Hey everybody and welcome to AQ's Blog & Grill.
We're happy today to have Jeff Aramini with us.
Jeff is the founder and CEO of Focus21.
Now this is a firm that
is really focused around, if you will,
creating online experiences with purpose.
And we're going to chat to Jeff about
that because they're doing some pretty
exciting things these days.
Welcome Jeff. Pleasure thank you.
Now Jeff I gotta start off with this because
it's such an interesting background.
You have a PhD in epidemiology. Public health engineers.
See I was going to say that
but I'm glad I didn't. So say that just one
more time for us Jeff. Public health
epidemiology. Of course. You also are a
doctor of veterinary medicine.
Yes. And you're working on your MBA. Yes.
Is there something about learning that
excites you?
Yes, I very much enjoy learning, I probably
also have attention deficit disorder
which fits with my path. But yeah, no,
I started off as a veterinarian and worked
in a mixed animal practice for five,
six, seven years, enjoyed it but wanted to
make a difference more than treating
pets and families.
Okay. So it's, and actually in Canada
the shift or the progression from
veterinary medicine to public health
it's been set. So actually a
lot of veterinarians get into public health.
And it's probably because
veterinarians deal with herds and
populations and that's all that public
health does too, right? So it's all about preventing disease.
Right. And the natural path is to
go through epidemiology which is the
study of populations and diseases.
So outbreaks and surveillance and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah so some of the
science of course is transferable -
yep - from one profession, one study
to the next.
Yes. So that's very interesting. And you said
you wanted to make a difference. Right.
How? What kind of difference
are you looking at? Essentially
improving people's lives, right, whether
that's around health or social demographic
factors and you know I think looking
back I didn't realize that I probably
was making a difference treating
pets and their families but wanted to
make a difference at a sort of larger
level - okay - and epidemiology or public health
allows you to do that, right?
So discovering a risk factor, solving an
outbreak has the impact to touch on many
families not just one or two.
Absolutely. So I took, I did my Masters
and PhD and then worked with the Public
Health Agency of Canada for about eight
or nine years and that's where I was
introduced to informatics. Much of
epidemiology is around data, analyzing
data, turning data into information and
intelligence, and so I was introduced
for informatics and got really jazzed
about all that stuff right and then
I decided after eight or nine years that
I was entrepreneurial in nature. So I
enjoyed creating things, building things
and it's hard to do that within
government in some places. So I've heard.
Yeah. So it was either decide to live in
my cubicle for the next 35 years and
somehow survive or to get out. So I
decided to leave, started up a health
informatics firm and then ultimately a few
years ago it turned into Focus21 and
now I work with my partner Ilya Peskov
and, yeah, we're having a lot of fun
doing innovative things and making a difference.
Well there you go. Now you and Ilya and
Focus21 are located at Communitech - yes -
here in the Waterloo Region so why
are so many startups coming out of this
area and maybe even
particularly Communitech. Have you noticed
anything that's common? If I were to boil
it down I think it's about energy.
Yeah. Right? And I don't know exactly what
that is but it's this positive energy
about getting things done, wanting to
make a difference, supporting each other.
There's still a lot of us, i.e.
Kitchener-Waterloo
versus them whoever them is whether it's
Toronto or Silicon Valley and that in
itself I think pulls people together and
to, you know, focus on support.
So yeah it is this support network at least
that I found that it comes in very handy
when you as an entrepreneur go into that
Death Valley of uh-oh, we no longer have any money
- right - the sales are on the near horizon and
what are we going to do?
Right, right. And sometimes at least I
know what I found is that people get
together and say, Okay you know you can
do this. I did this," and maybe not help by
just pouring money into your
bank account but at least give you
that moral support - yes - and encouragement.
And you know and then this past couple of
months ago, sort of continuing along the
path of education, both Ilya and I felt
well one of us should get some business
training. And I think one of the most
important things I've learned over the past
several years was there's a difference
between innovation and entrepreneurship.
Right. You can be innovative in
government, outside of government, but if
your goal is to translate innovation
into revenue, right, and
having the ability to even do more
things because ultimately you need money to
do things, then you have to learn how to
translate that. And like we've had
lots of innovative ideas but then it
boiled down to
while there's no revenue model.
Right. Right? If you can't get
somebody to pay for it eventually then
it's, yeah, you have to do something else.
It's a no-go.
So you know so I'm taking my MBA at
Laurier and it's been really
fascinating to look at things
through the lenses of previous experiences.
Yeah and I really enjoy getting emails
from you at three o'clock in the morning
because you're working on an assignment
and you just want
"Hey what's your thought on...?"
Well it's because, like I think a lot of
these things you kind of intuitively
know and it's nice now to see it in a
framework of well actually people have
spent lifetimes thinking about these
things, right?
So business strategy and
managerial strategies and yeah, like
even, although we're still relatively small,
we're growing. So a lot of these
things come into play but at the same
time many of our clients are big companies.
Yes. So understanding, so seeing how what
they think about, right, so insourcing vs
outsourcing and core competencies,
all that kind of stuff, for us to bring
value we kind of have to
understand how they think about it. Right.
And so it's been, I think it's going to
be really helpful in that respect as well.
Excellent. Now Focus21 has grown
quite a bit in the past six to 12 months
so what kind of things are you doing
that fuels that growth? We, going back a
little bit, after we realized, like after
we had a few startup ideas that kind of
didn't go anywhere, Ilya and I began
to appreciate that we were really good
at working through complex workflows,
complex problems on the software side.
So it's not just about making a simple
website. It's around, you know,
working through user interfaces to
guide the user through some sort of
complex task. Right. To make it simple,
intuitive and then that equates also to
being more productive. Right. Right?
