Four Canadian software companies are taking home over $210,000 in prize money from SAAS NORTH 2023.
This week, thousands of members of Canada’s SaaS ecosystem gathered at Ottawa’s Shaw Centre for SAAS NORTH. This year’s event featured headliners like Wealthsimple VP of platform engineering Anne Steptoe, Paper CTO Roberto Cipriani, and former Shopify VP of product acceleration Satish Kanwar.
SAAS NORTH 2023 featured two competitions: the Firehood Angel Camp and the seventh-annual SAAS NORTH Pitchfest competition.
In addition to live speakers and panels on the BetaKit Keynote Stage (BetaKit is a SAAS NORTH media partner), and an investor matchmaking corner hosted by MaRS, the 2023 event featured two competitions this year: the Firehood Angel Camp and the seventh-annual SAAS NORTH Pitchfest competition.
Pitchfest granted startups an opportunity to pitch live at SAAS NORTH in front of an audience of attendees. On the second day of SAAS NORTH, the two finalists competed in a winner-takes-all pitch-off.
Kibby Pollak from Ottawa-based Enurgen was named the winner of the Pitchfest competition. Enurgen has developed a cleantech software solution that enables solar asset planning, design, and lifetime management through end-to-end digital twin continuity. Pollak is taking home $10,000 in cash from Pitchfest. This comes in addition to a $1-million USD pre-seed financing round that Enurgen closed earlier this month.
The Firehood Angel Camp connected women founders with angel investors who pre-committed capital to be deployed at SAAS NORTH. The competition makes available $200,000 in total investment, as well as mentorship opportunities to founders. Three startups were named the winners of the competition.
In first place was Fatemeh Dastourian, founder and CEO of Toronto-based Strucwise, a startup that uses automation to generate accurate documents for the construction industry. Founded earlier this year, Strucwise is taking home $130,000 in funding as the first-place winner.
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In second place was Rafaela Andrade, CEO of Halifax-based Myomar Molecular. Andrade’s startup is developing a diagnostic tool to identify early stages of muscle atrophy. The startup is taking home $50,000.
Yun Yao, CEO of Quebec-based Soralink was named the third-place winner of the Firehood Camp, winning $20,000. Soralink offers smart sensors and an AI-powered prediction engine for industrial machine condition monitoring, failure prediction, predictive maintenance, and productivity tracking. The startup has launched several pilot projects across Canada since the product launched in 2022.
In addition to taking home the prize money, Deloitte is also providing an additional $15,000 in in-kind services to the second and third-place winners of the Firehood Angel Camp—Myomar is receiving $10,000, while Soralink is receiving $5,000.
Feature image courtesy of SAAS NORTH.