46 BCBusiness april 2016
30
under
30
THE STORY: Most class proj-
ects only last a semester, but
Colin O'Neill and Nick Seto have
been raising money, build-
ing and tinkering with their
surgical device, Target Tape,
for over ve years now.¥The two
met at UBC, where O'Neill was
pursuing a double honours in
economics and engineering and
Seto was a third-year commerce
student. Both were taking
UBC
Sauder School of Business's
new venture design course, an
interdisciplinary course that
pairs commerce with engineer-
ing students on a project whose
end goal is a viable product
prototype. The basis of their
project (and the cornerstone of
their business) is the X-grad—a
disposable tool for surgeons to
help them make more accurate
incisions. While the march
toward protability—through
the bog of health bureaucracy—
can take years, the pair remains
hopeful. Says Seto: "There's no
real course on entrepreneur-
ship; we were thrown into the
water and expected to learn
how to swim."
MARKERS OF SUCCESS:
Target Tape is still pre-revenue,
but the founders expect to gear
into sales mode in late 2016.
Their device has received com-
mitments for future use from
the B.C. Cancer Centre, the
Fraser Valley Cancer Centre and
Surrey Memorial Hospital. —J.P.
n i c k s e t o
c o l i n o ' n e i l l
colin o'neill
and nick seto
co-founders,
target tape inc.
ages: 27 and 28
