Announcing the Velocity Fund S17 $5K Finalists

This past Wednesday and Thursday, students from across the University of Waterloo participated in the Velocity Fund $5K Qualifiers. Of the 40 students who pitched their exciting startup ideas, 10 finalists were selected by a panel of judges to move on and compete at the Velocity Fund Finals on July 20th for their chance to win one of three $5,000 prizes. The $5K competition will start at 11am, and the $25K competition will start at 1pm, where an additional 10 teams (to be announced this afternoon) will compete for $115,000 in funding to help build their businesses.

The Velocity Fund Finals $5K competition provides equity-free funding to early-stage startups to help remove some of the barriers that can hinder innovation and entrepreneurial growth. Each participant at the Velocity Fund $5K Qualifiers had exactly 3 minutes on stage to pitch their solution to a real-world problem to a panel of esteemed judges and a packed audience of their peers. The judges provided feedback to each student on their pitching style, as well as valuable insight to help improve their business idea. The best five contenders from each night were selected to move to the finals.

We are pleased to announce this term’s Velocity Fund $5K finalists:

Busboy
Busboy is an ad tech company that specializes in completing the online-to-offline conversion cycle.

ExoMuscle
ExoMuscle provides smart sensing joint sleeves for enhanced athletic performance and recovery.

GrowXY
GrowXY is an indoor vertical farming company that provides fresh food stability in an unstable world.

HALo
HALo works to provide manual wheelchair users with accessible solutions to motorize their wheelchairs.

Intelline
Intelline is developing inexpensive and reliable cryocooling to enable the technologies of the future.

QuantWave
QuantWave provides faster, cheaper, and simpler pathogen detection for drinking water and food suppliers.

SheLeads
SheLeads is a story based game that helps girls realize their unlimited leadership potential.

Sienci LabsSienci Labs builds CNC machines to help makers turn their digital designs into real physical products.

StarSpeak
StartSpeak combines traditional wisdom with modern tech to help students develop their public speaking skills.

StarterHacks
StarterHacks is working towards a more inclusive and collaborative hackathon culture for beginners.

Make sure to come out to the Velocity Fund Finals on July 20th to hear some great pitches! Register to attend or join in via live stream for your chance to win 1 of 5 VR headsets, just for participating as an audience member! We will also be providing free boxed lunches to the first 200 audience members.

The Spring 2017 Velocity Fund Finals is sponsored by Thomson Reuters and Sequoia. 

Thomson Reuters provides professionals with the intelligence, technology and human expertise they need to find trusted answers in the financial and risk, legal, tax and accounting, and media markets. The new Thomson Reuters Toronto Technology Centre will create 1,500 high-quality technology jobs in Canada and accelerate research for cognitive computing, visualization, UX, and cloud development.