BCBusiness

27 B C B U S I N E S S . C A M AY 2 0 24 S a r a h H u g g i n s : M a r k B i n k s says, adding that the company is looking at devel- oping crab cake and scallop products as well. Organic growth is the name of the game, and Save da Sea, which has five full-time employees and one part-timer, is in 180 grocery locations across B.C. and Alberta, including Whole Foods and Save-On-Foods. Her team does a lot of sampling in those stores in order to educate the public on what's possible in the sector. "Plant-based has taken a bit of a bad rap recently, because a lot of it is quite processed," she says. "It's refreshing for people when they see the number-one ingredient is carrots or jackfruit and all the ingredients are recognizable." –N.C. R U N N E R S - U P J ill Doucette graduated from the University of Victoria with a biol- ogy degree and a dream to start a company that would help businesses move toward a more sustainable, regenerative future. "I didn't exactly begin with the business acumen you should have when you start a busi- ness," she says with a laugh. "When I started Synergy [in 2008], I had $70,000 in student debt. The banks wouldn't touch me." After bootstrapping for three years, Doucette began growing the team, working with organizations to measure their environmental impact, set GHG reduction targets and engage stakeholders, among other priorities. Today, Synergy has worked with thou- sands of clients, including the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority (on a project that plugged cruise ships into clean power), the Calgary Airport (on decarbonization), Rocky Mountaineer and numerous clients in the nickel and copper mining sectors. The company has around 30 employees and just moved into a new Victoria office it designed from scratch. "It's been fun, lots of growth," says Doucette. "It's a fasci- nating change of tone with the banks, which I'm enjoying. 'Hey, remember me from back then?'"–N.C. JILL DOUCETTE FOUNDER AND CEO, SYNERGY ENTERPRISES IN 1998, when Sarah Huggins left Vancouver after high school for Montreal and McGill University, she assumed she'd be back in four years. "No one in my family had really left before—the idea of leaving town and going away to university was something my parents hadn't con- templated me doing," she recalls. She returned 25 years later with both a bachelor's and a law degree from McGill, along with three kids and several years' experience at a top Toronto law firm. Oh, and she'd opened a Toronto restaurant called Mary Be Kitchen that she still over- sees. After COVID, though, the call to come home became too pressing to ignore. In 2021, she, husband Sim Desai and two co-founders started Hiive, an online marketplace for trad- ing private securities. They moved the business and its 10 employees to Vancouver in 2022. Two years later, Hiive has some 60 staff, a $5.7-million Series A funding round under its belt and plans to expand out of its Mount Pleasant office. Although the market has been fraught with turbulence of late, Hug- gins argues that, in many ways, the timing wasn't bad for starting a busi- ness. "It forced us to be disciplined in a way that we probably wouldn't have been forced to be a couple of years earlier," she says."–N.C. SARAH HUGGINS CO-FOUNDER, COO AND GENERAL COUNSEL, HIIVE

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