The Entrepreneur’s Journey to Business Success

The combination of engineering and entrepreneurship is defining the first quarter century of this millennium. From fintech to fibre optics, we’re seeing that the revolution isn’t so straightforward. Meaningful innovation tends to move incrementally and steady rather than big and fast.

The story of two startups, EidoSearch and Fibos, illustrates the journey from ideation and research to business success. Dr. Xiao-Ping Zhang’s EidoSearch is a probability intelligence company. Nicholas Burgwin’s Fibos enables high-speed, high-resolution measurements to be performed with unprecedented precision.

Group of four recent Ryerson graduates in front of the Student Learning Centre (SLC).

Nicholas Burgwin

Masters Electrical Engineering Class of 2016

and Fibos Co-Founder & CEO

Nicholas Burgwin

The Norman Esch Engineering and Entrepreneurship Award at Ryerson was incredibly instrumental in developing Fibos, as it provided $38,000 to establish the company and build prototypes to validate both the technology and solution. Not only was this seed funding essential, but the award application process encouraged and challenged me to perform market research and apply critical thinking towards the product and its market fit.

Nicholas Burgwin

Dr. Xiao-Ping Zhang

Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

and EidoSearch Co-Founder & CEO

Dr. Xiao-Ping Zhang

We found greater acceptance among hedge funds that use a purely systematic investment approach. We shifted our focus and now concentrate on selling data signals generated by our proprietary forecasting methodology to systematic funds.

Dr. Xiao-Ping Zhang