12 Companies Present at Startup Weekend Toronto EDU

August 12, 2013

Startup Weekend took place this weekend bringing together creative minds, educators, and skilled developers to tackle issues in the education sector.

This year’s event brought out over 100 participants. 40 pitched startup ideas disrupting everything from the used textbook market to online video learning. Each participant was given 60 seconds to explain their idea and the problem their startup was going to solve. Since the event was designed to solve problems in the education space, educators were given additional voting points to help select companies that would add the most value to the sector.

In 54 hours, 12 companies presented to a panel of judges with experience in the startup and education space. This year’s panel included:

Lloyed Lobo – Cofounder of thecloufactory.io
Dean McCall – Advisor (AvidTap, Drifty Co, and Ziptask) and Mentor at Extreme Startups
Jared Gordon: Investment Manager at the Investment Accelerator Fund
Aaron Solomon – Education strategist, entrepreneur, and advisor
Tarun Sachdeva – Head of product at Wattpad

The judge selected three winners based each startup on their ability to produce a working product, their business model, and the products educational impact.

FIRST PLACE

LearningLoop is an online platform that enables educators to share information with parents in a simple yet meaningful way. LearningLoop can be accessed through a mobile browser enabling educators to easily take notes on children in their care to share with parents.

This weekend they were able to put the tool right into the hands of educators by hosting a pop-up daycare. Before the end of the weekend they had 40 parents express interest in being part of the beta and have already received emails from early education centres interested in learning more.

SECOND PLACE

Smartypants is mobile app that prompts the user to answer skill-testing, academic questions before being able to access games on their device. The app is customizable, so questions can be varied by skill-level depending on the user.

THIRD PLACE

Fieldr is a search engine designed for educators to find budget-friendly activities. Teachers can filter activities based on grade and budget and get access to helpful information such as the learning objectives the field trip will meet and reviews from other teachers.

Startup Weekend Toronto has already proven its able to launch successful startups. Last year’s winner Groupnote went on to win the Global Startup Battle. With the response that LearningLoop has already had Startup Toronto might have another winner on its hands.