I'm sure you've been to a few conferences, heard great talks, and met some amazing people - but my favorite part of any conference is listening to the startups and ideas that entrepreneurs are building. Alberta is home to some wicked talent and savvy entrepreneurs, but they usually get overlooked in the global marketplace. AccelerateAB showed us 5 great companies being built in Canada, all poised to compete around the world. Here's my takeaway on a few of the startups I believe can really become legitimate international companies.
TLink Golf
The winner of the best elevator pitch out of 15 companies, TLink Golf definitely earned their place. The TLink Gold team built a GPS watch for golfers that acts as both a pedometer and a golf course stat tracker, measuring yardages to the pin for over 30,000 golf courses around the world.
One of the most amazing feature is the ability to customize the watch to your company or event colors, making it a go-to gift. Another standout feature is the app which syncs with the watch, allowing you to revisit your stats at anytime.
TLink has a great product that is sure to make its way to every golf tournament, especially as corporate sponsor start shelling these out to guests, customers, or employees.
JumpOn
A unique pitch for an interesting concept, JumpOn lets users crowdfund flights to select cities in Canada. But what does that mean?
Say, for example, you want to go from Calgary to Victoria on a long May weekend. If you can get 80% of the flight filled, the flight will be booked at a cheaper or comparable price to a bigger airline. Think of it as a cool way to secure your own airplane for a big group over a weekend or even a spontaneous trip with friends.
JumpOn has already made their pitch to the investors of Dragon's Den, Europe's Shark Tank counterpart, getting some great exposure.
Hobblit
Encouraged by the power and potential of the sharing economy, Hobblit's founder is building an online platform for local experts to offer unique experiences to visitors. The team is focused on major Canadian cities like Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto.
As a guest you could learn how to make pasta or gelato from scratch, try out 3D printing, or receive a photography class. This is a great idea to offer a unique experience for visitors, and I see experiences like this continuing to gain steam in the future - especially with Millennials.
TikTiks
Finding tickets to an event or trying to sell them - a problem almost all of us have dealt with in the past. Yes, there are websites like Ticketmaster or StubHub but TikTiks is making the exchange a lot easier. The secure app lets users purchase or sell their tickets without scalping it out in the cold or rain the next time you can't make your favorite hockey game. The special angle: TikTiks is perfect for season ticket holders who can't make every game.
Aimsio
One of the most surprising pitches of the day, the Aimsio founder jumped on the stage shyly, but as soon as he started talking, the crowd could tell he had a great idea and vision for his company. It helps, of course, when he dropped the news that Aimsio had been in stealth mode for the past two years and had just raised a near $10 million series A round.
Aimsio is yet another promising startup in the cloud computing space, which offers cloud-based operations management solutions for field-centric companies. Their founding team seemed very knowledgeable in the space and sees a big opportunity to capitalize on the market.
With this recent crop of really bright companies, it's safe to say that Alberta is home to some brilliant entrepreneurs. Canada and Alberta in particular is usually known for its vast resource and energy intensive economy, but there is no better time than now for Alberta to start diversifying the economy. There needs to be new innovations, ideas, and sectors that produce both jobs and opportunities to create. Canada has the potential to be a global economic powerhouse if it chooses to diversify it's economy away from the oil and gas sector into areas like biotech, software, clean energy, and many others.
I'm a proud Canadian, but it can be depressing to see older generations and industries in Canada failing to innovate their businesses and solutions. This is a recipe for disaster, and hopefully this post can spark some of it's readers to wake up and realize its the 21st century. If you are not innovating your business constantly, its a recipe for failure.
Cover photo provided by: Angle Media Group