The annual Digifest tech festival has wrapped up another year of showcases filled with extraordinary tech talent and outstanding speakers. startGBC is proud to have supported Digifest 2018 to further support the entrepreneurial initiatives of the Digital Media and Gaming incubator at George Brown College.
This year’s Digifest theme Hello Tomorrow: Our Creative Cities was about improving our quality of life and making creative cities of the future better through design, innovation, and technology.
Over a three day period, Digifest brought guest speakers to share their innovative work in the areas of digital media, art, design and technology. One of the highlights of the three day tech festival was the IT’S A START pitch competition supported by startGBC. Ten startups had the opportunity to pitch their business idea, convince the judges of its value, and impress the crowd in 5 minutes for a chance to take home this year’s Grand Prize of $5,000 in startup funding, as well as other great prizes!
This years top prize went to InStage, a virtual reality training tool that improves verbal communication skills. InStage combines virtual reality and data science to simulate the sensation of speaking in front of a live audience and generates metrics relating to your performance. As part of their grand prize of $5,000, InStage will represent Canada in Beijing and present their idea at the Overseas Talent and Entrepreneurship Conference (OTEC) Global Pitch Competition for a chance to win more start-up funding! Go InStage!
The runner-up winners were as follows:
Second place: CoolCat Innovations — a tech company that develops Sonacles, an innovative bone conduction hearing aid, in the form of regular glasses, which promises to bring affordability and discreteness to its customers.
Third place: Phyxable — a self-help video solution that empowers you to fix your own pain and injuries.
People’s Choice: CommuniHelp — a volunteer matching platform that uses an algorithm to match professionals seeking skills-based volunteer opportunities with social good organizations looking looking to maximize their social impact.
Congratulations to all those who participated in the IT’S A START pitch competition! If you’d like to know more about the finalists of the IT’S A START pitch competition and the prizes they’ve won, click here for more information!