New high-tech club starts up

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Start-up nation meet (soon-to-be-former) laidback city. The newly established Vancouver Israeli Tech Club will hold its inaugural event next week at the SFU Beedie School of Business. Among the planned activities, four high-tech ventures will present their ideas, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Prof. Amos Drory will discuss what BGU is doing in the high-tech area, and participants will have the chance to network.

With the start of the Canadian Associates of BGU B.C. branch, VIT organizer (and BGU alumnus) Yaron Bazaz told the Independent that he thought it would be a great time to launch a Vancouver Israeli technology club. It’s an idea he has been considering for awhile, based on TechAviv, which has clubs in other cities; Bazaz mentioned Tel Aviv, San Francisco, Boston and New York.

“They create a hub, they create a community, for Israeli technology entrepreneurs and investors to meet together and present their new start-ups, and create a venue for the members of the group to reach out, to get support, to get investments and recruit employees,” he explained. He said he presented one of his start-ups, CrowdFanatic, at a San Francisco meeting, and that “the feedback and the energy were great.”

Looking at the Vancouver community, he said there are many Israelis here who are involved in technology companies and research, “but never till now did we have a professional forum in which we could meet together, support each other and enhance business relationships between Vancouver and Israel.” The local club was established on Oct. 25, and the response has been strong, with more than 100 members in less than a month.

Among those members is co-organizer Eran Elizur, and entrepreneur Ronen Tanne, co-founder of a company called Serentic, who has also assisted in the planning of the Dec. 3 event at the Beedie School. All three men have been involved in several high-tech ventures.

Bazaz, who is originally from Jerusalem, moved to Vancouver in 2006 with his wife and two children. He took psychology at BGU and has a master’s in business administration from the Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University. Initially working in the health-care field, he transitioned into high-tech, working with Creo, now part of Kodak, as well as in executive roles in a couple of other companies.

In Vancouver, he started Western Headquarters Ltd., which deals “with business development and capital raising for technology companies.” He also was founder of the aforementioned CrowdFanatic, an app (“direct engagement platform”) that allowed group-to-group interactions on Facebook. Unfortunately, the app did not take off as quickly as Bazaz would have liked, and he and his partners shut it down this past August.

Nowadays, Bazaz is considering new ventures in wearable technology. “I find it very interesting and I believe, if we look five, 10 years ahead, we will see technology and computing embedded in a much greater way in our clothes and fashion,” he said. “I have a very specific idea within this area that I’m exploring now.”

Elizur, who was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Tel Aviv. He got his master’s in science (physics) from the Weizmann Institute and his MBA from Tel Aviv University. Always interested and active in technology development, he moved to Canada in 2000 for a job with Creo (Kodak), with his wife and their daughter (they now also have two sons).

“In 2009, I left Kodak and co-founded a tech start-up, KaleidoFlex,” he told the Independent. “In KaleidoFlex, we developed a solution to convert black and white e-readers (such as Kindle and Kobo) to color. We sold the technology to a major display manufacturer in 2011. These days, I am actively looking into new technologies.

“Since I always had a passion for new technologies and entrepreneurship as well as a deep connection to Israel, when David [Berson] and Yaron shared the idea of the new meetup group, I jumped right on it.”

CABGU, the City of Surrey, Simon Fraser University and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Pacific Region, are sponsors of the Dec. 3 meetup. As to the connection between all of these groups, David Berson, B.C. regional director of CABGU, explained, “A representative of the City of Surrey will be bringing greetings to the forum. The City of Surrey has recently initiated the creation of Innovation Boulevard – a state-of-the-art medical innovation hub – and they are keen to learn from Israel’s experience in innovation and entrepreneurship. In light of the MOU [memorandum of understanding] signed between SFU and BGU, as well as an upcoming major collaborative effort [a trade delegation to Israel] with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Israel will play a significant role in what will be Western Canada’s fastest-growing centre of innovation. CABGU Vancouver and CIJA have invested much effort in educating the City of Surrey about BGU’s Advanced Technology Park and its parallels to Surrey’s Innovation Boulevard. The ATP is a new initiative of the City of Beer Sheva, BGU and Gav Yam, a developer of high-tech and science parks in Israel.”

The most recent MOU between BGU and SFU was signed on Aug. 15 in Vancouver by BGU rector Prof. Zvi HaCohen and SFU president Andrew Petter, said Berson. “There are commitments from both SFU and BGU to fund joint doctoral programs,” he explained. “Both universities have put in place resources to make joint doctor degrees possible. We are actively engaged in discovering where there are common research and faculty interests.”

CABGU’s chief executive officer, Mark Mendelson, from Montreal, will be in attendance at the VIT’s first meeting. BGU’s Drory, vice-president for external affairs and chief executive officer for the Bengis Centre for Entepreneurship and High-Tech Management of the Guildford Glazer Faculty of Business, will present the keynote address.

Bazaz sees VIT as not only being a way for local high-tech entrepreneurs and investors to meet and exchange feedback, but as a way in which to bridge the high-tech communities of Vancouver and Israel.

Pointing to Israel, “a superpower with all regard to entrepreneurship, technology and research, and venture capital investments,” he said, “in Vancouver, it’s not the case and so any assistance with Israeli investors and ... relationships between commercialization offices of Israeli universities to local universities, we believe will be appreciated.”

The Vancouver Israeli Tech Club is not just for Israelis, but for anyone interested in Israeli technology innovators and investors, here and in Israel. It is a group, said Bazaz, that will meet regularly, every two to three months, to give “the stage for new start-ups to present, maybe bring keynotes, maybe bring investors to speak, etcetera and so forth. There are many plans.”

Bazaz said that talk about the next VIT meeting has centred around the topic of medical devices and biotech. To join the club, visit meetup.com/Vancouver-Israeli-Tech-Club.

The Dec. 3 event will take place from 5:30-8:30 p.m. The Beedie School is located at the Segal Graduate Centre, 500 Granville St. The evening will also include snacks and a Chanukah candlelighting. Registration is required to [email protected] or 604-263-5529, ext. 1.

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