Five Atlantic Canada entrepreneurs share their lessons in empire

COVER STORY
Five Atlantic Canada entrepreneurs share
their lessons in empire building
Mike Holland photo by Alison Jamieson of Backroads
Wildlife Photography
Mike “Gear Head” Holland
This veteran outdoorsman went
hunting investors, bagged a Dragon
Kumaran “Sixth Sense”
Thillainadarajah
Inventrepreneur perceives
global opportunities with
smart technologies
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Travis “Got Game” McDonough
The software specialist who knocked it
out of the park in Dodger stadium
Mike “Pita King” Timani
How he grew from a tiny bakery to a
45,000 sq. ft. plant — and is preparing
to launch south of the border
Alex “Swag Man” MacLean
A 24-year-old’s journey from biology
bailout to $10 million Lifestyle czar
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Lessons in: Brand building
product: Lebanese-style pita bread.
He further reckoned that the best
place to launch such a venture was
Moncton. “This was, and remains,
the hub city of New Brunswick, even
the Maritimes,” he says. “People are
always coming and going to and
from all kinds of places. Also, this
is a bilingual community — so that
cultural diversity was attractive.”
In 1988, he established a 74-seat
Lebanese style restaurant in the heart
of the downtown. To supply it with
pita, he opened a 1,000 sq. ft. bakery
several blocks away on Albert Street.
It was, in many ways, a grueling
introduction to self-employment. “We
had three employees each baking
one pita loaf at a time,” he says. “We
would take 12 hours to make 2,000
loaves.”
Still, he had bigger things in mind.
As he tells it, he was determined
to get his products onto the shelves
of major retailers such as Sobeys,
the Co-Op, and the Loblaws-owned
franchise across the province. If
his restaurant was, in effect, his
How New Brunswick’s Mike Timani manufactured
customer-contact center, it was also
his brand booster in the corporate
an insatiable appetite for pita bread
sector. The strategy worked. Retailers
By Alec Bruce
recognized the popularity of his
products almost immediately. The
might amuse Mike Timani, the
the United States — a gleaming, new
only question for them was whether
founder of Atlantic Canada’s
58,000 square-foot production plant
Timani could deliver the volumes they
biggest private-label pita bread
— is set to swing open its doors in
required and could he deliver on time.
enterprise, to ruminate on the
Lancaster, South Carolina.
In 1990, he opened a 4,000
proposition that it has taken him a
It’s not at all bad for a former
square-foot facility. Five years later,
mere quarter-century to become an
busboy — born in Venezuela of
he moved the operation to its current
overnight success. Then again, he
Lebanese parents and raised in
location (then 24,000 sq. ft., now
might not appreciate the humour in
Lebanon before emigrating to Canada
45,000).Over the ensuing decade,
that statement at all, especially when
in 1976 — who decided to become
expansion followed expansion,
he recalls just how hard he worked to
his own man of means on little more
in both manufacturing capacity
get to where he is today.
than a wink and a prayer in the late
and product lines — pizza crust,
“In the early days, it was crazy,”
1980s.
flatbreads, bagels, and tortillas.
says the Moncton-based dynamo
Timani recounts
Throughout, he made sure
behind Fancy Pokket. “I was running
working his way
to invest in state-of-the“In the early days,
around all over the province trying to
up the Hilton Hotel
art production, freezing
it was crazy. I was
sell my products to major retailers. At
organization’s ranks
and storage technology.
the same time, I was managing the
in Toronto and
All of which positioned
running around all
little bakery that made these goods.
then in Saint John,
his company for continued
over the province
And there was the tiny restaurant we
where he eventually
product innovation and
trying to sell my
had going on Moncton’s Main Street.
became the food
growth.
products to major
Sometimes, it was like 20 hours a day.
and beverage
As he looks forward to
retailers.”
I think I almost lost my life six times
director at the
the new plant opening
driving on the roads and highways of
convention center
in the U.S., perseverance
Mike Timani, founder
Fancy Pokket
New Brunswick.”
there. “That was
and hard work may be
Fortunately for the 60 people he
a very good job,”
two of the greatest lessons
employs at his 45,000 square-foot
he says. “But something in me was
he imparts to entrepreneurs in any
facility in the north end of the city,
looking for a change. I was ready for a
field of endeavor. There is, in effect,
the businessman survived in both
fresh challenge.”
no such thing as overnight success;
body and soul. Now, if all goes well
He decided that his adopted
just every night success, measured in
next month, his first major foray into
province was ripe for a new food
increments, over and over again. •
Hungry for more
It
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Lessons in: Marketing
Dude,
where’s
my
hoodie?
