Founder Institute Waterloo Fall 2019 Produces 11 New Technology Startups

The Waterloo Founder Institute, the local chapter of the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator, is proud to present Demo Day pitches from the newest Alumni of the Fall 2019 program.

Over 170 people applied to the Waterloo Fall 2019 program, and after an intense four months of aggressive business-building sprints and constant evaluation and feedback from investors and mentors, just 11 companies were able to make it through. The impressive new Canadian FI Alumni cohort includes 7 female founders, as well as 9 immigrant founders hailing from India, China, Pakistan, Poland, Egypt, and Palestine. 

Each of these founders have demonstrated a high level of perseverance and creativity, and their companies have been thoroughly vetted and supported by a collection of Ontario's top startup experts and investors.  

And now, without further ado, we present the Alumni of the Waterloo Fall 2019 Founder Institute: 

• Sponsor Circle - a deal engine for sponsorship, helping to find and match with the right sponsors fast.
• Tradesjet - a real-time workforce platform for managing employees and sourcing talent in the construction industry.
• KICKIN' - a social shopping discovery platform connecting like-minded shoppers with their favourite brands.
• Cleanbee - connecting homeowners to cleaners, and making a luxury of hiring a great cleaning service.
• FUZE Rentals - the peer-to-peer place to rent and lend fashion, high quality clothes for one-time special occasions. 
• TRUSTiiN - enabling accelerated digital innovation through Testing as a Service (TaaS) via AI and the crowd. 
• Loganno - automated root-cause analysis and triage of failures tool for product managers, deploying AI in analysis of software logs.
  
• Finiite - a facial recognition app that matches users with the right products for their skin through predictive AI.
  
• Wellbow - a wearable for sufferers of hand and elbow conditions, including carpal tunnel and tennis elbow. 
• Bounc3 - providing portable and customizable benefits that help gig workers maintain and build their financial health.
  
• Postavant -  an AI helping art enthusiasts and collectors to access expertise, real-time artwork market information, and personalized art recommendations. 
  

This Demo Day was held January 29th at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI):

The Waterloo Fall 2019 program would not have been possible without help from experts across the Kitchener-Waterloo region who showed up to mentor these promising founders. We would first like to thank the Local Leaders of the Waterloo Founder Institute: Jordan Jocius and Sunil Sharma. Our Local Leaders play an incredibly important role in building the local Founder Institute program, and creating an environment and network in Waterloo that is conducive to building to great companies.

In addition, the Waterloo Fall 2019 program was supported by some of Waterloo's top technology organizations, including:

Some of Ontario’s top startup mentors helped our founders in the program, including:

In the Founder Institute's pre-seed accelerator program, early-stage entrepreneurs and teams build their business alongside a critical support network of local startup experts that share equity in their success, and through a structured and challenging business-building process that has helped alumni raise over $1.8BN. 

After Graduation, the new Waterloo Founder Institute Portfolio Companies now have a fast-growing company that has been fully validated by experienced startup founders, with access to the Founder Institute's global network and post-graduate support programs to continue building their business. 

Leaders of the world’s fastest-growing startups have used the Founder Institute to raise funding, get into seed-accelerators, generate traction, recruit a team, build a product, transition from employee to entrepreneur, and more. Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 200+ cities and 100+ countries, the Founder Institute’s mission is to Globalize Silicon Valley and empower talented and motivated entrepreneurs to build companies that will create one million new jobs.

Applications for the upcoming Waterloo Founder Institute Sping 2020 program are open now at FI.co/apply/waterloo.