After doing a national tour with the goal of recruiting startups to join its Scale-Up program, the Lazaridis Institute has announced the 10 startups accepted into the program.
The program attempts to address the gap startups face as they move away from the early stage and look to scale into larger companies. The Lazaridis Institute promises to provide one-on-one mentorship to each startup, and will have entrepreneurs spend one weekend a month, over six months, in major cities across Canada working on specific aspects of the company such as product and customer acquisition. The program ends with a week spent in Silicon Valley.
A panel of venture capitalists and Canadian and American technology executives considered over 100 applications and video submissions to assess each firm’s potential for growth. The final 10 selected companies come from Montreal, Halifax, Waterloo, Toronto, Chatham, and Ottawa.
“The quality of technology companies in Canada is extraordinary, and that was reflected in the many compelling applications we received,” said Carlo Chiarello, CEO of the Lazaridis Institute. “Our collective challenge is to continue to keep more companies growing in Canada by helping them as they transition into the scale-up phase. We can’t wait to start working with the 10 firms we’ve chosen for our first year, companies who are at that critical inflection point in their evolution. We’re confident that members of this cohort will take their places among the next generation of globally recognized Canadian companies.”
The program will begin in Toronto on November 3, with sessions in Montreal, Vancouver, and Ottawa to follow. The companies accepted into the program include:
- ARC4DIA (Montreal)
- Dozr (Waterloo)
- Intellitix (Chatham)
- Noviflow (Montreal)
- Oculys (Waterloo)
- PostBeyond (Toronto)
- QRA Corp (Halifax)
- StackAdapt (Toronto)
- The Better Software Company (Ottawa)
- Tulip Retail (Toronto)