L-Spark completes its first cohort as a corporate accelerator

After more than 10 years and 11 cohorts, Ottawa-based accelerator L-Spark changed direction last April. The organization is no longer an accelerator for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies; it’s now a hired gun, finding startups that complement a corporation’s offering so they don’t have to. 

L-Spark executive managing director Leo Lax explained to BetaKit last year that the accelerator’s pivot came as Canada’s early-stage venture market “slowed down significantly.” In that slowdown, L-Spark saw an opportunity to unlock the “captured money” on corporate balance sheets.

“This is it,” Lax said. “We are 100 percent focused on making this work.” 

“I would love to be able to tap into the treasuries of all of these large Canadian corporations that are putting their money in a bank instead of putting it to work with our innovation economy.”

Leo Lax, L-Spark

Last Thursday, at the Brookstreet Hotel in Ottawa, L-Spark showed off what its first client, communications service giant Mitel, and its partners gained from the inaugural Mitel Unified Communications Accelerator. Eight cohort members from across Canada, the US, and Europe took to the stage to present their technologies and the progress they made with Mitel over the six-month program. 

Canadian cohort members included Toronto-based Intelocate, Ottawa-based MicroMetrics, and Ottawa-based Zendelity. Other participants included American companies like TeamMate, MosaicVoice, and IDgo, as well as Zurich-based Typewise and Berlin-based SuitePad. 

“All eight companies in this cohort are extending Mitel’s AI capabilities in ways that are very tangible for customers,” Mitel CTO Luiz Domingos said in a statement. “By tightly integrating their innovation with Mitel’s platforms, they are accelerating how quickly customers can realize value from AI in their day-to-day communications workflows.”

Julian McCarty, the CEO of MosaicVoice, an AI-powered compliance tool for call centre agents that graduated from Y Combinator, said they gained a six-figure, five-year contract with a company they met through the Mitel program. 

Artem Abramov of Ottawa-based MicroMetrics, which provides an AI voice to answer hotel phones and coordinate service requests, called the partnership with Mitel a “huge step.” His company now has 32 Mitel clients signed up for his tool, including the Lord Elgin hotel in Ottawa and the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. 

Lax called his first corporate accelerator an “interesting trial” that is “actually generating real results.” 

“Four of our companies are in the pilot stage with existing customers, which is rapid speed for anybody when you’re talking about what a normal time it takes for a new product to be introduced into the Mitel ecosystem,” Lax told BetaKit following the showcase. 

Lax explained that the difference between running a SaaS accelerator and a corporate accelerator is market traction. Before, L-Spark was generally helping companies grow their business. Now, they are fulfilling targets set by Mitel. 

“In a SaaS accelerator, we spend half of the acceleration time to figure [out] how to get to market,” Lax said. “In a corporate accelerator, [I know] how I’m going to get there, I just need to work through the process to get there faster.”

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L-Spark doesn’t know if Mitel will opt for another cohort; that decision should come in March after the inaugural members are certified for use in Mitel’s Technology Network. However, the accelerator has secured a partnership with Telus to recruit startups that need its specialized data centres to build compute-intensive products. 

While facilitating partnerships between startups and corporations is nice, Lax is hoping he can convince future clients to invest in the startups as well.  

“I would love to be able to tap into the treasuries of all of these large Canadian corporations that are putting their money in a bank instead of putting it to work with our innovation economy,” Lax said at the showcase. “If that would happen, then I would have the full circle for a true corporate accelerator.”

All images by Sarah Bradley, courtesy L-Spark.