Quick Takes: Waabi keeps on rolling with a strategic investment from Volvo 

What is the news?

On Thursday, Waabi announced a strategic investment from Volvo Group Venture Capital AB. The amount of the investment was not disclosed but the terms were. The investment was an extension to the $83.5m USD Series A that was led by Khosla Ventures.

What makes Waabi interesting?

Waabi is one of several well-funded startups that is working on autonomous trucks but it has a few unique things about the team and its approach:

1. The company was founded by Raquel Urtasun. Raquel is a shining star in the autonomous world. She is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, a co-founder of the Vector Institute for AI, and a former chief scientist at Uber ATG. Raquel not only is a star but her teaching and association with the Vector Institute enable her to recruit extremely sought-after talent.

2. Waabi's approach to autonomy is to create a solution that is purpose-built for OEM integration. Their solution is designed to be part of OEM truck designs and not add on hardware (e.g.lidar). Waabi's Driver is an all in one solution that includes software, computer power and sensors that is designed into the trucks and built into the vehicles on the assembly line. This results in a better looking vehicle that is easier to clean and maintain.

3. Waabi is using AI-first simulation to train it's software. This is significantly less capital intensive and should result in faster development of its software than the traditional fleet on the road approach.

Why accept this money from Volvo now?

This investment/partnership makes sense as Volvo has been an active developer and investor in autonomous trucks. It developed an autonomous truck concept in 2017 and it is jointly developing autonomous semi-trucks with Aurora Innovation. In addition, Volvo is a large truck OEM that can be a perfect partner to launch Waabi Drive with. It is not clear if there is a catalyst around the timing of the investment but if I were to guess, I would not be surprised if the two companies are working on a commercial partner as well.

What are the takeaways for founders?

Waabi's capital-light approach is one reason that it has been able to raise capital quickly and at high valuations. in the current environment, the capital intensity and margins of a business will play a significant role in the multiples/valuations that startups raise at. With many corporate VCs being established in the last several years and a slowdown in the funding market, we may see corporate VCs becoming more and more active. The model that Waabi has followed is one that many companies would be advised to follow. Take money from a strategic investor as a follower not the leader of the round. It will avoid the strategy from having too much influence over the company and potentially odd optics around any follow-on round.

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Profile: Lisa Israelovitch and AssistIQ

What does your company do?

AssistIQ is on a mission to make healthcare more affordable and sustainable by reducing unnecessary supply waste. The company's software platform delivers deep savings to hospitals and healthcare providers by using AI to provide real-time supply intelligence and actionable insights.

What insight led to you starting your company?

One of my co-founders is a surgeon and he led a study at the CHUM hospital in Montreal with a simple prototype to demonstrate the ability to reduce costs by reducing unnecessary waste of supplies. The CHUM leadership wanted to expand the study but the prototype wasnʼt scalable.

I was in between companies and evaluating ideas and opportunities with my technical co-founders. We decided to invest some time evaluating the market and concluded that the problem was real and that the market was very large. We also had the advantage of the CHUM as our living lab.

Although selling into hospitals is known to be extremely difficult and slow, we were able to validate that this was a top 3 problem for many hospitals that they were ready to prioritize.

What did you do prior to this that led you to start AssistIQ?

In 2012, I started a company called Umapped along with Thierry, who was the CTO.

We developed digital itinerary products for the travel industry. The company was acquired by Flight Centre in 2018 and we spent the following 2 years scaling the product and team across the enterprise. I also took some healthy time off for about a year. During this time, I advised a number of startups but ultimately I missed being hands-on. Thierry (co-founder & CTO), Mundeep (co-founder & CPO) and I looked at a number of ideas and opportunities. I was interested in mission-driven opportunities and we wanted to make sure that whatever we built next would solve a real problem for a very large market. We never expected to start a health tech company but the pieces just fell into place when we were introduced to the idea by our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Moishe Liberman.

What else should people know about your company?

We officially started the company in late Sept 2021, so we're still early in our journey. Over the last 16 months, we've built our MVP and deployed our product across several procedures at the CHUM hospital. We've also landed 3 other pilots (2 with leading US hospitals that are kicking off this month), grown our team to 10 superstars and closed our first financing round with an amazing group of investors that I'm really proud to partner with.

How did you meet your Co-Founder?

My co-founders are all very close friends - we have complementary skill sets and we trust and support each other. We met our first hire, Abby, at Centech. She's amazing and we've met some amazing people through the Centech community.

What are you a subject matter expert on?

I enjoy finding product market fit and building partnerships.

Learn more about AssistIQ here, or meet us in person on January 31 to hear from Lisa about her journey at our upcoming TechTO: Together event.

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*TechTO: Together returns to Montreal to kick off 2023 with the local ecosystem. Lisa will be taking the stage to share more of her insights and perspective on building a successful business and continuing to scale.

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Thanks to our friends at Planned for hosting and partnering with us on this event. We'd also like to thank Mission for their continued partnership as well.

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Headlines and Content

• #ICYMI - Catch up on past newsletters if you hadn't yet subscribed!

• Summit Nanotech secures $50m USD to scale Lithium - READ HERE

• Wave of tech layoffs tips power back in favour of employers in sector - READ HERE

• *NEW CONTENT* Learn from Rebecca Kacaba, the Co-Founder and CEO of DealMaker - WATCH HERE

Top Takeaways from Rebecca

• "If you've got a yes, you have got to get them to close ASAP"

• On getting their first customer: "We went out, we knocked on doors, we listened to what our customers wanted, and we build it into the platform. You really have to try everything to make it work."

• How do you know which customer feedback to listen to? "To me, anyone who is a paying customer is who I'm going to listen to. At the end of the day, if someone is not going to pay for the product, they are not the feedback that I'm going to listen to."

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TechTO Talent

Principal Security Engineer, ecobee (Canada)

Why is this cool? ecobee introduced the world’s first smart Wi-Fi thermostat to help millions of consumers save money, conserve energy, and bring home automation into their lives. That was just the beginning. They're a rapidly growing global tech company headquartered in the heart of downtown Toronto with offices in Toronto, Canada and Leeds, UK (and remote ecopeeps in the US). Join as a Principal Security Engineer. APPLY HERE

Solutions Architect, Railz.ai (Toronto, ON)

Why is this cool? Railz is a FinTech company that provides a single API to all major accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, etc.) service providers and enables on-demand access to financial transactions, analytics, insights, and reports on small business customers. As an Engineering Solutions Architect, you will help define future states while continuing to support current technologies and architectures. APPLY HERE

Co-Founder Match

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Events and Links

Check out the interesting content, events, and happenings for the community here:

• TechTO Together | Montreal: January 31, 2023 - Join us LIVE from Montreal and kick off the year with the Montreal tech ecosystem - REGISTER HERE

• Lessons Learned: Newcomers Growing Tech Businesses in Canada: February 2, 2023 - Learn how 3 tech companies owned by newcomers led their businesses to success. How did they create and grow their businesses? REGISTER HERE

• Meet the Top 100 Tech Companies to Watch for in 2023: February 7 from 12-1:00 pm ET - Meet the next companies to watch in Tech - REGISTER HERE

• TechTO Together | Toronto: February 6, 2023 - Announcements coming soon! - REGISTER HERE

• TechTO Talent | Virtual | February 22, 2023 - Meet and mingle with top tech talent and employers hiring now! REGISTER FOR FREE

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