Media Releases

Eleven new ventures graduate from University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab

June 26, 2014

TORONTO, ON — Eleven ven­tures have suc­cess­ful­ly grad­u­at­ed from the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab, a busi­ness incu­ba­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment.

Com­bined with the ven­tures who grad­u­at­ed in the Lab’s first cohort last June, these ven­tures have col­lec­tive­ly gen­er­at­ed approx­i­mate­ly $130 mil­lion in equi­ty val­ue.

Dur­ing their eight months in the Lab, ven­tures reg­u­lar­ly meet with the Lab’s Group of 7 Fel­lows (G7), a  group of nine entre­pre­neurs who suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ed and grew, mas­sive­ly scal­able, tech­nol­o­gy-based busi­ness­es who include Rot­man MBA grad­u­ates Daniel Debow and Nigel Stokes. The ven­tures meet reg­u­lar­ly with the G7 to set spe­cif­ic mile­stones to guide the allo­ca­tion of their resources. Mile­stones are of two types: busi­ness and tech­ni­cal. The care­ful selec­tion of mile­stones is con­duct­ed to most effi­cient­ly reduce risk asso­ci­at­ed with the ven­ture and max­i­mize equi­ty val­ue as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Fif­teen ven­tures start­ed in the Lab last fall but only eleven grad­u­at­ed ear­li­er this month.

The suc­cess­ful ven­tures this year who raised or are rais­ing seed cap­i­tal, among meet­ing oth­er mile­stones, include:

  • Taplyt­ics – A cloud-based mobile devel­op­ment and opti­miza­tion plat­form that trans­forms exist­ing sta­t­ic and release cycle-dri­ven apps and makes them com­plete­ly dynam­ic.
  • Push – The first fit­ness track­ing device that mea­sures strength.
  • Bridg­it – An appli­ca­tion that enables con­struc­tion com­pa­nies to track project defi­cien­cies sim­ply and in real time.
  • OTI Lumion­ics – A low-cost man­u­fac­tur­ing solu­tion for organ­ic light emit­ting diodes (OLEDs).
  • Lumo­tune – A sys­tem that elec­tri­cal­ly tunes the trans­paren­cy of win­dows for pri­va­cy and ener­gy-sav­ing pur­pos­es.
  • Piin­point – An online plat­form that uses machine learn­ing to iden­ti­fy opti­mal new store loca­tions while cen­tral­iz­ing demo­graph­ic, real estate, traf­fic, and munic­i­pal data.
  • Whirlscape – The devel­op­er of Min­u­um, a one-dimen­sion­al key­board that enables typ­ing on wear­able devices and saves smart­phone screen space.
  • Instant Chem­istry – A firm that uses genet­ics-based algo­rithms for the assess­ment of human com­pat­i­bil­i­ty.
  • Kiwi Wear­ables –An open-source wear­able com­put­ing com­mu­ni­ty for devel­op­ers and con­sumers, their prod­uct (the Glance) is the first smart acces­so­ry for reg­u­lar watch­es.
  • NV Bots – The first cloud-con­trolled auto­mat­ed 3D print­er com­pa­ny.
  • T‑Bot – The first auto­mat­ed loose-leaf tea vend­ing machine com­pa­ny.

“We are excit­ed to see how much the sec­ond cohort of ven­tures has grown since they first applied back in Sep­tem­ber 2013,” says Jesse Rodgers, Direc­tor of the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab. “We had an increase in both the over­all qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty of appli­ca­tions this year, and it was real­ly great to see eleven ven­tures suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the pro­gram.”

The Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab is cur­rent­ly accept­ing ven­ture appli­ca­tions for its third cohort.

About the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab

Found­ed in 2012 by Pro­fes­sor Ajay Agraw­al, the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab at the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment lever­ages lead­ing fac­ul­ty and indus­try net­works, inven­tions, and tal­ent from world-class, tech­nol­o­gy-ori­ent­ed fac­ul­ties at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to as well as its loca­tion in Toron­to, one of the world’s most cul­tur­al­ly diverse cities and Canada’s largest finan­cial cen­tre.  For real-time updates, please vis­it the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab on Twit­ter and  Face­book and at www.creativedestructionlab.com.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

 

-30-

For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool