Transcript—Medical Innovation with Intellijoint

Region: Waterloo

[Opening sequence]

[Text on screen – FedDev Ontario, Road to Success]

[Text on screen - intellijoint Surgical Inc.
Waterloo, Ontario – Founded: 2010]

I met my co-founders as part of my undergraduate degree. Andre and Richard were both my classmates at the University of Waterloo.

[Armen Bakirtzian - CEO and Co-founder, intellijoint Surgical Inc.]

We really dedicated our fourth year to solve the problem that a lot of orthopedic surgeons have, which is in hip replacement surgery.

So really, intellijoint Surgical was born out of a fourth year engineering design project.

But once we graduated, we didn't really know what to do with it. We didn't know what entrepreneurship was, and we didn't know where to take it next.

One day we got word of a pitch competition called Ontario's Next Top Young Entrepreneur.

We were very fortunate to have the opportunity to successfully go through that competition and win, which gave us a lot of confidence, but we still didn't know where to take it after that. We needed more help.

We really appreciate the ecosystem in Waterloo. We really like how entrepreneurship has grown in the Waterloo region over the years.

We moved into the Accelerator Centre, you know, as three technical co-founders not knowing how to start a business or how to do anything.

But one of the things we really learned and appreciated early on was access to capital and finding money is one of the biggest problems that face entrepreneurs today.

The money that we received from FedDev Ontario was critical in allowing myself in particular and my co-founders to really focus on creating technology to solve problems, and to create value in our business instead of chasing capital.

My co-founders and I are really fortunate and very lucky to be where we are today.

[Text on screen – $4.1 million leveraged in private investment]

It came with a lot of hard work, a lot of support from great people in our ecosystem, like FedDev Ontario.

Our products have been used to help hundreds of people go through hip surgery a lot better, without complications. We're really happy and fortunate to have created something that really benefits patients.

[Text on screen – www.FedDevOntario.gc.ca Follow us @FedDevOntario]

[FedDev Ontario identifier and Canada wordmark]