Celebrating Startup Milestones, Partnerships, and the People's Choice Award Winner for Cohort 9!
If you were lucky enough to snag a seat at the sold-out Velocity South Showcase, you'd find yourself in a room buzzing with excitement as the latest cohort of Alberta Catalyzer Velocity South entrepreneurs took centre stage to deliver their final pitches. This cohort showcased a diverse range of startups spanning various industries and business ideas, but what truly set this cohort apart was their impressive scale. For instance, BClouder is already generating $20K in monthly recurring revenue, while Egistix, a 23 year old company, boasts clients such as top oil and gas companies like Enbridge, ARC Resources, and Cenovus.
It just goes to show that innovation is ever-evolving and thriving within Alberta's startup ecosystem.
Cohort 9 Companies: AkinĂŞ, BClouder, DecisionHub, Egistix, One Dragon Technology, Low End Nation, WizDrop, Pocket Finance, TheLocal.ai
About the Velocity Showcase
The Velocity Showcase serves as a unique opportunity for early-stage startups to showcase their innovative ideas and solutions, pitch live, and gain valuable exposure within the tech and startup community. For attendees, it’s an exciting opportunity to witness innovation in action, learn how Alberta Catalyzer supports early-stage startups, and be part of the buzz in Calgary’s startup scene! View the full gallery here.
People's Choice Award
One of the highlights of the Alberta Catalyzer Velocity Showcase is the People's Choice Award. This award recognizes the startup or founder that resonates most with attendees, shining a spotlight on their achievements and contributions to the startup community. It's a testament to the hard work, dedication, and ingenuity of the winning startup.
Meet Our Program Partners
Like-minded partners are essential contributors to the Calgary startup ecosystem, offering expertise, resources, and support to our founders. Simply put, we couldn’t do what we do without our program partners.
We’re incredibly grateful to the Platform Pillar Team partners that contributed to elevating the People's Choice Award for cohort 9. The winner will receive in-kind services from Platform Pillar Team members KPMG, Ayming, and Fasken. These partners bring a wealth of expertise and resources to support participants in Alberta Catalyzer.
KPMG equips early-stage startups in Velocity with vital insights for startup accounting and tax success. Participants explore the fundamentals of startup accounting and taxation, SR&ED intricacies, unlocking opportunities for government funding and incentives to fuel growth, and learn to manage changes seamlessly while optimizing financial processes. The goal is to empower founders with the tools and knowledge necessary to establish a strong foundation, leading them towards sustainable and long-term growth.
Ayming provides invaluable input and guidance to startups in the Alberta Catalyzer Velocity Program. They pride themselves in guiding and supporting founders in successfully navigating vital government funding avenues essential to their business. With their leading AI software they provide a customized portfolio of current and future Federal and Provincial Grants and tax credits tailored for each business. Their SR&ED Express service exclusively supports early-stage companies, and their non-dilutive financing allows faster access to these government funds. Ayming is driven by one purpose, to help companies fund their innovation and growth in a sustainable and profitable manner, helping them leap ahead competitively.
Fasken, is a leading Canadian law firm to emerging and high-growth technology companies. Their Emerging Technology practice is comprised of 90+ dedicated legal professionals across the Canadian market. Deeply involved in the startup ecosystem they have worked closely with founders from startup to scale up to exit. As a leading Canadian law firm for venture capital financings and tech mergers and acquisitions they act for many of the best-in-class startup and scale up innovation-based companies in Canada. Given this experience they understand market trends and can assist in guiding companies forward as they scale – they take a holistic and strategic approach to helping clients achieve their goals and provide the full suite of services including corporate, corporate finance, mergers & acquisitions, commercial, IP, data and compliance, employment, tax and beyond.
And the Winner is…
And now, the moment we've all been waiting for - the announcement of the People's Choice Award winner! After a suspenseful voting moment, we're thrilled to congratulate Pouria Shahbazi founder of WizDrop for their outstanding achievements so far.
“Winning the People's Choice Award was an exhilarating moment filled with pride and gratitude. Standing on stage, feeling the support and recognition from the community was a moment of validation for the hard work, dedication, and belief we've poured into WizDrop.” - Pouria
WizDrop revolutionizes the way students tackle study challenges by combining cutting-edge AI technology with personalized tutoring services, providing an effective solution for enhancing study habits. With an impressive traction of 150K users within 7 months and 30 active users using $0 to advertise, WizDrop is currently seeking partnerships with tutoring agencies to launch a revenue sharing model to further enhance features for their network of students.
Pouria Shahbazi also reflected on his entrepreneurial journey, expressing “As a first-time entrepreneur, the chance to dive deep into the business world, learn extensively, and gain both confidence and expertise in such a short time has been nothing short of remarkable….This experience has left me with a profound sense of gratitude towards our great province and the endless opportunities it provides… It was truly amazing to see that people believed in us enough to vote for our vision.”
Pouria and WizDrop will receive in-kind services from KPMG, Ayming, and Fasken as the winner of the People’s Choice Award! Pouria also expressed his gratitude, saying, "It's truly an honour and a privilege to collaborate with top-tier partners who bring unparalleled expertise and insights," says the winner of the People's Choice Award, Pouria Shahbazi of WizDrop…”We've been bootstrapping WizDrop to this point, so the support from these top-tier organizations is incredibly timely and appreciated.”
Together, we're shaping the future of innovation and entrepreneurship in Alberta, and we can't wait to see what the future holds for our startup community.
Thank you for joining us on this journey of celebration, collaboration, and community. See you at the next showcase.
About Alberta Catalyzer
Alberta Catalyzer is a merit-based pre-accelerator that offers company support, resources, and coaching to entrepreneurs aiming to launch and grow their tech-enabled companies, preparing them for advancement to the scale-up and acceleration stages.
Launched in 2022, Alberta Catalyzer is developed and delivered by Platform Calgary and Edmonton Unlimited, with support from partners and organizations across the Alberta Innovation Network.
Apply to the next cohort in one of three programs: Engage, Traction, and Velocity.
