Montreal-based accelerator FounderFuel has announced the companies that will be joining its newest and 12th cohort for 2019.
The eight companies were chosen after a six week long application period that saw 205 companies apply. FounderFuel interviews 87 of those, choosing 24 finalists. Today’s announcement marks the final companies chosen to participate in the upcoming cohort.
Starting its search in late 2018, FounderFuel noted that it narrowed down its list of applicants for the 2019 cohort by looking for mission-driven, innovative tech companies with potential large-scale positive impacts on society. The current cohort also put an emphasis on women founders, with accelerator noting that women co-founders represented 45 percent of the companies that made it to the top 20 and 37 percent of those finally selected.
The FounderFuel 2019 cohort:
- NameShouts: a Montréal-based company name pronunciation service that allows businesses to embed its API solution into dashboards and software. It’s more than 300,000 names and 17 languages help business with difficult to pronounce names.
- Willful: founded by Kevin Oulds, and now run by Erin Bury, Willful aims to simplify the process of estate preparation by getting more Canadians to create a will.
- PowerTree:Montréal-based platform that gives building operators and owners real-time access to their electrical infrastructure and key analytics.
- Gravy:offers AI-powered restaurant pricing platform that personalizes the digital ordering experience.
- BoxKnight:a same-day and scheduled deliveries service for e-commerce merchants based in Saint-Laurent, Quebec.
- LiveScale:Montréal-based platform transforming online commerce into live shopping
experiences for the mobile-first generation. - HALEO:Montréal-based telehealth company, looking to improve health and performance by making treatment for sleep disorders more accessible and effective.
- OSCP:Montréal-based integrated optical MEMS Sensor company that has created an integrated precise and reliable motion sensing solution.
An accelerator program founded out of the Real Ventures fund, FounderFuel provides structured and unstructured mentoring and coaching by proven entrepreneurs over a three-month residency in Montréal’s Notman House.
FounderFuel noted that this year’s applicants the vast majority (85 percent) were Canadian with. Within about 55 percent from Quebec, 30 percent from Ontario, and 15 percent from the rest of Canada.
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“FounderFuel is broad, we do not have a sector-specific thesis, it is horizontal by design,” said Sylvain Carle, partner at Real Ventures. “FounderFuel’s mission is still the same, to help founders realize the full potential of their companies by providing them with the guidance, stage-specific support and communities to help them rapidly grow. This is the same mission we have at Real Ventures.”
The accelerator offers a network of 100 mentors and Carle noted that its goal this year was to have 50 percent new mentors spanning founders and early employees from startups from Montréal, Toronto, across Canada and the US.
The demo day for the 12th cohort is set for July 9 at New City Gas in Montréal, and will be part of the kick off to Startupfest, taking place July 9 to 12 in the city.
“FounderFuel has always been Real Ventures’ petri dish, fertile soil where we work to grow nascent ideas into blooming businesses. We have a couple of really interesting experiment ongoing,” Carle stated.
Image courtesy FounderFuel