The Fundica Roadshow mission is to educate, inspire and fund entrepreneurs across Canada. In 2017, the initiative has organized 10 city stops from Victoria to Halifax in order to seek out Canada’s most promising startups. 

As the fourth stop in the 2017 edition, Waterloo makes the cut as one of Fundica’s most successful events yet. With an exceptional lineup of pitching startups and educational talks on marketing, legal and pitching tips for entrepreneurs, the conference sparked new ideas and connections. 

The competition took place at the Accelerator Centre on March 29, 2017. Although the competition was tough with a total of 16 startups all pitching for the $1,000,000 Investment Award, one clear winner took home the trophy for Waterloo.  

The startups were judged by a panel of 13 individuals composed of VCs, banks and government organizations from 500 Startups Canada, First Stone Venture Partners, BDC, OCE, Startup Waterloo, Ryerson Futures, Leverage.IT, Communitech, Startup Canada and others.

In addition to an opportunity to receive the $1,000,000 FSVP Investment Award, each Fundica Roadshow city stop winner receives 3 months of free office space at WeWork, a cloud hosting package from CANARIE and free accounting services from Intuit QuickBooks.  

The pitching startups were graded based on market potential, solution, team, pitch and readiness for the $1,000,000 FSVP Investment Award.  

Ryan Close, Co-Founder of Bartesian, won the Roadshow with a captivating pitch about their innovative product. Bartesian creates bar-quality cocktails on demand, providing an effortless way to enjoy and serve premium cocktails at home.

“The million dollars would allow us to put some more resources into developing further capsule recipes so that we can expand and grow rapidly along with the demand that we’ve already encountered through major retail, online and hotel,” said Close about how Bartesian would grow their business with the $1,000,000 Investment Award.

Stay tuned for the next Fundica Roadshow stop on April 6 in Halifax. Register now for an intense pitch competition, valuable networking opportunities and great speaker sessions!   

Check out the remaining 2017 Fundica Roadshow city stops:  

·         Halifax @ Innovacorp, April 6 

·         Vancouver @ SFU Harbour Centre, April 28 

·         Victoria @ VIATEC, May 2 

·         Montreal @ SID LEE, June 2

·         Toronto, TBA