by Peter Moreira via Entrevestor.
Springleap of Cape Town, South Africa, and LeadSift of Halifax have been named the two top companies appearing at MentorCamp Atlantic Canada 2012, a one-day forum of advice and learning for nine startups and 37 mentors.
Permjot Valia, CEO and founder of the event, tweeted last night that the mentors had chosen Springleap, a design crowdsourcing startup, and LeadSift, which mines social media to find sales leads, as the two top presenters. Each company will be offered a $25,000 seed investment from MentorCamp.
Springleap CEO Eran Eyal told the opening session that his company is gaining momentum and would be interested in relocating to Canada, if it could be arranged. One company that attended MentorCamp 2011, Wooshii of the U.K., set up shop in Halifax last spring.
LeadSift, which went through the Launch36 accelerator in the spring, generates sales leads for businesses by mining social media. CEO Tapajyoti Das said there are 400 million tweets a day, and then there is Facebook and LinkedIn as well. The company has signed up early adopters, will attend the Ad:Tech in New York in November and has received commitments for investment.
Though some of the young companies were interested in looking for money at MentorCamp, most stressed that they wanted to tap the mentors’ knowledge with specific strategic challenges they were facing.
For Frank Lessard, the CEO of Fredericton-based software company Tabture, that means gaining market presence internationally.
“We want help thinking outside the box,” he said. “How do we get out of Atlantic Canada without leaving Atlantic Canada? How do we bring it to the next level so we’re not just a New Brunswick thing anymore?”
Tabture, which also went through Launch36, helps people share links on the internet, unifying a process of sending links over Twitter, Facebook, email etc.
Jumpstart 720, another Launch36 company appearing at MentorCamp, gives companies and organizations an SaaS solution to the problem of assessing workforce morale and mental health in real time. The Moncton-based company now employs nine people and has six investors, and its early adopters include Irving, Grand & Toy and Purolator. CEO Paula Morand said the company now has a weighted pipeline (meaning it gives extra emphasis to those most likely to sign) of $43 million.
G2 Research is a Dartmouth company that analyses data from GPS to allow law enforcement agencies to follow suspects, track their networks or predict where they may be going. CEO Tom Gilgan said the technology could have other applications, such as tracking sex offenders, or tracking shipping.
The other companies attending MentorCamp were Boondoc, znanja, Strue, and Xiplinx.
The second annual camp took place yesterday at the Dalhousie Life Sciences Building in Halifax with all the polish and confidence of an event that had been around for years. It was a reminder of how quickly novices – both people and events – become established in the startup world.
Mark Kennedy, the CEO of film industry support software maker Celtx of St. John’s, attended the first MentorCamp as an entrepreneur. Yesterday, he was back at the event, this time as a mentor.
