Students bring fresh perspectives to local sports tech company

Vancouver sports technology company FORM has created the first smart swimming goggles, giving swimmers the unprecedented ability to see metrics like split times, distance, stroke rate, and calories displayed directly in their line of sight as they swim. The FORM goggles were developed in collaboration with top competitive swimmers and coaches as part of the startup’s mission to break down the barriers between what swimming is and what it could be.  

This past February, the FORM won the prestigious Red Dot Award for Product Design, recognizing the company’s AR enhanced goggles for outstanding innovation, industry-leading design quality, and their unique user experience. And just two months later they announced $12M (CAD) raised in Series A funding. 

We caught up with Trung Vo, VP of Engineering at FORM to learn more about the company and find out how the five co-op students they’ve hired since 2018 -- with $16,200 through Innovate BC’s Tech Co-op Grants Program -- have impacted their business. 

Q: What do you do? 

Trung: I’m responsible for the hardware and software at FORM. I make sure that our software and hardware implementations meet all product requirements, are delivered on time, and are of the utmost quality. I also ensure that the engineering teams have everything they need to work as efficiently as possible. 

Q: Why did you choose to hire a co-op student? How did they help your company? 

Trung: In the highly competitive tech industry of B.C., the co-op programs have been a great way to build a pipeline of engineering talent at FORM. Many of the FORM co-op alumni have returned for full time employment in recent months. Moreover, the cohort of new students every term help provide fresh perspectives and ideas in our day to day problem solving. Co-op students at FORM are given the same responsibilities and projects as full-time employees, from small bug fixes to large feature implementation. A lot of the user facing features you see when you use our smart swim goggles and mobile apps wouldn’t have been possible without the co-op students who worked on them. 

Q: What’s next for FORM? Are there any big projects on the horizon? 

Trung: We are developing a slew of exciting new software features to make our smart swim goggles useful to even more swimmers this summer. We’ll also be expanding our product offering to new geographical regions too! 

Would your company benefit from our Tech Co-op Grants Program? You could receive up to $20,000 a year to hire co-op students to help your business grow.