With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1222419
24 BCBUSINESS APRIL 2020 W I N N E R PILAR PORTELA F O U N D E R + P R E S I D E N T , A S T R A S M A R T S Y S T E M S + i 4 C I N N O V A T I O N PILAR PORTELA HAS founded nine companies, three of which have been acquired. Though she didn't begin her formal post- secondary education until her late 30s, she's been employed in the tech industry for most of her career, at a variety of organiza- tions in her native Costa Rica as well as in Canada and the U.S., while running businesses on the side. At 38, Portela started her bachelor's in international trade from Distance State Uni- versity in Montes de Oca, Costa Rica, followed by a master's in project management through the University for International Cooperation in San José, her hometown. She completed both while working full-time. In 2015, having spent five years in Silicon Valley as director of software development for a multinational, she moved to B.C. to become CEO of tech- nology incubator Accelerate Okanagan. Entrepreneurship lured Portela back to working for herself, and she relocated to rural B.C. to launch two busi- nesses: Astra Smart Systems in 2016 and i4C Innovation in 2017. Burnaby-based Carl Data Solu- tions acquired them in 2017 and 2019, respectively, and Portela remains president of both companies. Astra, with its eight employ- ees, offers an end-to-end solution for industrial environ- mental analytics, everything from collecting data through sensors to running networks to transmitting the collected information for analysis. The idea for Astra came as Portela reflected on "finding solutions that can solve global problems," she remembers. "It's extremely expensive to collect and trans- mit data, so [businesses] often don't have enough of it to be able to make decisions." That's where Astra comes in, offering low-power and low-cost networks. With clients in Canada, Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico, the company will expand into Colombia, Brazil and North Africa this year. i4C Innovation runs parallel to Astra, helping it reach its targets. Portela's second com- pany in Trail is a hub of eight companies, hand-picked by her, working together to help each other scale up. The idea is that the partners can join forces, for example, by putting in bids to work with larger organizations, Portela explains. "[i4C] was really about proving you can do innovation in rural communi- ties," she says. "It was profitable from the beginning." Portela says i4C grew out of a belief that collaboration is the key to success in business. That, and revenue: "Investors will come if they see money coming in," she adds. "I am a believer, because of what I have done, that a company that has revenue will be acquired at the best rate possible." —J.N.W. PETER HOLST