KITCHENER, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Communitech is pleased to announce Alexandra McCalla of AirMatrix, Toronto, ON, has been awarded $100,000 at the Communitech Fierce Founders Bootcamp Pitch Competition Wednesday. McCalla took top place after pitching her startup that creates an airspace mapping system for autonomous drones in high-density urban areas used by commercial businesses like Amazon.
Gabrielle Masone of Coloursmith Labs Inc., Halifax, NS, and Shawn Hewat of Wavy, Toronto, ON, were named runners-up and awarded spots in the Communitech Fierce Founders Accelerator.
The two-part bootcamp hosted female founders with early-stage startups at Communitech to develop business skills for their businesses. Over two weeks, twenty-four women took part in the Winter 2019 Fierce Founders Bootcamp at Communitech in Kitchener where they learned about running a startup and business fundamentals including customer validation, HR and leadership, creating financials, building sales funnels and marketing. They were also coached on their pitch presentations.
Other founders who pitched Wednesday include:
Susan Chen, TasteGuru Artificial Intelligence Inc., Toronto, ON
Kristal Lewis, Senior Care Connect, Toronto, ON
Stephanie Florio, Swob Inc., Vaughn, ON
Rebecca Swabey, Maple Precision Inc., Kitchener, ON
Marianne Bell, Toxon Technologies Inc., Waterloo, ON
The pitches were judged by a panel of industry experts, including Jennifer Smith, Senior Vice President, Technology and Operations at Cineplex Digital Media, Talia Abramowitz, Chief Operating Officer, Artificial Intelligence Practice at Deloitte, Aaron Bast, Investment Director at MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, Steven Woods, Senior Director of Engineering at Google and Michelle Cooper, Managing Director, Growth & Transition Capital at BDC.
Fierce Founders is a Communitech program backed by Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Deloitte, Google, the City of Kitchener and the Government of Ontario and the Government of Canada that helps women tech entrepreneurs accelerate their companies. For more information about Communitech’s women in technology programming, please visit http://www.communitech.ca/fiercefounders.
About Communitech
Communitech was founded in 1997 by a group of entrepreneurs committed to making Waterloo Region a global innovation leader. At the time it was crazy talk, but somehow this community managed to pull it off. Today, Communitech is a public-private innovation hub that supports a community of more than 1400 companies — from startups to scale-ups to large global players.
Communitech is a member of the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs and helps tech companies start, grow and succeed in three distinct ways.
- Communitech is a place – the center of gravity for entrepreneurs and innovators. A clubhouse for building cool tech and great companies.
- Communitech delivers programs – helping companies at all stages with access to capital, customers and talent. We are here to help them grow and innovate.
- Communitech partners in building a world-leading ecosystem – making sure we have all the ingredients (and the brand) to go from a small startup to a global giant.
