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L-SPARK Team Feeling Bullish Moving into a Post-pandemic Mode

Reporting on the progress achieved over the Quarter, the team at L-SPARK feels positive about the near- and longer-term programs being planned and executed. These include the current and upcoming Accelerators and the return to live events.

However, until now the team had to focus on delivering key events in a requisite virtual fashion. In April, SaaS Showcase 2021 was held — the seventh instance of this annual event. It provided opportunity for the latest cohort of B2B and B2B2C Accelerator companies (9 companies in total this year) to network with and pitch their refined investment stories to a group of relevant online audience members. Information about the pitching companies can be found here.

In May, together with partners TELUS, Blackberry, Solace and CIRA, L-SPARK celebrated the graduation of the eight start-ups that formed the first MedTech Accelerator cohort. The virtual MedTech Demo Day showcased the innovative new Healthcare solutions being developed by these young Canadian companies using advanced new connected, secure medical platforms and devices. Details are available here.

Both events above celebrated the successes of the entrepreneurs and highlighted the progress and growth they experienced over their time with L-SPARK.

While those two programs came to a close, L-SPARK kicked off the second cohort of Compass North, the Accelerator formed in partnership with Queen’s University and dedicated to women-led technology companies. They also opened applications for the next SaaS Accelerator, LSA-8.

The application process for LSA-8 runs until mid-August, and is open to Canadian startups who believe they have a business vision that matters, a large addressable customer market, and as a B2B or B2B2C software company, a $5-10K monthly recurring revenue (MRR) stream. If the company is focused on deep technology but is still pre-revenue, they must at least demonstrate a prototype of the product.

As Q3 wraps up in September, applicants who manage to get short-listed will be invited to a Selection Day event, where they will pitch their plans to a Committee made up of the L-SPARK team, interested investors and key partners. This Committee will review all the plans, and also be looking for healthy doses of passion, leadership, coachability, focus, commitment and perseverance. These characteristics will help determine the final cohort for what will become the eighth L-SPARK SaaS Accelerator.

Eight cohorts and counting. To date, L-SPARK has welcomed into their programs more than 75 companies, helped those startups raise just shy of $100M in funding, and developed an international community of more than ten thousand members. As you might guess, the ongoing Quarterly activities shown here suggest that those numbers are going to continue to climb. l-spark.com