L-SPARK’s Fall 2016 Accelerator is officially kicking off this month, with six SaaS and cloud startups making the move into the Ottawa-based accelerator. The six selected companies will move into L-SPARK’s space for nine months, with the goal of helping companies reach 10x revenue growth. Through one-on-one mentorship, intensive SaaS workshops, and meeting with other SaaS entrepreneurs, the selected companies will focus on scaling customer traction and revenue.
Following a three-week bootcamp, 11 companies were selected to participate in a pitchfest held at the end of September. A selection committee including representatives like OMERS, iNovia Capital, Information Venture Partners, MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, Mistral Venture Partners, Microsoft Canada, Wesley Clover International, Mitel, Capital Angels Network, and Whitecap Venture Partners chose the winning startups.
L-SPARK will work with each company to create a custom plan and develop a strategy to generate month over month growth. Each company will be paired with a mentor to work hands-on for two days a week throughout to ensure that entrepreneurs are executing on their plans over the nine-month period.
“With an optimized channel strategy, we grew our revenue from $7,000 MRR to over $100,000 MRR over the course of the nine-month program,” said Chris Perram, CEO of Filefacets and an L-SPARK alumni. “Entrepreneurs entering the program should be prepared to work intensely together with the L-SPARK team to accelerate revenue, infrastructure, market reach and opportunities.”
The fall 2016 cohort includes:
Bluink: Bluink provides an Enterprise Identity and Access Management (IAM) platform that uses smartphones as the authentication token to facilitate ease of use.
Hangry: Hangry a food app targeting campus establishments, and allow students to order and pay for on-campus food in advance.
Lurniture: Lurniture is an intelligent, video SaaS platform helping sales teams reduce onboarding time, accelerate performance ramp, and increase win rates. Lurniture’s platform uses mobile capture, smart curation, and on-demand delivery of bite-size, peer-to-peer videos in CRM.
Member365: Member365 is an all-in-one membership management platform that allows organizations using its cloud-based software to run their operations, drive membership engagement, and increase revenue.
Optimity: Optimity’s is a data-driven B2B SaaS business provides a platform for employee health and wellness. It uses customizable mobile apps and wearables to aggregate data and retarget high-risk segments to reduce risk of heart disease, diabetes, and depression.
Worx: Worx provides the Productiiv hybrid cloud platform that allows manufacturers of complex products to maximize the financial return of a product over its lifetime. It enables rapid and low-cost collaboration between all resources be they internal or contractors.