Who says Silicon Valley gets to have all the cool nerds? Our own home in the Sea to Sky is rampant with the entrepreneurial spirit, so it’s no wonder even local companies are making waves in the tech world.

Tiipz is a company based in Squamish focused on making market research cool and interactive. Nobody likes to answer surveys. So why not make it fun and social with a chance to win points and prizes for answering questions from your favourite brands?

Tiipz from Tiipz.com on Vimeo.

Right now you can answer questions and polls from Ogio, Westbeach, Bataleon, Live at Squamish and there are more brands signing on every day.

Tiipz founders – Mark Nickson, Gesvyn Tjandra and Jason Cyr got together to create Tiipz only a short year ago – and have since managed to quit their day jobs to focus on building out the company full-time. Tiipz now has 12 full time employees – seven of whom live in Sea to Sky.

So where have they gone since they took the big risk and jumped head first into the tech stream? Well, the crew has earned some serious accolades since they began going full-tilt in January.

They were chosen as one of 15 Canadian start-ups to debut their product at the Grow Conference in Vancouver this summer, which was sponsored by Tech Vibes. The conference featured the who’s who of the tech world, including people from LinkedIn, Google, StumbleUpon and many more familiar names.

And that’s where all the magic happened.

Thanks to a tweet from someone at the Grow Conference, Tiipz has landed a super sweet – top secret – project with Microsoft.

“It’s a huge achievement for us to have them as a customer,” says Cyr. “And it will put our technology in front of thousands of North Americas technology influencers. Thank you Twitter!”

Tiipz has worked with the Downtown Squamish Business Association and even Live at Squamish. Remember the “Weezer then, Weezer now” t-shirts?

“Essentially we have had the opportunity to build a strong tribe of supporters that I really believe would not have been possible had we been lost in the sea of other businesses in Vancouver,” says Cyr.

For more information on Tiipz, check out their Facebook Fan Page and follow them on Twitter.