L-SPARK Selects B2B SaaS Startups to Join Second Accelerator Session
Four Companies Make the Grade out of 190 Qualified Applicants
OTTAWA, ON – Four B2B SaaS and cloud software startups have been chosen to join L-SPARK’s second Accelerator program that begins this month. Following an application process that attracted startups from the Waterloo, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa areas, 11 companies were selected to participate in a Pitchfest held at the end of September. A selection committee including representatives from Microsoft, IBM, Real Ventures, FF Venture Capital, Mitel, the Capital Angel Network, Naavon Capital and Wesley Clover International chose the winning applicants.
Two of the four companies are recent graduates from L-SPARK’s Inaugural Incubator program. ZINation, an automated merchandising platform for e-commerce storefronts, launched their Product Catalog builder on Shopify in April of this year while in the Incubator and has since announced the launch of their second platform integration on e-Bay owned e-commerce site Magento in September. The company’s platform has been adopted by several thousand businesses, managing tens of thousands of digital assets already.
Cliniconex, a patient reminder and survey software application that integrates with electronic medical record (EMR) solutions, is another recent L-SPARK Incubator graduate. During their time in the four month program, the company developed new partnerships with leading Canadian EMR vendors and will look towards securing further partnerships with EMR vendors in the United States over the next nine months.
FileFacets, a hosted Information Governance (IG) implementation Software as a Service (SaaS) product, has joined the L-SPARK Accelerator after recently being awarded IG Technology Provider of the Year 2015 by the Information Governance Initiative (IGI). Competing for the award amongst IG leaders from across North America, such as OpenText and Hewlett-Packard (HP), FileFacets offers a solution for content owners to easily and collaboratively classify, attribute and migrate content from file shares to Information Governance in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems.
Toronto-based startup, CareerLaunch, is the first comprehensive job search management application that allows job seekers to track and manage their search across all of hiring resources. CareerLaunch licenses their software to University and College partners who can access real-time data to gain meaningful insights about post graduate employment outcomes. The first release of the CareerLaunch software, launching across Ontario this month, will have more than 70,000 users at twenty partner institutions.
“After a rigorous selection process, with over 190 qualified applicants participating in this round, I am proud to welcome four high potential enterprise SaaS companies into the second L-SPARK Accelerator session. Now it is time for the founders to get to work with our team of mentors and advisors to accelerate sales and prepare for investment,” says L-SPARK Managing Director, Leo Lax.
The four selected companies will move into L-SPARK’s office space for nine months starting immediately, and will have access to a range of key resources including dedicated guidance from high-profile mentors, who have scaled their own enterprise software companies. L-SPARK will also provide multiple opportunities for the companies to pitch their businesses to angel investors and VCs over the nine months, with the purpose of accelerating the companies to a Series A investment. The companies will also meet one-on-one with L-SPARK’s champion partners, including Google, Microsoft BizSpark Plus, Citrix, OpenText, Mitel and IBM to identify customer or partnership opportunities.
Applications to the second Incubator Session will remain open until December 18, 2015 via the L-SPARK website https://www.l-spark.com/programs/incubator/