Volta Cohort
Helping early stage, high calibre founders attract and secure venture capital sooner
This program provides mentorship, resources and investments of $25,000 through a microfund co-founded by Volta, BDC Capital, Innovacorp and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.
Along with funding, Cohort companies are given space at Volta and access to a board of mentors comprised of CEOs and founders of Volta’s Resident and Alumni companies. The board will meet with each company every two months and hold the company accountable for agreed upon milestones and metrics. Between meetings, the companies have access to all relevant programming and support Volta provides. For companies outside of Halifax, support will be arranged with partnering organizations in other cities across Atlantic Canada.
Congratulations to the Spring 2020 Volta Cohort Pitch Event Winners:
– SmartMed
– Habit Forming Technologies
– Adorify, formerly known as Kute Lab
– KorrAI
– VMOpro Inc.
The next Volta Cohort Pitch Event is taking place on Wednesday, November 25 at 5:30pm. Save your virtual seat by clicking the Eventbrite link below!
How to Participate
Determine eligibility
Applicants must be a technology-based, early stage startup with an ambitious idea. Startups must also be based in Atlantic Canada and not yet received investment (i.e. have not closed a financing round).
Submit an application
Apply before the deadline. Note that the selection committee will consider the following: ambition of idea; disruptive level of the technology; ability of the team to execute; and impact $25,000 will have on the company.
Perfect your 3-minute pitch
Select participants will have time on the day of to practice their three-minute pitch. Then, that evening, it’s the real deal. Pitch your heart out for a shot at mentorship, resources and $25,000 in investment.
Network while judges deliberate
After the pitches are complete, judges will leave the room to deliberate, selecting up to five pitch participants for the program. Meanwhile, audience members have time to network and discuss their predictions about the next Cohort.
Winners are announced
As you can imagine, there’s a lot of excitement as audience members await the cheque presentation! Judges return to announce up to five select participants, who will receive mentorship, resources and $25,000 in investment.
Timeline for the next Cohort intake:
- Applications open: September 8, 2020
- Applications close: October 14, 2020
- Company review + selection process: October 2020
- Successful applicants contacted: Late October 2020
- Volta Cohort Pitch Event: November 25, 2020
Sixteen finalists will pitch virtually on November 25! They include:
- Cohability (Halifax, NS) eases the anxiety and guesswork of finding roommates by matching lifestyles and suggesting the best roommate – in the least amount of time.
- Cultivated EcoSystems Ltd. (Egerton, NS) is a women-led biotech company with the initiative to create a better, more sustainable life by increasing soil and global health.
- Dear Life (Halifax, NS) is an online platform used to help you tell your story as beautifully as the life you lived. They make it easy to document and showcase meaningful moments for generations to come.
- Essvai (St. John’s, NL) merges the power of artificial intelligence and solid mathematical algorithms to provide novel solutions for design, optimization and support of drilling processes.
- Granville Biomedical (St. John’s, NL) is a women’s health tech company, specializing in the design of anatomical models to enhance health care training, advance patient education, and innovate device demonstration.
- Haven Villages (Dartmouth, NS ) is building modern eco-villages: close to nature, reimagined to empower remote work.
- Macro Movements Inc. (Sydney, NS) is an innovative biomechanics company. They offer a platform for clinicians and athletes to monitor and improve important movements in users’ lives.
- MICC Financial (Charlottetown, PEI) is a collaborative platform that helps groups of people save money, access capital and build credit.
- Nextcheck Software Inc. (St. John’s, NL) is a cloud-based aircraft maintenance tracking software.
- Owlya Inc. (St. John’s, NL) is an artificial intelligence-powered assessment platform.
- Parados Cerebral Solutions Inc. (Fredericton, NB) is taking a quantitative approach to solving the concussion epidemic in sports.
- Pocket Finance (Halifax, NS) is a personal finance management mobile application minimizing waste, highlighting banking fine print, and improving financial literacy.
- Scarcity Analytics (Halifax, NS) leverages environmental models to help agriculture dependent businesses preempt environment driven price spikes, improving the climate resilience of their supply chains.
- Smooth Meal Prep (Dartmouth, NS) delivers healthy fitness-focused meals provided by the community conveniently to your door.
- Subait Inc. (Dartmouth, NS) takes a scientific approach to develop a superior, sustainable lobster bait substitute, based on seafood co-products replacing environmentally challenging commercial bait fish species.
- Swiftsure Innovations Inc. (Pasadena, NL) develops products that benefit frontline workers, patients, and healthcare institutions overall.
Apply to pitch at Volta Cohort! Submit your application before October 14 at 11:59pm.
Gabrielle Masone (Elliott-Bouchard)
Co-Founder and CEO / Coloursmith Labs
Volta Cohort is the best first step you can possibly take to establish yourself as a business in Atlantic Canada.
Paul Doerwald
Founder / Clockk
When I started Volta Academy, Clockk was just a promising idea. By the end, thanks especially to in-class discussions with the facilitators and other attendees, I had the necessary tools and knowledge to make a winning pitch at the first ever Volta Cohort competition.
Cohort Companies
Adorify
Focus: Beauty
Adorify is creating a two sided platform; one side offers a mobile application to users that simplifies cosmetic ingredients, and on the other side, it provides market assessment to beauty manufactures.
Arolytics
Focus: Environment
Arolytics is developing web applications to help production and manufacturing industries cost-effectively manage and mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases and air toxics.
Atomo
Focus: Software
Atomo is a simple Customer Research platform for B2B SaaS.
Bloxo
Focus: Booking platform for sports
Bloxo Inc. is a mobile and web-based platform that simplifies the process of organizing and participating in sports, by connecting organizers, players and facilities.
Bursity.ca
Focus: Funding platform for students
Bursity.ca is developing a web platform that helps post-secondary students pay their tuition by finding and applying for financial awards in a few easy steps. Their platform uses one universal form to connect students to more than two-million funding opportunities.
Electric Owl
Focus: Software
Electric Owl develops smart technology that combines plant science with computer science to help people grow food. An AI powered garden planning and coaching App on the front end, and a data aggregating, machine learning engine on the back end – It’s like having a personal gardener in your back pocket.
Habit Forming Technologies
Focus: Health
Habit Forming Technologies is creating a growth management system using persuasive technology, sentiment analysis + human interaction, to provide individualized solutions that melds physical + mental health.
KorrAI
Focus: Artificial Intelligence
KorrAI Technology Inc. is a technology company that enables mining companies to make smarter exploration and extraction decisions using AI.
RIDDL
Focus: Financial tool
RIDDL RIDDL provides proprietary data to impact investors to guide better investment decisions.
SmartMed
Focus: Medtech
SmartMed has created SmartShift, a tool that helps auto-schedule 800 shift positions in one minute, saving time and money.
Sparrow Acoustics
Focus: Medtech
Sparrow Acoustics is making it possible for health care professionals to triage a cardiac patient in less than 10 minutes using only their software and an electronic stethoscope. The company combines a decade of auscultation research, with novel computer visualization, proprietary acoustic algorithms, and artificial intelligence.
VMOpro Inc.
Focus: Health
VMOpro Inc. is a remote physiotherapy solution that enables patients to self-manage their injuries and conditions at home. The platform combines smart PhysioBalls that communicate with a mobile app and is monitored by physiotherapists through a clinical dashboard.