Entrepreneurs from Ivey and Western University are seeking to raise over $9.5 million from alumni investors at Western Angels' Demo Day on May 14, 2024.
The initiative led by the Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship Powered by Ivey, has helped entrepreneurs attract over $6.3 million, and many former participants have been featured on the popular pitch competition, CBC's The Dragons' Den.
The 8th edition of Western Angels' Demo Day will feature eight start-ups and scale-ups pitching asks ranging from $250,000 to $5 million.
OneReview
OneReview is a Shopify app that finds ratings and reviews of products on other websites and generates a summary review and star rating to display on product pages. Reviews are a key part of the online shopping experience. About 90% of customers read reviews before making an online purchase. However, it takes years for merchants to build up a meaningful number of reviews, and it’s extremely difficult to have review coverage across all products. OneReview solves this by generating from existing content on other websites.
OneReview is led by Josh Lehman, HBA ’19, and is seeking to raise $260K on a SAFE note.
Vessl Prosthetics Inc.
Vessl is pioneering novel prosthetics for amputees, led by biomedical engineers, clinical anatomists, and prosthetists. Their first product, the isoform socket is the only socket that automatically adjusts as amputees’ legs change size, providing a more comfortable, and more accessible option that also reduces pressure extremes that often lead to wound development.
Currently, many amputees experience poor socket fit; a misfit between their residual leg and prosthetic socket causing chaffing. As many as 16% of amputees abandon their prostheses and are unable to walk.
Vessl is led by Sydney Robinson, MESc’21 (Biomedical Engineering) and Oleksiy Zaika, PhD’23 (Clinical Anatomy) and is seeking to raise $1M USD convertible note.
AgentOps
The AI agent market is expected to grow to $28.5B by 2028, but there is currently no way to test where agents are succeeding and failing. For example, an agent may succeed at writing an investor memo, but it may fail at sourcing where its information came from. Agents require specialized tooling due to the way they perform functions autonomously, and developers need to understand the compliance, reliability, and robustness of their agents to bring them to market.
AgentOps SDK has developed a testing platform as well as our agent marketplace at Staf.ai to ensure these tools are ready for enterprises.
Led by Ivey HBA ’20 Adam Silverman, AgentOps is asking for $5M SAFE.
The Real View
Reviewing strata documents for residential real estate transactions is time-consuming, expensive, and full of potential liability for realtors. For many realtors, it is one of the least enjoyable aspects of their work. The Real View translates 2 minutes of a realtor's time into a 165-point inspection that saves time and summarizes essential information about a potential purchase. The reports are easy to comprehend even for first-time homebuyers, and the results are customizable, allowing a realtor to edit and annotate the report before sending it along to their client.
The Real View is led by Andrew Armstrong, HBA ’10, and is seeking $500K.
LiquidShare Investments
LiquidShare will revolutionize whiskey investing by lowering the financial barrier to entry and welcoming new retail investors to the exciting and exclusive asset class of maturing barrels of whiskey. Whiskey has a proven track record of outperforming the S&P 500, however, high investment thresholds prevent most retail investors from accessing this unique asset class. Through LiquidShare, initial investments can be made for as low as $500 – up to 100 times less than leading competitors – with subsequent investments for only $50. The business will launch a fully SEC-compliant platform in the United States to provide retail investors with unprecedented access to investment-grade barrels.
LiquidShare is led by Ivey MBA ’24s Grant Sparling II, Michael Cooper, Colton James, and Bruno Saux, and is seeking $400K USD pre-seed raise, with a preference for SAFE.
CARE Group
CARE Group is reshaping the landscape of mental health care with our cutting-edge digital health technologies and programs, tailored to address the unique needs of underserved communities, including Indigenous populations and remote areas. The company’s innovative platforms integrate seamless virtual care with real-time monitoring and personalized patient engagement, delivering improved health outcomes at a lower cost.
Led by Ray Yue, EMBA’17, and Marline Aizouki, The Care Group is seeking to raise up to $1.5M in equity for strategic, value-added investors.
Kaitongo Inc.
Conceptualized and built by a team with a cumulative 35+ years of domain experience, Kaitongo is staking a position in the disruption of the syndicated research and consulting industries by Generative Artificial Intelligence. Kaitongo is a GPT-powered market intelligence platform that aggregates, curates and extracts insights from a range of external data sources, providing users with quality, relevant market insights, that they can use to be well-informed and thoroughly prepared for client meetings and engagements as well as cultivate and nurture client relationships by easily transforming these valuable insights into engaging and informative content.
Kaitonga Inc. is led by Sumathi Pundit, MBA ’97, and is seeking to raise $350K.
Transferpace Technology Inc.
TransferPace is a fintech firm that makes it cheaper, faster, safer, and more convenient to send money to Africa by offering multi-currency accounts via its mobile app. For Africans living across Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, International money transfers are slow (often taking 2-5 days), expensive (with an 8% cost), and difficult due to heavy reliance on correspondent banking.
These difficulties often lead immigrants to use non-transparent remittance apps, a patchwork of multiple apps, and unsafe, riskier informal channels to meet basic remittance needs.
TransferPace’s innovative approach aims to revolutionize global money transfers. The initial focus will be on the Canada-Nigeria remittance corridor, with plans for expansion to the US, UK, and other regions.
Led by MBA ’24s Aaron Olajide and Kenneth Kanlisi, Temi Adepoju, and Kuma Mede, and is seeking $250K SAFE.
