Undergraduates raise the bar with start-up company

New software for engineers earns prize in First Capital Challenge competition

September 09, 2004

Queen's undergraduates Michael Bond (BCom’06) and Michael Woloszynowicz (BSc’06) have teamed up to start Terrabuild Software, a company that develops software tools for structural steel design analysis. Structural engineers often need to perform time intensive calculations, but the software tools currently available are either too complex and expensive, or unsophisticated and poorly supported. Because of this gap, engineers often perform these calculations by hand. Terrabuild Software provides tools that perform, in seconds, calculations that would otherwise take an engineer hours to perform by hand.

With this business concept the team won the $1,000 Tune-Up Award for “best new business concept” in the First Capital Challenge 2004 competition and were finalists for the $50,000 prize. According to one of the judges, professor emeritus and former dean of Queen's School of Business John Gordon, “Terrabuild demonstrated a strong understanding of their customers and the capability to deliver a solid product.”

After just a year, the company has two products in the market – SimpleBeam Studio for the analysis of simply supported steel beams, and GerberBeam Studio for the creation of suspended span systems – and a third in beta trials (BeamColumn Studio for the analysis of standard steel columns). The products are winning rave reviews from the early customers and hundreds more have recently downloaded the trial versions from the new web site at www.Terrabuild.com.

The appeal of this software is summed up best by Terrabuild’s customers, such as Michael Dent of Dent Engineering in Kingston. “After just an hour, I had already learned the software and it was saving me time and money.”

We are excited about the progress the company has made over the last year, particularly the great response from customers,” said Commerce student Michael Bond, CEO of Terrabuild. “A 'Summer Company' grant from the Ontario government provided some much appreciated seed capital. Support from numerous people at Queen's School of Business and the School of Computing, as well as First Capital Challenge, has been a big help in getting our marketing and product plans together.”

With the knowledge and experience gained over the last year, the team plans on entering First Capital Challenge 2005, a move welcomed by competition organizers.

The Terrabuild team put on a very strong showing last year – all the more impressive given that they were only in second year university. I look forward to seeing their new and improved plan in this year’s competition,” said Brad Ross (B.Sc.Eng.’80, M.Sc.Eng.’82), Chairman and Founder, First Capital Challenge.

First Capital Challenge is a $50,000 business plan competition for the best plan to start a new high potential business in Kingston – open to anyone, from anywhere, interested in putting their entrepreneurial talents to work in Kingston. More on the competition is at: www.FirstCapitalChallenge.com.