So that's where we sort of focus our
work and because I have a data
science background we also sort of tend
to lean towards projects that have a
data component because we can bring
value there. Right. So we
worked in several areas.
In one company in Toronto, the World Council
for City Data - yes - they're a company that
spun out of the University of Toronto and they
help cities to to benchmark themselves
across a hundred different indicators.
So we helped them build an auditing portal
and data exploration portal.
That was really fun
and I think it's now being
used, I think it's over 120 cities,
it's on display in the Siemens
Building in London, UK. Yes and that
work climaxed, didn't it
in London at a global conference?
Yeah, there was
representatives from 20 global cities.
They all got together. There's,
there's this whole sort of movement
towards the ability to benchmark on
standard parameters. Otherwise there's sort of
no way of comparing - right - whether
that's around pollution, employment,
crime rates, etc. So this group,
the World Council on City Data,
spent the last many years making an
iso-standard which then we helped build a
platform around. Right. So that was one of
our main projects and our
other big area that we work in remains
in the sort of Public Health area -
right - and we're working with a
company down in Arizona call STC,
Scientific Technologies Corporation, and
they're North America leading
company for providing public health
solutions to states and provinces
and now the consumer. Yeah and that's
an amazing thing too, isn't it, because
it's not just about the state it's not
just about the medical associations but
they're reaching out to the consumer,
to us, to say, "Are your medical records, are
your immunization records, is your
vaccine history somewhere?" Right
And I think that's going to be - yeah and
it probably is the next big step, right?
So it's about empowering individuals
to promote their own health. And so it's
not just about doctors telling us what
to do or the government telling us
what to do.
Probably the most gain to be made in
health is around behavioral change, right?
And making sure you're vaccinated is one,
eating properly is another and a lot of
it relates to be here to behavioral change.
Right. And people need the information at
their fingertips.
It's no different than well you don't
know what to wear outside unless you
know what the weather's going to be. Right.
It's the same thing. Like we need
information to better manage our own health.
Yeah. So one of the things that
fascinates me about Focus21
is this application you're developing.
It's called Watr. Yes.
Are we able to talk about that at this time?
Yeah, sure. So we were approached
by the city of Guelph a couple of years ago
around, the basic question was can we
leverage people's water consumption data
to motivate them to save water? And they
had struggled for several years
trying to figure it out and
we got involved and after some
initial assessments realized yeah we
could bring a lot of value, we can
help them. So we've been working
away on a platform that allows
individuals to access their water
consumption data and through various
tools like social norms and gamification
essentially incentivize people. The most
basic part of it is allowing
households to compare how much water
they use compared to their neighbor.
And it kind of starts there because if
if you don't know what's normal then how
do you know whether your bill is right?
Right. Right and so now, you'll
soon be able to go onto
the app and it's called Watr, without
the E - right - and to see yeah, we're using
more or less than we should be. And then
that's the sort of first step. You know
clearly that's the first step to if
we're not then why?
And then why leads to answers. There we go.
I think that's such an exciting project and
I'm looking forward to seeing it succeed
across North America, if not the world.
So Focus21:
what is it about you guys that makes you unique?
Why would someone buy from Focus21 to
help them build their online presence or
their online brand or their online experience?
What is it that Focus21
brings to the table that is unusual?
I think there's a few things. One is
culture. We've done, we've worked
very, very hard to have a high-energy,
positive culture and you know that
almost always translates into doing a
good job, overdelivering - right - and so
that's kind of one thing. Another
theme that we realized at the start
was software or really anything, it is
about the experience. The product is the
user experience. Right. Right?
The technology behind it no, actually I think
people don't understand it nor do they care.
Right. Right? So we put a lot of focus
in as to, and it is not just
about what the product looks like but
it's, you know, how it drives a
person through the app or through
the website. So we put a lot of
focus on the user experience and
our team thus is fully integrated. So we
have designers, developers,
data scientists all working together with a
focus to address the need. Right.
So that, you know, that's
another one. And we have an
internal mantra, right? A mantra? We get good shit done.
Sorry, I didn't hear - what was that again?
We get good shit done.
Wow. And it is
a lens at how we look at things. Okay.
Right? We work hard.
We celebrate. We own up to our mistakes.
We're all about transparency and it's
how we set up every project so the
client, like there are no surprises.
There's no surprises about budgets,
there's no surprise about what
they get at the end. It's because we
all hear about IT projects that go down
the toilet. Right.
We do what we say and we say what we do.
Excellent. Now I've met with one of
Focus21's clients and the CEO of that
company was very effusive in his
regard for Focus21 and was very
complimentary. And he did say that you
guys deliver what you say you're going
to deliver on time, on budget and no BS.
How's that sound. Is that kind of what
you do? That's pretty much us.
So what's next then for Focus21? Where
are you guys going to go? We're growing,
we're putting a lot of effort onto
marketing and branding now and again
it's part of the sort of evolution of
understanding business. You can have
the most amazing group on the planet but
if nobody knows about them
you're not going to make it, right?
So it's now sort of pulling in other parts
of the business so we can grow, we can
scale and yeah we have lots of
innovative ideas about other products,
other things we want to kind of
work on, but it starts with, you know,
meeting the needs of our clients and
delivering and then with that anything's possible.
Anything is possible. And you know that
as a scientist. Yes, yes I do.
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in
everybody today to AQ's Blog & Grill
and it was a treat to have Jeff Aramini
here with us, one of the
cofounders of Focus21 and we're going
to look for great and fabulous things
from Focus21 in the future. So thanks
for coming in and we'll see you later.
AQ's Blog & Grill
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