Laid-back student taps
local zeitgeist, aces
business school, chills
with Obama
By Stephen Kimber
It
was the fall of 2010, and Alex
MacLean’s life plan had not
worked out exactly as planned. He’d
enrolled at Acadia University the
fall before to study biology, step one
on his path to medical school where
he intended to specialize in sports
medicine and, ultimately, work with
NHL players and other elite athletes.
But he discovered biology wasn’t
his thing. Neither was football. He’d
spent freshman year as a defensive
end, being “groomed” — thanks to a
full-meal-deal residence food plan
— for a future as a defensive lineman. “I gained 30 pounds.”
He decided he needed to make
some changes. He would eat
“healthier.” And he would explore
other academic possibilities.
He signed up for some business
courses. Better, but not yet a cigar.
He excelled in marketing, but
math-oriented courses like stats
and finance stumped him.
Then, in third year, he enrolled in
a course called Venture Creation. It
was a small class — just eight students — that only met once a month.
Students were required to read
three business books, including The
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29
Lean Start Up by Eric Ries, then create a business or — more likely — a
business plan using its bare-bones
approach to venture creation.
Maclean wanted his to be a real
business — but what kind of business? He considered himself part of
the laid-back surfer culture… Mellow Clothing Company? No. He also
considered himself a proud Nova
Scotian, and wanted his business to
reflect that: like the famous St. F.X.
“X” rings, for example, but targeted
at a broader audience. Or maybe a
line of clothing like Roots Canada…
But Roots’ national focus “didn’t do
it for us for the east coast.”
What about East Coast… Lifestyle? Yes.
Although he confesses he had
“barely any” Adobe skills, Maclean
quickly created a text-only logo on
his computer. With an $800 loan
from his father — his father, admits
MacLean, was “confused” since his
son had never before expressed
any particular interest in clothing —
MacLean immediately bought $40
worth of stickers bearing his new
logo at Staples. He pasted them on
30
street signs and trash cans all over
Wolfville. He ordered 30 East Coast
Lifestyle hoodies from a Spryfield,
N.S., embroidery shop, instantly sold
all of them, mostly to friends, and
then ordered another 60 to satisfy
the demand he had created.
750,000
Number of items
Alex MacLean has sold since
he began working full time
on East Coast Lifestyle two
years ago
He got an A on the course.
By the summer of 2013, MacLean
had created a new and improved
logo — an anchor inside a circle
he’d sketched out during a Florida
family vacation — and was juggling
a summer marketing internship at
Atlantic Lottery while peddling his
clothing, now including summer
T-shirts, from a rack on his moth-
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er’s Halifax front lawn. He used
social media — mainly Facebook
and Twitter, along with emails to
friends — to advertise his “mom
shop.”
“It was insane.” Suddenly, there
were line-ups around the block and
he was selling 200 T-shirts a day.
That generated more interest — and
free publicity — from local media,
which in turn attracted the notice of
a local Pseudio clothing store outlet.
“They said, ‘We’ll take 15 of your
hoodies… kid,” he jokes. “I couldn’t
believe it.”
The store managers couldn’t believe it either when the hoodies sold
out within an hour. They ordered
200 more and gave them prominent
window display in their mall outlet.
And the rest, as they say, is history that is still happening and
evolving by the day.
Today — just two years after he
began working the business full
time (he completed his degree online) — MacLean, now 24, has sold
750,000 units: hoodies, T-shirts,
tank tops, tuques, baby onesies,
even jewelry and logo shopping
bags, in dozens of styles, many of
them limited edition, to customers
in 55 countries, many of them online. His gear is on the shelves in 78
Canadian retail outlets, including
his own Halifax waterfront and airport locations, not to mention traveling “pop-up shops” that set up at
summer festivals and events.
Though he doesn’t want to talk
specifics, he acknowledges ECL
has “easily” crossed the $10 million sales threshold. He employs 16
people, including both his younger
sisters. “My grandmother does some
art design,” he adds proudly, and
says his father, a dentist who does
public speaking on the side, makes
a point of wearing his son’s clothing
on his travels.
The keys to his success?
Perhaps surprisingly, given his
business’s beginnings, MacLean
gives less credit than you might
expect to his business school training. “I learned 75 per cent of what
I know since I left school.” He wonders why business schools don’t
spend more time on trademarks.
