September 27, 2000
Bullish on the Market
Why cool, youthful and decidedly anti-corporate start-up
firms are cool on Kanata and love the Byward Market.
Peter Hum
The Ottawa Citizen
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Wayne Hiebert, Ottawa Citizen / Phil Giroux of
Zaxxon says the Byward Market has a better high-tech
working environment than Kanata. 'It's looser in the
market. People are more relaxed and creative and happy.'
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Wayne Hiebert, Ottawa Citizen / Raj Narula, an
engineer by training, serves up more than fine Indian
food at his Haveli restaurant.
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Wayne Hiebert, Ottawa Citizen / KC Parker of Sirius
Consulting says 'you can do everything in the market'
-- he and his co-workers are are happy to buy fresh
fruit from the vendors and have lunch at Bagel Bagel.
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Wayne Hiebert, Ottawa Citizen / Antera programmers
Brian Lamb, Scott Francis and Dennis Ho fit the Byward
Market's high-tech demographic: Males (usually) in their
early 20s, no spouse or mortgage payments, willing and
able to put in the long hours, happy for the occasional
time-out at a nearby cool bar.
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Wayne Hiebert, Ottawa Citizen / John Criswick is
a market-tech success story. In 1998, he sold his firm
to Sun Microsystems and now plows his money into start-ups
and is a silent partner in the Mercury Lounge. |
When high-tech executive Phil Giroux commutes to work, he
takes his skateboard, not a sports car. For him, dressing
for success means shorts and sneakers -- never a suit. At
his fledgling Internet software development business, he and
his co-workers have forsaken cubicles and Dilbert-esque working
conditions for a dimly lit apartment-turned-office, where
beer on ice is kept in a bathtub.
Best of all, in their minds, they are nowhere near Kanata
and what it signifies -- cultural and corporate stodginess.
Cool, youthful, and decidedly anti-corporate, Mr. Giroux's
company and more than a few others are showing how high-tech
is done in the Byward Market.
"It's such a much better working environment. It's looser
in the market. People are more relaxed and creative and happy,"
says Mr. Giroux, his sneakered feet up on his desk.
"It's a lot more relaxing and social, so it makes it
a lot more pleasant to work longer hours. You don't feel it
so much."
He makes his point with this scenario: "We'll work late.
Go out. Get totally hammered. Come back. Work. Totally."
It should be said that Mr. Giroux, 30, is something of a
comedian, as his appearances on the TV show of his friend
Tom Green attest. But he keeps a straight face as he continues.
"You'd be surprised," he says. "You work really,
really hard. Can't solve the problem. Go out and have a couple
of beers. Just chill out for a couple of hours. You'll just
look at things differently."
Different is the word to describe high-tech's growing presence
in the Byward Market.
Not that Kanata's denizens weren't already familiar with
the neighbourhood. Ottawa's high-tech elite has always liked
to frolic here in the shadow of the Chateau Laurier, as the
frequent sightings of Marlen Cowpland's yellow Ferrari and
Mac Brown's red Jaguar convertible attest. Mrs. Cowpland's
shopping sprees at Richard Robinson's Sussex Drive boutique
are legendary. Mr. Brown, the chief executive officer of Rebel.com,
met his wife Marie-Josee Naim at the Second Cup on Clarence
Street.
The rank and file at Nortel, Alcatel and other suburban high-tech
giants are also regulars at the market's many restaurants,
making the crosstown trip to entertain clients and fete employees.
It's gotten so that the Empire Grill, arguably the hippest
of the market's hangouts, is doubling in size this fall and
wiring its new space for Internet conferencing.
But the latest big high-tech thing here is the arrival of
the start-ups, changing the mix of the already diverse market.
In the last few years and especially in the last year, high-tech
start-ups such as Zaxxon, Mr. Giroux's barely above-ground
company, have been quietly and stealthily operating in Ottawa's
oldest and trendiest neighbourhood, setting themselves apart
from their rivals on March Road or Antares Drive.
You have to look closely, but if you scour the market's streetscapes
of restaurants, food vendors and boutiques, you will see the
signs and logos of the high-tech start-ups upstairs, or at
least the glow of a computer monitor in the second-storey
windows.
Where there was once a bar or hair salon, an art gallery
or an apartment, there are now software developers, information
technology consultants, spanking new high-tech incubators,
Web site designers aplenty and a few Web-based companies.
No one, not the Ottawa-Carleton Research Institute nor the
Byward Market Business Improvement Area for starters, has
a clear, current fix on where all the neighbourhood's high-tech
tenants are located.
The man who knows best may be Eric Van Hofwegen, the Colliers
International associate broker who finds office space in the
region for baby-step businesses. He covers the entire region,
but says that for high-tech start-ups, the Byward Market has
the greatest appeal.
"It's exploded," he says, before offering an explanation.
"They want a fun location. They want to be part of this
culture," he says. "It's of even more importance
to them to get the 'cool space' than other tenants."
Now, Mr. Van Hofwegen says, the market is a few occupants
away from being jam-packed. If some market office space comes
open, he thinks that he could possibly fill it with a phone
call or two to high-tech start-ups.
"If things continue, in a year from now there will be
no space. Nothing at all," Mr. Van Hofwegen says.
If you spend an afternoon pounding the pavement in the market,
you'll see that in many of its best known addresses, high-tech
in one form or another rears its head. Among them:
- Sirius Consulting Group Inc. rents three floors at York
Street and Sussex Drive in the May Building, an Ottawa landmark
built in 1846. The five-year-old information technology firm,
whose revenues grew from $846,000 in 1995 to $13.7 million
last year, moved from downtown in March 1997 to bask in the
prestige of the America embassy, whose construction across
the street was imminent.
- East a few blocks at 126 York St., a cluster of the market's
high-tech veterans call the former "CHEZ 106 building"
home. VMI Medical, which develops information technology for
cardiology applications, has grown to occupy a floor. So too
has Filament Communications, the digital communications company
formerly known as Animatics Interactive, which occupies another
floor. Sun Microsystems has its Ottawa outpost there, having
bought the fledgling Byward Market company Beduin Communications
two years ago in a $20-million success story.
- San Francisco-based Linuxcare has one office built in a
former alleyway at 41 1/2 William St. Across the street in
the Byward Market Building is a second shop where its software
developers toil, above the tasty treats of the Moulin de Provence
bakery. Linuxcare's arrival in the market occurred last December,
when it bought the Puffin Group, a start-up run out of the
William Street office.
- The Canadian office of ePALS, the online service linking
65,000 classrooms in more than 180 countries, recently leased
four floors at Rideau Street and Sussex Drive. It had outgrown
its digs above the Burger King on Dalhousie Street.
- Web site developers, including the digital offshoots of
established advertising companies such as McMillan and Associates
on Sussex Drive, are everywhere in the market. Among them,
iStudio holds the fort on York Street beside the Bay and above
the McDonald's, while Storm Communications is next door.
- Soma Networks, which has offices in San Francisco and Toronto,
this summer opened its Ottawa outpost at 110 Clarence St.
- Startingstartups.com, an incubator that helps provides
space and capital to spanking new companies, recently moved
into its office at 105 Murray St. There, it has taken under
its wing AssetMetrix, a three-person company that offers corporate
computer inventory services across the Web. Previously, Zuccotto
Wireless was the office's tenant, until that start-up outgrew
the space and moved to Slater Street. The location above Johnson's
Furniture used to be the Liquid Monkey bar.
- Hi-tech Ottawa.com, another incubator of sorts, is run
out of a Clarence Street suite. One of its principals, 41-year-old
Raj Narula, has been a fixture in the market for 17 years
as the owner of the Indian restaurant Haveli. Mr. Narula,
an engineer by training, says that the contacts he has made
through his restaurants and catering (he provides Indian food
to Nortel cafeterias) assist his new incubator project.
- Also among the neighbourhood's start-up companies, run
by 20-somethings and the occasional 30-ish dinosaur, is Mr.
Giroux's company Zaxxon, seven months old and operating quietly
above a thriving Byward Market restaurant (Mr. Giroux wants
his location kept hush-hush for the moment).
- Also at 110 Clarence St. with Soma, there's Antera, a wireless
applications company just six months old.
- The building at 30 Murray St. houses Engine Creative, a
fledgling digital communications company that also does research
and development. It began with four people in an office above
the Clarence Street Second Cup; now there are 20 or so staff
in its new space.
- One floor above Engine Creative is Planetfred, the wireless
services company which owns Antera. While Planetfred is just
months old and has yet to launch, it has already finalized
plans to take more space above the Irving Rivers store on
the Byward Market.
- Perhaps most in keeping with the market's 160-year-old
tradition of foodselling, LazyGrocer.com, an online grocery
service founded by two 25-year-olds, set up its office in
February at 41 York St. and is to launch later this fall.
For the market's property owners, it wasn't so hot a few
years back. But now, says Mr. Van Hofwegen, "landlords
are pinching themselves. They can't believe someone wants
to rent their space and pay them good money as well."
If you ask the tenants to explain the lure of their location,
you will hear the same reasons why time and again.
Some of the market's newer high-tech tenants moved in to
enjoy the character of a heritage property and bask in the
prestige of a nearby landmark. KC Parker, Sirius Consulting's
26-year-old director of finance and operations, says that
his company would not have moved to the market had the United
States embassy not been gleaming in the neighbourhood's eye.
On the other hand, the area's funkiness and creative buzz
are the big draws for new media designers and computer programmers
who regard working in a Kanata high-tech hive as putting one
foot in the grave.
They see themselves as team members of cutting-edge companies
in a cutting-edge neighbourhood, thriving in boldly coloured,
untraditional work spaces that say "cool" and "anti-corporate"
in the same breath.
"A large company in a business in Kanata has a really
negative connotation," say John Lomow, the 23-year-old
vice-president and chief technology officer of Engine Creative.
"I was in that cubicle always striving for that window
seat," he says. Now, he and co-workers spend their days
in a open-concept studio filled with grey, purple and red
walls and slanting angles.
Whatever their businesses, their employees rave about the
amenities at their fingertips. The quality-of-life add-ons
that Nortel had to build into its suburban campuses -- good
cafeteria food, gym facilities, dry cleaning -- occur naturally
in the Byward Market.
"You can do everything here," says Mr. Parker.
He says Sirius's 18 staffers are happy to be able to buy fresh
fruit from vendors in the summer and sun themselves by York
Street's new Millennium Fountain.
"You want people to work hard, but you want people to
do work well. And to do that, you need to give them breaks,"
Mr. Parker says.
The nightlife, fine dining and nearby accommodation are all
boons to recruiting young computer hotshots. Linuxcare, for
example, has hired talent from Denmark, England, the Netherlands
and Italy and its Byward Market location was a draw.
"The individuals who have talent today understand they
have an ability to choose (their job)," says Doug Smith,
Linuxcare's director of Canadian sales. "Money is no
longer their motivating factor. Fringe benefits -- that's
what they're looking for. The Byward Market offers the most
fringe benefits to this age group."
Mr. Smith estimated that the average age of Linuxcare's two
dozen or so employees is 25. Nearly all of them live within
walking or biking distance of work so that the Byward Market
envelops practically their whole lives.
"You've got a little eco-system right down here that's
going to get better and better," says Mr. Smith.
"I spend my entire life here," says Alex deVries,
27, one of founders of the Puffin Group, and now Linuxcare's
director of professional services.
"I hardly have to leave a two-block radius," he
says. "It has everything I need to live."
It is hard to say which high-tech entrepreneur led the charge
into the market. But it is easy to say who has encouraged
the start-ups to come -- John Criswick.
The example he has set would be inspiration enough. Mr. Criswick,
37, is a market-centric success story.
After tiring of the drive from Lowertown to Nortel's Carling
Avenue campus, he started his Java applications company Beduin
Communications in his apartment in February 1997. The company
moved to 126 York St. in May 1998. In October that year, Sun
Microsystems of California bought Beduin for $20 million,
largely in stock. Since Sun shares more than tripled their
value following the sale, everyone at Beduin, including Mr.
Criswick, is now a millionaire many times over.
Moreover, Mr. Criswick has been an active mentor to some
of the market start-ups that would emulate his success. He
has helped and is helping a number of companies by sharing
his business acumen (his technical knowledge, he says, remains
with him and his Sun bosses).
