.
daVid stein and
daniel deBOw
Rypple is a Web-based
program that integrates with
smartphones and office e-mail
to help managers monitor
staff performance—they call it
“coaching.” It’s a favourite of
tech companies, such as
browser maker Mozilla.
a handful of Toronto’s present day tech companies can be traced movies they watch. They see the holes in the Internet—Why can’t
to the sale in 2007 of a management software firm called Workbrain I easily find all the hockey photos on Twitter? Why can’t I play a
for $227 million. Three years later, much of the capital from the game involving werewolves and tambourines and lassos?—and
Workbrain sale is now spread across several new companies, includ- try to fill them. And they’ve grown up in the shadows of the on-line,
ing Dayforce, Rypple and Versant. All are housed in the GTA and billion-dollar conquests by the likes of those pubescent Facebook
buoyed by this shared experience of taking a company from noth- founders. No wonder they’re quitting their day jobs and becoming
ing to the pinnacle, a level of expertise the city hasn’t seen before. tech entrepreneurs. Google was just a few people in a garage 12
Toronto’s attractiveness to start-ups is due in part to a govern- years ago. Why not them?
ment tax credit called SR&ED (Scientific Research and Experi- The wired generation isn’t making Toronto a tech hotbed out of
mental Development, pronounced “shred”) and to grants from a civic pride, but because they genuinely do not recognize the borders
federal industrial research assistance program. In 2010 and 2011, between Toronto and anywhere else. Silicon Valley North, Silicon
the program will hand out $90 million in stimulus dollars to small- Valley South—it doesn’t really matter when the entire world is
and medium-size Ontario businesses. connected. Silicon Valley becomes less a place than a state of mind,
These kinds of economic incentives stimulate new companies so in that case, why not stay in a livable city with excellent bars
and may keep more established ones from leaving Toronto. Polar and relatively cheap real estate? The tech boom is part and parcel
Mobile, one of the city’s fastest growing new companies, builds of what Richard Florida (and Jane Jacobs before him) has been
apps and develops software for 150 clients in 10 countries, but saying about Toronto for years: the city is attractive because it’s a
mostly in the U.S. (Time and CNN are two of its most prominent bastion of diversity, culturally and creatively.
customers). Polar creates a product that barely existed when its Many of the tech start-ups have congregated in Liberty Vil-
CEO, Kunal Gupta, was a first-year student at Waterloo in 2004 lage—with its mix of offices in renovated 19th-century factories,
(he won’t reveal exactly how young he is, possibly to avoid freak- new condos and brunch restaurants—precisely for those reasons.
ing out his blue chip clients), but is now in high demand. Earlier One company, NuLayer, was launched in 2007 by Jeff Brenner and
this year, his company, which has 40 staff members, was dealing Peter Kieltyka, two university friends best known for Crowdreel,
with a tidal wave of business, and briefly considered outsourcing an app that organizes Twitter photos. The owners of Twitter were
its R&D to China or India. “We looked into it,” Gupta says, “but so impressed by Crowdreel that they tried, unsuccessfully, to
between the talent that’s here and the tax credits, we realized it persuade Kieltyka and Brenner to move to California to work for
was cheaper to do it in Toronto.” them. “We love Twitter, but we just couldn’t do it,” says Brenner.
“We see ourselves as artists—the goal is to write our own products.”
The new generation of techies was born suckling the computer Kieltyka adds, “We don’t want to work for other people. It’s the
teat. They’ve spent a lifetime in a constant state of connection and difference between playing weddings and writing your own songs.”
conversation, ever since they could click a mouse (mice! How 2000!). This fall, after landing the contract to develop an app for the Toronto
Familiarity has made them fearless; computers and mobile devices Star, NuLayer and its staff of eight moved out of their $1,700-a-
are simply in service to their endless conversation. They jailbreak month shared office in Liberty Village into a new, bigger, solo space
their iPhones to add the apps that Apple doesn’t want them to add. around the block, complete with wood beams, big windows and
They download all the music they listen to, books they read and an all-whiteboard think-tank room.
November 2010 toronto life 47

7. anand agarawala
BumpTop produces a
touch-screen program
for tablet computers that
imitates a real-world desk.
Before Agarawala sold
the company to Google for
a reported $35 million,
BumpTop had been
downloaded over a
million times.
anthOny nOVac and
suhail mirza
Spreed makes a program
that tailors newspaper
content for smartphones.
