| The Emerging Entrepreneurs Contest recognizes and rewards Québec-based up-and-comers who contribute to the advancement of business by demonstrating remarkable creativity and innovation. The 25 laureates are invited to participate to C2 Montréal 2018, May 23-25, courtesy of The Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation, where they will benefit from a tailored program, meet with world- renowned speakers, take part in various discussions and workshops, and get to rub shoulders with leading figures in commerce and creativity. | ||
Agorize Canada Aurélie Wen, Director, North America |
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Agorize Canada is reinventing the way companies innovate and recruit thanks to its open innovation platform. This Montréal startup specializes in organizing hackathons and innovation challenges. Since its creation in March 2017, Agorize Canada has organized 10 challenges connecting major Canadian groups to a global community of 5 million innovators (students, developers, startups, entrepreneurs and corporate employees), through its collaborative platform.Agorize Canada works with companies such as CBC, CGI, TD, National Bank, Desjardins, Oxford Properties, Baker & McKenzie, Microsoft and L'Oréal. |
Aifred Health Inc. Dr. Marc J. Miresco, Chief Medical Officer |
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Aifred Health is developing a clinical decision- making tool in mental health for physicians to help predict which treatments will be most likely to be effective for a particular patient. Our main goal is to help healthcare professionals choose the best treatments, measure reported patient outcomes, and adjust treatment plans as needed in a personalized way. To do this, we use an in- depth learning approach to build a predictive model based on the best available data from clinical trials, research studies, and data collected through daily symptom monitoring and a recommendation tool based on best practice guidelines in psychiatry. |
Anagraph Nicolas Delffon, CEO |
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Anagraph is a geographical intelligence studio. It provides decision support solutions to guide business intelligence through the analysis of large volumes of geospatial data. Founded by Nicolas Delffon in 2016, and now employing 4 full-time analysts, Anagraph helps its clients (Teo Taxi, city of Montréal, Olameter, Pur Vodka, Igloofest and others) to optimize the use of their data and use it as a lever for business development. In 2018, the company launched a project to automate its spatial analysis and make data enrichment accessible to a wider audience. This new online service, Geometric, allows marketing agencies as well as e-commerce companies to better understand the distribution of their customers and optimize the marketing of their products. |
Autonom Inc. Hugues Marceau, Co-founder |
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Hugues is a young engineering leader: during his studies he founded the first electric Formula racecar in the Americas and led the team to international competitions across the world. He worked at the Masters level at the Hydro-Québec research institute on a technology that could replace the current lithium battery. Now he?s combining his engineering, project management and business skills, building a startup that would enable developing countries to have access to reliable, clean and affordable electricity. |
Blue Citadel Technologies Inc. Jeff St-Louis, Account director |
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Our mission is to present the latest and most advanced technologies as well as the most energy-efficient LED lighting systems. Offering growers an energy- efficient lighting system capable of producing much higher output than conventional systems, this is a new era for all producers. Blue Citadel Technologies Inc. is proud to respond to the call and to be part of the revolution. |
Boréas Technologies Inc. Simon Chaput, President |
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Imagine you're shopping on your tablet for new clothes and you can feel the texture of the fabric by touching your screen. Haptic (touch) technology enables you to feel an objects via the screen of your smartphone or tablet. However, power consumption of haptics need to be reduced to achieve its full potential. Boréas Technologies offers haptic electronic components that allow for 10X power savings compared to the competition. Our products are perfect for mass consumer electronics (e.g. phones, watches, gaming) where space and power are limited. |
CANN Forecast Naysan Saran, Co-founder & CEO |
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CANN Forecast applies artificial intelligence to help municipalities make better shoreline and water treatment management decisions, helping our partners reduce operating costs and better understand their impact on the environment. CANN was founded by the winners of the 2016 AquaHacking challenge. After signing its first contract with the city of Montréal, CANN continues to refine its technology and deploys it throughout Québec and Ontario. |
Deeplite Davis Sawyer, Co-founder & Product Lead |
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Deep Learning and AI technologies are disrupting every industry in an incredible way - self-driving cars, drones, surveillance cameras, detecting cancers, virtual assistants and much more. With the emergence of deep learning on mobile and embedded devices, AI solutions must satisfy strict computing requirements, which often limit performance and prevent people from moving to these devices. Deeplite created the AI-Driven Optimizer to make deep neural networks (DNNs) faster, smaller and energy- efficient from cloud to edge computing. Our holistic approach, developed in part at Brown University, combines powerful optimizations with design space exploration in a single intelligent framework to make AI more accessible and affordable. |
Demos Robotics Greg Boki, CEO |
