Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) is pleased to announce that the next round of the SmartStart Seed Fund (SmartStart) program is now open.
The SmartStart program is designed to support new ventures led by Ontario’s next generation of entrepreneurs, to transition their start-ups from product development, to market entry and company building. The program provides up to $30,000 (to be matched 1:1 by the start-up) in seed funding and support for entrepreneurship skills training and professional advisory services, helping to grow the start-ups and make them investment- and customer-ready. The SmartStart program is delivered by OCE on behalf of the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario).
To ensure SmartStart supports only high-quality companies, applicants to the program must be endorsed by one of the following members of the ONE Network: a Regional Innovation Centre (RIC) funded by the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade (MEDJCT), an OCE-funded Campus-Linked Accelerator (CLA), or an OCE-funded On-Campus Entrepreneurship Activities (OCEA) program recipient.
To this effect, please note that all potential SmartStart applicants will require an endorsement form from their RIC, CLA or OCEA before they can apply to the program. We are relying on the endorsers to vet potential applicants to ensure they fit both our required eligibility criteria and are suitable for the program.
Companies must be:
- For-profit, based in a Southern Ontario census region, incorporated for less than four years, and have less than $250,000 in revenue and/or investment;
- Actively engaged as a client for at least four months within the past 12 months, and/or recently accepted into a program involving a selection process (such as an accelerator, a bootcamp/pitch competition winner, recipient of an embedded executive, etc.) with your RIC, CLA or OCEA organization;
- Additionally, companies should meet the following suitability criteria: have a team of two or more people, be developing a disruptive, technology-based, scalable business focused on a fast-growing or new market, have a minimum-viable product (MVP), and can articulate a product-market fit and sales process.
The Humber CfE will be your endorser so please contact Humber CfE (cfe@humber.ca) once you have completed the Eligibility Questionaire. Deadline to submit an Eligibility Questionnaire: February 1, 2019, 11:59 p.m. ET.
Humber Centre for Entrepreneurship
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