Toronto's Startup Grind Chapter, working with MaRS Commons, Cdling and the MaRS Mentor Network has a good thing going IMHO. Paul Singh agreed to tack on some Office Hours to his Startup Grind fireside chat happening this Monday for lunch. Cdling submitted a list of startups who have been referred through the Cdling platform, MaRS Mentor network and a variety of other channels and Paul made the final selections below. Out of dozens of local company submissions the best 5 were selected. They are highlighted below.
We should point out to the rest of the community that Jolt withdrew the startups in their current crop from this selection process since Paul will be meeting exclusively with these Founding teams on September 11th. Thank you again to the team at Jolt and MaRS Commons for working with us to make this open time available to any startup!
There are still some spots available to join us for Paul's pizza lunch "fire side chat". You can get your tickets here.
I also have a couple of spots for the closed investors only event with Paul that will be taking place on Monday afternoon at 3 pm. If you are interested in one of those, please tweet @cdlingHQ or email me at michael at cdling dot com.
If you are connected to any of the Founders from these startups, please send them a link to this post! We are trying to contact them now to make sure that they are ready for Monday morning!
Thanks also to all of the startups who expressed interest in the opportunity to meet with Paul. If you were not selected, don’t take it badly there were many inputs and not making this list is not necessarily a reflection on what you are doing. Congrats to the companies that were selected!
Paul will be getting started at 9:30 am Monday, September 10 in the MaRS Commons on the second floor at 101 College Street. The format is 10 mins. Make a bond. Ask a question. Pitch. But you have 10 mins. Here is the schedule and names of companies selected:
9:30 am
Penyo Pal
Penyo Pal builds fun, engaging experiences for kids and kids at heart to learn Mandarin. Users adopt and customize their own Penyo Pal and explore Penyo World playing mini-games and interacting with their Penyo Pal. Learning a new language opens doors, your eyes, and your mind... and with Penyo Pal you'll be saying in no time!
9:40 am
NoteSolution
Notesolution is an educational network that delivers the best course resources to university students worldwide by crowdsourcing content.
9:50 am
Hovr
HOVR makes images on social networks clickable for product search. Through a 1-click update of your browser, the magic of HOVR is unlocked on any website. Easily go from the image of what you want, to window shopping comparables, to the best place to buy all within the HOVR Sidebar.
10:00 am - break
10:10 am
Kickvox
Kickvox is a search engine built uniquely for mobile. We do this by introducing a visual search process and deep integration with popular mobile apps giving users a truly mobile friendly experience.
10:20 am
Bunch
Bunch is a mobile platform to share and discuss your passions with like-minded people. The Bunch iPhone app is live in private beta and has had 1.1 million pre-signups via a Facebook marketing app. Bunch will test launch Sept 2012 in Canada, with a US launch to follow.
Special thanks to the nearly 100 new members of Startup Grind Toronto. Our community now has almost 400 members. If you know a tech rock star coming to Toronto, please introduce us! We would like to create an opportunity for you to discover the amazing Grinders we have in Toronto.