Revving up Manitoba’s startup ecosystem at RampUp Weekend

Opinion

Close to 200 participants, most of whom who didn’t know each other before Friday night, participated in the 16th iteration of North Forge’s RampUp Weekend.

The registered participants form into 10 teams and over the course of a couple days try to will a concept into the bare bones of a business. It’s not a make- believe exercise — the point is to create an actual business in some 50 hours.

At least three ideas pitched at past RampUp events have gone on to become successful businesses — Permission Click, Go Oil and Taiv — generating jobs and wealth.

Although there are some who night claim ownership of an idea, the process is collaboration at it rawest. It’s also a stunning example of diversity at work, with a rainbow of accents and ethnicities in the mix.

There are no barriers to entry such as enrolment in a particular post-secondary institution or even prior association with North Forge.Nor are there age restrictions. While many are college-aged, every demographic is represented from high schoolers to middle age.

It’s probably not relevant to try to categorize the kind of ideas that would work. Like most successful startups, trying to address an identified problem in need of a solution is the driving force.

This year, artificial intelligence was a tool that featured prominently in a few of the 10 pitches Sunday evening, including the winner: Staff on Shift, a digital platform that links event planners with workers looking for occasional (unskilled) shifts.

One of the through-lines of RampUp Weekends is to come up with novel ways to deploy existing technology.

When Permission Click was chosen by the judges as the winner in 2014, it proposed replacing paper permission slips teachers used to send home with students for every manner of field trip or extracurricular activity with digital permission slips emailed to parents.

Not surprisingly, that idea has taken off. Although Permission Click was acquired by a much larger U.S. firm and has been though at least one other transaction, a Winnipeg team remains employed and its founder, Chris Johnston, remains a committed volunteer mentor at RampUp Weekend.

(Other past RampUp winners that developed into on-going successful businesses include Go Oil, a mobile oil change franchised enterprise, and Taiv, that developed technology and marketing allowing restaurants and bars to play content better targeted to their audience from a unit that connects to an existing cable box and works with every satellite and cable provider.)

This year, in a twist many might not have seen coming, two of the pitches employed AI to handle old-fashioned voicemail requests.

Echo Order is targeted at independent mom-and-pop restaurants so they don’t miss orders when too busy to answer the phone; Ava addresses dental offices whom the founders say miss up to 30 appointments per month because calls go unanswered.

Weekend participants must work fast.

Staff on Shift, led by Hashim Farooq, a Brandon University student, already had a rudimentary website built and at least one customer lined up by Sunday night.

Labour Power, the runner-up (receiving $5,000) led by Jamie O’Neill, a worker rights hot-line aggregator, already has one labour union seeking to subscribe when the tech is developed.

There was one medical device entry, whose founders had some background in the technology, and the founders of Kooma Drones, pitching a competitive drone sports league and school-based training, were clearly aficionados.

The two winning teams, along with the Fan Favourite prize, Armoirie (a digital virtual closet for wardrobe organization, led by Alexa Kozlowski), all receive services from North Forge.

North Forge didn’t invent the Ramp-Up Weekend concept, but its galvanizing presence makes it uniquely qualified to shepherd the passionate energy of would-be business founders.

These gatherings are not job fairs and certainly not get-rich quick schemes. They’re part of North Forge’s entrepreneurial advocacy that goes under-appreciated until the emergence of an occasional overnight sensation that was 10 years in the making.

At its core, such events foster a supportive ecosystem that encourages wild swings — and bolsters the hope in a system that rewards innovation.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca