Innovation in Atlantic Canada
Integrated solutions for city travel
Hotspot was founded by Phillip Curley in 2013. The idea behind HotSpot was that people don't go downtown to just park – they go downtown to do business and have fun. Their technology was built to make parking easier so people come back more often and stay longer.
The Fredericton-based company is a start-up technology company that allows users to pay for parking with their mobile devices. Users can feed the meter without interrupting their shopping or meetings. Merchants can also use a cellphone to pay a customer’s parking, rather than have the customer run out of the store to feed the meter and never return.
What started as a simple pay-by-phone parking app has grown into an integrated solution for all the ways people get around in their city.
In 2018, Hotspot worked with a different SR&ED consultant and didn’t have a good experience. They were creating the whole claim and having the consultant perform review-like services.


“After having a not-so-pleasant experience our first time around, we weren’t sure about claiming SR&ED again. Colum changed that mindset. Colum Consultants took charge of the situation and represented our research very well to the CRA.”
-Phillip Curley, CEO, HotSpot
Phillip and his team weren’t sure about claiming SR&ED again, but they put their trust in Colum Consultants to help redesign their approach to R&D, so that in future more of their research can be captured by the SR&ED program.
We are delighted that we were able to help HotSpot Parking relieve their SR&ED stress through our services. By creating strategic relationships with our clients, we were able to claim SR&ED tax refunds for HotSpot for multiple fiscal years now. We are very proud of the amazing innovation our clients are engaged in.