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Founded in 2017 in Montréal, Demos Robotics manufacture multifunctional personal robots with scalable and adaptable Artificial Intelligence. Useful for people of all ages and lifestyles, our technology is developped initially for autonomous or semi-autonomous senior citizens. DemosRobotics and its partners have a mission to propel Québec and Canada to leading positions in the robot revolution of the next decade and to contribute to a world where the benefits of robotics and artificial intelligence are equitably shared through a decentralized, transparent and democratic process of governance and ownership. |
Dumornay Délis Jason Delis, President |
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We started Dumornay Delis (dD) with two goals in mind: to make unbelievably tasty hot Haitian-style peanut butter available to Canadians, and to support peanut farmers and the Haitian economy by importing peanuts from Haiti. dD Manba is the only spicy peanut butter in Canada to include premium peanuts from Haiti. Since Manba?s founding in October 2015, it has imported over 7 tonnes of peanuts! All those rich, nutty peanuts were used to create dD?s very own spicy Haitian-style peanut butter. |
Embrace the life VR Naima Abbadi, CEO |
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Embrace the Life VR provides immersive virtual reality simulations for cognitive and physical rehabilitation that are user-friendly, enjoyable and educational while providing a positive emotional experience for users that results in a higher level of motivation, presence and commitment. What is the problem we are trying to solve? Physical and cognitive rehabilitation is often hampered by a lack of client engagement in the rehabilitation process, leading to frustration and withdrawal of patients from sessions, leading to longer and more costly rehabilitation. Motivation and apathy are key mechanisms that affect the engagement of clients/patients. |
Hardbacon Julien Brault, CEO |
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Julien Brault has been simplifying finance for years as a business reporter at Les Affaires prior to founding Hardbacon. He is an author and a bookworm, founding a non-fiction publishing house that he sold in 2010. When he's not working to improve capitalism, he's still working to improve capitalism. |
Impactful Health R&D Mina Mekhail, President |
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IHRD develops innovative biomaterial-based solutions for the food and health industries. We are currently developing active packaging to prolong the shelf life of fresh fish, since they are highly perishable and there is an unmet need to reduce fish waste. Currently, 10-16 million tonnes of fish are wasted globally every year. Our differentiation factors are: 1) compliance with most recent US and Canadian regulations; 2) anti-microbial properties and reduction of water loss to preserve texture; and 3) compostability. Our beachhead market is estimated at $100M. The co-founders (both Ph.Ds) have 20- plus years of combined experience in biomaterials and toxicology. Our vision is to commercialize this new packaging to provide a sustainable solution that reduces carbon footprints and increases profitability for different stakeholders in the seafood industry. |
Intelligence Industrielle Jeremie Ponak, Co-founder & Vice-president, business development |
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We're a Quebec based startup that's creating the world's next smart factories. Incubated in the CENTECH, one of the best tech incubators in North America, we help manufacturers take the industry 4.0 leap with a complete solution to collect, control, analyze, and optimize data from factory equipment. In far too many factories, machines are sitting idle, making the manufacturing processes extremely inefficient. Intelligence Industrielle thus connects the factory's systems to improve and optimize, because manufacturers must better understand what happens on their shop floor. |
Kalepso Georgios Depastas, Co-founder |
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Kalepso protects sensitive data on the cloud with the world's strongest post-quantum encryption and the concept of "privacy-by-design." While businesses must inevitably adopt the cloud if they want to get ahead, regulators and consumers are confronted by high-profile data breaches, which cost the US economy $2B in 2017. Kalepso is the first to bridge this gap with a proprietary tech invented at Harvard: unlike other solutions, its dynamic encryption protects the data from current and future attacks, while retaining the applications' functionality. At the same time, Kalepso boosts data privacy compliance, including PIPEDA, GDPR, etc. Kalepso is the winner of the 2017 Canada Fintech Forum Startup award and the Cooperathon Cybersecurity prize by Caisse populaire Desjardins. |
MicroHabitat Orlane Panet, Co-owner |
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At MicroHabitat, we offer a turnkey service of urban agriculture. Our expertise in agricultural production on rooftops and on the ground allows us to offer our customers an ecological and personalized production of fresh vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers (100% chemical- free). Our experts take care of installing, maintaining and harvesting your urban garden. We can also offer a wider array of complimentary services such as educational programs for schools, team-building workshops at work around urban agriculture, promotional material and content and many other things.We offer our services to businesses, schools, organizations and individuals.We are also partners with the Breakfast Club of Canada. Each of our gardens will provide meals for children in need. Let's cultivate change together! |
Muses Urnes Design Inc. Marie-Claude Lemire, President |
