After working in California for the early part of his career, Jason Richards moved back home to the Okanagan Valley in 2008 to launch his first business, Vineyard Networks. He originally planned on settling in Vancouver; however, government programs supporting Kelowna entrepreneurs drew him back to the Central Okanagan.

After selling his first company in 2013 to a California based technology company, Richards launched Minga in 2018, capitalizing again on the community in the Central Okanagan and the enviable lifestyle Kelowna offered.

“The motivation to start Minga came from my own kids’ school experience,” explains Richards. “My kids were all great students, but there were still so many opportunities available to them through school, like clubs or extracurricular programs, that they didn’t even know existed.”

Minga’s journey involved a few years of exploratory work to learn more about the K-12 school system and how they could improve student engagement and participation using social media style tools. In 2020, Richards beat out 44 other startups to win the Okanagan Angel Summit, which secured $155,000 in angel investment for the company.

“One of the nice things about being a Founder in Kelowna is that it’s big enough to have access to what you need day to day, but small enough to be connected to everyone in the community that you need to be,” notes Richards. “Most people are invested in making the Okanagan a great place to live and do business, which is a huge competitive advantage.”

While Minga’s early discovery was primarily done in Canada, it quickly became clear they had to evolve the vision and the market.

“After visiting schools across the United States, we saw a rapidly increasing need for campus management and student safety,” notes Richards. “To achieve the goal of students wanting to be on campus, we first had to work on the basics.”

While engagement remains at the core of Minga’s vision, features like managing student movement on and around campus, improving student behavior, and overseeing events and activities have become the core of Minga’s Campus Management Platform, which is currently being used by over 1,000 schools in 500 districts in the US.

The Minga team, which has grown from 18 people and 100 schools at the beginning of 2023 to nearly 50 people and more than 1,000 schools in 2024, continues to mature, improving its processes so the company can scale more effectively and efficiently.

The Minga head office is located downtown in Kelowna’s Innovation Centre, allowing team members to stay well-connected with people in the community. The location is ideal, as it has facilitated easy access to Accelerate Okanagan, which offers numerous resources for startups in the region.

Though most of Minga’s current clients are in the US, Richards says he “cannot think of a better place [to build his company] or have better balance anywhere in North America.” He notes that the Central Okanagan’s lifestyle, which includes easy access to lakes, mountains, and other outdoor adventures, is critical for the overall mental health of his team, which is the cream of the crop.

Thanks to this quality of talent, Richards notes that investors from around the world are blown away when they come to visit Minga’s offices. The robust team of experienced people Richards has assembled will drive Minga’s success as the company continues towards their vision of supporting 5,000 schools and five million students in the next few years.

“The support we got from the community was amazing,” says Richards. “We had early angel investors, advisement support, some amazingly talented people. Everything just lined up, and we gathered critical mass in Kelowna.”

“Our theme for this year is “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” inspired by the Daft Punk song—we’re looking to be 10% better in 10 areas,” says Richards of his team’s work.

The founders of TerraSense Analytics, which was originally launched as part of a local forestry company, had planned to use drones and artificial intelligence to detect trees that needed to be chopped down. However, in 2018, TerraSense President & Chief Technology Officer, Jozsef Hamari, attended a seminar at UBC Okanagan’s Survive and Thrive Applied Research (STAR) lab, where Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) set out a list of challenges through its Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) Program.

Through the program, which was designed to improve the Department of National Defence’s access to the creative potential of Canadian innovators, TerraSense pitched its software idea alongside 65 other companies; it was one of only a dozen or so companies selected in the first stage and was awarded $200,000 to pursue research and development of its intelligent surveillance and monitoring solutions.

“We are a defence-first tech startup that uses AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning) to build software to help recognize objects in multiple modes, edge computed in real time, for defence and security operations. It is inevitably quite technical,” explains TerraSense CEO, Mike McGinty, whose extensive military background was a welcome addition to the company. “It’s very niche, very specific, both in terms of domain and technology.”

Since 2018, TerraSense has been focused on creating intelligent surveillance and monitoring solutions using computer vision and deep learning technology.

Through additional IDEaS program funding and a $1 million DRDC Innovation contract with Transport Canada, TerraSense continued its upward trajectory.

In its initial years, the company was researching and developing two different proprietary products: Multi-modal Input Surveillance and Tracking (MIST) software, which leverages AI and sensor fusion in aerial surveillance, and Corona Remote Wireless Network (CRWN), which focuses on utility transmission systems.

With little technical overlap between the two products, CRWN was spun off into its own company about three years ago, leaving TerraSense to maintain its focus on defence and security applications through MIST.

In May 2022, the company was awarded an additional IDEaS program contract, the largest in the program’s history, valued at a record $8.976 million dollars, to further its development of MIST.

“Since then, we’ve received an additional $2.8 million and we are one of only 3 companies that have gone to the culmination stage of the IDEaS process,” notes McGinty. “This has allowed us to be funded to build product but also to build relationships with DND and Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).”

TerraSense now also has relationships with some of the defence and aerospace industry’s largest multinational companies—including General Dynamics Mission Systems, Thales, BAE Systems, Raytheon— with whom it conducts R&D for products to enable Canadian and allied defense.

Along with its strong and supportive relationship with UBC Okanagan, which includes not only research but also recruiting staff and working with co-op students, TerraSense is also connected to KF Aerospace, with McGinty noting that “many people in the Valley probably don’t realize how big of a deal KF is in national terms.” The company has also benefited from Accelerate Okanagan’s tech ecosystem, as well as the presence and connectivity of the Kelowna International Airport.

“We make a big play of the lifestyle in the Central Okanagan, as there are lots of good reasons to live in the Valley,” explains McGinty of attracting talent to its team, which has now grown to around 30 full-time employees. “We pay a “fun bonus” quarterly to encourage people to buy their ski pass [or] buy a paddleboard. It’s meant to be seen as a lifestyle-supportive allowance for coming to the Valley.”

In its pre-commercial phase, TerraSense has started to have engagements and discussions in the UK and Australia, and the company is in the initial stages for discussion with the US market. The company will remain Kelowna-based, continuing to grow and contribute to the region’s ever-changing business ecosystem. Through its relationships and global presence, TerraSense will continue to showcase its innovative product and coherent business vision, brought to life by its most important asset: its team members.

“The existence of UBC Okanagan was a factor [in launching the business in the Central Okanagan] because it allowed incubation, acceleration, and support, and the prospect of talent and researchers,” says McGinty. “Also, the fact that there is also an emerging tech sector…all those things make it possible [to run our business] in a way that perhaps would not be possible in other parts of rural BC. The ingredients are here.”

Hyper Hippo’s success perfectly illustrates the John C. Maxwell-coined term, failing forward. By learning from their mistakes and taking a new, creative approach, Hyper Hippo’s team launched its flagship game and set off on an unstoppable growth trajectory.

It started in 2012, when Lance Priebe founded Hyper Hippo after leaving Disney, which had acquired his first Kelowna-based company, Club Penguin, in 2007. Priebe’s first venture helped put Kelowna’s tech community on the map, as it was still seen as a “remote” community in BC when he launched Club Penguin.

With $5 million in startup capital for his new venture, Priebe and the Hyper Hippo team got to work on building Mech Mice, which was slated to include an online game, television show, and more. Six months in, with almost no capital left, it was clear that Mech Mice would not be a success. They learned from their mistakes and Priebe gave the team the freedom to take risks and build anything they wanted over the following six months.

Through this process, AdVenture Capitalist was created and successfully launched in 2015. Seven years later, the idle game (sometimes called clicker or incremental games) has been downloaded more than 50 million times and is one of the most successful mobile titles ever released.

