Laurier University’s Lazaridis Institute has chosen 10 women-led Canadian tech companies to be a part the fourth cohort of its ScaleUp Program.
The ScaleUp program looks to address specific challenges companies face as they try to scale their business.
“The gender gap in tech amounts to a lost opportunity.”
In the first three years of the program, the number of women founders (or co-founders) has increased from one out of 10 companies to four in 10, according to Lazaridis. In total, the institute said fewer than 20 percent of its cohort company executive teams have been women.
During last year’s announcement of the third cohort, Lazaridis Institute noted its plan to run its 2019 ScaleUp Program specifically for companies with a female founder, co-founder, or CEO.
Kim Morouney, managing director of the Lazaridis Institute, stated at the time, “You’ve seen the research, something like five percent of Canadian tech companies have female founders and CEOs, women only make up 13 percent of the average Canadian tech company exec team. And 53 percent of tech firms don’t have any female executives at all. We all need to thank organizations such as Communitech, #MoveTheDial, big push, DMZ and others who have begun the work on female-focused programming to help close this gap.”
About today’s announcement, she said, “The gender gap in tech amounts to a lost opportunity,” noting “the Lazaridis Institute intends to be part of the solution.”
The companies included in the fourth cohort are:
- Advanced Symbolics Inc: an artificial intelligence company based in Ottawa seeking to help businesses and governments better understand their audiences. The Canadian Government partnered with Advanced Symbolics last year to monitor social media and identify possible spikes in suicide.
- Brillist Better Projects: a Saskatoon-based company developing software designed to eliminate inefficiencies out of project schedules.
- Conscia Corporation: A Mississauga SaaS company that organizes data in siloed systems to make it available to digital applications via APIs.
- Questor Technology: a Calgary-based cleantech company that designs and manufactures waste gas combustion systems and power generation systems.
- Sheertex: a Bracebridge-based company developing pantyhose made from “the world’s strongest polymer”.
- Stathletes: a St. Catharines company providing performance data insights and analysis for professional hockey teams. Stathletes was one of 22 companies selected for Next Founders 2018.
- Storytap: a storytelling platform helping companies collect video reviews from customers. The company is based in Vancouver.
- Symend: a Calgary-based company specializing in customer experience of debt resolutions. The company raised $1 million in seed funding in 2016.
- Vivametrica: a Calgary company dedicated to using wearables, AI, and scientific models to predict and prevent sickness and disease.
- Voices.com: the London-based company runs an online platform for people to post jobs for professional voice actors. In 2017, the company raised an $18 million growth round from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.
The Lazaridis ScaleUp Program is set to begin on March 7. Over the next six months, companies will travel to six cities across North America for workshops with industry experts.
Featured photo via Burst.