BCBusiness

50 B C B U S I N E S S . C A A P R I L / M AY 2 0 2 5 S h i f t REDBRICK IS ONE of Victoria's largest tech companies. But the common joke you hear about it is that it's not really a tech company at all. Founded in 2011 by Tobyn Sowden, Redbrick was initially a digital marketing firm. Eventu- ally, though, it moved toward collecting a portfolio of companies that help dig- ital entrepreneurs build their businesses. These include properties Redbrick has acquired, like Animoto, Delivra and Leadpages, along with those that started within the firm, like Assembly, a digital media technology company (which was eventually sold to St. Joseph's Communications), and a browser tool founded in 2016 called Shift. How most people use browsers hasn't fundamentally changed in some time. You likely use Chrome or Edge or Safari and that's mostly that. But Shift, which integrates all your apps into one browser to focus on workplace productivity, is trying to change that. "The big key is having all your apps in one window," says Neil Henderson, CEO of Shift. "One browser window for everything you use on your computer each and every day. So you're not looking out to other windows or apps for Slack, Spotify, Skype. Everything is integrated into its own window. It saves time and you're not context-switching with eyeballs back and forth." And it's not just for apps, explains Henderson. Shift has workspaces that users can dedicate different tabs to. "Right now there's all sorts of stuff coming at you on your desktop from different angles," he says. "We can customize all of that and have the notifications within Shift regardless of the app it's coming from, and then mute or silence them if needed. It's really just letting you work harder and more efficiently in your browser." The reality of being inside a company like Redbrick is that things are always changing. Often, you'll hear executives at large firms say that working at their company is like working on a few different startups because there are so many disparate things to do. At Redbrick, that's self-evident. Henderson has held roles at many different companies in Redbrick in his more than 10 years on the team. Recently, he was the CEO of Redbrick's soft- ware division, Rebase. That company merged with Shift and Henderson took on the top role last year. With some 65 staff, Shift is now the biggest company at Redbrick. Henderson describes his primary goals as "respecting the SaaS and pro- ductivity legacies and bringing them forward," and moving the company toward becoming more of a general-purpose browser. "It's a bit farfetched to say that we want to replace Chrome, period," he admits. "But the browser market is so big. Everyone is browsing on multiple devices. The minute percentages of market shares of browsers are humun- gous businesses. We're on a mission to, without fail, be considered in the top 10 browsers worldwide. I think that's doable." Typically, browsers are marketed to people who are tech savvy. "Generally speaking, very few people are looking to try a new browser every day," says Henderson. "But search is changing rapidly; most search occurs within the browser. My mother-in-law isn't querying to search engines to the same extent she was six months ago. We're trying to think about people that browser companies don't."—N.C. KEEPING TABS Victoria-based Shift thinks the internet browser could use a refresh "Right now there's all sorts of stuff coming at you on your desktop from different angles. We can customize all of that and have the notifications within Shift regardless of the app it's coming from, and then mute or silence them if needed."-Neil Henderson

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