ventureLAB’s Capital Investment Program hosted an engaging and impactful International Demo Day on January 26th. This International Demo Day provided an opportunity for Canadian Startups to pitch transformational products and services to U.S. based angels and seed stage investors. 7 Canadian startups participated in the Demo Day event, showcasing products and services ranging from climate adaptation technology to advanced color changing nano technology, in hopes to connect directly with U.S. based investors and secure strategic investments, and accelerate their journey to develop and commercialize their offerings.
ventureLAB’s Capital Investment Program supports scale-ready companies to establish a long-term capital strategy and support rapid business growth. Launched in 2012, the mission of the Capital Investment Program is to help accelerate participating ventures’ development and journeys to commercialization, with key areas focusing on attracting and retaining talent, customer acquisition, access to capital and technology development and commercialization.
According to WSJ, since 2020, venture capital investors across the globe, especially U.S. based investment firms, have taken significant note of Canada’s growing startup ecosystems in tech hubs such as Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, along with other provinces. Over the last three years, more than half of all Toronto-based venture capital deals have included at least one investor from the U.S. As U.S. investors inject cash into Canadian tech startups, a record $13.6 billion in venture capital has been raised in 2021, which was more than double of a previous high set in 2019. This has directly fostered a growing pool of skilled tech workers in the Canadian Startup ecosystems.
ventureLAB is proud to present the below companies that participated in the demo day event:
Permalution
Permalution works on fog and cloud water collection technology and innovation. Permalution is on a mission to introduce a new water source through its world-class technology. Permalution’s solutions are more affordable than desalination plants, safer than groundwater extraction, and more efficient than rain.
Indiegraf
Indiegraf is a platform that leverages data to accelerate the growth of independent community news outlets. Launched in May 2020, Indiegraf has grown from 2 employees to 23, served over 95 publisher customers, and generated over $2.7 million in revenue to date. Indiegraf has been funded by New Media Ventures and Mucker Labs, and attracted angel investors including Roger McNamee, Elevation Partners, and Craig Miller, Shopify. This fall, Indiegraf launched a $4.5 million non-dilutive partnership with Google, the Knight Foundation and the McConnell Family Foundation to fund Indiegraf’s News Startup Fund to provide financing to its customers.
Isempower
Isempower is Canada’s first career launchpad for international students. The technology enables universities & colleges to support, engage, and attract the growing population of international students at scale while helping employers hire diverse candidates inside the country, faster and easier.
Halion
Halion is developing advanced color-changing nanomaterials for smart surfaces. We are working towards a $15M LOI for a switchable glass product, and we are also using our materials to create ultra low-power, outdoor visible displays that will disrupt the $200B display industry in consumer electronics, digital signage and more.
EarAccess
earAccess is a healthtech company that offers a winning value proposition – supplying quality hearing aids at an affordable price with the testing and alternative distribution to increase hearing access to millions. To date, earAccess has provided hearing care to over 45,000 people, sold over 4,000 hearing aids and trained 350 people across four countries
The Owl Solutions
The Owl Solutions is a supply chain data analytics company based in Waterloo, Canada. It’s flagship product is called OWL, a digital performance platform that helps mid-to-large manufacturers and distributors reduce Financial, Environmental and Time waste by identifying and addressing performance anomalies before they turn into significant business liabilities. With customers in US and Canada, companies that use OWL achieve waste reduction valued a minimum of 5X their annual investment in OWL.
The Talent Game
The Talent Games is the world’s first interconnected, gamified assessment platform that digitizes and gamifies HR assessment processes, helping leaders to attract, engage and assess the right Millennial and Gen-z talent. Using our proprietary Game engine, we harness the power of game mechanics, big data and deep analytics to ensures higher candidate engagement and greater decision accuracy for recruiters, in short we bring fun and science to the art of recruitment.
Interested in the Capital Investment Program? Visit our page and learn more about the program.
About Capital Investment Program
ventureLAB's Capital Investment Program works with scale-ready companies to establish a long-term capital strategy and support rapid business growth. Since 2012, our experienced Advisors have worked with hundreds of founders, enabling them to raise over $150 million in private investment. ventureLAB has relaunched and expanded the reach of our Capital Investment Program with specific opportunities for underrepresented and early stage founders across Canada. Our team is now providing a broad and diverse founder community with guidance and expertise through the entire fundraising process, from refining investment pitches to connecting founders with strategically-aligned investors to further their investment goals.
About ventureLAB
ventureLAB is a leading global founder community for hardware technology and enterprise software companies in Canada. Located at the heart of Ontario’s innovation corridor in York Region, ventureLAB is part of one of the biggest and most diverse tech communities in Canada. Our initiatives focused on raising capital, talent retention, commercializing technology and IP, and customer acquisition have enabled thousands of companies to create over 5,000 jobs and raise more than $340 million in investment capital. At ventureLAB, we grow globally competitive tech titans that build-to-scale in Canada, for global markets.
