Entries open for Invest Nova Scotia Accelerate Program (Canada)

Focus Areas

• The program is focused on five sectors where they can leverage their deep in-house expertise and their network of experts and investors to deliver value to their clients:
  • Agriculture Tech: start-ups addressing the global foodproduction challenges while reducing dependency on fossil fuels or petrochemicals
  • Clean Tech: start-ups addressing climate change and clean air, water and soil
  • Health Tech: start-ups developing new therapeutics, medical devices or digital health technologies solving large unmet healthcare needs
  • Ocean Tech: start-ups developing solutions in ocean health, fisheries and aquaculture, offshore energy, shipborne technologies, and marine bioresources
  • Software: start-ups working on software solutions leveraging artificial intelligence, computer vision, blockchain, or data network effects to solve large unmet market needs

Funding Information

• Invest Nova Scotia Accelerate is delivered in a five-month sprint. Participating companies each receive up to $40,000 in non-dilutive, non-repayable funding to address key technical and business milestones. Companies are eligible for participation in one cohort of the Accelerate program.

Program Benefits

• In addition to funding, companies get access to a series of acceleration activities and resources. Resources are tailored to the cohorts to provide support where participants need it most. Participants should make every effort to take advantage of all the activities and resources offered, which include:
  • Meetings with advisors matched from their network of sector-focused investment and technology commercialization executives.
  • Workshops on a variety of investment-readiness topics. Topics will be tailored to the cohort participants’ industries and needs. Subjects covered during previous cohorts include human resources, IP strategy, term-sheets, raising capital, storytelling and more.
  • Perks Program offers discounts to 100+ vendors such as Hubspot, Google Cloud, Zoom, Slack, AWS, and more.

Eligibility Criteria

• They’re seeking companies that they see as pipeline for their investment fund in the five sector streams described above. Invest Nova Scotia investment portfolio companies are ineligible for this opportunity.
• Location: Nova Scotia-based. Applicants must be a Nova Scotia-registered business in good standing (current registration on the Registry of Joint Stock Companies), have a permanent establishment, and have most of its workforce and the majority of its senior leadership residing in Nova Scotia. Details on how to register with Nova Scotia Registry of Joint Stock Companies (RJSC) are available from Service Nova Scotia.
• Financing: Less than $1 million in cumulative sales and less than $250,000 in equity investment (including convertible debt) raised to date
• Stage: In addition to having identified a large market pain and market opportunity and having established a company around a customer-validated solution, competitive applicants have conducted a thorough competitive analysis and achieved proof of concept or minimum viable product (MVP) that has demonstrated value to early adopters
• People: Entrants must be the majority owner(s) (51% or more) of the company and plan to work full-time with the business

For more information, visit Invest Nova Scotia Accelerate.