Venn Garage Program Takes Five New Startups Under Its Wing
MONCTON–Venn Innovation has welcomed five new startups into its incubator program.
This brings the number of early-stage startups participating in the Venn’s Garage program to 15, notes Program Manager Alicia Grayeb. She says the new group comes months after Venn welcomed startups OZ Health and DYOFOX Viclys System into the program.
Grayeb noted the number of companies can vary because the Garage program is not a cohort-style program, like other incubators.
“They can stay up to a year, or a year-and-a-half, and that’s why at any given time we have more than just the ones we onboarded during the pitch competition,” Grayeb said.
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While Venn’s philosophy is “the more the merrier,” when it comes to participation, Grayeb said the organization wants to make sure there aren’t too many participating, so members can get the best guidance and support.
“We always make sure the startups we take on get the best services possible,” she noted.
“At any given time, we tend to keep around 15 startups, but there have been times where we’ve had up to 20, and as long as we can still offer quality mentoring and services for them, we don’t have a specific cap on how many startups we can have in our program.”
The new startups include:
- CHOOZ – a company developing a dating app based on analytics;
- Too-Go-Inc. – a company developing technology to help businesses create, manage, and promote products and services;
- Wander App – a personalized AI platform that matches users with travel recommendations;
- ShopTok – an e-commerce platform handling the logistics and inventory side of the celebrity e-commerce sale of cosmetics;
- Maureen Blacquiere – a company specializing in online and in-person training for website development, social media, and funnel building for business.
The new startups joined Venn’s incubator after it hosted another open pitch day in February.
Startups participating in the Garage program are provided mentoring, coaching, and support with technology validation and the aspects of setting up a business. Participants are also granted access to Venn’s private cloud, with network resources with which they can host meetings and securely save documents and links.
“We connect them with a pool of experts and mentors who work with them to see what ongoing needs each has. This past five months, we’ve been running a lot of workshops on the IT sector, data security, investment, and how to talk to investors,” said Grayeb.
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“Startups go at their own pace, and some can graduate earlier than others – why would we keep them from graduating and going onto further things, if they are ready?”
Venn and the Garage program are subsidized by Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), the City of Moncton, and the province.
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas at [email protected].