Tag: Trending.info

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Accelerator Centre announces its largest graduating class to date

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Four graduates, four unique business stories

The AC is excited to announce our largest graduating class in our ten year history. The graduation of Ecopia, InTheChat, Trending.info and Knowledge In Development brings the total number of companies to successfully complete the AC’s intensive multi-year business commercialization program to 55.  The occasion also marks the AC’s first graduate from our facility in Stratford, Ontario.

“The companies graduating from the Accelerator Centre today represent the diversity of industry segments and founder backgrounds that characterize the AC’s client base,” says Paul Salvini, CEO of the Accelerator Centre. “Within just this graduating class we have mature business executives, tenured professors, and serial entrepreneurs — all realizing their dream of starting and building a world-class business. We are also very excited to have our first graduate from our Stratford facility represented today. Trending.info was in on the ground floor with us when we expanded our programming to the University of Waterloo campus in that city. It is fantastic to see the company leave today a graduate.”

Ecopia
Millions of geospatial images are collected by satellites, airplanes, and vehicles every day. With large amounts of data becoming available at an increasing rate, efficient retrieval and organization of useful information from this data has become a large issue. As a result, much of this information is not accessible to those who need it most. Ecopia Tech creates intelligent systems that vastly improve the process of analyzing geospatial imagery through the employment of computer vision techniques.

Knowledge in Development
Founded in 2008, by University of Waterloo professor and researcher Dr. Daniela O’Neill, Knowledge in Development (KID) Inc. publishes and distributes the Language Use Inventory (LUI), a unique assessment of early pragmatic language development, to professionals and researchers. Knowledge in Development’s online platform now allows users to administer the LUI fully online with parents, in house or via email.

IntheChat
InTheChat (ITC) is an industry-leading digital customer engagement platform that enables large-scale enterprises to serve their customers via today’s preferred communication channels: text messaging, social media, web and mobile chat, email and messaging apps. Global leaders in the banking, telecommunications, retail and other industries are using ITC today to free their customers from phone calls to their call centres, while also simplifying contact handling for the company’s front-line teams.

Trending.Info
Trending.Info provides social media solutions for businesses, services and associations, allowing them to harness the power of online marketing while building communities of social interest showcased in one place. Founded in 2013 by Randy Huitema, the company today becomes the Accelerator Centre’s first Stratford-based graduate.

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First AC JumpStart Cohort Announced

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Seventeen early stage companies to benefit from critical seed capital injection and world-class mentorship

The Accelerator Centre® (AC) is proud to announce its first AC JumpStart cohort, the first group of companies to benefit from the $8M funding program, announced January 15th in conjunction with the Federal Economic Development Agency (FedDev Ontario), and partners Conestoga College, the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University.

Companies joining the first AC JumpStart Cohort are:

Quick Facts about AC JumpStart

  • Each member of the AC JumpStart first cohort will receive $30,000 in seed capital (to be matched by the recipient firms), mentorship from experts in finance, sales, marketing, human resources, technology and product development, access to market research and connections to investors, with services to be delivered over a 12 month period.
  • This is the first of three cohorts of companies to participate in the program in 2015, followed by two cohorts annually through to the end of 2018.
  • In total, it is expected that 180 companies will participate in the AC JumpStart program over the next four years.
  • Start-ups participating in the 2013 AC JumpStart pilot program have created 212 new jobs in Waterloo Region, have generated $3.1 million in combined revenue and are expected to raise $5 million in private investment.