Announcing the 2020 Class of Techstars Toronto
Mar 30, 2020
By Sunil Sharma, Managing Director of Techstars Toronto
It is with great pleasure that I am announcing the 2020 Class of Techstars Toronto.
This year’s 10 companies once again represent the spirit of our diversity, both as a program and as a city. Our companies come from across Canada and the world, and focus on a wide range of industry verticals. 40% of our new class have at least one female founder (including two Chief Technology Officers), and countries of origin include Iran, Turkey, Poland and Nigeria in addition to being very pan-Canadian (Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary).
We are fortunate to have launched two successful classes of startups over the past two years. Collectively, our 20 alumni have already raised over $50 million dollars and hired more than 300 people, all while becoming recognized industry players across many verticals.
Our 2020 class will continue on this positive trend. This year’s companies come from business verticals that serve freelancers, design professionals, and consumers of services such as digital health, wellness, online retail and digital currencies. Others are tackling legacy industries such as automotive and parking enforcement, product sampling, workplace productivity and building construction.
At Techstars, our top priority is everyone’s health and safety. We will continue to do all we can to minimize the risks of COVID-19 and help us all get through this crisis. While our 10 companies for this year’s program have been selected and are very excited to begin their Techstars journey, we have decided to take the necessary and responsible measures to ensure the safety of our founders and mentors by delaying the “official” start date of Techstars Toronto to June 8, 2020.
During this interim period we will provide support and resources to our teams, founders, portfolio companies, communities and partners. Techstars has a lot of experience navigating economic downturns and we want to help everyone get through this tough time as smoothly as possible. We are a strong global network and we will get through this together. We are continuing to work with our local and regional teams and rely on updates from health officials to determine the best courses of action to support our teams and communities. We are providing active updates and resources on techstars.com.
Rather than wait until June, we are excited to introduce these 10 companies now to give them a soft-start and full access to our renowned global network of mentors, investors, corporate partners and more than 2000 alumni companies. In some ways, we feel that our program will in fact be a uniquely elongated program that will span more than 5 months instead of the usual 3.
And now, in partnership with Real Ventures (one of Canada’s most recognized venture capital funds), I am pleased to introduce the new class of Techstars Toronto 2020:
Artboard Studio
Artboard Studio is an online graphic design and animation tool for branding and marketing teams. With Artboard Studio you can create incredible mockups right in your browser and also collaborate, present and get feedback on your assets in real-time.
Babbly
Babbly is building the world’s largest data platform for speech development. Through it’s AI-powered mobile platform, parents can analyze their baby’s speech development and track their progress over time.
Fable
Fable is building the direct-to-consumer dinnerware lifestyle brand for millennials. Our product today consists of dining essentials artisan crafted in Portugal.
Gini Health
Gini Health is one of North America's fastest growing personalized diet and supplement companies changing the status quo of one size fits all approach to health and nutrition. Gini Health delivers a 100% personalized experience to every individual customer based on their DNA, health goals, diet and lifestyle data. Customized smart vitamins are made to supplement an individual's diet and lifestyle rather than giving high dosages to everybody that overloads the metabolism and organs. This smart vitamins formula changes on every subscription based on diet, exercise, sleep, mood and progress on health goals. In addition to this, customers are provided free DNA reports, macro and micro nutrients targets and food suggestions to decrease reliance on supplements.
With the world going through a pandemic crisis, Gini Health's data informed individualized approach helps people to get optimal nutrition and immunity to fight viruses and maximize health.
Car Scanner
Car Scanner introduces transparency and automatization into the car appraisal process with an autonomous robot performing car inspections. The company also offers a highly efficient parking enforcement system.
Lance
LANCE is out to solve the main challenges freelancers face. This first-of-its-kind freelance invoicing platform, designed to favour the freelancer, transforms invoicing transactions into more gain and less of the pains that come with working independently. LANCE's invoicing and payment technology helps freelancers get paid on time, have access to client-subsidized Manulife health & dental benefits, streamlines invoicing and payment at no added cost to the Freelancer while providing rewards on each invoice that can turn into cash in hand. LANCE is building a better way for freelancers to work- putting freelancers' needs first.
Mayday
Mayday reimagines the calendar as a wellness & productivity product, that analyzes how you spend time, and recommends ways to best optimize each day. It makes finding time to meet with people easier, and automatically adapts to changes in your schedule.
Mayday understands your priorities, and proactively blocks time in your week, so you can always make time for what matters most. At home, and at work.
Time is our most valuable asset, yet it’s still too easily lost, stolen, or misspent. Mayday aims to fix that.
Orbiseed
Orbiseed's AI platform is a digital bridge that links streams of proptech data to deliver faster and more accurate business insights. By translating diverse and underutilized data into a common language on a single platform, property stakeholders can access analytics in real-time and maximize their building's potential. Orbiseed's patent pending data extraction AI allows data to be extracted 40 times faster & 10 times cheaper, while significantly reducing human error. This provides proptech customers an easier way to realize value from their data.
Peekage
Peekage is a digital product sampling platform that helps the consumer packaged companies to target the right audience, send free product samples, and get consumer feedback in order to increase sales, build brand loyalty, and re-target consumers based on their behaviour.
Quidax
With a focus on Africa, Quidax makes it easy for businesses and individuals to buy and sell cryptocurrency with their local currency while making it possible for Fintechs to offer cryptocurrency services to their customers.