The idea for one of Fredericton’s latest tech startups was dreamed up on a hike in Scotland.
As Duncan McSporran and Ryan Groom, the co-founders of Kognitiv Spark cleared their heads in the outdoors and talked about augmented-reality software that could be used for industrial-worker support. McSporran, then in the military, thought it could have the potential for the armed forces.
“It was essentially a meeting of the minds where we put together what we thought would work for workers,” said Yan Simard, who became CEO of the company that launched in 2016.
Kognitiv Spark is the kind of business that emerged in the years since 2011 when two back-to-back exit deals totalling nearly a billion dollars were made.
Salesforce, a San Francisco-based software company, bought Radian6, a Fredericton-based social media monitoring company, for $326 million. Shortly thereafter, IBM bought Q1 Labs, another Fredericton startup, for $600 million.
The Fredericton ecosystem that has developed since then has allowed for the emergence of new businesses ranging from SomaDetect, an agri-tech business, to HomeWurk, a student-founded online platform that pairs people with odd jobs for work. Most recently, a co-founder and a CEO from of Q1 Labs launched Sonrai Security, a cybersecurity startup that attracted 18.5-million in investment. . . .
Alexandre Silberman is a journalism and political science student at St. Thomas University.
