Dave McClure and company at Silicon Valley’s 500 Startups have given the nod to three Canadian startups for entry into their newest cohort.
Gym Track from Ottawa, as well as Rover and Uplette, both from Toronto, are heading down south for the program’s 10th cohort, the first one to grace 500 Startups’ new offices.
11 of the 28 companies (39 percent) have at least one woman on the founding team while 18 of 28 teams (64 percent) have at least one foreign‐born founder.
GymTrack builds a system for gyms that allows all of their members to automatically track their workouts,and builds a platform that lets gyms sell virtual personal training to their clients. Gymtrack’s system installsaftermarket onto any existing piece of gym equipment, and allows for members to wear their existing smartwatches. Founders Lee Silverstone and Pablo Srugo are currently the youngest people within the company.
Rover‘s iBeacon platform helps retailers deliver a better customer experience by transforming their mobileapps into in‐store shopping companions. Founders John Coombs and Sean Rucker grew up in the same city, went to the same university and got married on the same day but had never connected until the company’s founding year.
Uplette, a graduate of Extreme Startups, automates, consolidates, and optimizes the mobile advertising experience through the delivery ofsmart post‐ad content. With Uplette, brands and advertisers know who their customers are and how theyare converting, boosting customer acquisition by 4.8x and click‐throughs by 2x when our proprietaryfeedback loop is integrated.
Founders Amanda Parker and Alexey Adamsky said their moto is “Sell first, build later.”
We chatted with Parker at DX3 2014 back in late March. Check out our conversation: