Waterloo, Ont.’s $30 million technology accelerator is hosting its demo day today as part of a conference dubbed “Techtoberfest.”
Hosted in the Communitech hub that also houses offices for Research in Motion and Google, Hyperdrive launched its technology accelerator in April. The stated goal is to take 10 startup companies, hook them up with some seed-funding and three months of intensive business development under the Communitech roof, provide mentorship, and have them ready for a round of Series A funding two years down the line.
Three cohorts per year are brought into the Hyperdrive program and each three-month program ends with a demo day. Today, seven Hyperdrive startups gave their best pitch to a room of prospective investors. Scroll down to see the startup profiles, provided by Communitech:
BUILDCIRCLE is a software application that removes more than two thirds of the time estimators in the construction industry now spend distributing documents and sending thousands of emails and faxes worldwide. Once in use, BuildCircle becomes a mission critical tool that reduces resource usage and enables more and better estimation to be done generating lower costs per project with a higher level of success and ultimately more profit.
COACHD is THE mobile app that lets amateur athletes and sports fans be coached through workouts by their favourite professional athletes. By leveraging the Coachd platform, professional athletes are able to grow and monetize their fan base while building their personal brand. Coachd is much more than just a new way to elevate your game, it’s the ONLY way you can train, play and be…like the pros.
INCENTIVIBE is a cost-sharing platform that pools small businesses together so they can afford expensive giveaway prizes such as vacations, gadgets etc. at 1/10th of the prize cost. Small businesses can now incentivize their visitors just like the big businesses, and generate hundreds and thousands of dollars-worth of social media exposure, traffic, fans and leads.
SIMPLICITY VMS is a cloud based, SaaS platform that automates and centralizes the end-to-end process of hiring, engaging and administering contract and temporary workers. The system functions across all departments across the entire enterprise. SimplicityVMS’ easy to configure platform reduces the time and cost to implement best of breed VMS technology.
LOYALTY MONKEY revolutionizes the process of collecting loyalty points through a digital stamp that works on smartphones to simulate the buy-10-get-1-free stamp cards. Vendors are provided with real-time business intelligence data as well as on-demand advertising opportunities.
WILL PWN 4 FOOD is gaming for money. The company creates fast action 3D games that you can play directly in the web browser for actual cash and prizes. Gamers have the skills to pay the bills, but nowhere to go to put their money where their mouth is, and that’s where Will Pwn 4 Food comes in.
ORGANIMI lets people create, update and share org charts, photo boards and contact lists for every organization they belong to, at work and play. We’re reinventing and integrating these tools with leading social, mobile and cloud platforms. Organimi lets everyone “claim their place” in each organization they belong to, manage their profile across all the organizations they are part of from a single place, and provide an engaging application for new levels of personal growth, communication and collaboration.
But it doesn’t stop there. Communitech’s Vensture Service Group also gave their piches today. One of them, TitanFile, already secured $1.1 million in financing earlier this week. Here’s the profiles of the firms pitching out of VSG:
Vidyard: Vidyard believes in the communication power of video to promote a product, educate a user-base, or simply keep in touch with those around you. At Vidyard, the goal is to help businesses, bloggers, and individuals put video on their websites in a simple and effective way.
Maluuba: Maluuba is a voice powered “do” engine that understands you naturally. It helps organize your life and find everything that matters. Rather than give you websites, Maluuba gives you results that you can act upon.
Thalmic labs: Thalmic labs is developing a hardware-software technology which will shape the future of human-computer interaction . Thalmic was founded by Top 20 under 20 and The Next 36 alumnus Stephen Lake and two fellow University of Waterloo Mechatronics Engineering graduates Aaron Grant and Matthew Bailey, and was a winner of the Fall 2012 Velocity Venture Fund.
BufferBox: BufferBox is putting an end to frustrating failed parcel deliveries! BufferBox enables online shoppers to ship their goods to a BufferBox parcel pick-up station for anytime pick-up from convenient locations such as supermarkets, convenience stores, and transit hubs.
GreenOwl Mobile: GreenOwl Mobile has developed the next generation audio media platform for the car. GreenOwl’s award-winning TrafficAlert app safely informs users of traffic problems and delays on their route by detailed real-time audio alerts. The location-based and contextual audio messaging platform delivers traffic and other personalized audio content, as well as advertising, to commuters while they drive.
Formulating Change: Formulating Change Inc. is revolutionizing charitable giving by partnering with financial institutions to enable their cardholders to create Virtual Change on their transactions and then forwards these amounts as donations to the cardholder’s charities of choice. The program is called ChangeIt and it is powered by a process patent that FCI is exclusively commercializing in Canada and the United States.
Polychart Inc.: Polychart Inc. is a data analytics and visualization company that helps turn numbers and statistics into charts and dashboards to drive more innovative and accurate decision-making. Its drag and drop environment simplifies advanced visualization making it available to non-technical users or “analytics for everyone
Eyedro: This startup is a designer and manufacturer of electronic devices and cloud based services with a focus on electricity monitoring and analysis. With rising electricity prices, green initiatives, and government conservation targets, Eyedro’s affordable and easy to use monitoring technology is compelling for residential, commercial, and industrial applications. See eyedro.com for further information
Mozzaz: Mozzaz creates innovative mobile apps to help individuals with speech disabilities to communicate anywhere using any device. Mozzaz currently has over 200 organizations signed & ready to launch!
Matinee: Matinée is a website builder for independent film. With us, filmmakers set up a new website to promote and distribute one of their films, letting them sell downloads, streams, or DVDs of their work directly to fans.
PumpUp: PumpUp, winner of 2012 Velocity Venture Fund, creates personalized workouts by putting the knowledge of a personal trainer into an algorithm on your mobile device. Our application is able to adapt each user’s workout to help them reach their fitness goals.
ClevrU: ClevrU is an adaptive and intuitive e-teaching platform that delivers education to a mobile user using cloud technology to customize and deliver on demand, anywhere, anytime. The ClevrU Education Marketplace enables emerging markets like China, India or Brazil to easily access education that is affordable. Students can collaborate and learn by working with others using an intelligent multi-lingual delivery system.
TitanFile: TitanFile is a business communication tool for professionals and organizations looking to share and collaborate on confidential information from any device in an accountable way. Unlike other solutions, TitanFile integrates with your existing information sources and organizes information around people and context instead of files and folders”
Qwalify: Qwalify has developed an approach to hiring that goes beyond résumés. We envision a future where hiring managers could instead hire for attitude and train for skills. We’re committed to creating intuitive technology to power the future of hiring.
I Think Security Ltd.: I Think Security Ltd. provides solutions for authentication, encryption and management of digital files. The Qsolution allows an enterprise to control and protect their documents, in just a few clicks with no installation or tech support. These solutions are technology agnostic and utilize advanced management features to provide enterprises with detailed audit, geo-location information, analytics and access rights management through a secure cloud-based management dashboard.
Source | Techtoberfest