The Genesis Centre on Thursday divvied up the proceeds of a poker extravaganza with the goal of helping six female entrepreneurs develop their companies.
The St. John’s-based startup incubator kicked off its Pitch and Pick event by dividing more than $40,000 between six female founders. The money was raised through a charity poker tournament titled the Big Raise All-In for Women hosted in January by Genesis, the YMCA and the Big Raise.
Roshell Industries was awarded $10,000 as its founder Donna Paddon was the big poker winner of the event.
More than 100 female business leaders came together at the sold-out event to play poker in support of female technology entrepreneurs in Newfoundland and Labrador. All money raised throughout the evening was divided between these six female entrepreneurs:
- Emily Bland, Sucseed – Sucseed makes hydroponic units designed to provide a low-cost, high-yield solution so people can grow their own leafy greens.
- Ivana Drcec, Zero Worx – Zero Worx is a software development company that makes products to fit a range of business needs. Its Linxpot product is a cloud platform that connects customers’ business world and makes daily activities more accurate, efficient and faster.
- Stefana Egli, Intelligent Materials and Monitoring Inc. – This company is a Memorial University spin-off company that provides a cleantech portable water sampling device for analysis and monitoring of particular compounds of interest in water.
- Chrissy Rossiter, Peachy – Peachy has developed an online platform for home-care providers to simplify their job and optimize their time.
- Kelly Strickland, HashtagTutors – This startup offers an administration platform designed for tutoring businesses. From matching students to managing sessions, HashtagTutors aims to simplify all administrative tasks.
- And Donna Paddon, Roshell Industries --.Labrador-based Roshell is developing an individual outdoor transport system that combines skis and a gas-powered engine, The Skizee “Woodsrunner” provides access to harsh Arctic backcountry, which is in demand by individuals and organizations such as the Military.
Read Our Recent Profile of Peachy's Chrissy Rossiter
The cheque presentation took place at the Genesis Centre’s Pitch and Pick event, which is the culmination of eight weeks of intensive Genesis Centre Evolution workshops.
The Evolution program for early stage technology-based startups is designed to help entrepreneurs identify their markets and validate their ideas. The top eight teams from the program pitched Thursday afternoon to a full house of local stakeholders at the Bier Markt, and the audience picked the winners.
The three winners, whose prizes ranged between $200 and $500, were Fufilament, VitalMIST and BreatheSuite.
