Photos by Spencer Thompson.

Last Tuesday, Centre for Digital Media held its first annual Alumni Startup Demo Day & Mixer, where alumni startup companies from the MDM program, along with startups from CDM’s partner schools - UBC, SFU and BCIT - presented their companies, met with investors and networked with entrepreneurs.

There was a great turnout, with 12 startup companies on display and various entrepreneurs and investors from Vancouver’s startup community.

The Demo Day and Mixer was an initiative brought forward by the CDM alumni committee. "Special credit goes to Craig Slagel (cohort 5 graduate and founder of RunGO) who both proposed the idea and helped us run with it (pun intended)" says CDM’s Director of Industry Relations, Dennis Chenard.

The event was a chance to support and celebrate startups and provided a place for startups to meet one another and share ideas. It also involved masters students from SFU's FCAT program and Emily Carr’s MDES programs mingling with current MDM students and the alumni entrepreneurs.

Bringing together these various entrepreneurs, investors and supporters from across the entrepreneur support network in academia and industry was amazing. There are so many incredible companies coming out of the Master of Digital Media and our partners’ programs, and being able to connect and inspire talented individuals is what this event was about," says Chenard.

The companies were thrilled with the event.

It was a great opportunity to showcase our concept, get real-time feedback, connect with accelerators and government support programs and network with like-minded entrepreneurs from major universities in BC," says Felipe Martins – co-founder of Livelly and current entrepreneurship@UBC member company.

Below are the 12 startup companies that participated in the Alumni Startup Demo Day & Mixer.

Demo Day Alumni Companies

CartaRoom (BCIT) is a convenient online room management service that connects local hosts with underutilized available space to customers who need temporary space for work, networking, or leisure. There will be two different types of users - Hosts and patrons. Hosts will be able to offer their rooms for reservation and view analytics for each of their rooms such as traffic, peak times, and demographics. With this information, hosts can create targeted promotions and marketing tactics for their business. Patrons will be able to book rooms for various activities such as meetings or studying through CartaRoom.

With Davos (CDM), Canadian small- to medium-sized charities looking to initiate or build their online fundraising capabilities will have access to an economical, bilingual supported, CRA compliant platform to fundraise online without requiring in-house technical expertise for both implementation and regular maintenance. Using Davos reduces manual administrative work for charities giving them more time to spend building relationships and reaching new markets.

Doki Doki (CDM) – Empower Imaginative and Creative Play. Doki Doki is a smart toy for 3-7 year olds that empowers creative and active play.

Humpback Swims (CDM) is dedicated to providing quality & fun trips to swim with humpback whales in Tonga.

Livelly (UBC) is creating a way to connect people ready to work with people who need work done. "We are here to make people’s lives better"

Neartuit (CDM) helps build engagement with visitors by making it easy to tell the stories behind the people, places and things they're near.

Quupe (CDM) is a fully insured community rental platform where people can easily rent things from locals and experience a new lifestyle. We allow people to share resources while reducing waste, generating passive income and getting the most value out of items.

RunGo (CDM) provides runners the most innovative free* Running App available in the market today. We do this by using state-of-the art turn-by-turn voice navigation tailored to the runner’s needs.

Spliqs (SFU) is an AI-based platform for interactive musical creation, sharing, and collaboration. Riffs, loops, clips, licks—"spliqs."Like a riff or a loop, a spliq is a musical concept. But while a normal loop is a static, fixed thing, spliqs are intelligent and adaptive entities. Spliqs understand music in a fundamentally human way—and they understand themselves, too. Spliqs can communicate with other Spliqs, allowing them to adapt to one another and musically “get along."

The Impossible Studio (CDM) is an interactive media studio that creates unique augmented reality experiences for live events. Enhance the show and make it more interactive!

Time Factory (CDM) is here to revolutionize how companies develop products and solve their challenges! We run Design Sprints, mini sprints on Growth, Branding and Productivity and validate your ideas with prototypes. We are digital experts, productivity nerds, rapid prototype builders, Augmented Reality investigators, business strategy agitators, user experience enthusiasts and tech disruptors and we are here to help you build better products, FASTER! Fasten your seat belts.

Thank you to everyone who came out to support our Alumni Startup Demo Day & Mixer! We also want to thank our partners from SFU's FCAT for partnering on the mixer event and helping bring out their grad students.

To connect about the Demo Day events or other industry relations related interest please connect with dennis_chenard@thecdm.ca.