The 2017 Fundica Roadshow presented by Intuit QuickBooks concluded on June 23 at Huff Estates Winery in Prince Edward County. For its fifth edition, the nationwide pitch competition featured over 450 pitch applications across ten Canadian cities.

The competition was fierce as only 12 startups out of the 150 selected pitching startups moved onto the final round. The finalists were graded based on market potential, solution, team, pitch and investment readiness for the $1,000,000 FSVP Investment Award.

The two winners are Quote Kong, a quoting process automation for contractors, and Vini, SaaS software that modernizes wine selling and buying. A special mention is also warranted to Nobal Technologies and Lexop as First Stone expressed interest in investment after further due diligence. Congratulations to the other eight competing finalists FLODocs, reDock, UGRAN Drive Safe, Bartesian, GreyLitMatters, thisopenspace, Certn and YodelUP.

Nathan Seiling from Quote Kong earned his way into the Finale by claiming the trophy at the Toronto Fundica Roadshow on May 24. Alan Serpa from Vini was the Calgary Wildcard invited to the Finale.

“When I pitched at the Fundica Roadshow one year and a half ago, it was a failure and that’s ok,” Seiling says about overcoming failure on the pitching stage. “It’s never about the success or failure at that time, it’s about what you do with that information next time. Repeat the successes, fix the failures.”

Serpa is excited to move Vini forward thanks to the FSVP Investment. “This funding allows us to really dig into the production and launch to get our client to market in the fall. What that does is it accelerates us into exactly where we need to be, which is in refining, finishing, development, into processes and onboarding the systems that we’re going to implement with our client.”

The Fundica Roadshow celebrated their most successful year to date and will be back in 2018. Stay tuned for more surprises!