Miovision

[rangersfan]

Canadian technology start-up Miovision raises C$30 million
February 10, 2015 | John Tilak | Reuters.ca | LINK

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian technology start-up Miovision, which produces software that converts video of vehicle traffic into data, said on Tuesday it received C$30 million ($23.83 million) in funding to help support its growth plans.

The funding, its biggest to-date, was led by Canadian merchant bank MacKinnon, Bennett & Co. Investeco Capital, Renewal Funds, Plaza Ventures and Comerica also participated.

The Kitchener, Ontario-based company has more than 500 customers in 50 countries. They include the transportation departments of Massachusetts, Texas and Illinois, as well as the city of Edmonton and Caltrans.

Founded in 2005, Miovision collects data by filming videos at intersections to capture the traffic flow, alerting customers when problems arise and helping them understand the impact of changes like the building of new malls and schools.

Companies such as McCain Inc and Tyco Traffic & Transportation, a unit of Tyco International Plc TYC.N, are other players in the space. Technology giants such as IBM IBM.N and Cisco Systems Inc CSCO.O have also been showing interest in the 'smart city' concept.

Miovision plans to use the cash to expand its product range and step up hiring of engineers.

"The funding ... will take our vision forward and get ourselves into a broader product portfolio," said Kurtis McBride, chief executive of Miovision, who helped start the company as an engineering student at the University of Waterloo.

Miovision, which is profitable, has been growing revenue at an annual rate of 60 to 80 percent in the past six to seven years, he said.
The biggest Canadian venture capital deal in 2014 was an C$85 million funding round to Desire2Learn Inc, according to Thomson Reuters data. BuildDirect, Wattpad, HootSuite and Verafin Inc were other companies involved with securing significant financing in 2014, the report said.

Overall Canadian start-ups received some C$2.36 billion in funding in 2014, a 21 percent jump from a year ago, according to the report.

($1 = 1.2588 Canadian dollars)

[rangersfan]

Hunting tech talent
Jan 7, 2015 | James Jackson | Waterloo Chronicle | LINK

All is fair when it comes to love, war and business.

It’s a mantra adopted by Kurtis McBride, CEO and co-founder of Kitchener-based Miovision Technologies and among the first tech executives in the region to openly admit he looks to hiring employees away from other companies to help fill his own ranks.

For the past two years or so, McBride has changed his recruiting approach to target the best and brightest in this region — even if they already have a job. Some may call it talent poaching, but McBride prefers to call it hunting.

Others have called it hunting unicorns in the search for elusive developer talent that fits their specific needs.

Rather than hurting the tech sector, McBride argues hiring the top talent of other companies actually helps strengthen the Waterloo tech ecosystem.

“When we talk about hunting or poaching talent, we’re not in the business of trying to rip people out of where they are. If they’re happy, that’s great,” said McBride, a University of Waterloo grad who started Miovision when he was one of the first clients at the Accelerator Centre when it first opened in 2006.

But if another company, like Miovision, draws an employee away from their job, it forces those other businesses to “look inside and figure out how to make it so I can’t,” he added.

“Ultimately that will make (Waterloo Region) better competitors on the global market.”

That means making your company a better place to work by providing a more challenging work environment, a friendlier workplace, giving employees more responsibility or other perks that may help retain talent.

McBride’s tactic is to build lasting relationships with talented employees in the region he may want to work with in the future instead of resorting to what he refers to as the “spray and pray” approach of posting a job online and sifting through the hundreds of resumes that flood in.

What prompted McBride’s change in hiring was when another company poached a couple top employees about two years ago. That led to a complete revision of company policies and the development of Miovision’s core values.

Those values include putting the customer first, reinforcing the idea that complacency is not an option, promoting a passion for success, and valuing individuals and empowering teams.

That approach has allowed Miovision, which specializes in providing accurate traffic counts and road volume data, to grow from a three-man team in a basement to a 75-employee company that has a sales office in Germany and operates in about 40 countries.

Over the past 18 months, Miovision has recruited an average of one employee a month away from other tech companies in Waterloo, and McBride encourages employees to discuss their work concerns or ways to improve their work environment as a way of preventing workers from being poached away from him.

When asked how many employees he has lost over the same 18-month period, McBride smiles and responds, “less than one a month.”

This isn’t the first time McBride has sparked interest in his hiring methods. Two years ago he offered a $3,000 “refer a friend” bonus for anyone who referred a software engineer to the company and who passed Miovision’s probation period.

Iain Klugman, chief executive officer of Communitech, which provides coaching, mentoring and other resources to tech entrepreneurs, agreed that cultivating the hyper-competitive nature of the tech sector is key to its success.

“You need to bring a business development focus to talent in the same way you do to selling your product,” said Klugman.

