In The Burroughes’ swanky 6th floor event space, five startups local to the Toronto area came out to showcase their work, booth-style.
The event kicked off with a quick introduction from Rebecca, the Toronto branch organizer, thanking Jobspring Partners for their continued financial backing, as well as giving a brief overview of the group to-date, which six events in now has over 900 members in Toronto, and garners over 200 RSVPs per event.
The introduction was followed by quick pitches from each of the presenting companies, who gave the crowd an idea of what their product does, and how the company was formed.
Top Hat, an education engagement platform, was the first to speak. Their mobile system is now deployed in over 330 universities worldwide.
Flixel was next up, a novel new app that allows users to take a “living photo”, where only parts of the photo move. The app was recently featured on America’s Next Top Model, where photos of models were created with moving clothing and hair. You can check out the project here.
AskForTask, a relatively new startup created by two university students, came out to showcase their website that allows people to post tasks that they need completed, and find people who may be skilled in that area, to complete them. The website currently has over 45,000 users and is expanding quickly.
Checkout 51 then spoke on their service, which is akin to reverse-couponing. The company sends a weekly email of local offers, and all the user needs to do is upload a receipt if they take part. When the account reaches $20 in rebates, a check is mailed to the user.
Last but definitely not least, Bitstrips came out to talk with the crowd about the mass success of their user-created cartoon app. Bitstrips is currently the most download app in the iPhone app store, and has only been released in the past year.
After the pitches, the companies set up demo tables where attendees were able to test out the programs, and talk with the founders and employees about what made their companies tick, how they got off the ground, and what they were looking forward to.