On Jan. 24, the University of New Brunswick’s Wu Conference Centre was filled with student entrepreneurs awaiting the results of the BMO Apex Startup Challenge.
The challenge has brought the entrepreneurial spirit alive across Canada for the past 25 years.
This year the competitors were not only engaged in the challenge but they also took part in training workshops and networking opportunities with judges, potential investors and future employers.
The challenge held two tracks of competition from Jan. 23-24 for undergraduate and graduate competitors.
Halpie Technologies is a company that is transforming healthcare with high quality data from an all-in-one monitoring chest patch, which aims to shorten hospitalization time and reduce the workload on medical professionals.
Émile Tremblay-Antoine and William Boucher, representatives of Halpie Technologies from Université Laval won first place for the undergraduate track.
Boucher said it was a great experience to participate in the competition. It helped them practice pitching their ideas in different contexts where they either needed to be concise or answer complicated questions from the judges.
“I’d say some of the questions that we got were some of the best that we’ve seen from other competitions or other demo days,” said Tremblay-Antoine.
Each track competed for a total of $30,000 in prizes with $8,000 going to the first place entrepreneurs. Over 150 teams applied and only 24 were selected to participate.
TissueTinker is a company that focuses on accelerating cancer therapeutic development by creating a 3D bio printed modeling platform to capture key aspects related to cancer growth and metastasis, won second place for the graduate track.
Ben Ringler, CEO of TissueTinker and graduate student at McGill University was ecstatic with the result of the competition.
“I’m really glad to have been able to get the opportunity to come here and to meet the rest of the Atlantic Canada network,” he said. “It’s not so often that we get to do the same kind of cross pollination. So it’s great to have been able to branch out.”
Miranda Myles and Nick St. Pierre, representatives of Caddy Cap, are developing a product that maintains people’s safety during a night out.
“If we were to come to another competition like this, the judges gave us some input to include more specific things in our pitches that will help us,” said Myles.
Representatives from both Halpie Technologies and Caddy Cap encouraged young entrepreneurs to not give up and seize opportunities like the BMO Apex Startup Challenge.
“My best advice would be, find something you’re really passionate about and when you have that passion, you’ll do whatever it takes to win,” said St. Pierre.
Myles complemented St. Pierre’s idea by saying it can be “daunting” to build a business from scratch, but “just try not to let it get you down because it’s a lot of work at once.”
“I’d say believe in your idea,” said Tremblay-Antoine. “If you’ve been working on it, it’s probably going to be good and you’re going to love presenting it.”