Hyper Hippo’s presence in Kelowna is one of the reasons that the Central Okanagan is known globally as a digital animation and gaming powerhouse.

“I can walk on Google’s campus and say we’re from Kelowna, and they say, ‘Oh yeah, Hyper Hippo.’ We’ve been very blessed, and it proves that this world from an industry perspective is getting smaller and smaller,” says Hyper Hippo’s CEO, Sam Fisher, who believes that the biggest key to the company’s success is working strategically in a spirit of true partnership. The simple philosophy that guides the company is also key.

Steady, sustained growth is a feature of many Central Okanagan companies and is certainly the case for WTFast, which launched in 2009 to create plug and play network optimization for gamers. Today, the company employs 40 people, has 11 patents to its name, and makes millions of gamers very happy.

The happiness of the end user is achieved through the company’s Gamers’ Private Network (GPN), which is similar in nature to a Virtual Private Network (VPN). WTFast’s patented technology finds the fastest connection from a gamer’s computer to the game server, minimizing the network latency, or ping as it is known in the world of online gaming, that gamers despise.

It is the “interesting and challenging/novel work” the company is doing, which includes developing technology to level the playing field through connection equalization, that CEO and Co-founder, Rob Bartlett, says allows the company to attract and retain top talent. That and the fact that “the Okanagan is one of the nicest places to live in Canada.”

“Like many Albertans, we spent some time vacationing in the Okanagan. We got tired of the cold Alberta winters and generally fell in the love with the great work/life balance in the Okanagan, so we decided to move here,” says Bartlett.

As a self-described “Internet Hermit,” Bartlett says it was encouragement from the team at Accelerate Okanagan that pushed him to get out of his shell and take advantage of face-to-face opportunities in the region. This face time was vital for the company’s growth, Bartlett adds, as it allowed him to secure millions in investment and close distribution deals with multi-billion-dollar corporations.

“The region is a great place to build tech and while we are doing a lot of remote working these days, it isn’t hard to convince people to move to the Okanagan for those face-to-face meetings.”

When a business is included on three fastest-growing company lists in one year, you know they are going places. This was certainly the case for Kelowna-based Bananatag, who in 2020 was listed on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 North America List, The Globe and Mail’s list of Canada’s Top Growing Companies, and Rocket Builders annual Ready to Rocket list, which profiles BC tech companies who they predict will grow faster than their peers by delivering on technology sector trends.

The rise to the top started when Corey Wagner helped launch Bananatag in 2011. He and his co-founders, who all grew up in the Okanagan, set out to help companies, especially those with a distributed workforce, successfully deliver their internal communication.

“Our core belief is that internal communication moves people, and people move companies,” says Wagner. “Our solutions have been developed for enterprises who are looking to bring employee communication and employee experience to a new, modern level.”

Over 10 years, the Kelowna- based company grew to 150 employees and opened an office in Vancouver. In March 2021, Bananatag was propelled even further ahead when it merged with Germany’s Staffbase, a company with complementary software and strength in the European market, to form the world’s largest and fastest-growing internal communications company. While the Bananatag name has been retired, the ethos of the company remains.

Staffbase now employs more than 675 people across North America and Europe, providing service to 1,350+ businesses worldwide, including companies like Adidas, Audi, and Ikea.

While Wagner notes that the institutions and infrastructure in the Okanagan provided great support for the business, he believes it’s the world-class people in Kelowna that are the biggest draw.

“When new team members join, they always comment that everyone is so nice, people recognize that, and they want to be part of it.”

“Starting a business in the Central Okanagan is great because you and your employees get to enjoy a lot of the benefits of being near a major centre, without a lot of the downsides.”

Rocket Monkeys. Pete the Cat. Angry Birds. Beat Bugs. DNAce. Hotel Transylvania. Any of these animated series ring a bell? If not, maybe you’re familiar with where they’re playing: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Nickelodeon Teletoon, Corus, YouTube.