These days, MacLean spends a lot of
lawyer time and money protecting
his brand from knock-offs, including
from big companies like H&M — and
other practical matters he believes
wannabe entrepreneurs need to
understand.
$10 Million+
Value of East Coast
Lifestyle-branded products
sold to date
Although MacLean has clearly
tapped into a rich celebrate-whereyou’re-from pride, much of his
success can be credited to probably
unteachable personal qualities: his
own cheerful hustle… and chutzpah.
Consider just some of the celebrities photographed wearing his
gear: hockey players Sidney Crosby,
Nathan MacKinnon, Brad Marchand,
Jason Spezza, Adam McQuaid and
the entire Halifax Mooseheads
hockey team; musicians Wu-Tang
Clan, Classified, James Taylor;
actor Kim Coates from the Sons
of Anarchy; and comedian Kenan
Thompson (who wore his during a
Saturday Night Live credit roll)…
MacLean is quick to point out
he’s never paid anyone to wear his
clothing. Some, in fact, like Crosby, have occasionally sported East
Coast Lifestyle clothing even though
they’re under contract to other
much bigger makers.
MacLean even tried — and failed
— to give U.S. President Barack
Obama some East Coast swag. He
was at the White House last spring
for a presentation after being
named first runner-up in a global
young entrepreneurs’ competition.
But he did manage to score an autographed photo of the U.S. president,
which hangs on the wall in his office — the “Captain’s Quarters” — in
ECL’s laid-back Halifax headquarters above another autographed
photo, this one of young hockey star
Jonathan Drouin.
East Coast Lifestyle may also
have come along at exactly the right
social media moment. Besides huge
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followings on Twitter and Facebook, which help drive traffic to its
online store, ECL’s Instragam account, with more than 190,000 followers, features not only celebrity
photos but also candid snaps of real
people wearing their gear, “reppin’”
where they’re from at the Wall of
China and other exotic locales.
ECL’s Instagram account also
documents the company’s generosity. Soon after the company
launched, MacLean handed out free
shirts to 100 residents at a local
homeless shelter. He has provided
clothing to Bryony House, a shelter
for women and children fleeing
abuse, and to Syrian refugees. Before Christmas 2015, ECL’s Halifax
store contributed $2 from every
sale to the local food bank. And $2
from every ECL camo hoodie sold
goes directly to the Wounded Warriors veterans’ charity. Maclean,
who estimates the company gives
five to 10 per cent of its profits to
various worthy causes — much of it
unpublicized — credits his mother
with instilling that need to give
back. It also, he acknowledges,
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doesn’t hurt brand loyalty. “I think
people like to know you’re giving
back.”
East Coast Lifestyle’s future
possibilities seem limitless. Although primarily still a Canadian
phenomenon, MacLean is quick to
5-10%
Estimated profit that East
Coast Lifestyle donates
to various charitable causes.
ECL founder Alex MacLean
credits his mother
for teaching him the
importance of giving back
to the community.
rhyme off the numbers of potential
proud-to-be-where-they’re-from
customers residing on assorted
“east coasts” in other countries:
115 million in the United States,
60 million in Japan, 35 million in
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Australia.
In the spring — to cover all
downhome bases — he’ll roll out
a new line of West Coast Lifestyle
clothing.
Perhaps not surprisingly, MacLean has had more than a few expressions of interest from wannabe
investors. He’s cautious. “I want to
keep control.” Ironically, for someone who’s won more than his share
of young entrepreneur honours,
MacLean says he doesn’t have a
business mentor of his own. “When
I need to talk to someone, I talk to
my dad.”
That said, his ultimate goal is to
create his own entrepreneurship
organization to provide mentoring
and free entrepreneurship programs to youth in Atlantic Canada.
“We’re the underdogs of Canada”
he says, “and yet we’re ready to
embrace entrepreneurship.”
In Alex MacLean’s entrepreneur
school, he says with a smile, “there
will be no math courses. The goal
will be to teach ‘hustle.’”
Alex MacLean has already learned that lesson very well. •
Lessons in: Financing
Photo by Alison Jamieson of Backroads Wildlife Photography
Happy hunting
Resourceful Redneck bags big bucks selling
survival tools
By Alec Bruce
Any
hunter will testify that
he spends a lot more
time in the woods sitting on his
rump than pointing and shooting
his rifle. And if that hunter happens
to be Mike Holland, that’s time to
think. So it was not long ago when
the former New Brunswick civil
servant, a lifelong outdoorsman,
began to cogitate ways to transform
his recreational passion into a
bonafide business.
