The results of one of New Brunswick’s ambitious accelerator programs will be on display next Wednesday in Moncton as five companies from the McKenzie Accelerator pitch at an Angels’ Den.
Last autumn, two new accelerator programs began in New Brunswick: PropelICT’s Launch36, which we wrote about last month, is designed to bring companies to the market-ready or investment-ready stage; and the McKenzie Accelerator is designed to take concept companies and prepare them for seed funding. The idea is that a company can go through the McKenzie Accelerator and be ready to enter Launch36.
First, they will get a chance Wednesday to present their businesses to a panel of investors and experts at the Angels’ Den, from 11 am to 2 pm at La Teraz on Church Street in Moncton. The panel will comprise: Jeff White, (former CFO of Radian6 and Q1 Labs) East Valley Ventures; Trevor MacAusland, PropelICT; George Donovan, Gogii Games; Peter Clark, GrowthWorks Atlantic; and Calvin Milbury of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.
The five presenters are:
- Guyverson Vernous, iCubemedia Inc., Dieppe, a mobile development and web company offering a full spectrum of professional yet affordable iPhone/iPad and web-based applications;
- Sean Fahey, VidCruiter, Moncton, which replaces repetitive tasks that take recruiters hours to perform but yet bring no significant benefit to the organization;
- Marco DeGrace, The Money Tree, which permits merchants to create and send out e-coupons directly to local consumers' smartphones at the touch of a button;
- John Doubt, Tribeonomics Inc., which is developing a toolset, which will perform on-line community persona analysis, resulting in actionable on-line marketing recommendations;
- And Barhat Gadher, N-Gauge, which monitors social media that uses market-specific information from Twitter to understand and predict consumer behavior on large purchase items, such as real estate and motor vehicles.
Dale Ritchie, President of McKenzie College, said two of these companies, VidCruiter and Tribeonomics, as well as one associate company, are also going through the Launch36 program.
The five companies in the McKenzie Accelerator each raised $15,000 from friends and family and received $15,000 in matching funding from Business New Brunswick. McKenzie College, a private art and design school, subsidized rent and provided administration as well as design, branding and promotional support.
The Angels’ Den is aimed at angel investors, bankers, funding organizations, startups and prospective startups, though space is limited. Registration is available here. The event is followed by Tech South East's SpeakIT seminar on Google Apps, which in turn will be followed by the monthly CyberSocial.
