Investor Meeting Highlights – March

March 22, 2018

Author: Dennis Ensing

Our monthly SWO Angels Investor Meeting was held in our regular meeting space at the MVP Lab in the Convergence Centre on Western University’s Discovery Park.

This meeting capped the inaugural set of presentations in our recently launched collaboration with Golden Triangle Angel Network (GTAN) and Angel One Network. The three presenting ventures were jointly screened and selected, then presented at individual meetings of all three angel groups in their respective locations.

The attached photos are from the meetings in Burlington (Angel One) and Kitchener (GTAN). All three companies received interest from members in each angel group for deeper dives with the founders and team beginning next week, also to be conducted on a combined basis.

As reviewed in an earlier post, the principal outcomes we expect from this collaboration include: more attractive process to companies, better access to deal flow to members, more resources available, larger investment rounds and greater leverage.

Needless to say it was an exciting and eventful week following months of preparation and I can say that the results exceeded our expectations!

Investment Update: In the last month, SWO Angels’ members made a seed investment in LoanConnect, as well as a follow-on in an existing portfolio company Renix Inc. Due diligence continues on opportunities presented in recent Investor Meetings, including SmartTones, QuickSilk, and Orca Intelligence.

Event Update: Next Wednesday March 28 is our member-only dinner and social, with a few words from Yuri Navarro, the CEO of NACO Canada. On Thursday April 12, we have a member-only joint Education and Social event in Kitchener with GTAN and Angel One. Alec Saunders, Principal Program Manager of Microsoft’s Business AI division will speak on, “What is Artificial intelligence”. The education portion of this event is preparation for our April 19 Investor Meeting, which has an AI theme. Details are available on all of these – please don’t hesitate to contact me.

If you are an accredited investor and interested in attending one of our upcoming Investor Meetings, please also contact me at dennis@swoangel.com.

March Presenting Companies:

AVSS has developed a Connected Recovery hardware product that enables the safe adoption of UAV across the world by drastically reducing the likelihood and impact of UAV failure. By equipping a UAV with the CR (hardware) and utilizing the Command Centre (SaaS), fleet owners will be reassured that their opportunities are not grounded and their staff are executing on their missions.

Genecisis is an organic waste processing company that up-cycles food waste into products of higher value, such as PHA bioplastics. PHAs (polyhydroxyalkanoates) are a type of high quality biodegradable thermoplastics, suitable for making a wide variety of materials including thin film, foodware, 3D printing filament and medical equipment.

Joyride is a turnkey enterprise fleet management platform for bike share operators. Using a mobile app and dashboard, a private bike share operator can launch a fleet of bikes with software that matches their branding. Operators can seamlessly scale their fleet from 10 to 100,000 bikes. Joyride is the only platform integrating multiple third party smart lock manufacturers to provide a customizable and flexible solution to help operators launch bike sharing in their market.