👏 Money Making May: Meet the 5 Founders Pitching for VC Funding
Hey LOI Fam,
The end of May is here. Which means:
- 🏖 your sun burn still stings from may-long
- 🧊 your go-to french press is now an ice cold latte
- 👏 we're v proud of the 40+ startups that graduated from Labs X
- 🥁 anddddd we just dropped a 20 sec hype vid announcing our FINAL FIVE FOUNDERS jumping into the LOI Shark Tank next month.
*Here's a photo of their lovely faces if you're too busy binging Bridgerton to see the full vid 👇
🍽 Today's Menu
- 🏆 Founder Wins of the Month
- 🗓 Upcoming LOI Events to Be At
- 🤫 Spilling The LOI Tea
- 🍿 Reminder to RSVP to LOI Shark Tank
- 🐦 Founder Tweet of the Week
Dim the lights, draw the curtains and let's dive in.
We saw a lot of you IRL this month which was amazing. From Startup Canada's flagship event to Winnipeg meetups, the founder fire keeps spreading across the country.
And tbh, that puts us over the moon. 🌙
Seeing your IG stories and LI posts is one thing. But hanging out in the flesh, face to face, well that's just Fresh-Prince-of-Bel-Air-level awesome.
Enough jibber-jabber. Let's get to the founder home runs of the month👇
🏆 Founder Wins of the Month
- 🤯 100 Store Partnership: Lily Bond from Spyce Girlz just signed a deal with Farm Boy and is MID-process of signing a 2nd deal with another grocery chain that will put them in 100 stores by end of the summer!
- 🇨🇦 LOI Takeover: Nadia, Lily, Michelle, Lauren, Tara, Shari and Melody all rocked the Startup Canada Vancouver event
- 🤩 Vivian won $3,000 of cold hard cash for finishing 1st place in her pitch competition
- 🎧 New Top Pod, Who Dis? Nikita Roy just launched her new podcast last month (Newsroom Robots) and it's already listed as the Top 20 Tech podcasts in 2 countries (#12 in Argentina and #19 in Denmark). Give it a listen.
- 💸 Back up the VC Truck: LOI Alumni Enrique, Sophie and Callum scooped up $800K CAD of funding for their startup Zeeno.ai
- 👏 Dream Duo: Lily Harper got to meet Tara Bosch in person (video here to prove it)
- 🚀 New AI Tool: Brayden from Akeeva just launched an AI-powered Obituaty-Creator tool and recently secured partnerships in 7 provinces.
- 🕹 2 million download milestone: LOI Alumni Kevin Ho just hit 2m downloads of his startup, Insights.gg, which is a cloud-based software helping PC gamers improve their performance
- 💪 Alumni Awesomeness: Simran Dhillon copped a 30x30 award from Glory Professional
- 🎊 Pitch Party: Shlesha Van from Oora-3D pitched at UHN Kite last week
- 🤝 AI Acquisition Update: Ryan Kelly recently sold his startup to Tirecraft. After a series of tests, the new platform is live.
- 🍿 New Kickstarter Vid: Dawson Wood is launching his new game on June 10th and has a Kickstarter video ready to rock if you want an early peek.
- 🪴 First Product Gitters: Derek from Wavyleaf dropped their first product, hydropot: a self-watering pot made for growing houseplants w/o soil. Check it out on their website.
Wanna see your name up here next month? Say no more. Just tap the big ol' button below and email us your coolest news since we last chatted.
Email LOI My Latest Founder News
🗓 Upcoming LOI Events to Be At
- 🗓 June 13th: LOI's virtual Demo Day taking place on Stonks.com. RSVP here to join ~1,000 founders, alumni, partners and investors coming out to listen to the 5 startups pitching.
- 🗓 June 26-29: Collision Conference in Toronto. RSVP here and email Simran/Rob if you'd like to connect with the 100+ LOI fam attending.
- 🗓 October LOIa team is brewing something secret up for next October. Email Rob to be the first to hear about it.
Want your startup event in our LOI calendar? Thought you'd never ask. Just email joelh@loi.vc and we'll get it featured in the next newsletter.
🤫 Spilling The LOI Tea
- 🏦 Tired of waiting on hold at the big banks? We've got a new credit card partnership with Float. If you wanna get a business expense card in the hand of your staff this is the way to do it in minutes.
- 🍷 We're working on an event with The Peak for this fall. Stay tuned for when the news drops as this intimate event will fill up quickly.
- 🧨 Kyle Moore from our LOI team keeps dropping gems on his Instagram. Follow along here if you need some positive reminders throughout the week.
- 🤫 Rob's looking to speak with a few founders about a secret project launching this October. Email him if you want to learn more.
- ✈️ Melissa, Max and Anderston soaked up an amazing weekend in Omaha for Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett's annual shareholder meeting
- 💸 LOI Venture announced investments in Surf, Go Oil and Ohh Foods
- 👏 Vivian recently came on board our LOI Success Academy as a mentor.
- 💙 Salima Visram from Samara continues to rock it. Did you know she named her startup after her younger sister? They run the startup in honour of their mother who sadly passed a few months before the company's inception. Their goal with SAMARA has always been to create impact in the world, and to make fashion better - taking inspiration from their mom and how she lived.
🐦 Tweet of the Week
In case you forgot, here's a simple playbook to get to $100k/year of income with your startup idea:
Got questions, ideas or summer patio recommendations you need help with when your mother-in-law's in town? Reply to this email and we'll sort you out.
And remember, come cheer on your fellow LOI alumni at our June Demo Day by smashin' that button below.
Always in your corner,
💙 The LOI Fam