Tom and I attended the Startup Festival in Montreal, QC. We took the startup train to the conference. The train was a great way to get there. It was filled with VCs, lawyers, other startups and lots of interesting people. We made many good connections.
After the momentum we built on the way out there, we hit the ground running at the festival. We pitched to as many VCs and anyone who would listen in Montreal. The first VC we pitched to was from FounderFuel and we made a good impression. We were planning on leaving the next night, but we were told we were under serious consideration for early entry into the FounderFuel program, so we re-arranged our plans to stay one more night at the last minute. The next day, to our surprise, we were told we would be joining the FounderFuel accelerator in the September 2014 cohort. We’re really excited to move to Montreal and can’t wait to complete the testing and final development of our mobile robotics platform.
For those who haven’t been following us, we are developing a hardware, software and communication platform for mobile robotics. Typically companies have a single robot which has been designed for a single task. For example, think about a robotic boat which has sensors and motors to drive around a lake measuring environmental contamination. It may take alot of time and work and be difficult to change application to a driving rover. Circuits and hardware may need to be designed, and software may need to be customized to make things work. If multiple robots are required, most existing companies do not have any built in support to seamless communicate between the robots. Our system is designed to solve these problems in a simple out-of-the box solution. Companies can now save time and money, and focus on delivering value for their clients by focusing on the application of the robot and now making the hardware, software and communications work.
Here’s some of the news articles:
* [http://www.socs.uoguelph.ca/2014/07/socs-and-soe-students-win-with-redtree-robotics/](http://www.socs.uoguelph.ca/2014/07/socs-and-soe-students-win-with-redtree-robotics/)
* [http://www.lesaffaires.com/blogues/julien-brault/international-startup-festival–les-start-ups-ontariennes-volent-la-vedette/570508](https://www.lesaffaires.com/blogues/julien-brault/international-startup-festival%E2%80%93les-start-ups-ontariennes-volent-la-vedette/570508)
* [http://startupfestival.com/news-item/49](https://web.archive.org/web/20140714021906/http://startupfestival.com/news-item/49)
* [http://www.betakit.com/blynk-scores-100000-investment-prize-at-the-international-startup-festival/](https://betakit.com/blynk-scores-100000-investment-prize-at-the-international-startup-festival/)
* [http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2014/07/11/startup-fest-prize-winners-get-unveiled/](https://web.archive.org/web/20140719043928/http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2014/07/11/startup-fest-prize-winners-get-unveiled/)
Here’s some pictures from the festival:
