Web Summit Vancouver wrapped up on May 30 with its first Pitch competition, and all three early-stage startups on stage were founded or co-founded by women based in Vancouver.
The winner, sustainable colourants developer Lite-1, launched in 2021 with co-founders Roya Aghighi and Sarah Graham at the helm. GlüxKind, a hard tech firm responsible for an AI-enabled smart stroller, was created in 2020 after co-founders Anne Hunger and Kevin Huang became parents. VodaSafe is developing aquatic rescue tech for first responders and was founded by Carlyn Loncaric in 2014.
“That’s my mission, to be able to scale [Lite-1] to a level that can make a big impact and capture a good market portion.”
Roya Aghighi
CEO,
Lite-1
Web Summit’s organizers claimed the competition reflected a “remarkable rise” in women’s involvement since its women in tech program launched in 2015. It stated 44 percent of participating startups this year had one or more female founders. To qualify for the competition, startups had to have received less than $5 million CAD in funding with no “discernible change” in business model in the last three years. The 15 judges included RBCx associate vice-president Audrey Marie-Nely, FPV Ventures co-founder Wesley Chan, and Race Capital general partner Edith Yeung.
Lite-1 is developing microorganism-based colourants meant to replace sometimes toxic synthetic dyes. Aghighi claimed in a statement that her company’s approach is useful for “any industry” that uses materials that require colouring, and that large-scale adoption was her goal.
“That’s my mission, to be able to scale [Lite-1] to a level that can make a big impact and capture a good market portion,” she said in the statement.
Pitch aims to boost recognition and attract interest from investors rather than secure funding in itself. Aghighi noted in her statement that it was rare to pitch to “this many people all at once,” and that there had been some “meaningful” investor conversations after each pitch during the competition. She had hoped for more public exposure, however.
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“We still need a little bit more [of an] educational aspect around it with the public,” Aghighi said.
The win comes as last year’s Pitch winner, Victoria’s VoxCell BioInnovation, won the BC’s Startup All-Stars competition at Web Summit. It bested 11 other companies, taking home $10,000 for its work on human-like cancer tissue models that the company claims can help improve and accelerate pharmaceutical research on drug candidates.
Web Summit said its inaugural conference in Vancouver had a relatively low turnout compared to its predecessor, the Toronto-based Collision conference, with 15,727 attendees versus 37,832. Diana Gibson, BC’s new Minister of Jobs, Economic Development, and Innovation, nonetheless said the event was worth “every penny” of the $14.8 million in government funding (from all levels of government) involved in relocating it to Vancouver. It fostered partnerships and “energy,” she said.
Feature image courtesy of Web Summit Vancouver on Flickr.