Each year, ventureLAB recognizes innovators in the York Region tech community who have delivered excellence. We announce our award recipients at our Annual General Meeting, as part of our relentless commitment to our companies and their success. At this year’s AGM, we’re proud to announce our 2019 award recipients in the following categories:
- Chair of the Board Award
- Company of the Year
- Collaborator of the Year
Chair of the Board Award
The Chair of the Board Award is awarded to a prolific founder of a ventureLAB company that embodies the spirit of the ventureLAB Board Chair for the previous year. This year’s criteria reflects our board chair Paul Bradley’s leadership qualities: Tenacity, Vision, Collaboration, Optimistism. The Chair of the Board is awarded to a technology company that embodies ventureLAB’s vision and mission to create globally competitive companies that Build-to-Scale in Canada and go global. The award winner demonstrates commitment to building a strong team culture and developing their staff, as well as broad collaboration across ecosystem, partners and other stakeholders.
2019 Recipient: Adrian Schauer, Founder and CEO of Alayacare
We are proud to present this year’s Chair of the Board Award to Adrian Schauer, Founder and CEO of Alayacare, a leading provider of cloud-based home health care software. With an end-to-end solution spanning clinical documentation, back office functionality, client and family portals, remote patient monitoring, and mobile care worker functionality, Alayacare offers a platform for agencies to propel towards innovation and home care of the future. Adrian is a serial technology entrepreneur having built two successful mobile software companies previously, is an active Angel Investor and sits on the boards of several fast-growing tech companies. Adrian is also the co-founder of the Madiro Fund, a charitable organization created to support innovative solutions to the health problems in low-income countries. In 2016, Adrian received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Emerging Entrepreneur category in Quebec, and, more recently, AlayaCare secured the 8th spot on Deloitte Technology’s Fast 50 2019 Awards. In 2020, AlayaCare released a COVID-19 screener as part of its home care mobile platform. The application gives front-line workers an electronic tool that they can use to assess risk before they provide home and community-based services to the elderly and patients who are most vulnerable. Learn more about AlayaCare.
Company of the Year Award
The Company of the Year Award is awarded to a company that is leading the way through their technology or innovation, or breaking down barriers to rapidly progress and achieve significant growth. In selecting our nominees and winner, we look for funding received; revenue generated; jobs created; and diversity of gender, ethnicity, age, or other underrepresented groups (for both founder and team).
2019 Recipient: Ted Maulucci, President, SmartONE Solutions
We are proud to present this year’s Company of the Year Award to Ted Maulucci, President of SmartONE Solutions, a company committed to advancing the digital living experience in communities. SmartONE enables Smart Communities through its platform which is designed to bring together multiple solution partners who deliver the next generation community experience. Ted and his team have been part of the ventureLAB community, part of our Capital Investment Program and first moved into our innovation hub in 2018. At the end of 2019, SmartOne’s team had grown approximately 4X and the company moved to its own office in Markham with its strong customer revenue growth from telcos and multiple developments in Ontario. Ted assumed the role of President at SmartONE after a 26 year career as Chief Information Officer at Tridel. Ted has been recognized through multiple Industry Awards for his commitment to community including the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for promoting Canadian innovation and in 2019 IT World Canada named SmartONE Solutions as Disruptor of the Year. Learn more about SmartONE Solutions.
Collaborator of the Year Award
The Collaborator of the Year Award is awarded to the partner that has had significant impact on our ecosystem in the past year. The award recipient offers invaluable support to ventureLAB and/or the companies we support to grow and scale. In selecting our nominees and winners, we looked for:
- Impact on our ecosystem
- Impact to ventureLAB-supported companies
- Impact to ventureLAB
2019 Recipient: Niraj Mathur
We are proud to present this year’s Chair of the Board Award to Niraj Mathur who has been a key collaborator through our Hardware Catalyst Initiative. We first connected with Niraj in the early days of dreaming of creating Canada’s first semiconductor supercluster, and over the past 3+ years he has been an instrumental champion of our vision and roadmap to rebuild Canada’s leadership as a global hub for silicon and silicon-based companies to grow and scale. Niraj is a veteran in the semiconductor sector as a business and technical leader at large global and Canadian companies in the semiconductor sector. Niraj brings a rare combination of both deep and incredible technical and business expertise in the sector, and his collaborative approach has been instrumental in supporting several of our companies in the first HCI cohort, connecting our companies with new private sector partners to enable ventureLAB to build out the semiconductor ecosystem that re-establishes the start of an end-to-end electronics domestic supply chain and key investment partners that will enable Canadian companies to scale and go global.
