Rencontre avec un résident – Seedcha

Locataire depuis septembre, Seedcha est un nouveau venu à la Maison Notman. L’entreprise est le fruit du travail de deux amies, Lauren Lallemand et Rivellie Tchuisseu, qui se sont rencontrées lors de leur maîtrise sur le développement des zones rurales et de l’agriculture.

Ayant toutes deux vécu et travaillé pendant de nombreuses années à l’étranger, elles ont voulu créer une entreprise où elles pourraient se consacrer à des projets de recherche intéressants et à des collaborations liées aux thèmes de l’agriculture et de l’environnement, tant au Canada qu’à l’étranger.

L’entreprise fait des demandes de financement auprès du secteur public (gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux), d’organisations de développement international, d’instituts de recherche et d’organisations non gouvernementales pour effectuer des recherches appliquées sur l’industrie agroalimentaire, l’environnement et le changement climatique.

Si vous souhaitez discuter des défis liés au développement durable, nous sommes toujours heureux de vous aider ! Et si vous avez besoin de conseils sur les plantes d’intérieur ou les jardins, n’hésitez pas à passer voir Lauren.

Nous sommes très heureuses de partager notre première année d’activité avec les autres locataires de l’immeuble !

– L’Équipe de Seedcha

Thank you, Real Ventures

Many people are not aware of the origin story of the non-profit OSMO Foundation which owns Notman House, and has the goal of supporting the growth and development of the ecosystem in Montreal and throughout Quebec. It was co-founded in mid-2009 by Real Ventures, together with several other companies, organizations and members of the Montreal startup community.

So, the announcement Real Ventures made today, makes it clear that they are as committed as ever to supporting OSMO and Notman in our mission. The firm will be donating 20% of the carried interest from their new fund, OrbitMTL, to the OSMO Foundation.

Their latest fund, of $180 million, has just launched and is backed by multiple Canadian and international investors such as Teralys, BDC, Investissement Quebec, Caisse de Depot, HarbourVest, as well as Asia-headquartered investors, Tencent and Temasek. Of this $180 million, $30 million will go to OrbitMTL, the firm’s accelerator and pre-seed investment strategy in Quebec. It is a portion of the carry from this early-stage fund that will be donated to OSMO.

“For Real, it starts with the desire to contribute to startup ecosystems in a manner that can benefit all active participants,” said Alan MacIntosh. “This collaborative mindset inspires us to launch initiatives that help rapidly growing tech communities across Canada,and wherever else we might go.”

-The OSMO Foundation & Notman House

Life After Notman – Corstem AI*

Our time at Notman House was short, and besides the occasional tea or coffee from Café OSMO, we pretty much stayed confined in our office, working hard. As a matter of fact, even that was quite sporadic since we had to attend several tradeshows and conferences in order to simultaneously get acquainted with the Montreal Entrepreneurship ecosystem, as well as the Canadian and US healthcare industry. However, this four-month stay allowed us to perfect Corstem’s business model and build its foundation. It also gave us a cozy place to work from, for our first contract.

We must say that when we joined Notman House last October, the market traction was already significant. That keen interest is mainly due to two ingredients: first, we are part of the wave of Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies surging in Montréal, and second, we’ve been closely collaborating with physicians for the last few years which has allowed us to pinpoint their needs.

Since being at Notman, Corstem has moved to Inno-centre’s office which is quite convenient because we have a coaching/consulting agreement with them. Being at the same workplace as your lawyer, your financial advisor, and your business advisor has proven to be quite practical!

Also, in the past three months, we’ve had the chance to participate in CENTECH’s high-standard Accelerator Program and have since secured ourselves a place in its newly-managed Propulsion Program. Its affiliation with École des Technologies Supérieures (ÉTS) also facilitates the access to highly qualified resources.

On the business side, we are currently collaborating with the National Institutes of Health in the US as well as other research organizations and major foreign industrial partners. Our flagship software product is saving cardiologists up to 40 minutes of diagnosis time per patient. We do this by automatically eliminating the manual labor involved in their medical image analysis, and we’re planning to do even more with new proprietary products that we’ll be introducing to market shortly.

