U of C program for startups to double in size
A program at the University of Calgary that aims to help commercialize early-stage technology ventures has proven so popular since its launch last year that it is doubling in size.
Creative Destruction Labs, which started at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management in 2012 and was expanded to the U of C’s Haskayne School of Business in 2017, announced Thursday it will expand the number of seed-stage startups it accepts from 25 to 50. The new spaces will be part of a new stream of the program focusing specifically on the energy sector.
Creative Destruction Lab-Rockies, or CDL, gives entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors working on promising technological innovations access to coaching from a group of experienced, successful entrepreneurs, as well as U of C faculty members with scientific and technical expertise. The startups work with the mentors to achieve business objectives and raise capital.
In its inaugural year, the program received 170 applications for the 25 available spots, said Alice Reimer, CDL-Rockies site lead. The startups involved raised almost $14 million in seed funding.
“We had a tremendous interest … and so there was a natural opportunity for us to go ahead and expand it,” Reimer said. “We’ve had close to 260 applications for 50 spots this year.”
About 100 of this year’s applications have been from startups interested in the new energy sector stream of the program. They come from as far afield as Texas, Colorado, the U.K., Chile, Dubai, Iran, Singapore, Sweden and India, Reimer said.
“We are seeing technologies that truly have an opportunity to both support and disrupt the energy industry of the future,” she said, adding applicants are doing work in a wide range of subjects, including carbon to value, hydrocarbon leak detection, digital oilfield data analytics, power management and electricity, extraction and drilling, safety and water technologies.
INGU Solutions Inc., a graduate from the first cohort of CDL-Rockies last year, went from a pre-commercial company to a commercial stage company as a result of its involvement in the program, said co-founder and CEO John van Pol. The company, which specializes in pipeline leak detection technology, was given the ability to run a live test on an operational 10-km sour gas line by Scott Saxberg, then the CEO of Crescent Point Energy and one of the mentors with the CDL program.
INGU also raised $1 million in equity within six weeks, something van Pol also attributes to the company’s participation in CDL.
“It made our fundraising efforts significantly easier and gave us a good network,” he said. “For us, it was a world of difference.”
In addition to the energy stream of the program, CDL will also continue to offer its primary stream open to startups with innovations in a variety of sectors, including health care, agriculture and industrials.