March 1, 2017 marked another milestone for Qoints, as the Toronto team moved into IBM’s Innovation Space located at 185 Spadina Ave!
We are beyond excited with a new spark of energy, and believe partnering with IBM will foster many opportunities to grow and pursue our vision of empowering intelligent, data-driven marketing solutions. IBM is a technology industry leader with world class Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing technologies offered by Watson, making them a great partner for us as we start to dig deeper into the analysis of our growing campaign repository.
At the end of 2016, Qoints was accepted in to IBM’s exclusive Global Entrepreneurship Program and plans were put in place at that time to relocate to 185 Spadina Ave. IBM is providing significant funds towards the use of their technology, so we can further develop risk-free proof of concepts for our clients. Along with platform credits and office space, there are co-sales and partnership opportunities as well as an amazing network of IBMers to learn from. The energy in 185 Spadina isn’t like the “Big Blue” corporate giant you might expect, but more like a lean tech startup (not really a traditional incubator) where Canada’s brightest are working on some of the smartest, most challenging and exciting businesses we’ve seen in a single room. We’re honoured to be a part of it.
We’d also like to give a shout-out and a big thank you to OCAD U and the Imagination Catalyst program. Being headquartered at iCat over the last year has been greatly beneficial for Qoints, helping us build new partnerships, get invaluable advice, and access new mentors that we otherwise would probably not have met. Imagination Catalyst took a big risk on Qoints, accepting a community member with no direct association to OCAD U at the time – they were looking to bring business minds in to balance the design-first thinking of the space. The result is that Qoints now thinks with design as a priority, and we’re so proud to truly be OCAD U alumi and a permanent part of this amazing community. We had the opportunity to guest lecture, lead bootcamps, judge contests, have dinner at the President’s home and most memorable of all, held our first ever State of MarTech event in partnership with Imagination Catalyst. We’d like to give a special thanks to both Kathryn Ellis and Katherine Roos, who are both incredible people and champions of the startup ecosystem. We will certainly miss seeing you every day, and look forward to collaborating on more industry events in the near future.
As we look ahead, we know we will continue to work hard to bring digital benchmarking to the forefront of the industry, and help ensure that digital marketers have the tools to make smarter and more effective decisions.
We can’t wait to see what the future holds for us in our new environment!