Investor Meeting Highlights – May

May 18, 2018

Author: Dennis Ensing

We held our monthly SWO Angels Investor Meeting yesterday morning, Thursday May 17. Three ventures presented to attending members in the MVP Lab in the Convergence Centre on Western’s Discovery Park. All had presented earlier this week to our angel group Alliance partners, Golden Triangle Angel Network (GTAN) and Angel One Network.

Snapshots of the three ventures are included below. Deeper dives with company principals are scheduled for next week as noted below – details of location and dial-in to be provided separately, or upon request.

Investment Update: Investments led by our members in SmartTones and QuickSilk have now closed. Due diligence continues with Genecis, AVSS, and Joyride, and is also well underway with Backyard Media and Plurilock who both presented in April.

Event Update: On May 23 Angel Investors Ontario and YPO are co-hosting a Joint Angel Investment Event in Toronto. Our next Lunch & Learn – “Managing Your Angel Investment Portfolio” is set for June 13. Details of both of these are available on request – please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Finally, our next Investor Meeting is scheduled for Thursday June 21. Please let me know if you are an accredited investor and interested in attending.

May Presenting Companies:

20/20 Armor has developed and sells an electronic scoring vest for martial arts that removes the guesswork from scoring. In martial arts, students just guess when a point happens in sparring, which is like Usain Bolt running 100 meters & guessing his time. This is demotivating for kids & leads to high attrition for club owners. The company has the Adidas family as investors & they have been on Dragons Den.

Deeper dive: Tuesday May 22 3:00 pm

Powernoodle is a decision-making platform used by businesses like Deloitte, Major League Baseball, Enercare, Omnicom Global, and large financial institutions. 60% of executives feel they make as many bad decisions as good ones (McKinsey). Powernoodle brings more of the right people to the decision process, minimizes the barriers to ignite focused debate, and embeds process structure to untangle the wiring of the human brain.

Deeper dive: Thursday May 24 3:00 pm

Organizations are increasingly focused on the online content produced by their people – employees, subject-matter experts and executives – as they look to drive brand reputation and market visibility. Managing this content and distributing it is a big pain point since the content (including biographies, research papers, videos, and social media feeds) is fragmented across a wide array of online platforms. This impacts everything from media coverage to Google search and it results in missed connections. ExpertFile is the first SaaS software platform that helps IT departments organize their people-based content into search optimized profiles and online directories. Then they help marketing departments boost the visibility of this content beyond their websites.

Deeper dive: Monday May 28 3:00 pm