“Anybody who grows up in rural
New Brunswick knows you go into
the field with limited resources,” he
says. “A lot of things can go wrong,
so you need to be creative pretty
quickly. You might only have a
hammer and a piece of yarn to solve
a problem or figure something out.”
Still, what if these on-the-fly
inventions could be manufactured,
commercialized, packaged, and sold
to outdoorsy types across Canada,
possibly even the world? Better
yet, what if the Internet and social
media took the place of traditional
bricks-and-mortar store frontage
and advertising to get these
products into customers’ hands?
Thus was born Resourceful
Redneck, operating out of Holland’s
Riverview home, just about a year
ago. His website explains what he
likes to call the company’s DNA: “We
are not just a company that sells
products; we are outdoors people
ourselves. Much of the product line
has been invented as a result of real
people facing real situations in the
field and needing to find solutions to
those problems.”
The start-up’s product line
is broad as well as ingenious.
Customers can buy, online,
everything from apparel and
hunting accessories to knives
and tools. Homespun problemsolvers devised by Holland and
members of what he refers to as
the “community” of hunters and
fishers (to whom he pays royalties
on sales) include the “barrel buddy”
– a protective cover that fits over
the tip of a rifle – and the “bear-ier”
– a girdle that affixes to a tree’s
trunk to keep overly curious ursine
visitors, without harming them, from
reaching a hunter perched in the
canopy.
Holland is both the face of the
company and its R&D department,
which, he says, is fortunate. “I
don’t do commercialization and
mechanization,” he says. “That’s not
something I would be any good at.”
For that, he has a broadly
experienced expert in these
functions, his partner Steen
Gunderson, who also happens to
be the general manager of Dieppebased ambulance manufacturer
Malley Industries.
Last November, the two men
travelled to Toronto for a highly
coveted appearance on the CBC’s
wildly popular television program
Dragon’s Den, as much for the
exposure as the chance to raise
equity for their fledgling company.
To their surprise and delight,
they got a bite from Dragon Joe
Mimran, the fashion titan behind
Club Monaco, Caban, Alfred Sung,
and Joe Fresh. For a 10 per cent
stake, they could walk away with
$50,000. “We were ecstatic to not
only secure a deal, but to hear that
an idea that I had while out hunting
was not just valid, it was investment
worthy,” Holland said at the time.
Fortune, it seems, does favour the
bold. Within days of their turn on
the show, they received an even
better offer from British Columbiabased Thunder Boyz Productions
Inc., which runs the Trigger Effect
TV program. Its cash-for-equity
proposal was similar to Mimran’s,
but the additional perks were
simply unbeatable, especially the
opportunity to market directly to
their target community of customers
with commercial spots, website
enhancements and social media
management and expansion. They
quickly sealed the deal.
Now, the entrepreneurs are
positioning Resourceful Redneck —
which is, Holland says, financially
healthy — for measurable growth.
“The moral of the story is learning
how to capitalize on the interests
of people with like minds,” says
Holland. “Understand the needs of
your community of customers and do
everything you can to meet them.” •
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Lessons in: Innovation
Reinventing
the wheel
Made-to-order innovation key to Fredericton
entrepreneur’s commercial success
By Alec Bruce
At
Fredericton-based Smart
Skin Technologies, inventive
genius is a given. Still, as founder
and CEO Kumaran Thillainadarajah
says, “understanding what the
marketplace needs is the big thing.
Knowing how to tailor what you’ve
created to a wide variety of needs
in a wide variety of industries is the
key to survival and growth.”
He should know. Since 2009, his
company has, in equal measures,
specialized in both innovation
and commercial expansion for its
proprietary Quantifeel System™
— a technology he developed as a
computer-engineering student at
UNB. “Essentially,” he says, “it uses
nanotechnology to create a pressure-sensitive, polymer ‘skin’ that
you can apply to a manufactured
item.”
Originally, Thillainadarajah — an
immigrant from Sri Lanka — created
the product for the medical community, specifically for prosthetic
design. In short order, though, he
divined the broader applications
of his invention. “I guess in the
first couple of years, we were just
building the core technologies,” he
says. “Pretty soon, we realized that
we were at the edge of a brand new
paradigm shift in manufacturing, in
production.”
Still, to commercialize that “shift”
he had to explain it.
The pitch went a little like this:
You are a beer or pop bottling plant.
You run production lines every day
and every night. You lose, maybe,
10 per cent of your product to the
factory floor (the result of poorly
calibrated assembly systems that
just adore scratching or smashing
We’re on a winning streak!
Fredericton’s economic development team gets measured on how well we help new
and existing businesses grow. This year, we’re top of our league. Fredericton earned
three Top 10 rankings in fDi Magazine’s American Cities of the Future for 2015/16.
And there’s more. The City’s vibrant startup culture and innovative entrepreneurs
earned five of nine 2015 regional Startup Canada awards.
Your business success
is our win.
fredericton.ca
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Lessons in: Exporting
your containers to their robotic
hearts’ delight). That might cost
you a million bucks a year.
Now, imagine, not throwing
your money down the literal
drain. Imagine, for example,
fitting one of your bottles or cans
or plastic containers in every
production line with a very cool,
pressure-sensitive film, linked to
a computer, that would tell you
exactly what tolerances each unit
could handle before any damage
results. Would that, dear potential
customer, interest you?
It certainly interested New
Brunswick serial angel investor
Gerry Pond, the former CEO of
NBTel and president of the successor organization, Aliant Telecom. In a 2014 interview with the
Financial Post, Pond — who was
an early-stage investor in Smart
Skin and is now its board chairman — likened the company’s
commercial potential to two other
homespun, New Brunswick tech
companies (Radian6 and Q1 Labs)
in which he had pulled an equity
stake and subsequently saw spun
off to international buyers for a
combined total exceeding $300
million. “Smart Skin has the potential to be of that scale,” he said.
“I think they’re on a trajectory
equal to those companies. . . (It
is) a great Canadian innovation
story.”
For his part, Thillainadarajah
is content to build his company’s
brand and broad customer appeal.
Continuous production innovation
is key, but so is assiduous attention to the needs of an almost limitless global marketplace. “There
are, quite literally, thousands of
applications for our technology,”
he says. “We have to explore what
these are, get the message out
into the marketplace, and then
expand our product lines to meet
the demand that we discover.”
At the moment, this entails
keeping the 15 people he employs
in Fredericton (12 of whom are
engineers) productively engaged
in development and commercialization across the entire spectrum
of manufacturing and production.
It also involves commissioning
the best international sales team
he can muster to spread the word
about Smart Skin’s capabilities. •
Game on
Nova Scotia’s Travis McDonough
digs deep in L.A, bats 1,000 in
Dodger Stadium
By Quentin Casey
On
November 10, Travis McDonough walked
onto a stage erected near home plate in
Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium. In front of him was
a crowd of 550, including investors, sports and
fitness executives, and officials from some of North
America’s biggest sports teams and leagues.
McDonough’s Halifax-based company, Kinduct
Technologies Inc., was one of 10 sport technology
companies selected for the first-ever L.A. Dodgers
Accelerator. The four-month program started in August and gave its participating companies access to
a slew of mentors and contacts, including venture
capitalists, executives from companies such as Amazon, Google, Apple, Nike, and Facebook, and sports
world figures including Magic Johnson (a Dodgers
owner) and Lakers president Jeanie Buss.
McDonough spent four months in Los Angeles
attempting to glean as much advice and information as possible from those sources. His time in
the program concluded with the on-stage pitch
at Dodger Stadium. In it, he explained that his
company, created in 2010, has developed athlete management software that improves performance
and prevents injury.
“We have created the
world’s most advanced
human performance software platform,” he told
the stadium crowd. “Each
and every organization that
used our tool last year saw a
statistically significant improvement in winning percentage and a drastic reduction in preventable injuries.”
More than 50 professional sports teams now use
Kinduct’s technology, including more than half
of the 30 NBA teams — though, surprisingly, not
Canada’s lone NBA team, the Toronto Raptors. The
company’s subscription list includes the reigning
NBA champion Golden State Warriors, the New
York Knicks, football’s New England Patriots, the
NHL’s New York Rangers, and the Toronto Blue
Jays. (McDonough also claims 25,000 fitness trainers use the software, and says the Canadian military has 30,000 licenses.)
Kinduct’s software processes data from athletic
gadgets such as heart rate monitors, Fitbits, and
many other health devices. The company’s software
also relies on data from athlete journals and electronic health records.
