When the I-3 Technology Startup Competition takes place in the next five months, one area to keep an eye on will be Region 5, more commonly known as Cape Breton Island.
The interesting thing about the biennial I-3 competition in Cape Breton is it will feature the winners of the past three Spark Cape Breton competitions – a list that grew last week when Innovacorp announced the winners of the 2015 Spark competition.
Not to pre-judge the results of I-3, it’s conceivable that a Cape Breton company could end up with development funding and services totaling $275,000 between the two competitions. To see how, check the math below.
For now the big news is that Innovacorp has awarded $200,000 in development funds to six winners in the 2015 Spark Cape Breton competition. [Disclaimer: Innovacorp is a client of Entrevestor.]
Spark is an annual contest first held in early 2014 that seeks the hottest new startups in Cape Breton and Mulgrave and awards them as much as $50,000 each to develop their business. With the addition of six winners listed below, the Spark competition has now provided development funds to a total of 20 young companies.
What’s interesting is all three Spark competitions have taken place since the last I-3 winner was announced in January 2014. That means that all these companies (unless they entered a previous I-3 event) are eligible to go into the coming I-3, the provincial competition that aims to reward the best new companies in Nova Scotia.
I-3, which will launch on Friday, awards $100,000 in cash and in-kind services to each to five regional winners. Then the grand prize for the overall winner is an additional $100,000 in investment. I-3 also offers $25,000 prizes to the winners in five sectors.
That means one company in Nova Scotia could win as much as $225,000 in the I-3 competition. If one of the $50,000 Spark winners captures the grand prize and the sector prize, the company could conceivably bag $275,000 in development funds from the two competitions.
The Spark winners announced last week are:
Collegio – Douglas MacLennan – Sydney
Amount: $50,000
Collegio is a web and mobile application that aims to replace paper-based communication between school administration and faculty and students and their guardians.
Genus – Jake Florian – Sydney
Amount: $15,000
Genus is an application that allows Twitter users to easily sort the people they follow into personally defined groups.
Layers Technology – A.J. Fraser and Matt Johnston – Sydney
Amount: $50,000
Layers is an image creation and editing application that allows users to remix and share images with their friends and the wider image creation community.
PartyUP – Todd Mercer – Sydney
Amount: $15,000
PartyUP is a mobile application for the nightlife and event promotion industry that helps people find out about events and venues in their area and helps the events and venues connect with their target customers through video sharing.
Phased.io – Colin MacInnis and Brian Best – Glace Bay
Amount: $50,000
Phased.io is an application for companies that shares work status updates with co-workers and provides analytics on how projects and team members are doing based on those statuses.
Tileographer – Brent Stewart & Shawn Boutilier – Sydney
Amount: $20,000
Tileographer is a technology that lets developers build and customize web maps in real time and deliver them from their own servers or from a SaaS cloud model.