Finally, despite all the exciting possibilities that AI promises, it’s important for us, at Corstem, to nurture our primary objective, which is to allow physicians to spend more time at what they do best: dealing with patients, not with machines.

Pascal Labrecque
Co-founder/COO
Corstem

*Corstem was acquired by Circle Cardiovascular Imaging in 2019.

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Life After Notman – Motorleaf

Drinking from a firehose is an expression we heard from other startups while we were located in Notman House during our time at FounderFuel, which all culminated in July 2016; I understood from an intellectual level, and now KNOW what it means.

In August we shuffled out of Notman House, saying goodbye to our awesome neighbours and Notman staff (upstairs and downstairs), with a mix of excitement and melancholy.

Little did we know that in 6 months we would have landed our lead investor (500 StartUps Canada) and be 7 full time, and 4 part time staff at Motorleaf HQ.

It’s so easy to write that last sentence, it’s another thing to explain what a tough and nerve racking journey it was before we knew our runway was secure.

It’s now a task of execution verses planning what to execute.

We have moved into a loft style building in St-Henri, my Husky dog Shadow comes to hang out with us (he’s broken his leg so right now is taking it easy at home in Sutton Quebec), and we are starting to feel ‘it’s happening!!’ from a company culture / momentum perspective.

We’ve hired Masters and PHD brainiacs from McGill University, awesome business development, client experience, and engineering team members – and even an expresso machine and robot vacuum (this was a big deal for our team!)

Notman House showed Ramen (my Co-Founder) and myself what a vibrant tech community there is, and I also saw a community that truly wants others to succeed. We’ve had nothing but good wishes and positive feedback on what we’re doing, which before you land funding keeps you going during those darker days when the mountain you wish to climb looks too big to scale alone.

We’re planning to change the world, helping anyone grow crops anywhere in the world – automatically. Reach out if you think that’s a project worth looking at in more detail – we’re happy to speak with you!

– Ally & Ramen

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Life After Notman – Crew Collective and Cafe

You may have heard the buzz about the hybrid coffeeshop/co-working space that is Crew Collective and Cafe headquarters in Old Port, Montreal. After all, the redesign of the former Royal Bank on St-Jacques Street was described by Slate Magazine as “The World’s Most Elegant Startup Office”. Designed by architect Henri Cleinge, the opulent space retains the old-world elegance of the historic bank, while integrating all the necessities of a modern tech-startup space: integrated office space, conference rooms, individual work stations. What you may not have realized, is that Crew actually got their start at FounderFuel, and worked out of Notman House for the duration of the program.

Crew Collective and Cafe, at that time going by the name of Ooomf, applied and were accepted into the 2012 Founder Fuel cohort. “That’s where we met our two other cofounders actually,” says Stephanie Liverani, COO of Crew Collective. “At the end of the program we changed the name to Crew Collective and Cafe and had a slightly different business model.”

Turning their headquarters into a co-working space seems like a natural extension of Crew’s concept; they provide a platform that connects freelance designers and developers with people with project ideas. Their website boasts that many of the Crew team members are themselves former freelancers. The Crew Collective and Café venture has been wildly successful; the Café serves up gourmet food, pastries, and coffee, and the private workspaces have proved so popular there is a waiting list.

But the inspiration for many of these core concepts, a shared space promoting interaction among like-minded individuals, can be seen in the startup community fostered by Notman House. “I think it was the community feel about Notman House. You were really close together; there were always ongoing events happening at night that you can attend,” says Liverani. And this was especially useful at a time when Crew was just getting off the ground. “For us, it was great being close to our investors because they were working upstairs. And I just think Notman House is really a place for a lot of Montreal tech community to come hang out; whether they’re coming for an event or coming for a meeting, it was constantly being able to see people in our tech community, all the time.”

