2014 Winner

PrepMe (formerly nPulse)

Jawwad Siddiqui (Queen’s Commerce ’15) and Amin Nikdel (Queen’s Computing ’14)

Professors at numerous universities currently do not have a way of evaluating if students “get it or not?” Currently, professors depend on the gut and intuition to design and deliver in-class lectures and discussions. They do not get analytics or “finger on the pulse” about their students to aid with their teaching. PrepMe is here to solve that problem, with its powerful analytics!

2012 Winner

Penyo Pal

Jane Wu, Smith Commerce 2012; Jessica Fan, Simon Fraser University, Business & Design 2012; Rafal Dittwald, University of Toronto Engineering 2012; Ryan Wagner, University of Waterloo Engineering 2012

Penyo Pal is an innovative learning company for children and their adults. We build interactive stories and games that help kids ages 4-7 learn to read in English, Mandarin and French. We are grateful to have been awarded the titles of "Canada's Top 20 Hottest Innovative Startups" by the CIX, "Canada's Top 108 Startups" by Mark Evans, and the "Best Overall New Startup" from the Launch EDU conference in the Silicon Valley.

2011 Winner

OOHLALA Mobile, Inc.

Jake Housdon, Comm '14, Peter Cen, University of Toronto MA '12, James Dang, University of Toronto '12, Danial Jameel, University of Toronto '11, & Amsul Naeem, Ryerson University '12

Our mission is simple, to create a global mobile platform (iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, others coming soon) that helps students navigate their student and social life. Since our launch just eight weeks ago (Toronto, Montreal) we have brought on board 120+ merchants/venues ranging from popular brands such as the Hard Rock Cafe, Sunrise Records, Place des Arts (Montreal), to major universities such as the University of Toronto and McGill.

OOHLALA is the must have app for student life and provides location-based deals, coupons, guest-lists and events to students. We want to do this while changing the destructive methods of traditional advertising (flyers, paper coupons, spamming etc.)

2010 Winner

buildmylanyard.com

Ahmad Iqbal, Comm '10 & Chris Carmichael, Wilfred Laurier University '10

At buildmylanyard.com we recognized that the promotional product industry is slow to innovate and employs too many middle men. Buildmylanyard.com is a multi-manufacturer direct lanyard supplier to schools, conferences, companies and all sorts of other events. However, there is a gap in the conferences market which we aim to fill. We will soon be providing conferences, trade shows, and exhibitions the capability to allow their attendees to customize their name badge and have them pre-packed in the lanyards and ready to go. This will allow the attendees to upload pictures, contact information, company title and any other information they would like on their name badge. Our offering will increase security, streamline sign-in, save our clients the time and money they would have to otherwise spend making name badges.

In addition to this we have developed a USB flash drive embedded lanyard buckle which can come pre-loaded with any files the conference will want their attendees to have. Brochures, catalogues, itineraries, and any other information will no longer need to be printed. Currently we are also developing QR code scanning applications to allow seamless networking at conferences allowing attendees to share information digitally through their name badges.

2009 Winner

Campus Connect

Ian Macdonald, Comm '09 & David Phillips, Comm '09 / ArtSci '09

Campus Connect merged two successful student marketing enterprises (Samples For Students and Campus Kings) together to help national brands and local businesses better connect and establish meaningful relationships with Canadian students. Campus Connect combined sampling at the beginning of the year with school long communication on its website to create meaningful relationships between brands and Canadian students. Samples For Students created, packaged and delivered a turn-key sampling program for 20 of Canada's biggest brands (Mars, Harvey's, Coca-Cola, Via Rail, Lacoste, Smashbox etc.). Brands were able to connect with students on the first day of school via a Campus Pack. Campus Packs featured samples and bounce-back retail offers to drive exceptional student follow-up purchases after trial.

In just its first year, the program delivered over $1 million in products to 10,000 students across seven universities in Ontario. Samples For Students was born out of Summer Company, a Government of Ontario entrepreneurship grant and coaching program. Campus Kings enabled brands and local business to speak to students online via a local web community. Campus Kings enabled students to share and download study materials as well as to view local business profiles in their community to better orient themselves while at university.