Waterloo has a strong tradition of barn raising and tech startups working together to raise the region’s profile around the world, and McBride doesn’t see talent hunting as running counter to that tradition.

“There’s a unique culture of people helping each other build their business … and I think (hunting) will help build stronger companies here,” McBride said.

When asked if other tech executives share his opinion of talent hunting, McBride said, “We have an understanding that all is fair in love and war.”

[highlander]

Interesting local connection to the new bike lanes on Bloor St:

Specialized software provided at no cost by a tech company from Kitchener, Ont., called Miovision Technologies, will scan video footage of Bloor and allow a deeper analysis of the bike lanes’ effects on safety, the company says. In addition to traffic counts, the software – used around the world but never before by the City of Toronto – can detect anomalies such as sudden decelerations, allowing city staff to analyze places where close calls between cars and cyclists occur, for example. The cameras were also deployed to take baseline measurements before the lanes went in.

New Bloor bike lanes in Toronto must pass ‘rigorous’ tests (Globe and Mail)

[rangersfan]

Miovision has received $1.5 million from the Ontario Government to help with the company's expansion plans.

https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/mobile/kitc...-1.3780061

[REnerd]

Miovision has received $1.5 million from the Ontario Government to help with the company's expansion plans.

https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/mobile/kitc...-1.3780061

Interestingly the Ontario government is granting money to a company that is then discussing how they are going to leverage that into further private investor funds.

Seems to me the government should be investing in companies and receiving a payback if/when they are successful.

[plam]

Miovision has received $1.5 million from the Ontario Government to help with the company's expansion plans.

https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/mobile/kitc...-1.3780061

Interestingly the Ontario government is granting money to a company that is then discussing how they are going to leverage that into further private investor funds.

Seems to me the government should be investing in companies and receiving a payback if/when they are successful.

One could argue that they're hoping to make it back by collecting additional taxes from the company.

[KevinL]

And from the economic activity generated by that growth, etc. It's a well-established strategy.

[robdrimmie]

I wasn't sure of the best place to post this, but I noticed this interaction on Twitter the other day that I really liked. A former coworker of mine highlighted a bad intersection and tagged Miovision in the tweet. A little while later, Kurtis McBride responded with some data and some guidance. I'm looking forward to the Region, cities and townships having access to this information and making effective changes to the network.

I'm bad at embedding tweets. I tried getting this one in at this point in the post but could not.

This is a "improve flow for cars" style thing, so it's not inherently good and I don't know if there are factors involved for other modes of transportation, but Glasgow and Westmount is definitely a point were things snare up.

There's also a highlight if you follow the original thread where the City's twitter account responds with one of my more hated aspects of our infrastructure "that's the Region's responsibility", but at least the Region's twitter account also responds in saying they're forwarding it to their traffic engineers. It's an interesting sort of case where it seems like social media is leading to productive outcomes.

[danbrotherston]

I wasn't sure of the best place to post this, but I noticed this interaction on Twitter the other day that I really liked. A former coworker of mine highlighted a bad intersection and tagged Miovision in the tweet. A little while later, Kurtis McBride responded with some data and some guidance. I'm looking forward to the Region, cities and townships having access to this information and making effective changes to the network.

I'm bad at embedding tweets. I tried getting this one in at this point in the post but could not.

This is a "improve flow for cars" style thing, so it's not inherently good and I don't know if there are factors involved for other modes of transportation, but Glasgow and Westmount is definitely a point were things snare up.

There's also a highlight if you follow the original thread where the City's twitter account responds with one of my more hated aspects of our infrastructure "that's the Region's responsibility", but at least the Region's twitter account also responds in saying they're forwarding it to their traffic engineers. It's an interesting sort of case where it seems like social media is leading to productive outcomes.

I'm not going to bother getting involved in a twitter discussion at this point, but Westmount and Glasgow is an example of a complete failure of government.

Years and years ago when Westmount was rebuilt, engineers felt turn lanes were needed at Glasgow, but that would have taken trees and frontage from the property owners on Westmount, so that didn't happen. Then the intersection, not surprisingly had an excessive number of collisions.

Region staff went to work, and came up with some options:

1) Widen the road to put turn lanes in (expensive, and same problems as before).
2) Restrict turns (non-starter for the [wealthy] folks on Glasgow).
3) Just barely enough capacity to turn one lane into turn only and have one through lane.

They selected 3, and that was the configuration for a long time.

During LRT construction traffic shifts meant that the volume of traffic at Westmount/Union now justified a light, and Regional Staff proceeded under a plan to add that (never mind that this was largely driven by temporary construction).

To that end, they found that traffic backups along Westmount reached to Union, which would be a problem if there was a light there, so they needed to relieve the bottleneck at Glasgow.  They had the same 3 options.  But they chose option 4, revert the intersection to a four lane through street with excessive numbers of collisions.

