Waterloo Tech Highlights for September 2024
Our goal is to provide you with a monthly primer on significant news events from private Waterloo-based technology companies in 5 minutes or less.
Scribenote raised $8.2M in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz and included investments from Inovia Capital, Velocity fund and some angel investors.
Swap Robotics raised US$1.2M of new investment as the first part of a larger round to come.
eleven-x closed a large deal with the Toronto Parking Authority for their on-street parking. In addition, customers have expanded deployments including Florida Atlantic University, University of Wisconsin, Spruce Grove Alberta, Tallahassee, Stratford, the Town of Oakville and Edmonton.
ENVGO launched their flagship hydrofoil boat. They have a prototype built and they’re taking reservations with a $1000 refundable deposit.
Intellijoint has established a presence in Saudi Arabia with a distribution partner and medical clearance. They’ll begin surgeries in November.
Chris’ Thoughts
“Everybody lies!”
That’s the refrain I hear from pretty much every episode of House, a show we’re currently watching.
This exact line came to mind while listening to a pitch last week from an earnest entrepreneur who built an AI product to encourage small and medium companies to increase their adoption of AI at work.
The numbers of company leaders who acknowledge using AI tools remains shockingly low, as do the number of employees who admit to using AI tools for their jobs. Underneath it all though, I suspect “everybody lies”.
If there’s a shortcut available to do a job in half the time I’ll find it – sometimes taking twice as long to figure it out. Paying $30/month for ChatGPT and cutting my weekly working hours in half –sign me up. Working from home (WFH)makes it even easier to pull off. As the newest (and best?) tool in a long list, GPT helps me appear busy and keeps the boss happy.
Of course, the gains won’t last. From the top, eventually leaders will figure the game out and adjust workloads and staff loads accordingly. From the bottom, the lazy will be undermined by the hustlers.
I met a couple accountants who quit their practice and went all in on GPT and some Python scripts to open a bookkeeping business. They claim the two of them can do the work of at least 25 bookkeepers as a result and they’re making way more money than they could before. There’s lots of similar examples of this floating around.
So if you’re a boss and your WFH team tells you they’re not using AI and working really hard, re-watch a few episodes of House. I bet they’re lying.
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Chris Wormald @cwormald