Good afternoon, and thank you for having me here today.
My name is Zain Manji. I'm one of the co-founders of Lazer Technologies.
Lazer is an engineering and design studio that helps fast-growing start-ups as well as large and established organizations to build and ship amazing digital products and experiences. Some of the companies we have helped include Shopify, RBC, The Weather Network, Canadian Tire, LoyaltyOne and many more. The projects we have worked on span a number of industries including health care, e-commerce, finance, crypto, media, gaming and more.
When we work with companies, we focus primarily on the design and engineering execution of their products. This includes items such as product discovery; UI/UX discovery, or user interface/user experience discovery; wireframing; high-fidelity designs; architecture designs; product road map planning; engineering execution, such as back-end infrastructure; front-end engineering; DevOps and more. We also do go-to-market strategies.
In addition to helping these great companies, we also build our own products in-house. One of the products we built was a COVID-19 vaccine-finder chatbot, which someone could use to text a phone number with a postal code and that phone number would text them back with the closest three to five vaccine locations for that postal code. Through this product, we helped over 150,000 Canadians find vaccine locations across Canada.
Personally, I have been in technology for over 10 years as a software engineer and a product manager. Prior to Lazer, I worked at Google, Yelp and Instagram. I completed my Bachelor of Arts and Science degree at the University of Toronto in computer science and economics.
I believe I was invited here today because after reading about the dollar figure associated with the ArriveCAN app development through a Globe and Mail report, we made a cloned version of the ArriveCAN app's front end in two days. We did this because we wanted to shed light on how quickly the front end of an app like this could be made and how capital-efficient it could be if the right parties were engaged in the process.
We believed that by building the front-end experience of the app, we could open up the discussion as to how to improve the way Canada produces new technology. Personally, being deeply embedded in Canada's tech community, we also wanted to show that Canada has exceptional talent that is eager and excited to help out our country if need be.
We have already seen examples of this two years ago, first when Shopify engineers created a COVID-tracing app for free, and then a year ago when we created a COVID vaccine-finder app for free.
Personally, I love that the government is placing more of a focus on becoming digital-first. I hope we can continue to improve the transparency and efficiency around the development of Canadian digital projects. I also hope that we can work together towards creating the better structures, teams, resources, tools and frameworks that are needed to build the best technology for Canadians.
At the end of the day, we would love for Canada to become the most proficient when it comes to new technology and be a prime example of a country that develops impactful technology well.
Thank you.