Ottawa entrepreneur turns personal tragedy into opportunity

Business is booming for an Ottawa area entrepreneur who founded a company after he lost his ability to speak.
Garry Brownrigg, founder of Ottawa startup QuickSilk, was forced to face a new reality after waking up one morning in 1984 to find that his voice was completely gone.

An immediate investigation into the cause of Brownrigg’s condition determined that he was suffering from Laryngeal Dystonia, a disorder that causes involuntary spasms and movement of the muscles that control the larnyx. In Browrigg’s case, the condition was so severe that doctors told him he may never be able to speak again.

The news put Brownrigg’s plans for a promising career in financial services on hold. But, with a family at home, he needed to work. So, Brownrigg started a variety of manual labour jobs, while picking up computer and coding skills in his spare time. He took online courses and even graduated with a Masters degree from Boise State University.

His ability to code caught the attention of one of Ottawa’s early technology successes, JetForm, who brought him in to work on the company’s online presence. JetForm was a global leader in creating automated forms for corporations, which allowed people to fill out applications and place orders online. The company is perhaps best known for being the name sponsor on the city’s baseball stadium on Coventry Road, which was known as “JetForm Park” between 1998 and 2003.

While with the company he communicated with co-workers through email. Brownrigg joined the firm when it had around 60 employees. He left when it had more than 800.
JetForm, which eventually renamed itself Accelio, was acquired in a deal that brought software giant Adobe Corp. to Ottawa in 2002 for $114.5 million in shares.

While Brownrigg worked with JetForm, he began to build his own company that would help organizations more easily push content out to their websites without needing to access back-end systems and update multiple pages. It was a bit like Brownrigg was making communication easier for website administrators. After years of sending text messages and emails as his primary medium of communicating with the world, making communication easier was an area where Brownrigg had become a bit of an expert.
The idea began to take off. Some federal government departments began inquiring about the firm’s services.


He also found that, after much work and treatments, his ability to speak had returned.
“I was told I would never talk again,” said Brownrigg. “I had to find a way to make a living because I couldn’t talk.
“I turned to the Internet and started off with a desktop publishing unit. It was something I could do at home.”
Brownrigg left JetForm in 1998 to focus on his company, QuickSilk. The company’s products allow businesses to simply drag and drop content, including pictures and text, into a form that will place it on their websites. It allows small and medium-sized companies to avoid the need for computer experts with knowledge of coding languages like Java or HTML. When he started, the company’s staff consisted of just Brownrigg. Today, QuickSilk has 14 employees and has offices on Cooper Street in downtown Ottawa.

The company’s clients include the Parliamentary Budget Office, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, the Canadian Breast Cancer Network and the World Bank