Meet The 6 New Startups Launched Out Of JOLT, The Toronto Tech Incubator

A group of us TechCrunchers bundled up and headed to the Great White North last week to kick off our three-city Northern Meetup tour with a stop in Toronto, the largest city in Canada.

While we were in town, we visited the MaRS Discovery District, a non-profit entity focused on tech innovation and entrepreneurship. Housed within MaRS’ “Commons” area are the participants in the JOLT startup incubator, a four month accelerator program that just launched earlier this year. JOLT brings together a select group of startups and provides them with space to work, $30,000 in equity funding, and hands-on mentorship services to guide the all-important early stages of their development.

Our visit was well-timed, as the first-ever batch of JOLT companies had just recently wrapped the 16-week session and held the program’s Demo Day event. We took the opportunity to stop by the JOLT founders’ desks and get some in-person pitches.

You can watch each pitch in the video embedded above — and below, we’ve listed each company in the order in which they appear, along with basic descriptions of what they do.

  • Slingride (founded by Mike Holmes and Bryan Hurren): An online ridesharing network that allows drivers and passengers to safely connect, coordinate, and reduce their cost of travel.
  • ShelfLife (founded by James Chillcott, Nick Hoffman, Hilary Gillespie, Kiyan Azarbar, and Nevil Whitty): 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.
  • Venngage (founded by Eugene Woo and Lucas Walker): An analytics company that aims to take the pain out of creating clear and insightful reports based on company data.
  • Greengage Mobile (founded by Lindsey Goodchild, Dessy Daskalov, and Braiden Goodchild): Helps companies achieve their sustainability goals through Greengage’s new software platform, which includes a sustainability-focused smartphone app that works as both an employee engagement tool and a management system.
  • Tout.it (founded by Adnan “Addo” Smajic, Miroslav “Miro” Jeliaskoff, and Keith Loo): A new social media portal dedicated to sport enthusiasts, Tout.it uses Twitter-like streams to provide users with an easy way to connect and share their opinions about all professional and amateur sport leagues, teams and players.
  • eProf (founded by Trevor Koverko and Evan Lewis): An educational community where teachers and students connect in interactive virtual classrooms. (This startup was not in the office to be interviewed in the video.)