Its Globe and Mail app
reports 16 million page
views a month.
All this youthful vigour can be comical to those a mere 10 years Extreme’s lawyers, lent the company space at its offices at the top
older. Farhan Thawar, a 36-year-old VP and engineer at Xtreme of the Scotia Plaza tower. The graduates put on suits and skirts and
Labs who runs the Extreme University program, recalls that dur- nibbled at tables of catered food. The city twinkled as twilight fell
ing the Olympics, the staff was working on a Web site called across the floor-to-ceiling windows all around. They were told
Athletes in Motion, posting films directed by famous actors. One there would be 100 potential angel investors there with their
was by the former Beverly Hills 90210 hunk Jason Priestley. “I stood chequebooks. Be ready.
up and said, ‘Who in this room knows Jason Priestley?’ And not Thawar pointed out to his students some of the significant play-
one of them did. They just looked at me.” Priestley is as relevant ers in the crowd: JLA Ventures, RBC Ventures, Josh Sookman of
as a cave drawing to these people, a few of whom were born in 1990. the BlackBerry Partners Fund, Scott Pelton of GrowthWorks,
As if man has truly merged with machine in some kind of Video- investors in BumpTop.
drome present, their real-life language is often on-line shorthand. One by one, each team went up onstage and demonstrated its
“I’ll be talking to them, and someone will say ‘FML,’ ” says Thawar, technologies in real time on a computer. Chris Ye, a 23-year-old,
“but you probably can’t print that.” and Mark Lampert, who is 28, unveiled the apps that they had
On any given night in the city, there is probably a gathering of finessed over the summer. They were confident, almost cocky: after
young developers in pubs like The Pilot in Yorkville, or any Firkin- all, they already had 100,000 active paying users.
related watering hole. They gather over beer and talk program- The night of the presentation, wallets didn’t open for Ye and
ming code at DemoCamp, Mobile Monday and GenYTO—net- Lampert, though in the weeks following, there were some calls
working nights organized by local entrepreneurs and tech and meetings. Eventually, Extreme offered $250,000, and they
activists and announced through Twitter. Some of these evenings chose to go with them. They thought that Varma and Madra best
are about connecting generic small businesses (Sprout Up is one), understood their vision for the company, which contains the con-
but many are more niche—code bugs are solved and programming tradiction of wanting to grow “by magnitude” while following the
information exchanged. Every one of NuLayer’s employees was adage “We don’t make games to make money. We make money so
found at a networking event. that we can make more games.” (To date, the three groups who
Kunal Gupta, the young CEO of Polar Mobile, has watched the graduated from last year’s program have collectively raised $1.5
gatherings evolve. “It’s a sign of maturity. They’re splitting up by million in capital.)
platform. There was a BlackBerry developers meeting last night, In the Extreme offices, Ye shows me one of the games he devel-
and iPhone developers meet next week. This is something you oped for his iPhone. It’s a kind of retro cartoon role-playing game
didn’t see a few years ago.” called Villains. What makes his and Lampert’s games unique is
The result of this grassroots pioneering is that the world is that they’re ubiquitous in the mobile world, available across four
now seeking Toronto talent in Toronto rather than luring it away platforms: Facebook, iPhone, Android and the Web, through
from here. Polar Mobile just announced its Toronto offices will Facebook Connect. Almost no other gaming companies are blan-
be making apps for several Asian newspapers. Start-ups in India keting in this way—not yet.
and the U.S. are applying to Extreme University. At Xtreme Labs, Ye’s avatar in the game is a busty woman, the kind you’d see
Thawar is preparing American visas for two developers, adding spray painted on the side of a van, named Superhugebrother. “Over
to two other recent American hires. “We’re seeing reverse brain the past few days, all these people have attacked me, and I retali-
drain,” he says. ated”—he taps the phone—“It’s text based, so there are statistics
involved”—tap, tap—“Last week, Villains was ranked 13th most
The finale of the 12-week Extreme University program is a Drag- downloaded app in the U.S.”
ons’ Den–style event where the students present the results of their Ye looks up and offers his phone. On the little rectangular screen,
work to a room of potential investors. Last year, Cassels Brock, large cartoon letters read “KABOOM! You won the battle!” ∫
48 toronto life November 2010