As they have grown from a team of four to thirty-two, and moved from Notman to their current 13,000 sq. ft. space, Crew has tried to incorporate these ideas into Crew Collective and Café. “I think they [Notman House] did a really good job of hosting; not only having your office space as a place you go in to work, but having it placed as a collaborative space for a lot of people to use. And so that’s kind of what you think of for the Crew Collective as well. We shared our office space with a bunch of people, and it’s not just for us, it’s for people that are coming for business meetings or that want to rent desks, and we really embraced that concept and shared our space with the community of Montreal”.

-Quinn Mason

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Life After Notman – Volume 7 

Although Montreal-based Volume7 develops mobile and web application technology for a variety of startups, don’t confuse them for your run-of-the mill web agency. “We’re really a digital product agency,” explains Business Development Manager Raphael Christian-Roy. Most of our clients have a seed idea, but don’t necessarily have the background nor the know-how to execute it. Essentially, we’re taking their idea and building an MVP (minimum viable product) out of it, which they use to raise more money; if they don’t have money already, they go raise money with investors.”

The decision to make digital software products for startups was a deliberate one, despite the fact that early stage startups have significantly less funding than firmly established corporate giants. “We quickly realized that these established companies aren’t the clients we want. They typically just want a bunch of coders to execute on command, which is not what we’re about. First and foremost, we collaborate with clients during the ideation phase, ensuring that we’re building the best possible product.”

That’s why the decision to become tenants at Notman House earlier this year made so much sense; “Given the fact that we primarily work with startups, Notman House was the obvious choice when came time to find an office space. As Montreal’s largest startup hub, it was the best of both worlds for us,” said Christian-Roy. At the time they were tenants, Notman was also hosting between 20-30 events/month, providing the perfect opportunity to mingle with the community. “From meeting startups, founders and entrepreneurs, to individuals who are looking to develop an idea, Notman House events were and continue to be an invaluable part of my role as Business Development Manager.”

And although Volume7 moved out of Notman house in June to accommodate a steadily growing team (they’ve since jumped from four employees to twelve, with plans to be at 15-20 by the Summer), Christian-Roy is a member of the Young Founder’s Circle, and still finds himself at Notman at least twice a week. “Meeting and getting to know everyone in the startup community was definitely the coolest part about being a tenant here.”

–Quinn Mason

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Life after Notman – Immun.io*

As cloud adoption continues to grow and new web applications are being created faster than ever before, Immun.io has come forward with a solution to application security. The traditional method of “find quickly, fix quickly” simply can’t keep up with the current pace of innovation. Immun.io has developed protection software you can embed directly into the app itself. It’s more adaptable and offers better flexibility and security than a firewall. While web application firewalls are currently the most commonly used security measure, companies now have hundreds of thousands of clients and hundreds of millions of sites with sensitive data. It’s simply too expensive and difficult to cover such a vast range of rapidly evolving sites, especially for medium sized businesses. Immun.io is more affordable and have repeatedly stressed the ease of use of their product.

With an impressive $5 million in Series A funding announced this past April, bringing the total funds raised to $8.3 million, Immun.io is well on the way to startup success. But while things are taking off now, with 25 employees and plenty of buzz, there was a time not so long ago when Immun.io was working out of Notman House with only 4 employees.

“It was our first step after working from home,” said CEO Zaid Al Hamami. And Notman offers many ways to make that transition easier. Size, location, and amenities were all part of the decision to choose Notman, but what really attracted the Immun.io team was the people.

“We didn’t do FounderFuel. And the services on offer are great, but that wasn’t the biggest thing for us. For us it was the people. Just being around other startup people, it’s a good place to interact with people in a similar situation to you,” said Al Hamami. Immun.io spent a year at Notman where, along with other startup teams, they got exposure to potential investors. “We also found a lot of our trial users and some engineers we worked with at Notman House.”

A year and a half after first moving into Notman house, and six months after leaving, Immun.io is going strong. The team is now spread mainly between Montreal and Dartmouth, with their first sales exec based in London and a few employees in Portland, the DC area, and India, but Al Hamami still remembers their earlier days at Notman fondly.

-Quinn Mason

*Immunio has been acquired by Trend Micro in 2017

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