Who will take home the cash? Get to know the founders of the Top 11 Startups.
45 applicants. 24 selected companies. 11 finalists. The startups vying for the inaugural Digital Commerce Fintech Award are nearing the homestretch.
On October 14, a team of judges will select the top 5 finalists to pitch one last time for the chance to take home the cold hard cash. $300,000+ will be awarded in total, with $250,000 going to the first prize winner, and $60,000 to the second place company.
As we inch closer to the culmination of the award, we caught up with the top 11 finalists to learn more about their biggest lessons, milestones and what they’ve learned about growing a tech business in Calgary.
Alice Reimer, CEO, Fillip
Fillip is the first digital payment platform built for business fleets. With Fillip, business owners can empower drivers to pay for fuel and maintenance expenses with a secure digital wallet, spend controls and real-time transaction notifications.
Biggest learning?
It's a complex space with multiple stakeholders. Establishing strategic partnerships is critical. If you want to win, build product capabilities that support speed and scale from the onset.
Milestones in the past year.
We launched in January and celebrated our first 100 customers in Q2. We also closed our seed round of 2,6M CAD and added two new executives to accelerate our growth - our VP Strategy & Data and our Head of Growth & Customer Success.
On growing your business in Calgary.
Calgary's innovation ecosystem is one that enables entrepreneurs to start, scale, stay and succeed. We also have access to some of the best and brightest minds here, and many generations of remarkable talent that gives back and leans in. The infrastructure and the talent is there to support every stage of growth.
Evan Ferguson, CEO, Credit App
At Credit App, we’ve built a modern platform to securely and efficiently manage data transfer for consumer credit applications. To date, we have helped over 125,000 consumers process over $2 billion applications for automotive, residential rentals.
Biggest learning?
The importance of prioritizing good people. Good people attract good people which has allowed us to accelerate our product and engineering development.
Milestones in the past year.
Software contracts signed with multiple national lenders & the addition of senior Engineering team members.
On growing your business in Calgary.
We believe in the next 3-5 years there will be an expansion in Calgary of technology based employment opportunities and we intend to be at the forefront.
Jamie Beddis, VP Business Development, YRPlans
YRPlans is creating better financial outcomes for Canadians workers with The Smart Benefit™ - an employee attraction and retention tool that lets employers help employees with debt repayment.
Biggest learning?
Our biggest lesson was to accept our finite menu of employee debt solutions and acknowledge that in our first year of operations, we are logistically unable to fulfill every prospective request sent our way.
Milestones in the past year.
Onboarded our first Client within 6 months of completing MVP, completed a national pilot program with Canada’s largest provider of group savings plans, leading to a Preferred Vendor Agreement with Sun Life Financial & we’re ahead of schedule with the development of our ‘Mortgage Relief Benefit’.
On growing your business in Calgary.
The ecosystem contains all the services needed to execute on our technology platform. In a city known for innovation, we already have early adoption of our product, as well as access to mentors and experts and a deep pool of talent.
Jonah Chininga, Co-Founder & CEO, Miq
Miq is a financial platform that enables cooperatives to pool funds, save and build credit. We're enhancing how communities and capital work together through accessible, collaborative and social tools.
Biggest learning?
My biggest lesson has been the importance of timing. We're seeing changing consumer behaviour because of the high cost of living and economic pressures. Consumers are looking for better ways to do things, and we can seize the opportunity by leveraging technology and creative thinking to generate consumer surplus better than large slow incumbents.
Milestones in the past year.
We raised our pre-seed financing to build our product and continue our mission of enhancing how communities and capital work together to build community wealth. We partnered with Visa as a Fintech-approved partner to leverage their expansive payment network to reimagine community banking.
On growing your business in Calgary.
Calgary presents a lot of opportunities, especially for fintech startups. The embracement of digital transformation and talent pool makes it a great place to grow and scale our business.
Julien Brault, PDG | CEO, Hardbacon
Hardbacon is a fintech start-up whose mission is to help Canadians make better financial decisions. The company's mobile app connects to its users' bank and investment accounts to help them plan, budget and invest.
Biggest learning?
My biggest learning was that you need to find the best product-market fit.
Milestones in the past year.
Closed a $700,000 equity crowdfunding round on FrontFundr, launched the web version of our app & signed affiliation partnerships with 67 new clients, including major financial institutions such as CIBC, TD, AMEX and BMO.
On growing your business in Calgary.
Calgary is a great place to recruit world-class talent who know what makes Western Canada unique.
Kendall Raessler, Founder & CEO, Ownest
At Ownest, we’re passionate about providing an uncomplicated and streamlined process that empowers our partners to make the business process easier for consumers and businesses and to drive quality consumers directly from the point-of-sale in seconds.
