Capital Investment Network’s newest pitch event showcased some of Victoria’s coolest up-and-coming businesses.
Last Wednesday, May 11th, Capital Investment Network held a mini-pitch event at Tectoria, one of Victoria’s most prominent tech startup hubs. The sold-out event consisted of investors and entrepreneurs gathering to enjoy refreshments, good conversation, and the chance to hear more about exciting new startups.
The first startup to present was Allagro, a direct-to-consumer solution for premium hay orders. This creative business takes advantage of significant inefficiencies within the hay distribution network and offers farmers lower prices and a smaller carbon footprint through a web-based subscription service. Allagro founder and CEO Mike Tyler sees massive potential for growth within the 103.5 billion dollar hay industry. With both $350,000 revenue to date and over 170 customers, Allagro projects upwards of 4.5 million in revenue by 2023. Allagro is currently seeking a $ 250,000 pre-seed round at a 1.65 million pre-money valuation and can be contacted at mike.tyler@allagro.co.
Following Allagro was Frontly, a no-code alternative to front-end software development. Front-end developers—the people who program visual aspects of apps and websites—are expensive and in high demand, with an average salary of $ 125,000. However, Frontly’s founder and CEO Patrick Kelly argued that while front-end developers are necessary for some situations, most companies don’t need to spend large sums of money for a visually appealing web page design. Instead, Frontly offers an intuitive website builder which requires no programming and can easily be implemented by a single back-end developer. Frontly projects 100+ paid clients by September 2022, is raising $ 300,000 at a 2 million pre-money valuation, and can be contacted at patrick@frontlyapp.com.
The final pitch was Lindo, a company that aimed to simplify employee expenditures’ reporting and handling, a notoriously irritating task. Lindo is currently partnered with Visa and allows companies to issue employees a Visa credit card and an accompanying app. The app comes equipped with features like instant purchase approval, receipt collecting, and built-in limit controls. Given the sheer size of the credit card market and the initial interest demonstrated by early users, Lindo predicts that they could have 2000 customers in three years, which would generate 10 million in annual revenue. Lindo is seeking $400,000 USD ($516,216 CAD) in their current seed round and can be contacted through their website at getlindo.com.
The evening ended with James DeGreef, the chair of Capital Investment Network, giving a presentation on Cindicates. Cindicates is a Victoria-based investment fund designed to support startups in British Columbia (BC) and allow investors to invest in small BC-based businesses. The fund offers a 30% tax credit for investors in BC through a Small Business Venture Capital Tax Credit program and gives investors the option to invest through an RRSP/TFSA account.
Thank you to James DeGreef and Nagma Dhillon for organizing the event and to everyone who showed up and made for such a fantastic evening. We hope to see you all next time!