After seven weeks of intensive work and coaching, last night six teams of young entrepreneurs stood in front of a packed event hall to make their final pitches. After careful deliberation the distinguished panel of judges selected three teams to win grants to carry the ideas forward through the next phase of research and testing. Congratulations to the winners!
First place and a $3,000 start up grant was won by EnableLife, a team consisting of Xinyan Chen, Ovidiu Durbalau, Aamir Sheriff, Samuel Chan & Farhan Patel. Their vision is to create an online community for people with disabilities to share tips and tricks for easier living.
The competition was so strong that two teams tied for second place, each winning a $1,500 start up grant. Daycarepedia is working to create an online resource to help parents easily find, select and rate daycares in their neighbourhood. This team consists of Lynn Shinto, Mark O’Connor and Kelvin Chen. Mark Wijaya, Timofey Zhirenkin & Bo Lin started ReFilamer and won second place for their efforts to develop an affordable modular desktop recycling device that recycles your 3D printed waste into reusable, high quality filaments.
Other venture ideas ranged from a running app by Trekr to a personal accelerator for high school students by Edulocity and a women empowerment program by The Possible Studio. Huge congratulations to these teams for all their hard work in completing the program.
A big shout out to the RADIUS team, SFU Beedie, the panel of judges & mentors and to Vancity for their financial contribution. The Social Venture Accelerator would not have been a huge success without all of your support!
