What if I told you it was possible to finance your startup with next to nothing? Well, that’s how the company CANN Forecast, whose co-founder Naysan Saran I met last week at the Fondation Montréal Inc. event, where the 23 growth winners of 2018 were presented, and influential people from the entrepreneurial community were present, including donors, senior executives and mentors who accompany the winners. Naturally, the URelles team was there to discover women entrepreneurs in technology.
CANN Forecast is becoming increasingly well known as a recipient of several awards, including C2MTL’s Emerging Entrepreneurs and Entreprendre Ici. Most recently, the startup won one of three grants for up-and-coming female entrepreneurs from the Fondation J. Armand Bombardier.
Naysan Saran became an entrepreneur almost three years ago, after a career at Environment Canada lasting almost 8 years. Her startup uses artificial intelligence to support municipalities in their water management. The company has designed two innovative solutions: InfoBaignade and InfoBris.
InfoBaignade evaluates water quality before bathing. The previous solution took a long time. It could take 48 hours from the time the water was collected to the time it was analyzed. Now, this can be done in near-real time. The solution uses artificial intelligence to analyze data on the state of the water and offer analysis results on its quality.
The other product, InfoBris, warns municipalities before a pipe break occurs, by identifying the most vulnerable aqueduct segments. The solution therefore helps to reduce the problems and costs that could be incurred, as it enables them to be repaired in good time.
During the evening, between glasses of wine, I was able to ask founder Naysan a few questions about her entrepreneurial journey with CANN Forecast, and an important point was discussed: the importance of co-development for a startup. She recommends collaborating very quickly with potential customers to jointly create the product. Naysan emphasizes the need for customer involvement. She explains: “Municipalities play an important role in the development of solutions. These would not have been what they are today without their help.” Thanks to these partnerships, the company has been able to rapidly develop solutions that respond concretely to the needs of municipalities, so much so that now seven cities in Canada are their customers.
The co-founder encourages entrepreneurs to collaborate and contact their customers early on in the development process. This reduces errors and ensures that a problem is really addressed. She adds: “Often, we don’t even know that certain problems exist. We discover them when we’re in the field”. Another advantage of co-development is access to financing. In many cases, co-development enables us to share development and start-up costs, as well as risk, with our partners, who can then turn into customers.
The company is now dreaming of global expansion for its two solutions, while continuing to develop other technological tools, this time related to lakes… Impossible to tell you more at the moment! Another little secret? The startup plans to launch a first round of funding as early as autumn 2019. For interested investors, stay tuned!
