Innovation Factory

11/20/2025

🚀Ready to accelerate your business growth? 🚀

Hit the ground running with , an interactive 8-week training & mentorship program that can help you grow your startup, access industry expertise and prepare for investment.

👉 Applications are open until December 7, 2025: https://loom.ly/WT0gG2I

11/18/2025

Spent the day at the Niagara College Research and Innovation showcase! The scope of applied research happening here is incredible. 🤯

We saw two huge areas of innovation in action:

👵🦭Healthy Aging: We learned about the amazing therapeutic work being done at their HAWIC centre, using robotic animals like Flo and Coco (the seals!), along with robotic birds and cats to help residents in long-term care, especially those with dementia. Huge shoutout to Christine Wilkinson, research lead for Niagara College's Healthy Aging and Wellness Innovation Centre, for sharing her research!

🥫🌱Agri-Food & Beverage: Getting a look inside the Food and Beverage Innovation Centre (FBIC) and Horticultural and Environmental Sciences Innovation Centre (HESIC). These centres are national leaders, helping startups with everything from formulation optimization to small-batch canning (yes, even zero-alcohol gin and new beers!) so they can get to market faster.

Big thanks to Innovate Niagara, NRC IRAP, BioEnterprise and all the ecosystem partners supporting this critical research in Ontario!

11/18/2025

Five founders. One winner.🌟 Join us as the finalists of the New Venture Pitch Challenge step up to pitch their innovations and receive feedback from seasoned judges, at the Live Pitch and Business Networking Night, sponsored by llp!

🥂 Complimentary refreshments provided!
📅 November 26, 2025 | 5:00pm – 8:00pm ET
📍 Innovation Factory | 175 Longwood Rd. S, Hamilton

🔗 Limited spaces! Secure your spot: https://loom.ly/OrzHSuY

11/17/2025

Calling all founders! Take a break from the year-end hustle and join us for a relaxed evening of connection and celebration at our Holiday Client Social.

Network with fellow entrepreneurs, Innovation Factory advisors and partners in a welcoming, low-pressure environment, shared with our incredible partners at TechPlace.

📅 December 11 | 3:00pm - 5:00pm
📍 5151 New Street, Burlington
🔗 Space is limited! Save your spot: https://loom.ly/Db4qjHU

Join us for the Innovation Factory Holiday Client Social and experience networking in our new collaborative office space with TechPlace!

11/14/2025

What an incredible day yesterday at the 2025 Femtech Canada Forum in Vancouver!

From the airport hustle to the networking and insightful panel discussions, we were honoured to welcome leaders from across Canada truly committed to closing the gender health gap.

It was inspiring to see leaders from Sun Life, Deloitte Canada, BD, UNFPA, CIHR, IWK Foundation, PeriPharm, Audaxa Ventures, and Health Emergency Readiness Canada collaborate on capturing that $37 Billion economic opportunity in women's health.

Huge thanks to everyone who showed up to drive this important conversation forward. We're already planning the next steps.

➡️ Visit femtech.ca to learn more.

11/14/2025

🚀Ready to accelerate your business growth? 🚀

The program is an 8-week interactive training cohort for growing businesses to help gain the skills, knowledge, and connections needed to attract and secure funding.

With expert guidance and resources, you will learn how to develop a strong pitch, connect with potential investors, and secure investment to grow your business.

Applications are open until December 7, 2025.

👉 Apply now and get on the fast track to success: https://loom.ly/r9TJARo

11/14/2025

Our team was thrilled to attend the Women in Tech breakfast yesterday, powered by BDC's Thrive Platform for Women and hosted by DMZ! ☕️

The panel discussion offered crucial insights on how to streamline your fundraising approach and create a data room that stands out to build investor confidence.

We were especially proud to see our ecosystem represented by incredible founders like:

🌟 Parnian Majd, CEO & Founder of Fibra (an and client!)
🌟 Kathy Vurinaris, CEO & Founder of Sleaks (recently featured on Dragons' Den!)

Shoutout to the panelists, including Kayli Smith of Friendlier and Addy Graves of Cashew, and moderator Justine Clark of DMZ for some highly valuable takeaways.

