Professionalism, polish, pizzazz – all were on full display as 10 Communitech HYPERDRIVE startups and two special guest entrepreneurs pitched to a packed house at Demo Day on Thursday.
A standing-room-only crowd of about 250 filled the Tannery Event Centre to take in the supercharged spectacle, which marked the end of the initial three-month sprint of HYPERDRIVE’s second cohort of accelerator clients.
From the opening intros to the final pitch, it was clear to all in attendance, which included several investors, that this Demo Day was bigger, better and beyond the standard set by the inaugural event last October, held during Communitech’s first Techtoberfest.
“The pitches themselves were very much improved; a lot tighter, a lot more to-the-point, showing the actual metrics as well as presenting a big vision,” said Karam Nijjar, a Toronto-based principal with iNovia Capital, a partner in HYPERDRIVE’s $30-million-plus program.
“And, just in terms of the quality of the companies, I thought there were some really, really interesting companies in this one,” Nijjar said, noting his pleasant surprise that some were already hauling in six-figure revenues. “That’s great to see at this stage, with the limited resources they’ve had.
Nijjar suggested the Demo Day performances of its startups show that HYPERDRIVE has made significant progress in just over a year since its founding.
“It’s a wonderful ecosystem that they themselves have played a large part in creating,” he said, “and now they’ve positioned themselves to reap the benefits of that.”
Michael Mahon, Director, Strategic Investments with BDC Venture Capital, also a HYPERDRIVE partner, was similarly struck by the quality of Demo Day pitches.
“I’m very happy overall with the quality and content of all the presentations,” Mahon said. “I’ve been involved with a number of accelerators and seen quite a few cohorts go through, and I would say that this cohort was at the top of the pack of them all.”
Mahon said this suggests “HYPERDRIVE is doing a great job. I’m happy to be a part of it."
The event kicked off with pitches from two guest entrepreneurs, in a nod to the importance of Canadian accelerators working together to help grow the startup ecosystem nationwide.
The first guest pitch came from Bill MacEwen, founder of SpaceList, a Vancouver company that makes it faster and easier for people to find and market commercial real estate. SpaceList worked with Vancouver’s GrowLab accelerator.
Trina Chiasson, co-founder and CEO of InfoActive, pitched next. Chiasson’s company, which worked with the FounderFuel accelerator in Montreal, was recently recognized as the best bootstrap company at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin. Its web app turns dynamic data streams into powerful visuals.
The two guests were followed by 10 of the 11 Cohort 2 HYPERDRIVE companies (Inception Mobile was unable to attend due to other business demands):
- Dandy co-founder Matt Scobel, who told the crowd “it takes a community to raise an app” as he described how the company crowdsources app ideas, their validation and their development. This means only the best apps get built, and gives all involved a cut of the proceeds of those that succeed.
- Logan Fuller appeared next to make the case for Oikoi, “the Google for apartment search” that makes it easy to find apartments online. Oikoi matches tenants, property managers and landlords with its photo-centric, easy-to-use, custom-search site.
- Next up was Bruce Whitaker of Open Doorz, a web-based owner’s manual for homes, which reminds homeowners when essential repairs and maintenance are necessary and connects them with reputable providers.
- Nick Miller, founder of ESL Explorer, took the stage next to pitch his web-based marketplace for language-education travel. ESL Explorer, among several Cohort 2 companies that already has paying customers, became cash-flow positive this week.
- Cream.hr co-founder Caitlin MacGregor gave a clear and impactful presentation on her company’s science-based job applicant assessment engine, which prevents bad hires and saves time spent sifting through resumes.
- Next up was Groupnotes co-founder Matt Gardner, whose company allows people to share digital sticky notes on web pages with their friends. Steve Woods, Engineering Director for Google Canada, introduced Gardner wearing orange pants, as the Groupnotes team often does.
- Herman Lo, CEO of ViewsIQ, gave a stirring presentation featuring an infant named Sarah, whose blood sample was digitized by the company’s imaging technology and sent to a specialist who came up with a timely treatment plan. ViewsIQ makes it possible for medical specialists to view microscopy images in real time, eliminating the delay and cost of physically shipping samples to specialists.
- Rob Darling of WellRead was next to present. He pitched his solution to information overload, which feeds relevant news to users based on what’s most important to them.
- PumpUp co-founder Phil Jacobson followed with a pitch of his company’s mobile app that serves up personalized fitness routines. It was the second pitch of the day for PumpUp, which took part in a taping of CBC’s Dragons’ Den early Thursday morning.
- Last but definitely not least was BeanEvo, whose CEO, Catherine Dahl, made a compelling case for the company’s accounts payable automation system that drastically cuts corporate accounting costs.
“I was just blown away,” Communitech CEO Iain Klugman said after the pitches wound up. “What an incredible crop of HYPERDRIVE companies for its second cohort only.”
Brett Shellhammer, co-founder of first-cohort HYPERDRIVE company Organimi and a former Communitech executive-in-residence, said “the quality of the presentations was amazing this time.”
Shellhammer was particularly struck by how well the entrepreneurs recovered from minor stumbles during their pitches. “They obviously felt comfortable up there in front of this group, which was massive and genuinely scary. I think the HYPERDRIVE process and the mentors really helped them with that.”
The Demo Day was also something of a swan song for Steve Currie, Communitech’s outgoing Vice-President, Startup Services, who wound up his duties on Friday. While Currie is moving on, he won’t be moving far – he is taking up product management and marketing duties at Miovision Technologies, a fast-growing Waterloo Region-bred traffic management company.
Currie took a key leadership role in bringing HYPERDRIVE into being, before handing off day-to-day oversight of the program to HYPERDRIVE Managing Director Doug Cooper.
Currie, who received a standing ovation at the end of the pitch session, was proud to see the program’s second cohort through Demo Day.
“I was blown away by the calibre of the companies, the pitches and what I thought was one of the big differences from last time – the amount of traction that a number of the companies was able to display,” Currie said.
“It’s great to see that in a short period of time – a year, or a year and a half – that this has all come together.”
