Company Information

Executive Team

Michael Kuhlmann, CEO (co-founder): Michael is a serial entrepreneur who has helped found and operate several high-tech ventures in Canada, including FatPort and Colony Networks in the managed wireless services space as well as audiobaba and iscleaner in the new media space.

Ajay Agrawal (co-founder): Ajay is the Peter Munk Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management where he teaches business strategy to MBA students and conducts research on the economics of innovation, the market for ideas, and the commercialization of university inventions.

Our researchers are top students from major research universities. At present, the majority of our researchers are from the University of Toronto, Canada’s largest and most prolific research institution.

Our office is located at:
1055 West Hastings Street (Suite 300)
Vancouver BC, V6E 2E9
CANADA

History

Professor Agrawal hired his first student research assistant in 2001 at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario (Canada). Over the following years, it became obvious that as more information was made publicly available, web-savvy students had increasing advantages in searching for information. In many cases, students were much faster at finding information than librarians! Furthermore, really smart students were particularly good at synthesizing and organizing information and sought out opportunities to further sharpen these skills. In addition, graduate schools at top universities and recruiters at leading firms placed a high premium on candidates’ abilities to process information. At the same time, however, Professor Agrawal noticed that many colleagues who could have benefited from hiring student research assistants did not. He discovered that often a professor would have liked to employ students for a particular project but found the hassle of hiring them (evaluating resumes, interviewing, training to use scholarly databases, etc.) as well as keeping them busy between research assignments was more hassle than it was worth. Brainmaven was designed to facilitate more opportunities for students to sharpen their research skills by aggregating the demand for research support over many professors across multiple universities. Since Brainmaven is highly selective, focusing on students with track records of academic excellence, professors are assured of receiving reliably high quality research assistance. The Brainmaven service is now also available for use by the private sector.

Mission

Brainmaven’s mission is to provide a reliably high quality research service, primarily focused on the synthesis of information, in a timely manner at a reasonable price.