BCBusiness

33 BC BU S I N E S S .C A A P R I L 2 0 24 eventually created some 20 games and hit over 30 million in combined plays. But Sanchez had a burning desire to do more. "I wanted to have more of an impact, do more concrete things," he says. "Games are fun, but I wanted to do something that mattered." In 2017, he teamed up with some partners to found Commutifi, a data-driven commuting platform to help cities and their populations move. "You have companies with thousands of employees—they don't know where their employees live or how they commute," says Sanchez. "How do you change that? How do you solve parking problems, sustain- ability problems, return-to-office and retention problems?" Commutifi works with both Fortune 500 companies and organiza- tions like TransLink and UBC to help them make decisions on cost-efficient and sustainable parking and transpor- tation programs. "B.C. has all these goals in terms of climate, but there's no measurement right now in terms of commuting emissions," Sanchez says. "We partnered with TransLink to start implementing solutions with the employer to show that we can efficiently understand emissions and reduce them by having employers as part of the solution." B O T T O M L I N E : Commutifi, which operates remotely, has some 15 employees and is profitable. Sanchez moved to Squamish after COVID to enjoy the outdoors. His parents got their wish, eventually. –N.C. UNDER UNDER EVE BENNETT Age: 29 Founder and CEO, MeepMeep L I F E S T O R Y : Some families spend their quality time together watching Survivor or playing Monopoly, but for Eve Bennett, disc golf was the go-to bonding activity growing up on Salt Spring Island. "It was outdoors, low-cost and such a good experience for me as a kid," she remembers. She still has a disc from that time—and says she'd be devastated if she ever lost it. With MeepMeep's technology, however, lost discs could be a thing of the past. "Think air tags, but for disc golf," Bennett explains. She founded the Victoria-based stick-on disc track- ing company in 2020 after completing some exhaustive research and devel- opment: on top of the tracker needing to be adhesive and lightweight, it also had to flex with the disc, withstand frequent impacts and be effective in mud, rain and snow. The end product is a smart, battery-powered sticker that weighs seven grams and is only five millimetres thick. Instead of using mapping to show players where their discs have landed, MeepMeep (wait for it) beep-beeps. "We found that this was the most user-intuitive and precise way to locate," explains Bennett, who has a degree in commerce from UVic. The audio cue also makes the activity more accessible: "In order to get new players into any sport, you need to make it more fun, less frustrating and give people less reasons to give up," she says. B O T T O M L I N E : MeepMeep has sold over 4,500 units and has partnered with distributors in both Canada (Atlantic Disc Golf) and the U.S. (Infinite Discs and Disc Golf Deals USA). The team has grown from two to nine employees in three years, and Bennett looks forward to the brand having a presence at the Disc Golf Pro Tour's Europe launch in 2024. Plus, MeepMeep's about to get smarter: the entrepreneur and her crew are developing a next-gen product that presents analytics and uses machine-based learning to offer coaching suggestions. –A.H. LIAM ADAMS Age: 28 Manager, cybersecurity, PwC; adjunct professor, UBC L I F E S T O R Y : Liam Adams grew up in South Africa, but when his dad got a job with the Indian Premier League (one of the world's top cricket leagues), he moved with his family across the Indian Ocean. After finish- ing high school abroad, it was either Singapore or Canada for university. A scholarship at UBC clinched it. "In retrospect, it was a good decision. I don't think I could live anywhere else in Canada because of the weather," he says. Adams did a combined bachelor's degree in business and computer science through UBC Sauder and dabbled in a couple of ventures—a digital agency and a superfood company—before landing a job with multinational consulting giant PwC. He was the fourth employee in the Vancouver branch's cybersecurity department. Five years later, it's now at some 25 people. About two years ago, one of Adams's former professors approached him. "He said, 'I know you're in cybersecurity; we don't actually have a cybersecurity course at the business school and a lot of the employers are asking us to clean up our graduates in the space,'" recalls Adams. He was tasked with figuring out a curriculum and teaching the pilot course last year. "It went super well," Adams says. "I got some really great feedback from the students; they liked the hands-on approach. In some courses you don't get that." B O T T O M L I N E : Adams, who serves on the board of the Young Cavaliers Foundation, which helps South Africans from under-resourced communities access educational and career development opportunities, splits his time between PwC and sessional instruction at UBC. But the entrepreneurial fire still burns. "My focus is around the stuff I'm doing in cybersecurity, cyber education," he says. "The plan is to do something more entrepreneurial in that space." –N.C. RYAN CHING Age: 24 Co-founder and co-CEO, Vision2Reality Foundation L I F E S T O R Y : Growing up in Hong Kong, Ryan Ching enjoyed charitable work. The company his mom worked at donated gifts to an orphanage every year, and Ching remembers dressing up as Santa to deliver the presents. "It was always very rewarding to see," he says with a laugh. It's also what inspired him to continue with similar efforts after moving to Vancouver: while studying business administration at SFU (2017- 22), Ching served as the VP of finance for Wish Youth Network Society, a club that supports youth with serious medical conditions. In 2019, he joined Coquitlam- based NexGen Accounting as a junior bookkeeper. Founded by Winnie Hsu, the company provides cloud-based accounting services in B.C. Ching eventually moved on to an emergency specialist role at YVR but remembers being very moved by Hsu's stories of entrepreneur- ship. Such conversations sparked something in both Hsu and Ching, who, together with Queenki Gao and Hubert Liu, decided to launch an

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