Saturday, November 25, 2017
Brampton, ON - In an exciting and intense 54 hours this past weekend, seven businesses went from concept to potential commercialization at Brampton City Hall.
The City of Brampton and the Brampton Entrepreneur Centre, in partnership with Startup Peel, hosted the Techstars Global Startup Peel Region Weekend 2017. Attendees got access to exclusive resources to help prepare for success and make connections to mentors and other start-up teams.
Approximately 60 designers, developers, marketers, and entrepreneurs from across the Region of Peel, about half from Brampton, came together to share ideas, form teams and launch start-ups. An initial brave 20 individuals started the weekend by pitching their business ideas. Seven of those were selected to form the basis of teams around which other participants, coaches and mentors collaborated over the weekend to get from the initial business idea to a minimum viable product or service.
On Sunday night, three winning pitches were selected by a panel of judges.
First place: GoReno
Several Brampton residents were part of the winning team that built a business to help homeowners find trusted contractors for home renovation projects. A user can upload their project to the GoReno digital platform, and accredited vendors can bid on it. The platform provides project tracking and dispute resolution features to support customer confidence.
The group included PJ Grant, Arsala Bangash, Osemudiamen Umolu, Santiago Ordonez, Victoria Nguyen and Billy Stone.
Second place: Nat’s Robotics Academy
Thirteen-year-old Brampton resident Nathaniel Hawron started a business introducing children to technology by bringing robotics to birthday parties, where party-goers learn basic robotics and programming in a fun and comfortable environment. The goal is to build on this foundation to ultimately launch a school for robotics.
The group included Nathaniel Hawron, Vanessa McCulloch, Caoimhe O’Feaghail, Abena Bota Himah, Kirat Padda and Baiyu Chen
Third place: Maia
Building on the popularity and utility of services like Siri and Alexa, Maia is a digital personal assistant that learns from your task and activity history to help you prioritize and schedule work. By understanding what is important, it ensures that when schedule disruptions occur, you are still on top of the work that is important to you.
Maia team members included Syed Raza, Astaua Alam, Shashannk Srinivawan, Alina Raza
The winners received packages of goods and services including business coaching, print services, memberships and gift cards to support business launch and growth
Exciting things are happening in the entrepreneurial community in Brampton. Startup Weekend is clear evidence of the energy and innovation that is fueling new ideas, new businesses and new jobs and investment right here in our city. These entrepreneurs, along with new partnerships, a new university and connections with an innovation community on the Waterloo to Brampton to Toronto corridor are the driving forces behind our economic success in the future.
- Mayor Linda Jeffrey