Biggest learning?
Businesses want to understand how their products add value to customers' lives, make their work better and get results. On one side of the scale you have a business who lends out money to make money, on the other side you have a client who wants to save money.
Milestones in the past year.
Having successful relationships with 70% Alberta’s largest builders, mortgage brokers, realtors and small-mid sized lenders in Canada, we have other industry partners becoming resellers of our products and being added to other industries' technology roadmaps and have transitioned into the US with the opportunity to bring some interconnector opportunities back into Canada.
On growing your business in Calgary.
We’re on a mission to reimagine the way we live and work. We continue to create and to scale growth in Calgary and Alberta through more employment and business opportunities and build relationships with our partners-partners.
Kody Carroll, CEO, Integrity Technology Solutions
Integrity Technology Solutions (ITS) is a high-growth Calgary-based audit automation technology company that focuses on eliminating some of the biggest financial challenges in the energy accounting, audit, and joint venture space.
Biggest learning?
ITS has learned that all service offerings should start by focusing on the client and listening closely to their actual needs and problems. By listening closely to our clients’ pain points before product development, we were able to get early traction and immediate market penetration.
Milestones in the past year.
ITS’s biggest achievement was to successfully stress test our product on a paid project that involved the contract compliance review and audit of millions of transactions. We were able to demonstrate that our product is able to handle even the largest energy projects in Canada.
On growing your business in Calgary.
The Calgary technology ecosystem continues to develop in an exciting way but is also supported by an innovative energy sector that has relevance on the international stage.
Mike Zouhri, Co-Founder & Chief Pain Officer, Painworth
PainWorth is the world’s first automated solution for settling your personal injury claim. We’re making settlements faster, fairer, and easier for personal injury victims and insurance companies alike— saving both parties tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and helping to settle claims much sooner.
Biggest learning?
Discovering that we made a win-win product and the enormous amounts of money we can save both sides of the equation.
Milestones in the past year.
Helped over 2000 Canadians settle their personal injury claims, including over 1000 Albertans, raised a seed investment round recently, which meant hiring more people and making the technology even better & were featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Betakit, and a few others big publications.
On growing your business in Calgary.
About 30% of the accident victims using our app today are in Calgary, along with a large number of our employees, advisors, and investors. We’re looking at partnering with insurance companies that have offices here to open a physical space, as well as partner with massage therapists, chiropractors, and physiotherapists.
Wesley Sessenwein, CEO, PayShepherd
PayShepherd is the contract management platform manufacturing facilities rely on to maintain healthy relationships with their contractors. Our intelligence catches billing errors before they turn into large disputes and finally gives operational teams real-time cost visibility on maintenance projects.
Biggest learning?
Do not underestimate the power of the team you build if they’re aligned around the mission. As a CEO, my biggest learning has been to know when to get out of their way.
Milestones in the past year.
Doubling our customer base, triple digit revenue growth & closing a venture led seed investment round.
On growing your business in Calgary.
Access to talent who understand the market and customers we serve, support from the local innovation community, non dilutive funding agencies and local investors.
Yvette Wu, CEO, YieldExchange
YieldExchange is Canada's first B2B digital platform for organizations to access competitive GIC rates with speed, transparency and ease. Our platform acts as an online GIC marketplace for investors such as Canadian municipalities, universities, school boards, hospitals and large corporations to access competitive rates directly from our partnering financial institutions.
Biggest learning?
The importance and value of building a strong community and genuine relationships. They say it takes a village to raise a child, same goes for a startup baby!
Milestones in the past year.
With only $60K initial bootstrapped investment; we built and launched our platform, surpassed $100 Million in posted GIC transactions since go-live (Q4 2021) & signed on 20 Financial Institutions including some of the largest Credit Unions in Canada.
On growing your business in Calgary.
We see a huge opportunity to grow our business in Calgary. Calgary has a strong credit union system and those are the key financial institutions we hope to support by providing low-cost access to new wholesale deposit clients.
Zakir Kanji, Co-Founder, altruWisdom
altruWisdom uses digital technology to help Canadians become financially resilient. Through our subscription-based online platform, members can access tools, resources and personal and group financial coaching to help them make smart money decisions.
Biggest learning?
Continue to learn from your customer. Our current focus to scale our coaching program was born out of listening closely to our customers to ensure we can help them progress in their financial lives.
Milestones in the past year.
We launched our new coaching program and are in the process of developing the coaching platform. We’ve been fortunate to secure a larger scale B2B partner and have also expanded our team.
On growing your business in Calgary.
We find that the business community in Calgary is genuinely interested in working together to help our city and country progress. The city is open to innovation and new ideas, and there is ongoing financial and innovation power here to lead the charge.
