British Columbia Innovation Council

With only a few weeks to go until the winners of the BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional are announced, Andrew Labun, President and CEO  of Trajectory Design Automation Corp., is soaking in the final business workshops and mentorship opportunities before his final pitch in hopes of winning a piece of the  competition's prize money.

As a top 20 finalist of the business competition for regional companies outside of the Lower Mainland, Andrew is excited about the upcoming awards ceremony and hopes that his software company will make it to the top.  Trajectory DA helps computer chip companies, like Intel, AMD and IBM, design better chips. Its first product, a temperature-modeling software tool for digital integrated circuit design, uses analytical solutions to obtain highly accurate 3D temperature forecasts, enabling faster design turnaround for engineers and better chips as a result.

BCIC caught up with Andrew to find out more about his innovative product and company:

What's unique or innovative about your technology?

Trajectory's technology uses analytical solutions of the heat equation on a fine scale to obtain highly accurate 3D temperature forecasts, quickly and without requiring 3D grids.  Since the results are analytical, we can post-process them using calculus.  This approach is less computationally intensive than a numerical method and generates similar results, therefore enabling faster design turnaround.

What is the best advice you have received along the way?

"Join an incubator" - in my case, Accelerate Okanagan.  I have benefitted from various mentorship programs, and learned a lot from exposure to other entrepreneurs.  I think it has greatly improved my odds of success.

What has been the most valuable part of the competition so far?

The feedback from Round 2 judges has been very helpful.  How can you know what sort of message is being picked up by potential investors unless they tell you?

Good luck to Andrew and his team at Trajectory Design Automation!  Winners of the BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional will be announced on February 23, 2012 in Kelowna, BC.