The 2017 Fundica roadshow has concluded with the announcement of two winners.
Fundica kicked off its cross-Canada tour in January seeking startups in 10 cities to pitch at its $1 million competition.
The two winners are Toronto-based Quote Kong, a quoting process automation for contractors, and Vini, which allows users to order and sell wine through the app. While the competition originally called for one startup to win the $1 million, the two companies will split the prize in half.
“When I pitched at the Fundica Roadshow one year and a half ago, it was a failure and that’s okay,” said Nathan Seiling, founder of Quote Kong. “It’s never about the success or failure at that time, it’s about what you do with that information next time. Repeat the successes, fix the failures.”
The other competing finalists included FLODocs, reDock, UGRAN Drive Safe, Bartesian, GreyLitMatters, thisopenspace, and Certnand YodelUP. Nobal Technologies and Lexop also received investment interest from First Stone Venture Partners after further due diligence.
“This funding allows us to really dig into the production and launch to get our client to market in the fall,” said Alan Serpa, founder of Vini. “What that does is it accelerates us into exactly where we need to be, which is in refining, finishing, development, into processes and onboarding the systems that we’re going to implement with our client.”