Greg Malpass
T h e C o n v e r s a t i o n
The CEo of Traction on Demand discusses failure, working in
the cloud and building a 130-plus-employee operation with
no outside investment by Ricardo Khayatte
G
rowing up in Nelson, B.C., as the
son of a small-town doctor, Greg
Malpass always thought he'd follow
in his father's footsteps. Indeed, the
38-year-old former competitive swimmer and
rower dreamt of building his own sports medi-
cine clinic when he rst started his education
at
SFU. But those dreams came to a halt in
his rst semester, when a
GPA of just 1.54 got
him placed on academic probation. The
realization that the sciences might not be
for him drove Malpass into the business
faculty and, eventually, on to start a com-
pany with a simple yet highly customized
solution for sales and marketing teams:
Traction on Demand. Within nine years,
Traction has grown from a one-person
operation to 130-plus employees and
now counts megabrands such as
Telus, Aritzia, Aldo and
BlackBerry as clients.
16 BCBusiness AUGUST 2015