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With its innovative vision, Muses Urnes Design is redefining funeral trends. After our first collection of contemporary urns, we have developed - in collaboration with INEDI-Expertise and Research in Industrial Design - ROOTS, an ecological urn that turns into a tree. When one life stops, another begins. This new eco-responsible and highly symbolic ritual accompanies the mourning of hope and turns cemeteries into forest. After two years of R & D, which led to the development of a new biomaterial based on recycled coffee grounds, ROOTS was the winner of the GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN 2018 and has obtained the ecological certification of the Green Burial Council. ROOTS is also available for pets. |
Perceiv Research Inc. Maor Zaltzhendler, Cofounder & CTO |
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The aging population is becoming an increasing socio-economical issue that needs to be addressed in order to support that demographic shift. It is therefore important to diagnose and treat illnesses, such as Alzheimer's, as early as possible in order allow one to age in good health. Perceiv Research offers AI-driven solutions targeting problems pertaining to aging and the diseases associated with it. We are currently focusing our efforts on early diagnosis of Alzheimer?s disease and providing very accurate imaging biomarkers to track the progression of dementia. This type of solution could reduce the costs associated with clinical trials while speeding up new drug development. |
Rapid Check Solutions Michel Cournoyer, Founder & CEO |
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The Rapid Check™ Solution is the result of extensive practical experience acquired by Michel Cournoyer over nearly 15 years. An iron worker for many years, Michel has faced major problems in the field on many occasions. With each new project, the hassle of looking for tools and equipment on construction sites was repeated, yet no one took the time to solve it given the scale of the construction projects. The constant travel to-and-fro in a risky work environment is dangerous. In addition, it wastes time and therefore productivity. It was thus obvious to Michel there was a need to innovate in the management and visibility of building materials for employees. |
Saccades Analytics Isabel Galiana, CEO |
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Isabel Galiana is CEO and co-founder of Saccade Analytics, a Montréal based start-up that leverages eye-tracking VR to provide diagnostic metrics for neurological evaluations. After an international beach volleyball career, she pursued a Ph.D in economics, where her doctoral dissertation focused on policies aimed at inducing breakthrough innovations. At Saccade Analytics, she is bringing theory into practice as she leads this revolutionary medical software company. |
Smartbills Sébastien Labine, President & Founder |
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Founded in 2017 by Sébastien Labine, Smartbills' goal is to revolutionize the billing industry by digitizing and centralizing receipts on the cloud. Helping companies go paperless, it allows users to easily manage their bills and finances. |
Soundskrit Sahil Gupta, Cofounder & Product Lead |
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Soundskrit is fundamentally changing how sounds are captured to enable the next generation of audio applications. The new vocal interfaces seek to capture sounds from greater distances while remaining isolated from ambient noise. Since traditional microphones capture sounds from all directions, a network of microphones is required to isolate sounds from a single direction. This increases the cost and size of the systems and diminishes audio quality. Soundskrit has developed a directional microphone inspired by nature that allows the separation of sounds according to their direction without compromising on the audio quality or system size. The Soundskrit microphone will greatly improve speech recognition and sound localization, enabling a new suite of consumer electronic features. |
Tricentris Grégory Pratte, Verrox Ambassador |
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Grégory Pratte is part of the Tricentris team as its VERROX ambassador. Passionate about the highly promising innovation that is the powder created from glass recyclables, Grégory's mission is to help industry decision-makers discover the many benefits of this material. Determined and consistent, he is always looking for new markets in search of innovative and sustainable solutions. His vast experience in business development and his knowledge of the environment in Québec help him to take up the challenge of discovering the countless applications of VERROX. Passionate about innovation, Grégory hopes to share his passion for this very promising glass market. |
Upscale Technology Sami Cheref, Co-founder |
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Upscale Technology is a company originally created with a passion for music. It is difficult for a musician to have a good performance without the help of an experienced sound technician. Our mission is to provide a simple and affordable technology for musicians to control their sound. |
Wavelite Charlotte Savage-Pollock, Co-founder |
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Wavelite prides itself on drastically reducing IoT's carbon footprint with a sustainable wireless communication platform for sensors. By riding sensor data on ambient Wi-Fi or any other existing protocol (e.g. Bluetooth, zigbee), Wavelite reduces the power consumption of modern radios, such as Bluetooth, by a factor of 1000. Wavelite reduces waste and electricity usage by enabling battery-free sensors. By enabling a self-sustained IoT infrastructure for building automation, Wavelite contributes to the further reduction of GHG emissions (scaling up to approximately 6.7 million metric tonnes in reduction). The startup is currently developing its beta prototypes to be pilot tested for automated-building and urban farm IoT applications. Since raising seed funds through TandemLaunch in August 2017, Wavelite won the $100,000 US grand prize at the Smart City FIA competition and was honoured to be awarded the CES Innovator Award for Eureka Park Startups in January 2018, along with many other achievements. |