YSpace Technology Accelerator
Think you have the next high potential technology venture and want to take it to the next level? This 4-month virtual accelerator program is designed to support entrepreneurs as they find product-market fit, build traction, and unlock their roadmap for scale through bootcamps, workshops, one-on-one mentorship, along with over $60k in startup support and up to $30K in cash awards.
The Tech Accelerator program will focus on helping market ready technology startups execute their go-to-market strategies, acquire customers, and prepare for capital fundraising. The program will feature ample opportunities for hands-on experience, accountability sessions, customized mentorship, and dedicated growth hours with key partners in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Applications for the 2023 cohort are now closed. For information on other YSpace programs, please Click HERE!
Program Timeline

January 23
Applications Open

March 6
Applications Close at 11:59 pm EST

March 31
Participants are Selected & Notified

May 2
Programming Kicks-Off

May 2 - August 31
Weekly Sessions

September 28
Demo Day
Sprints

Creating Your Sales Structure

Developing Investment Strategy

Optimize Your Growth Framework

Executing Your Capital Strategy
Applications for the 2023 cohort are now extended until March 6th. Please APPLY HERE!
Our Entrepreneurs in Residence
Laura van Wyngaarden
Co-Founder & COO, Diligen
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Laura is an entrepreneur and expert in artificial intelligence and legal technology. She’s the COO of Diligen, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company transforming the way lawyers review contracts and a pioneer in the Legal Tech space. Laura is passionate about the connection between technology and human work, seeking to identify and explore innovative ways to reduce time and improve the accuracy of human tasks.
Prior to founding Diligen, Laura was the Managing Director of Distility. Laura holds undergraduate and honors degrees from the University of Cape Town and a Masters from Oxford University. She tweets as @lauravanwyn about legal technology, artificial intelligence and the future of work.
Rishabh Varshney
Co-Founder & CEO, Buy with Impact
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Rishabh was previously the CEO of Buy with Impact (acq.), a credit card which let members measure, reduce and offset their carbon footprint from their spending. Prior to BWI, Rishabh was the CEO of Lake Finance, working on bringing multi-asset wealth management to retail audiences. He also worked within the Facebook Messenger monetization team to scale revenue, and was the Chief Product Officer at Bunz.com, a bartering community which scaled to 500,000+ members in 250+ cities globally. Rishabh has been building and scaling teams across financial services, marketplaces and community-driven applications since 2010.
Helen Kontozopoulos
Chief Evangelist & Co-Founder, ODAIA Intelligence
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Helen co-founded ODAIA.ai in 2018, an AI-powered customer segmentation SaaS platform for Pharma companies to make better decisions about their customers. As Chief Evangelist, Helen brings her understanding of artificial intelligence, customer analytics and digital transformation to help sales and marketing teams adopt AI in their work; she's also developing new approaches for how these organizations can leverage data science and AI to achieve competitive advantage.
Helen has been advising artificial intelligence and emerging technology startups since 2014, including within in her own incubator, which she co-founded in 2015: The UofT's Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab (DCSIL). Where she supported students and faculty to commercialize their innovations.
Navin Kaminoulu
Co-Founder & COO, indus.ai
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Over the last 20+ years, Navin has been instrumental in building products & teams at three $20B+ market cap large public companies, maneuvered a turnaround for an early stage mobile application transportation business growing revenues by 500% in 3 years, and launched & sold a venture-backed artificial intelligence proptech to the world’s most widely used construction cloud B2B SaaS business. He is a 3X entrepreneur who has had the privilege of success through resiliency and failure.
He started his career in management consulting, where he was the key business and technology relationship manager for several initiatives helping deliver $200M+ business transformation projects. In 2014, he joined GreenOwl mobile where he directed the company’s hypergrowth leading to a strategic acquisition by Arcadis IBI Group (TSX:IBG). In 2017, he co-founded INDUS.AI, raised multiple rounds of venture capital, built & led several functions including Product, GTM & People ops, and guided the company’s strategic acquisition by Procore Technologies (PCOR:NYSE) in 2021.
