TechAlliance BURST Showcase

November 20, 2018

By: Dennis Ensing
On November 15th, one of our community partners, TechAlliance, held a showcase of many of the ventures that they have shepherded through their BURST program since it was launched in early 2017.

BURST is an innovative incubation program for high-potential medical technology startups and scale-ups that has positioned London as a focal point for life science innovation. The program provided intensive mentorship and support to 30 companies – 10 companies spread in 3 cohorts – including approximately $3 million in cash and in-kind support.

To date, BURST ventures have attracted over $5 million in additional seed capital investments to advance their progress and 9 products have been introduced to market. I spoke with with two notable examples of these in the showcase:

SWO Angels’ investee TopSpin Technologies was part of the first BURST cohort last year. I had a chance to catch up with founder Theo Versteegh on sales progress and was encouraged by uptake from key US sports-related constituents.

I also met Frank Fiorenza of Flusso who took a small medical device from concept to market in 18 months – a success many of the device companies who come to SWO Angels for investment should and could aspire to!

Peter Fragiskatos, Member of Parliament for London North Centre, brought a special announcement of a new grant of $440,000 for TechAlliance to extend BURST for 10 more companies.

Also in attendance were a few SWO Angels members or partners including Bernie Batt, SWO Angels Analyst, Jeff Hill of BDC, sponsor of our members’ upcoming Holiday reception on December 20, and Andre Vashist, Pillar Nonprofit Network’s Director, Social Enterprise and Social Finance.