Zuccotto was one of his proteges. "I encouraged them
to be in the market but didn't think they would grow that
quickly," Mr. Criswick says. Market locations serve small
to medium-sized companies best, he adds. Thirty or so employees
is an upper limit. "Beyond that, it's difficult,"
he says.
Mr. Criswick's mentoring with such businesses as Planetfred,
he notes, is done market-style -- casually, over coffee, at
the Second Cup.
The culture of his workplace is "very social,"
such that he and his co-workers are "best friends"
who, for example, lunch at Bagel Bagel or after work go to
Meditheo.
Not content to be a patron of Byward Market businesses, Mr.
Criswick two months ago bought into one and became a silent
partner in the Mercury Lounge, the market's trendiest, hippest
nightspot. Recently, he moved from Lowertown, even closer
to work, into a loft in the heart of the market.
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Brian Lamb, 19, Scott Francis, 21, and Dennis Ho, 22, could
easily pass for students as they refill their beer glasses
at Paddy Boland's pub on a recent Thursday afternoon.
You might think them to be university students on an early
bender, but you would be wrong. They are sharing a pitcher
with their Antera colleagues -- "team-building,"
says Aron Slipacoff, Planetfred's vice-president of public
relations, as he sees them in the pub.
(Mr. Slipacoff, by the way, has well-known roots in the market;
For decades, his family ran the Slipacoff's meat and vegetable
store in the market, a 40-year-old institution until in closed
in 1987. "The synchronicity of it," says Mr. Slipacoff.)
Some of the market's high-tech entrepreneurs speak of their
technical people as if they were a demographic unto themselves:
males (usually) in their early 20s, no spouse or mortgage
payments, willing and able to put in the long hours that a
start-up requires, happy for the occasional time-out at a
nearby cool restaurant or bar.
It is as if they had Mr. Lamb, Mr. Francis and Mr. Ho, all
Antera programmers, in mind.
All three grew up on computers, programming rudimentary games
before they hit puberty. They are all drop-outs too, whether
from high school, college or university.
"I just wasn't motivated," says Mr. Lamb, who left
high school early. "The things I was learning I didn't
need."
His friends Mr. Francis and Mr. Ho nod in agreement, although
they do not want computer-savvy teenagers to mistake them
for role models or bad influences. Still, they warn that another
crop of young people who live and breathe technology will
make them obsolete.
"The younger people in this industry, they're the heart
of it," Mr. Francis says. "People who are younger,
they're going to kill me when I'm 30."
"The kids of today are going to make me look stupid,"
says Mr. Ho.
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Three years ago, Mr. Lamb, who grew up in the Toronto suburb
of Georgina, wrote a newsreader application and licensed it
as shareware on the Internet, earning a tidy little sum in
the process.
"Blows away the competition," says Mr. Francis.
"The premier OS/2 newsreader," says Mr. Ho.
"I bought me a car," Mr. Lamb says.
Mr. Francis was two years ahead of Mr. Lamb at the same high
school. "Brian was my tutor," he says, referring
of course to extra-curricular computing.
Mr. Ho, who grew up in Toronto, was playing Tetris on a Commodore
64 at 10, and was soon writing little games in BASIC. He was
an information technology consultant in his teens before he
began and then quit computer science at the University of
Waterloo.
All three were journeymen high-tech workers before Mr. Francis
came to Ottawa this summer to work at Antera, and soon recruited
Mr. Lamb and Mr. Ho.
"Our job is like an extension of our lifestyle,"
says Mr. Ho. "We play with cool toys and we build cool
stuff. To us, it's just cool."
They live practically around the corner from Antera, all
in the same building, in separate $1,000 apartments. (Nonetheless,
they drive their leased 2000 Hondas to work -- separately.
It's a Toronto thing, they say.)
And as Torontonians, they not surprisingly respond far better
to the Byward Market than they would to working in Kanata
or Nepean.
"Ottawa's already too small," says Mr. Ho. "I
wouldn't go to a suburb of a small city.
"The attitude out here (in the market) is just cooler.
We have restaurants and bars all around us," he says.
"It's a nice area to work in," Mr. Ho says. "Well,
just a nice area to live in, I guess."
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