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Guest blog by Hans Downer, CEO, ActivDox
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ActivDox was incorporated in June 2011 and was initially based in Waterloo. Waterloo has quite an extensive network of start-ups and has an ample supply of University graduates from Waterloo and Guelph. Initially, ActivDox felt that those two qualities coupled with two well established incubators (Communitech in Kitchener and The Accelerator Centre in Waterloo) would make Waterloo the ideal home for ActivDox.

While the incubators did provide a good starting point, ActivDox was unable to find the necessary expertise associated with text processing in the Waterloo area. When Adobe had a significant downsizing in Ottawa in early 2012, ActivDox was able to attract the crème de la crème and initially contracted with a Systems Architect and subsequently hired four top notch developers, each with about 17 years experience and a VP Product Development who had led a team of 150+ developers. That team has developed the ActivDox mprototype with blazing speed and excellent quality. In addition, in early 2012, ActivDox was able to find some outstanding marketing and product management expertise in the Ottawa region. The rich technology heritage of Ottawa has provided ActivDox with the exact skills required to grow our business.

As an added bonus, we have relocated our headquarters to Invest Ottawa. The support from that team has been beyond expectations. An Executive in Residence with a strong background in document management who has successfully brought three start-ups to market has been assigned to ActivDox. We have been provided with some outstanding research assistance that would have been beyond our ability to fund, we have been interacting closely with the IRAP representative who is based at Invest Ottawa, and we have been provided strong support in our fund raising activities. The staff at Invest Ottawa have been bending over backwards to help ActivDox.

We have also been very enthused about the support from the Ottawa Investment community, most notably the Capital Angel Network. Capital Angel Network members have invested $365,000 so fair in ActivDox, which is over one third of our total investment.

With infrastructure already in place like Invest Ottawa and the Capital Angel network to support start-ups coupled with an abundance of broad experience in the technology sector, Ottawa is primed to return as “Silicon Valley North” over the next few years.

For further information about ActivDox, please see our web site at www.activdox.com or call Hans Downer at 613-799-3440.

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Guest blog by Hans Downer, CEO, ActivDox
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