Five Canadian startups are among the 12 chosen to participate in Google for Startup’s first Women Founders accelerator cohort.
The announcement of the initial cohort comes less than three months after Google announced its plan to launch a new accelerator program focused on women founders in Canada and the United States.
Twelve companies were chosen for the inaugural cohort, five of which hail from across Canada. Some of the Canadian companies in the mix include Saskatoon-based Coconut Software and Montreal’s My Intelligent Machines (MIMs).
The Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders, as it is formally known, marks the first such program that is open to both Canadian and American startups. The program is co-led by Ashley Francisco, Google’s head of startup developer ecosystem in Canada, who also helped launch the Google Accelerator in Canada earlier this year.
The Women Founders accelerator is open to tech startups in the seed to Series A stages, with headquarters in Canada and the United States. The program is designed for companies with women founders, or members of the core founding team. The inaugural cohort is set to run virtually from September 28 to December 4.
The 12 startups participating in this cohort include:
- Coconut Software (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan): led by its founder and CEO, Katherine Regnier, Coconut has developed an appointment scheduling and lobby management solution that is meant to modernize how banks and credit unions engage with their clients. Last year, the startup raised more than $10 million in seed capital.
- Heirlume (Hamilton, Ontario): The startup’s technology is aimed to make trademark registration “as easy and accessible as domain registration.” Heirlume does so by providing what it calls the “first self-serve professional-quality” trademark search and application platform. Heirlume was one of 14 startups chosen to participate in the 2020 Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) Digital.
- Livestock Water Recycling (Calgary, Alberta): Livestock Water Recycling (LWR) calls itself the first-class global manufacturer of manure treatment systems for hog and dairy operations. It has developed a patented manure treatment technology to recycle clean water and fertilizer nutrients from livestock manure for reuse at farms. In 2016, LWR made Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 list and in 2019 was among the finalists for PwC Canada’s Vision to Reality (V2R) Awards.
- My Intelligent Machines (MIMs) (Montreal, Quebec): MIMs works to help life-science companies use big data and AI to maximize food and drug production. In 2019, the startup raised a $2.6 million seed round.
- Zennea Technologies (Vancouver, BC): The startup has developed a medical device for chronic snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). It is aiming to be the first such clinically-proven device.
- COI Energy (Tampa, Florida): COI connects utilities and businesses in order to detect and eliminate energy waste in buildings. The idea is to optimize the electric grid, therefore creating a climate friendly economy for future generations.
- CultivatePeople (Arlington, Virginia): Having developed “compensation software,” the startup provides global compensation data to help companies make data-driven decisions on employee pay. The idea behind the startup is to eliminate pay gaps.
- CurieAI (Santa Clara, California): Using AI, the startup helps physicians understand respiratory health, disease progression and treatment effectiveness for the likes of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
- Fairygodboss (New York City, New York): Fairygodboss touts itself as the largest career community for women. It provides free resources, such as career connections, job listing, virtual recruiting events, and community advice. It also collects “hard-to-find information” about how companies treat women.
- Kapwing (San Francisco, California): Kapwing has developed a platform for creating digital storytelling via an online image, video, and GIFs.
- Possip (Nashville, Tennessee) : The startup has developed a platform that allows school communities to connect. It uses text message-based pulse checks in more than 100 languages to allow schools and districts to routinely hear from families and staff.
- Wisy (San Francisco, California): Wisy is developing technology meant to increase sales by providing contactless services for customers while enhancing field sales operations. It works with consumer products businesses to help them “thrive in the new economy.”
