Melissa Kargiannakis' multi-billion-dollar tech dream for Sault Ste. Marie

Far from not wanting to hire northerners, Melissa Kargiannakis says she'd be delighted to fill her company, Skritswap Inc., with northern Ontario-based employees. 

"If I had it my way, I'd place all of them in the north. That's absolutely my best-case scenario," Kargiannakis tells SooToday.

"I want to show the world that you can build a multi-billion-dollar AI [artificial intelligence] company in Sault Ste. Marie."

"That's why I came back," she says. "I'm going to build this but I'm not going to build it in Toronto like everyone else."

Skritswap was founded by Kargiannakis in 2015.

The tech start-up uses AI to make complex financial, legal and medical documents easier to understand.

Skritswap operates in Waterloo, Ontario and the San Francisco Bay area, but lists its main office as the sixth floor of 99 Foster Drive in Sault Ste. Marie.

That's the Civic Centre, where the sixth floor is home to Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre.

Skritswap outgrew its incubator support there months ago, but is still allowed to use a desk whenever founder and chief executive officer Kargiannakis is in town.

As SooToday reported last week, local concern has been raised over an $800,000 FedNor loan to the company announced last month in Ottawa by Kargiannakis and Sault MP Terry Sheehan.

FedNor is the Canadian government's economic development organization for northern Ontario, providing financial support to projects that lead to job creation and economic growth in the north.

Peter Bruijns, the Innovation Centre's executive director, recently contacted FedNor to question the tech start-up's plans for creating northern Ontario jobs.

Skritswap.com indicates the firm is currently hiring for three positions, none specifically located in Sault Ste. Marie or northern Ontario.

Sonny Spina, local Conservative candidate in the Oct. 21 federal election, is calling on FedNor and Sheehan to explain the interest-free loan.

"I know local people who have businesses in the Sault and have had major issues with FedNor funding. How was this allowed to happen?" Spina asked on his Facebook page last week.

"That's not how this system is supposed to work," he added in an online video. "These programs are in place so that we can use federal dollars to invest in northern Ontario so that we can create jobs here and grow our communities."

"I'm really troubled by this news, and I call on Terry Sheehan and the government of Canada to release all information about this project so that we can know exactly how many jobs Terry Sheehan actually fought for here in Sault Ste. Marie. I look forward to hearing that answer," Spina said.

Kargiannakis says, aside from herself, Skritswap currently has just four full-time employees, one of whom is based in northern Ontario.

But that Sudbury-based employee is the only one in the company who can code, and therefore constitutes 100 per cent of Skritswap's current product development/ engineering staff.

"This is among the first artificial intelligence technologies ever developed in Northern Ontario," Kargiannakis tells SooToday.

"I've offered three jobs to people in Sault Ste. Marie who declined because they chose to stay in their government jobs."

"As a strong, resourceful entrepreneur from Sault Ste. Marie myself, who's just getting started, I am proud that we already have 100 percent of our engineering in northern Ontario and are continuing to build on this."

"I want to hire as many people as I can from northern Ontario, from both the federal money and the private investment from across Canada and the United States that I have brought into the Sault Ste. Marie community."

"If you are reading this and you know how to code in Python, Django, React JS, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, or Microsoft Office and Microsoft Azure, please apply to our positions. We can't wait to talk to you."