Introducing: JOLT’s Inaugural Summer 2012 Cohort at CDMN node MaRS
By CDMN on Aug 9, 2012 / Categories: Blog, Partners
The following guest post was originally published on the MaRS blog and is published here with permission.
We are extremely pleased to announce the six startups that form the inaugural cohort of our JOLT Accelerator Program at MaRS. JOLT is MaRS’ first early-stage accelerator program dedicated to building high-growth web & mobile companies that promise to transform the way consumers and enterprises interact with technology. These startups beat out dozens of other applicants from all over Canada.
From niche social networks to sustainable mobile apps, each JOLT startup is determined to disrupt their respective industry.
So without further delay, below is the JOLT Summer 2012 roster, including a brief “elevator pitch” from each company. Learn more about these six amazing teams and check out their introductory videos on our new JOLT startup page!
Team:
Trevor Koverko, CEO
Evan Lewis, CTO
As the education sector rapidly changes, the needs of teachers and students are not being adequately addressed. eProf is an educational community where teachers and students connect in an interactive virtual classroom. Our platform helps teachers by giving them an easy way to consolidate their teaching materials, reach out to students and earn a sustainable income. At the same time, students are given a fun way to learn specific subjects in a live social setting. eProf’s ultimate vision is to offer students and teachers an alternative to academia.
Team:
Eugene Woo, CEO
Lucas Walker, CMO
Jonathan Hertz, Marketing Manager
Eric Carriere, Art Director
Venngage is an online platform for creating beautiful and compelling infographics in minutes. Venngage allows you to automatically jazz up boring reports by integrating with APIs and spreadsheets to produce stunning one-page infographics.
Team:
James Chillcott, CEO
Nick Hoffman, CTO
Hillary Gillespie, Lead Designer
ShelfLife is a next generation social commerce platform providing fans of collectibles with the ultimate secret base to buy, sell and collect the things they love most. Our permanent record of every collectible ever made allows us to automatically match buyers and sellers as efficiently as the stock market. Our business model is based on interlocking revenue streams including sale commissions, collectibles sales and gamification. ShelfLife services some of the largest, most passionate and profitable segments of the consumer economy with a series of linked services that result in extraordinarily high levels of interaction and revenue flow for vendors and partners.
Team:
Mike Holmes, CEO
Bryan Hurren, VP of Products
Suneel Tikkavarapu, Co-founder
SlingRide is an online ridesharing network that allows drivers and passengers to safely connect, coordinate, and reduce their cost of travel. With a host of convenient features backed up by numerous layers of passenger/ride safety measures, SlingRide offers drivers and passengers a fresh new way to experience ridesharing that saves both money and reduces the impact on the environment. Using SlingRide, drivers set their own fee, post their rides, and review and approve all potential passengers before meeting. Passengers can also use SlingRide to search for rides, review and learn more about drivers, make booking requests, coordinate pickup and drop off locations, as well as send online payments. In addition to leveraging the rich social information of popular social networks, the use of advanced mapping and routing technology enables SlingRide users to significantly increase the likelihood of finding ideal ride partners for their journey.
Team:
Lindsey Goodchild, CEO
Dessy Daskalov, CTO
Braiden Goodchild, COO
Greengage Mobile’s mission is to help companies achieve their sustainability goals by inspiring, educating, and engaging employees through the use of innovative mobile software solutions.
Greengage Mobile has created a new software platform, which includes a sustainability-focused smartphone app that works as both an employee engagement tool and a management system. Employees learn how to be more sustainable and get rewards for completed sustainable actions through the interactive, social, and “gamified app”. While fast and comprehensive reporting from a web-based tool means measurable results for management with easy exports into CR and Annual Reports. Greengage helps bridge the huge chasm at the individual and corporate level – between adopting a sustainable philosophy and actually working and living it.
Team:
Keith Loo, CEO
Adnan “Addo” Smajic, CBO
Miroslav Jeliaskoff, CTO
Tout.it is a social media platform for sports fans. It allows sports enthusiasts to have meaningful discussions about sports anytime and all the time. Combining the benefits of social networking sites, community forums, sports blogs, and mobile applications, tout.it aims to be the ultimate destination for sports fans around the world. With over 70 million sports fans in North America and almost 500 million across the globe, tout.it has a tremendous opportunity to be the next big thing in sports.