It’s big time stuff for Yeti Farm, the Kelowna-based digital animation studio that has hit warp speed in the last few years. Animating shows under contract for other companies, they’ve steadily expanded to the point where they’re writing, developing and pitching their own series. Recently three ideas have been green lit to develop into prime-time pilots, one of them a live action series. How did this all happen?

Rewind to 2007. Creative guy Todd Ramsey has been working as an animator and director in Vancouver, while Ashley has been producing various children’s animated shows. After starting their own company and becoming parents, they decided in 2010 to move closer to family in Kelowna.

“It was a huge risk and took us a few years to get going” Ashley explains. “The animation industry was just beginning here. There was Disney, then Bardel Animation and The Centre for Arts and Technology was teaching animation. So we were lucky we had lots of existing relationships outside the region to build on.”

In 2012 the couple rented space, hired five students from the school and secured their first roster of work with Electronic Arts, producing the heads on the athletes in various games like FIFA, UFC and NHL. “Pretty soon we signed a three-year lock-in output deal with Atomic Cartoons for Netflix shows like Rocket Monkeys and Beat Bugs, and that was when it really took off. 2013 to 2016 was pretty megascale, scaling up to about 50 employees. Then we expanded again, and by 2019 we had about 160 artists and a 7,000 square foot studio space.”

“Starting out I think we definitely benefited from a blend of support systems with municipal, provincial and federal aid behind us.

While we were scaling up, I worked weekly with advisors looking at different financial models and how to handle our operation, which was changing drastically. We also participated on the advisory board of Okanagan College to shape their animation program so it would fit our talent needs and they really supported us in that.”

The innovative healthcare technology company produces a suite of industry- leading products designed to streamline medical practices. Their flagship product is AccuroEMR, Canada’s largest single-platform electronic medical record software.

Mike Checkley, President of QHR and one of the three original developers of AccuroEMR, explains how it came about. “I studied Computer Science right here in the Okanagan. It’s been an amazing experience to see it grow from those early days to now the largest tech company in the Okanagan with customers all across the country.”

QHR has two more products in market: FreedomRx, an e-prescription management tool for pharmacists and Pharmacy EMR, which helps pharmacy staff manage their professional services. Both of these are now used in over 1,200 Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacies in Canada, following Loblaws’ purchase of QHR in 2016.

QHR currently has 523 employees across Canada, with 368 of those in the Kelowna head office. “Our market is all across Canada, but from a talent perspective Kelowna continues to deliver,” says Checkley.

“Kelowna is on the map now, not only as a tourist destination, but also for new business, maturing business, and as a result, career opportunities.”

Since 2012, his company’s AI- driven content moderation platform has been identifying and preventing harmful online behaviour, including cyberbullying, abuse, hate speech, violent threats and child exploitation, all while enforcing rules of conduct in online communities.

“Some of the largest companies in the world trust our team to keep their users safe,” Priebe explains. “We now process over 100 billion human interactions every month. To put it in perspective, that’s six times the reported size of Twitter.”

Two Hat’s success was recognized in 2017 when they were awarded the largest MITACS cluster grant of over three million dollars to work with universities.

“We looked all over Canada for leading universities to partner with, and to our surprise, one of our best has been here at home with UBC Okanagan.”

Most recently, the World Economic Forum selected Two Hat as one of its most promising Technology Pioneers of 2020 for its groundbreaking platform, offering the opportunity to engage with other industry leaders and work with public and private experts.

When asked about the infrastructure in place to help get his organization off the ground, Priebe credits the many programs designed to support start-ups here in the Okanagan. “Accelerate Okanagan has definitely been a great friend and supporter of Two Hat and our mission,” says Priebe. “I was still in my basement when I heard about AO and their programs. They helped us get our first desks, a mentor, community services, as well as legal and accounting firms who volunteered and helped get us set up. It would have cost thousands of dollars to hire any of their services and here they all were giving me amazing deals.”