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50+
Number of professional sports teams using
Kinduct’s performance enhancement
technology, including the Golden State
Warriors, the New York Knicks, football’s
New England Patriots, the NHL’s New York
Rangers, and the Toronto Blue Jays
The software analyzes data from
those disparate sources to find
correlations in an athlete’s performance. In other words, the software
tracks various factors — nutrition,
sleep, training intensity — to establish which ingredients are needed
to ensure top performance.
In the NBA, Kinduct has shown
that a player’s free throw percentage dips two days after a night of
poor sleep. In hockey, a correlation
was drawn between grip strength
and the number of shots a player
takes on goal; a stronger grip yielded more shots.
Kinduct works with NFL teams
to determine how a particular
player’s performance on the field
is affected by factors such as sleep
patterns and pre-game heart rate.
If problems are detected, Kinduct’s
software makes recommendations
for altering the player’s workout routine, diet, sleep patterns, or playing
time.
Later this year, Kinduct’s software
will be used to process data generated by special sensor-embedded
jerseys, to be worn by players during the home run derby at Major
League Baseball’s all-star game.
“This is frontier territory,” McDonough said at his office shortly
before departing for Los Angeles.
“We’re at the forefront of data and
analytics.”
Reached six weeks after his pitch
in California, McDonough says the
Dodgers accelerator experience
yielded new clients and changed his
“go to market” strategy.
Among the 10 new client teams
McDonough added while in California: the L.A. Galaxy soccer team,
the Denver Nuggets, Atlanta Hawks,
Minnesota Twins, and Phoenix
Suns.
McDonough, a chiropractor and
son of former federal New Democrat
leader Alexa McDonough, says his
company is in negotiations with
all four of the big North American
sports leagues (NFL, NBA, NHL,
MLB). If successful, those negotiations would see Kinduct supply its
technology league-wide in all four
sports.
“In a perfect world we’d get all
four, but if we got one it would still
be a big win,” he said. “That’s certainly within reach with the current
discussions we’re having.”
McDonough also wants to push
into the mass consumer market. But
his strategy for doing so changed
based on the advice he received
from mentors such as Jeanie Buss,
Jonathan Mariner (MLB’s chief investment officer), and Dodgers chief
financial officer Tucker Kain, among
others.
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36
Our Activator® program pairs
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Atlantic Business Magazine | March/April 2016
Date:16-02-17
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McDonough originally intended to
take Kinduct’s technology directly to
consumers, alone. Instead, he’ll now
work to access the distribution networks of large, established sports
companies. For example, Under Armour.
“That was a big epiphany moment for us,” he said of the decision
to pursue partnerships. “There are
some big, big companies that we are
closing in on deals with right now,”
he added.
The 10 companies selected for
the Dodgers accelerator — a first in
sports — came from among nearly
600 applications. (McDonough says
Kinduct, already a Dodgers client,
was asked to participate.) The
selected companies were deemed to
have technology that could help the
Dodgers — from athlete recruiting
to advanced analytics for fantasy
sports.
Kain, the Dodgers’ CFO, said his
team’s players work with strength
coaches, trainers, doctors, sleep experts, and nutritionists. “How do you
bring all those together to really add
to the athlete’s performance?” he
said in an interview from Los Angeles. “Kinduct has created a platform
to do that.”
Kain also called Kinduct’s software a “powerful tool” that could
“really add value” to sports companies, such as Nike and Under Armour,
that are pushing further into health,
“Each and every organization
that used our tool last year
saw a statistically significant
improvement in winning
percentage and a drastic
reduction in preventable
injuries.”
Travis McDonough, founder and CEO
Kinduct Technologies
fitness, and wearable technology.
“We think they’re really in a position to change athletes,” Kain said,
“and ultimately change how people
manage their health and wellness
in this digital age.”
The Dodgers ownership group,
Guggenheim Baseball Manage-
ment, took an equity stake in all
10 companies in the accelerator.
McDonough expects Guggenheim to
also put money into his company’s
Series A round this year. He says
three other players are likely to take
part in the eight-figure round: Intel
Capital, R/GA (a global ad agency
that helped run the Dodgers accelerator), and John Risley, the founder
of both Clearwater Seafoods and
Ocean Nutrition Canada. Risley’s
Clearwater Fine Foods holding
company already has a 15 per cent
stake in Kinduct, and Risley chairs
the company’s board.
McDonough’s stay in L.A. resulted
in new clients, potential funding,
and an office in the city. He says the
experience also convinced him that
his 42-person company can compete
internationally.
“I realized we belong here. We’re
just as good if not better than a lot
of these other companies,” he said.
“We can do this.” •
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