That's the conditions we have today.  Because people's lives are worth less than wealthy people's frontages, than forcing wealthy people to drive around the block, or than simply suffering through a little bit of congestion for total 1 hour per week day.  This is traffic planning in our region in a single intersection.

This understanding is derived from public documents (regional council reports) which I spent time reading when I was curious as to the change.

Oh, and just so we're clear on the current situation, now that LRT construction has ended, the light at Union is no longer justified, and Glasgow/Westmount retains it's (dangerous) configuration. Now I haven't seen traffic numbers from that intersection (and I don't think they have 5 years of history yet--that's how long they usually average the results over), but it's the only intersection in the city I've actually witnessed collisions at, and I've seen two there. So, take that anecdote with a grain of salt, but I'm guessing it's still the dangerous poorly designed intersection it's always been.

[panamaniac]

Why would the four lane through street configuration lead to more collisions? Westmount/Ottawa and Westmount/Victoria both have left turn lanes and both see more collisions than Westmount/Glasgow, although I assume they also see higher traffic volumes.

[ijmorlan]

Why would the four lane through street configuration lead to more collisions?  Westmount/Ottawa and Westmount/Victoria both have left turn lanes and both see more collisions than Westmount/Glasgow, although I assume they also see higher traffic volumes.

Needed turn lanes are missing. If one person wants to turn left, the entire left lane is blocked. The people behind them then try (understandably) to move into the right lane. Meanwhile, the right lane can also get blocked if somebody turning right needs to wait for a pedestrian. Net result: the actual capacity of dedicated through lanes is zero.

As far as I’m concerned the selection of the current configuration constitutes professional malpractice.

A more reasonable configuration would be one through lane in each direction, with right- and left-turn lanes. This gives the road a total width of 4 lanes at the intersection and 2 elsewhere. I think most of our 4-lane roads could benefit from this treatment, certainly including Union, Belmont, and Queen’s Blvd. If the 2-lane parts between intersections are done with a median, you get easy intermediate pedestrian crossing for free. This configuration also balance out the capacity more appropriately — instead of unused capacity between major intersections and jammed-up major intersections, you get more fully-used narrow roads combined with intersections that flow smoothly but aren’t of excessive size.

In short, I am highly unimpressed with our traffic “engineers”.

[timio]

My favourite part of that intersection is the dedicated left turn signals that never actually are triggered.

[danbrotherston]

Why would the four lane through street configuration lead to more collisions?  Westmount/Ottawa and Westmount/Victoria both have left turn lanes and both see more collisions than Westmount/Glasgow, although I assume they also see higher traffic volumes.

Needed turn lanes are missing. If one person wants to turn left, the entire left lane is blocked. The people behind them then try (understandably) to move into the right lane. Meanwhile, the right lane can also get blocked if somebody turning right needs to wait for a pedestrian. Net result: the actual capacity of dedicated through lanes is zero.

As far as I’m concerned the selection of the current configuration constitutes professional malpractice.

A more reasonable configuration would be one through lane in each direction, with right- and left-turn lanes. This gives the road a total width of 4 lanes at the intersection and 2 elsewhere. I think most of our 4-lane roads could benefit from this treatment, certainly including Union, Belmont, and Queen’s Blvd. If the 2-lane parts between intersections are done with a median, you get easy intermediate pedestrian crossing for free. This configuration also balance out the capacity more appropriately — instead of unused capacity between major intersections and jammed-up major intersections, you get more fully-used narrow roads combined with intersections that flow smoothly but aren’t of excessive size.

In short, I am highly unimpressed with our traffic “engineers”.

Yes, a very common collision is the vehicle waiting behind the turning vehicle pulls into the other lane to go around, and gets hit by a vehicle from behind, also common is for the vehicle pulling around to be hit by a left turning vehicle who believed they had a space.  

The other type of collision is left turn errors, because the vehicle turning feels substantially more pressure to turn when blocking a through lane.

I unfortunately agree with you.  Many of them have proven themselves unqualified to design a garden.  You can add the Weber/Laurel crossing to the list of infra we have which an engineer should lose their ring for.

[taylortbb]

Huge new funding round for Miovision. From: https://betakit.com/miovision-raises-120...-ventures/

Miovision, a smart city-focused startup, has raised $120 million CAD in a funding round led by Telus Ventures.

The round also saw participation from a syndicate of investors led by previous investor McRock Capital. The syndicate reportedly consists of new investors and existing investors who “chose to increase their support for the company.”
...

According to The Globe and Mail, the $120 million financing includes $100 million in equity and $20 million in debt financing, which BetaKit has since confirmed.

That's one of the bigger funding rounds we've seen locally, putting Miovision up there with Faire, North, ApplyBoard, etc as having a pretty significant vote of confidence from investors.

[KevinL]

Nice!