Five Atlantic Canadian Startups Nail $25,000 Volta Pitch Competition
HALIFAX – Imagine you’re a burgeoning entrepreneur with a game-changing idea trying to get your business off the ground.
Now, imagine someone offered you mentorship, resources, and $25,000 to bring your vision to life. The catch? You only have three minutes to dazzle a seven-member panel—and you’re up against a stacked field of competitors with their own big ideas.
That’s exactly where 15 of Atlantic Canada’s most promising startups found themselves last week when they competed in the latest round of the Volta Cohort pitch competition.
The competition has been around since 2017, giving “high-caliber” local startups a boost in their early days.
Over its lifetime the program has doled out more than $625,000 to 26 different companies, including well-known success stories like Trip Ninja.
On May 13, five new startups joined that list.
They included two artificial intelligence companies (Korr AI helps mining companies with mineral exploration; SmartMed can schedule hundreds of shifts in seconds), the “smart” physiotherapy equipment company VMOPro, the innovative mental health company Habit Forming Technologies, and KuteLab.
Selena Mahrani is the founder of KuteLab, a phone app that analyzes the ingredients of beauty products when users scan their barcodes.
Mahrani drew on her postdoctoral research to create the product, which she says is like having “a chemist in your pocket” that provides unbiased information on how safe and effective beauty products are.
A few days after KuteLab was selected she told Huddle that the Volta Cohort pitch competition was a “fantastic” experience.
She said her $25,000 prize will “make a huge impact” at this stage of her businesses, as it will let KuteLab expand their technical development team.
“I am confident about the future of the business idea, that’s why I’ve dedicated my life to it,” she said.
However, she admitted it was nerve-wracking knowing she only had three minutes to sell it and that she was “pretty nervous” before her pitch.
Darren Steeves, the CEO of Habit Forming Technologies, said the three-minute pitch format was also a challenge for him.
“Three minutes is tough,” he said.
Steeves has decades of experience giving presentations and pitches but admitted he’s had a hard time in the past describing everything Habit Forming Technologies does.
Being forced to distill it all down to three minutes, he said, made him “craft everything that much better.”
“We had to refine what it is we’re actually doing, and it challenges you to do it in three minutes,” he said.
Mahrani agreed, saying pitching your company is one of the best things entrepreneurs can do in the early stages.
“I learn a lot every time I prepare myself to pitch KuteLab in front of the experts from the comments, suggestions and also questions that I receive,” she said. “I highly encourage early-stage startups to participate in such wonderful events and take advantage of exposure to the professionals [like the ones at Volta].”