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February 7, 2001
"Students Start Million-Dollar Company"
A couple of UW students were rejoicing last week at the news that Arius Software Corporation, "a privately-owned web application consulting business", had received $1.5 million dollars in its initial round of funding.
Why so happy? Because they own the company.
Adam Zimmer (computer engineering) is president of Arius, and Mike Neame (computer science) is vice-president for product development. They started Arius early in 1999 during a co-op work term. The funding that was announced last week moves Arius beyond the gleam-in-the-eye stage and establishes it in the software business.
During their consulting engagements, an Arius news release explains, the two students "recognized a need to automate the web-application development process and designed a toolkit called ConnectedDB to address this need. ConnectedDB enables developers to rapidly generate graphical user interfaces for a variety of platforms and connect those interfaces to either current existing or legacy databases. It can generate an interface for the web, a full desktop application, or even a cellphone, without writing a single new line of code."
Since the business was started, Arius says, it has developed "solutions for a variety of clients in the financial services industry, security industry and educational market throughout North America". One example: a financial database system for Pacific and Western Trust. "The development consisted of several applications including an internal administrative system, an extranet for their brokers, and a common web-based interface to the applications."
"Some of our investors are either current or ex University of Waterloo professors, and a number of alumni," says Ted Shapiro, vice-president (sales and marketing) at Arius.
He sounds proud of Zimmer and Neame: "That they were able to attract $1.5 million from some very technology savvy investors, before they've even graduated, is a great endorsement of the tools we've built, their talent, drive and professionalism."
Arius is just the latest high-tech spinoff from Waterloo, he notes, pointing to some well-known names such as RIM and Pixstream. "There's a lot of exciting local technologies. We believe that Arius Software may be next on the horizon. We're in a very hot technology sector -- eB2B solutions and web applications."
And the people behind the company are staying local, he adds: "Adam and Mike were recently interviewed on the CBC, as skilled entrepreneurs that are staying here in Canada. They're building a profitable business and already provide employment for 10 others and growing. Each work term, Arius employs about 7 or 8 co-op students, who are helping us build our products and marketing materials. As we grow, we're certain to want some of those talented people back when they graduate."