Ottawa technology startup ChoiceBot Inc. launched two products this week that it is confident will allow it to turn a profit by the end of the first quarter next year.

Nick Desbarats, CEO of the 10-month-old firm, unveiled the new online tools at the same time he appointed a new vice-president of business development and announced the opening of a San Jose office, both meant to attract partnerships in the Bay Area.

Both products are Internet-based solutions geared at easing online shopping decisions. Mr. Desbarats said existing tools were time-consuming for retailers and confusing for online shoppers.

"The idea behind this started a couple years ago," said Mr. Desbarats, co-founder of four startups in the last 16 years. "I found the tools that were there didn't do a very good job at helping consumers in making a good decision" because they involved too much memory and guesswork for the user.

"I had to take over manually. I had to review the results for myself. I had to try to remember all the ways in which all the products met, exceeded or fell below my search requirements."

Previously, Mr. Desbarats was the VP marketing at BitFlash Inc, a company he co-founded and for which he raised US$23 million in venture financing. It was sold to OpenText Corp. in 2004 after growing to more than 100 employees.

Mr. Desbarats said his tools allow users to track and store online research, then help them make a final decision based on the user's choice of variables.

"Typically, the only way to rank the results was by some arbitrary figure, like price," a process he said was "overwhelmingly hit or miss."

ChoiceBot for e-Commerce, aimed at large retailers, as well as MyChoiceBot, a free online tool geared to consumers, aim to take some of the difficulty out of online shopping decision making.

"(ChoiceBot)is able to gather a much better understanding of your requirements, on a case-by-case basis," claimed Mr. Desbarats.

Take online house hunting as an example, he said.

Online real estate tool MLS asks house hunters to give yes or no answers to variables, while ChoiceBot will allow for shades of gray. For instance, take the question of air conditioning.

"Most of the time, my answer would be something in between (yes and no)," he said. "I'd love to have air conditioning, but I could live without it."

Shoppers using ChoiceBot specify which requirements are important. ChoiceBot's spreadsheet ranks the results.

"We did a lot of work around it, developing a very quick, very simple interface. The end result is that Choicebot is able to rank the search results by how well they meet the requirements, and by how happy you will be with the product," he said.

"In that sense, it's kind of like Google."

Partnering with an Internet giant such as eBay or Yahoo! is the company's next step. It has hired Alfredo Coppola to be its VP business development to take it there.

Mr. Coppola, a 15-year veteran in the U.S. market, will work on partnering the Ottawa startup with major tech firms in the Bay Area.

"(The companies) are all faced with the same problem: huge inventories. For eBay or Amazon, ChoiceBot is a great solution to that problem," said Mr. Desbarats.

"Most of (these) companies, Google in particular . . . have stated their goal is to organize product information," he continued.

"(Mr. Coppola) is extremely well-connected in the Valley . . . his network is already very extensive.

If everything goes to plan, ChoiceBot should start seeing profits by the end of March, 2007, he said. In the meantime, ChoiceBot is looking for interested parties to add to existing angel investors, which should be easy to attract due to the targeted advertising capable with ChoiceBot, he said.

"The only people who use ChoiceBot are the ones who are actively shopping in that category," said Mr. Desbarats. "We can do far more targeted advertising, on a feature by feature basis," exactly what Google and others are looking for, he said.

By Roman Zakaluzny

roman.zakaluzny@transcontinental.ca