🍁

11/13/2025

Health tech pilots must be designed to build trust AND attract funding. In this interactive session with CHEO, you will learn exactly how to:

🔹Identify and test your riskiest assumptions.
🔹Align validation with your market opportunity.
🔹Design effective pilot studies that resonate with investors.

Stop guessing, start validating.

🔗 Secure your spot: https://loom.ly/NS6crV8

11/13/2025

Did you know Intellectual Property is one of the most valuable assets you can create? It's the key to commercializing your innovation and scaling your company effectively.

Join us on 📆December 2, 12:00pm - 1:00pm for "IP 101: From Ideas to Assets", where experts from Marks & Clerk will demystify the complex world of Patents, Trademarks, and Trade Secrets.

We'll cover:
*️⃣What can be patented in the age of AI.
*️⃣When to use Trademarks vs. Copyrights to protect your brand.
*️⃣How to build an intentional IP strategy that directly supports your scaling goals.

This session is designed to give every founder the fundamentals needed to build a robust protective barrier.

👉Secure your spot: https://loom.ly/38xB8MM

Masterclass on IP basics for founders. Learn to protect your innovations, use patents/trademarks, and access IP funding with experts from Marks & Clerk.

11/13/2025

Where do you start building a Sales Playbook? 🤔

In this session, Expert Advisor Mark Elliott is simplifying the process and telling you exactly what to include. You'll walk away with a plan to define:
✅ Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
✅ Your High-Impact Messaging
✅ How to use AI & new tools
✅ Your strategy for growing your sales team

👉Secure your spot: https://loom.ly/p9WzpaI

A defined Sales Playbook is the single most powerful tool for B2B growth. Join our Expert Advisor, Mark Elliott, for a Power Hour designed to give you the blueprint.

11/12/2025

We're wrapping up the Future of Transportation and Mobility Series with an insightful keynote addressing a growing urban challenge: the coordination crisis caused by the rapid increase in robotaxi and automated delivery fleets. 🤖🚗

Bern Grush, CEO of Pudocity Inc, outlined why proactive Pickup/Drop-off (PUDO) orchestration is necessary for cities to maintain control, enhance urban resilience, and even recover lost parking revenue.

🤔The key takeaways? Think resilient, not just efficient:
🔹The big market opportunity is building the orchestration software that manages dynamic PUDO zones for cities.
🔹 Building auditable, transparent logging into your orchestration platform empowers cities to easily assign liability, manage disputes, and ensure fair access.
🔹Solutions that offer municipalities a new, easy revenue stream will gain traction much faster than those focused only on efficiency.

What could this look like in practice?
💡Building your solution around managing risk and failure scenarios. City planners favor AI/scheduling that prioritizes urban resilience, handling real-world chaos, over theoretical efficiency.
💡AI-powered contextual analysis of non-standard delivery points (e.g., stairs, gate codes, awkward entrances) based on customer feedback and geo-tagged qualitative data can help build human-centric PUDO solutions.

Thanks again to Bern for sharing these insights on making advanced mobility work with city infrastructure!

11/12/2025

Earlier today at the Future of Transportation and Mobility Series, we hosted an essential fireside chat focused on how adopting Data and AI can pave the way for a more resilient and sustainable transportation future. 💡

It was fantastic learning from the technology leaders at Geotab as they shared new strategies shaping the next era of mobility!

Here's what founders should definitely keep in mind building on the intersection of data and AI:
🔹Focus on the quality and consistency of your data streams to fuel meaningful, accurate AI insights.
🔹 Use AI not just to report past events, but to predict and mitigate future disruptions (like maintenance issues or route failures).
🔹Leverage analytics to measure, optimize, and prove your sustainability goals such as optimizing route density or tracking idle time.
🔹For safety-critical systems, generating high-quality simulated data allows you to train and test your AI models against complex, real-world scenarios before actual deployment.

Huge thanks to our speakers for diving deep into these insights:
🎤Bob Bradley | VP, Data Science & AI Engineering, Geotab
🎤Abhinav Narayanan | Sr Data & AI Advocate, Geotab
🎤(Moderator) Andrea Johnson | General Manager, Centre for Emerging Research Initiatives, Mohawk College