Invest Ottawa has revealed the six startups that will be pitching onstage at AccelerateOTT this year, vying for a shot at $150,000.
On Friday Invest Ottawa announced that BlackBox, CybernetIQ, GenM, GoFor, RVezy and Hoppier (formerly known as Desk Nibbles) will go head-to-head onstage at Ottawa’s annual entrepreneurship conference. Organizers raised the stakes this year with help from Montreal-based Panache Ventures, which has offered to go through due diligence with the winner on a potential $150,000 investment.
The six startups, which tout new approaches to education, the sharing economy and cybersecurity, earned their spots at two pitch-in events held in recent weeks. Learn more about them and check out some of their appearances on Techopia Live below.
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AccelerateOTT will be held at the National Arts Centre on June 11.
BlackBox.Global
Aiming to get content creators a fair share for their work, BlackBox.Global is a digital platform that acts as an agent for videographers and editors. More than 43,000 creators upload their work to the BlackBox platform, where stock footage sites and distributors such as Netflix can source their work. Creators keep a stake in their work, dubbed “fractional ownership of intellectual property,” to ensure they’re fairly compensated when their work is used.
CybernetIQ
CybernetIQ develops software to help companies visualize and automate their cybersecurity profile. The company’s SOAR (security orchestration, automation, response) platform integrates a variety of cybersecurity tools and data sources to give a full view of cyber vulnerabilities and immediately acts to neutralize threats.
Hoppier
What began as Desk Nibbles is now Hoppier, a chatbot-powered platform that helps workplaces stock the office kitchen. Employees can interact with the Hoppier bot through applications such as Slack, and provide the system with feedback and dietary restrictions to tailor the workplace’s kitchen supplies to individual tastes.
GenM
GenM looks to fill a skills gap in the marketing space by offering free courses to students. After earning a digital certificate, students can then take on three-month apprenticeships with participating businesses to start building a portfolio and then take their new skills to start freelancing or finding a full-time gig in the industry.
RVezy
After realizing that most RVs are sitting unused in the owner’s driveway for most months of the year, Michael McNaught developed an Airbnb-like platform for people looking to rent the popular vacation vehicles. RVezy covers rented vehicles under its own insurance policy for the length of the rental and charges a service fee on each transaction.
GoFor
Brad Rollo spent 10 years in the construction industry, spending hours each week fetching additional supplies for his builders, before deciding there was a better way to order extra materials. Contractors in need of a few extra 2x4s on a job site can now turn to GoFor, an app for on-demand delivery of construction materials.
