My Journey into Entrepreneurship

It is a big leap to leave a CIO position at a company where you worked close to 30 years. The hardest part is the mental adjustment and smoothing out the highs and lows. One day you feel invincible and the next that the whole world collapsing. From a world of certainty, I have plunged into a world where I don’t know what the future will hold. It takes some getting used to, but once you are there it is a lot of fun and your perspective on many things changes. Bottom line – I feel like I am in alignment with what I was supposed to do in this life.

It is hard to believe but it has been a year and a half since I began my journey as an entrepreneur with a dream to integrate software and technology with hard construction to change the way people connect, collaborate and operate their living environments – something we call Smart Communities.

My Smart Community adventure started over 14 years ago and it was honed through my years as a CIO working for a well-respected and innovative condominium developer and fine-tuned through my collaboration with designers, engineers, property managers and condo purchasers.

I have built a lot of software over my career to support multi-family real estate and it is great to be applying all that knowledge and experience into a solution that transforms how people live.

Everything we dream about, ideate on, and seek new solutions to is focused on one thing – Using technology to improve the lives of people.

Living simplified is our measurement for the resident and property manager – developing solutions that make their living environments secure, safe and convenient. We ensure that the building infrastructure is future proofed to accommodate any systems and technologies, is redundant and reliable, and will provide a conduit for future applications and services.

We call this the Smart Community Revolution!  

Reflecting on 2018- it was a tremendous year for SmartONE Solutions:

·     We signed an exclusive North American relationship with Commax – by far the world’s best-in-class smart building technology company

·     After many years of dedicated and detailed engineering and testing we launched our first operational building in downtown Toronto – an industry first.

·     We have developed fantastic relationships and have commitments for 5 new buildings.

·     We won two major industry awards for most innovative intelligent building platform and best intelligent building project – these are wonderful acknowledgements of our vision, technology and collaboration with our developer partners.

·     We have a new home in Markham, Ontario at Venture Labs – an incubator for innovation and new relationships.

·     Our team is growing with passionate and empowered staff.

·     Our research is in high-gear with one of Canada’s leading innovation networks.

2019 – The year of Smart Community

Now that we have the first Smart Community building live and operational, with hundreds of homes collaborating and connected – our plan for 2019 is to bring on new waves of outstanding developers, creation of next generation services and applications, and integration of new technologies. Stay tuned.

I invite you to join our Smart Community Revolution - the future is here!