With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/813780
34 BCBUSINESS MAY 2017 WORK IN PROGRESS 1981: Back then, he is simply Tony Mandl: a wine rep with a flair for marketing. In 1981, Mandl and two partners take control of Mission Hill Winery and help put Okanagan wine on the global map. He's added a couple of syl- lables to his name–now Anthony von Mandl–and several millions to his bank account, thanks to one big former investment: Mike's Hard Lemonade. 1983: Don Mattrick is 17 when he co-founds Distinctive Software Inc. and starts creating games for the Apple II computer. Electronic Arts Inc. buys Distinctive in 1991, and Mattrick becomes president of EA's world- wide studios, establishing Vancouver as a gaming giant. The Burnaby native, who's since had stints at Microsoft Corp. and game developer Zynga, makes news in 2015 with the $51-million sale of his Point Grey manse. 1983: A giant of B.C.'s forestry industry–Canadian Forest Products, privately held by the Prentice and Bentley families–goes public and changes its name. Canfor remains the second-largest producer of dimensional lumber in Canada, while B.C.'s richest man, Jim Pattison, is its largest shareholder. Park in California. The three-wheel Solo costs $19,888 and qualifies for provincial rebates of up to $11,000. Recharging the lithium ion battery is free at many public charging stations. It takes three (using 220 volts) to six hours (120 volts), but as with cellphones, most users will top up the battery before it's drained. And unlike filling a gas tank, notes Kroll, "practically, it takes half a second because you plug it in and you walk away—you're not standing there." The Solo is designed for commuters. In 2011, 74 per cent of Canadian commuters used a private vehicle, and 83 per cent of them drove alone, according to Statistics Canada. With a range of 160 kilometres, the Solo accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in eight seconds and reaches a top speed of 130 km/h. Thanks to its aluminum-composite body and light weight (450 kilograms), it would bounce away from another car instead of being crushed in an accident, resulting in a survivable incident, according to Kroll. As for what it's like to drive, "this thing really has pickup, and it's quiet and it's smooth," he says. "This is Vancouver Canadian technology that is being built here in New Westminster, and we've exported the technology to be built in China for the Chinese market, in India for the Indian market and going over to Europe for the European market," Kroll emphasizes. "Let me repeat: we are exporting Canadian cars." The family-owned company has taken orders for 500 Solos. Kroll, the Green Party candidate for Vancouver– Mount Pleasant, would like to have a self-driving Solo on the road within two to five years. "This is as exciting a time for cars as the mid-'70s were for the personal computer," he says. "There's so many won- derful things coming, and we're going to be at the forefront of it." —F.S. A Different Look ViewsIQ helps speed up disease diagnosis any- where in the world by taking pathology digital small startup based in a Richmond office park is confronting an infirmity that has dogged Canadian medicine and pre- sented around the globe—a shortage of pathologists. The specialized doctors, who diagnose diseases from tissue samples and tests, play a key role in determining treatment. As Canada's population ages and cancer cases become more numerous and complex, there aren't enough pathologists to han- dle the workload, studies show. "We have a team of just under 10, and we're trying to tackle this major problem in the world," says CEO Herman Lo, who founded ViewsIQ in 2010. ViewsIQ has developed a software system called Panoptiq that works with any hospital microscope. Panoptiq allows users to capture slides (of a tumour biopsy, for example) digitally and view them on a computer screen. Rather than mail slides to patholo- ONE FOR THE ROAD Jerry Kroll shows off Electra Meccanica's single-seat commuter car