Vancouver’s Radius, a social innovation hub based out of Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, is seeking startups to join its six-month Slingshot Accelerator, which supports early-stage social impact ventures.
The accelerator is seeking startups addressing risk factors and patterns of inequity that contribute to lifestyle-based chronic diseases.
The accelerator offers $25,000 to startups that join the program, and $15,000 for in-kind support.
According to Radius, lifestyle-based chronic diseases like type II diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers, and chronic respiratory disease currently affect three in five Canadians over the age of 20, with Indigenous, racialized people, and other equity-seeking groups disproportionately affected. Examples of eligible startups for the program include those tackling individual behaviour changes like unhealthy eating and physical inactivity, and those encouraging maternal literacy and food security.
Social ventures targeting poverty, racism, and colonization, with an explicit link to health promotion and chronic disease prevention, can also be eligible, such as increasing food access in under-served communities.
The accelerator offers $25,000 to startups that join the program, and $15,000 for in-kind support, including pro bono legal services. Startups applying for the program must have demonstrated traction ($50,000 to $200,000 in revenue, or known demand). Radius also takes two percent equity and employs a patient royalty stream based on gross revenue.
“Going into Slingshot, we knew the basics of what our company was, but not how to get there,” said Kashif Pasta, creative director of Dunya Media, a production company that uses storytelling to drive social change. “Slingshot was like a GPS for navigating unfamiliar roads above all else, for asking the right questions to uncover answers we had within us all along. It definitely doesn’t hurt that our association with Radius and the networking it facilitated helped us land the biggest client we had ever worked with.”
The session begins in January and runs until June 2020. Applications are due September 29 and can be found here.