Navin currently leads a 9 figure ARR product line at Procore Technologies and has helped scale revenues by 150% in less than 2 years coupled with 2X customer growth. He also maintains roles as a Board Advisor for the University of California Riverside Design thinking program, is an active community member & mentor at StartX (Stanford University’s technology accelerator), and serves as an Entrepreneur in Residence for YSpace at York University.
Mick B
Founder & CEO, IAmI Authentications Inc.
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Mick Be is the CEO & Founder of IAmI Authentications, Inc. (“IAmI”), an Identity & Access Management cybersecurity company. Being a startup founder of 10+ yrs, Mick advises coaches, and mentors numerous technology-based startups of all sizes and business types. Over the last 2 years, Mick has been an EiR and key member of the YSpace community.
Mick began his entrepreneurial journey after having worked for the financial services and card payment industries as a product marketing executive. Since beginning his first company, he has pivoted twice and now leads a highly innovative cybersecurity company. Mick possesses a very strong knowledge base in business development strategy, marketing, sales, operational management, technology & security strategy, and relationship building/management. He continues to be front and center at the crossroads of advancing technologies and user experiences, with a particular focus on privacy and security.
Areas of expertise and interest include:
• Privacy & Security
• Business Strategies
• Go to Market Strategy
Erin Blaskie
Fractional CMO & Marketing Consultant
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Erin is a fractional CMO and marketing advisor, to startups and scale-ups, with nearly 20 years of experience. Erin launched her company in 2004 and spent nearly 15 years working with scale-ups in Silicon Valley and growing the personal brands of best-selling authors, speakers, and actors. Erin also spent some time working in a B2B SaaS accelerator before joining startup, Fellow, as their first head of marketing hire.
Today, Erin is back to her fractional CMO roots, working with high-growth companies, as well as teaching the next wave of digital marketing professionals.
Elliott Atkins
Co-Founder & CEO, Opilio Labs
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Elliott is an educator and serial entrepreneur. Elliott spent 20 years in sales and sales leadership roles with high-tech companies including Microsoft and Dell before catching the entrepreneurship bug. He started his first business, AddMirror, in 2019 and sold it in 2017 after hitting seven figure sales numbers. His current venture includes a patented smart home platform. Elliott has a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA in Marketing from the Schulich School of Business.
Anita Chauhan
Director of Marketing, Fraction
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Anita is an award-winning marketer with international experience. She is passionate about education, content marketing, brand building and SaaS companies. She is a champion of building inclusive marketing departments and campaigns that can be used to inspire, connect and positively impact consumers. Her focuses include: messaging, positioning, GTM strategy and content marketing.
Anita has managed brands with $100MM+ in annual revenue across AI, tech, finance, lifestyle and end of life categories. Currently, she is the Director of Marketing at Fraction, a fintech company that provides fairer financial solutions to homeowners across North America.
Anita is passionate about diversity and inclusion and has been an advocate for women of colour in tech within the Toronto tech community.
Karen Lau
Co-Founder & CTO, Furnishr
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Karen Lau is the Cofounder and CTO of Furnishr. As one of Canada’s top growth companies in 2020, Furnishr is a tech-enabled furnishing solution for anyone who needs to furnish a room or the entire home. Focusing on operational efficiency and product development, Karen grew Furnishr’s operations to process $4m in revenue and deliveries with a team of 12. Karen is also a proud winner of 3 different startup pitches.
Muhammad Rashid
GM, Mortgage, Properly
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Muhammad is the GM, Mortgage at Properly. Properly is a Canadian real estate technology company that enables homeowners to buy when they find the home they love, move in, and then sell their old home from the comforts of their new one. Properly also offers Canada's most accurate home valuation report - homeowners can obtain a free and instant assessment of their home’s value that is always up-to-date. He is also a former founder with an exit under his belt.
Rohan Nair
Founder, Jointcare
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Rohan is the Founder and CEO of Jointcare, building machine learning tools for surgeons, and a Partner at Chai Ventures, which builds and advises companies in Fintech, Healthcare and HRTech. He was previously Head of Technology at Highline Beta, a Toronto-based VC firm, and has held numerous product and engineering leadership roles in Toronto-based startups.
Rohan’s advisory focuses are recruiting, and building high-performing engineering teams, GTM strategy, and early-stage fundraising.
Brent Stirling
VP of Growth & Sales, Shoelace
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Brent is a growth marketer with experience in performance, brand, design and UX and agency building. Proficient in driving successful full-funnel, end to end, omni-channel campaigns. Has managed upwards of $170M across social and search platforms. Previous stops at Shoelace and Shopify.
Emily Lonetto
Director of Growth, Voiceflow
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Emily is the Director of Community Growth at Webflow – a platform that enables anyone to design websites with no code. Previously she was the Director of Growth at Voiceflow, joining when they were a team of 5 and helping them reach over 85,000+ designers, developers and teams. Prior to Voiceflow, Emily was the second growth hire at Clio, the first at PartnerStack (YC’15) and helped to automate and scale Tilt (acquired by Airbnb, YC’12) through their global ambassador program. In her spare time, Emily is a speaker/advisor, and mentors early stage startups with their growth strategies.
Shubh Sidhu
Leading Growth, ZayZoon
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Shubh is an engineer by training who has spent a career in technology. He started his tech career spending 8 years in progressive roles at Mentor Engineering (later acquired by Constellation Software), 3 years at Rogers in Advanced Solutions, 3+ years building the sales and marketing functions at CovergentIS (top 500 growth company in Canada in 2018), and the last 3 years building the growth engine and team at ZayZoon. Shubh leads Sales, Marketing, Client Success and Revenue Operations at ZayZoon. He is passionate about the role FinTech can play in improving the lives of millions of employees. Outside of work, he's invested in being the best partner he can be, watching his kids be better than he ever could be, laughing with his friends, watching sports and eating chips. He has never met a microphone he hasn't liked.
Technology Accelerator FAQ
If you have additional questions, please email us at yspace@yorku.ca with your questions.
Who is the YSpace Technology Accelerator designed for?
Is there a specific industry or vertical that the accelerator focuses on?
How much does the program cost? Do I have to give up equity?
NOTHING! It is a free program for everyone and we do not take any equity in the company!
Is it only for York University students or alum?
The program is open to everyone in the community, as long as they are dedicated founders who are willing to put in the dedicated time to grow the venture.
How much time will I have to commit?
The program runs from the beginning of May 2022 to the end of August 2022 with a Demo Day scheduled for mid-September 2022 for the Top 5 ventures. On a weekly basis, the venture should devote a minimum of 5 hours for workshops, mentorship sessions, and office hours.
What are the different elements of the program
There are five (5) key components within the program:
- Monthly Mastermind Sessions led by a trained facilitator
- Hands-on workshops with leading industry experts
- Office hours with a private network of investors, industry experts, and growth consultants
- A dedicated mentor that has insights into the industry that your venture is disrupting
- Personality test and team dynamic assessment led by Pivot Perspectives
How many ventures will be chosen?
A maximum of 20 ventures will be chosen for the accelerator.
How much value will I get out of the program?
It is hard to measure the impact or value of the program as it will be different for everyone involved. However, the program offers over $60k worth of startup support paid for by YSpace, York University via the Mastermind sessions, dedicated mentorship, office hours with growth consultants.
In addition, the Top 3 ventures will compete for up to $30,000 in cash prize. Equity Free!
When is the application due?
The application is due on March 6th at 11:59 pm EST. If you are having issues with the application, please email us yspace@yorku.ca.