After seven months of mentorship and development in The Next 36, 25 startups pitched for the program’s Venture Day, which included an awards ceremony celebrating outstanding ventures.
At the MaRS Discovery District on August 16, over 250 investors, mentors, donors, and partners listened to the presentations and demos addressing opportunities in areas as diverse as agriculture, artificial intelligence, health care, wearables and FinTech.
“The Next 36 opened my eyes to the life that an entrepreneur leads and shown me how to create my own path for success,” said Elizabeth Wicks, co-founder of Tandem and an Engineering Physics student at the University of British Columbia. “The mentors, business leaders and professors who deliver the program have inspired us all to raise our expectations of ourselves and constantly pushed the entire cohort to relentlessly pursue opportunities wherever they may be.”
The presenting companies were from either The Next 36 flagship program for students and recent grads, or The Next Founders program for the creators of high growth ventures seeking founder development and access to investor and peer networks.
Startups honoured at the awards ceremony include:
Outstanding Venture (The Next 36): Awake Labs
– Outstanding Venture (The Next Founders): Blue J Legal
– Satchu Prize: Andrea Palmer, co-founder of Awake Labs
– The Hepburn Valedictorian Award: Tom Grainger, co-founder of Cultivate Compliance
– The Next Founders Valedictorian: Xavier Peich, co-founder of SmartHalo
– Alumni Achievement Award: Jessica Ching, co-founder of Eve Medical (Next Founders Class of 2014)
Besides mentorship, participants in The Next 36 program also get access to the Young Founders Fund, which provides up to $50,000 in seed capital for each venture. The Fund is backed by BDC Capital and Globalive Capital.
Applications are now open for next year’s cohort.
Photos courtesy The Next 36