5 exciting findings from Grand Messe startup invasion

In an old church transformed into Theatre Paradoxe, you could discover various innovative ventures in the food, travel, services, marketing, design or fashion industry. This 3rd edition of the Grand Messe was organized by Montréal inc and presented by Bell. Startups were pitching their ideas in confessionals to the media who symbolically awarded a benediction to their favorite emerging startup.

Innovation Montreal’s team was on the ground and discovered 5 innovative products:

Brwski

Sagafrika

Perla Paletas

Brwski, the first in-store digital beerologist that simplifies how grocery customers discover beer in-store. They invented a unique machine to help beginners and beer geeks look for the perfect beer in store.

Sagafrika, offering the first range of African frozen dishes cooked in Quebec. We met with Sandra, the founder, and tasted a delicious cassava leaves sauce from Congo.

Perla Paletas, bringing typical healthy Mexican ice-cream and Popsicle to Canada. Made with real fruits and no additive, they offer an original healthy snack for summer days. We tasted their lime and cucumber Popsicle and their chocolat and raspberry frozen yogurt. Perla has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Ulule to extend her product line.

Picolo Velo

Reunion D Sens

With the same healthy concerns in mind, we got to admire a bicycle made of wood, Picolo Velo. The wooden bike frames have been designed and built in Montreal with social, environmental concerns. We also discovered that the same sustainable concern was shared by corporations : Reunion D Sens offers companies two innovative locations in the heart of Montreal to organise meetings. These locations offer a unique experience that stimulates creation and helps to lower stress levels and increase confidence.

Stay tuned for more in depth stories on some of these innovative startups!

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Montreal, a new lab for innovative cannabis health usage

(c) Kevin Chen

For centuries, marijuana has proved to have a huge potential to alleviate pain especially when it is related to the side effects of chemotherapy and other degenerative diseases. Today, synthetized cannabis could be the next innovation in the health industry – at least it is the project of ambitious young scientist, Kevin Chen.

We met Kevin at an event organized by John Molson School of Business MBA Entrepreneurship Club (JMEC) earlier this year. With his 24 years old and geeky eyeglasses, Kevin is not the kind of guy you would imagine roaming around with a joint – in fact, he has never smoked any cannabis in his life, but he is passionate about biochemistry and that is enough to make a difference.

“As synthetic biologists, we adopt new technologies, innovations and models in making discoveries, finding cures, and solving problems.”

A pure Montreal innovation

This new innovation is a 100% Montreal project, from its premises to its actual stage: it all started at the beginning of 2014 at Bricobio, a biology lab where scientists and entrepreneurs met in Montreal. With a couple of friends, Kevin pitched his ideas to Irish biotech accelerator Indie.bio. After this, nothing was the same: Kevin started the company with his co-founders Zach Wiltshire, Alex Campbell, Shoham Mookerjee.

They decided to stay in Montreal, instead of Ireland: “we had a lot of incentive and support for moving there but for entrepreneurs, Montreal has a great talent pool and access to a lot of other resources that are great for early stage companies.” Fuelled with the cohesive and collaborative startup ecosystem, the team started the most difficult part of the job – collecting funds.

Getting funds one round at a time

The team closed a first round was as part of the IndieBio accelerator program. The  $520,000 second round was lead by Bill Liao at SOS Ventures, and followed by Ethan Perlstein of PerlsteinLab and Andrew Hessel of Autodesk. Major steps in achieving this were demonstrating potential through their results and ability to solve problems. Recently, Hyasynth Bio participated in MassChallenge in Boston this summer and won an award from Cydan, an accelerator of orphan disease research dedicated to creating therapies that impact the lives of people living with rare genetic diseases,

Synthetizing cannabinoids … and beyond

Today, Hyasynth Bio is in the later stages of the development phase, and very close to commercialization. They are aiming to be on the market within the next year. The target audience is ultimately patients, but they are also getting there by partnering with other companies and organizations of different kinds.”

“We’re aiming to synthesize anything. The cannabinoids are going to occupy a large portion of the pharmaceutical industry, and there are a lot of molecules in that family. Beyond that, there are many more biologicals that would make great targets”

From artists to entrepreneurs in construction

How can we start describing Malina and Steven? They are a surprising blend of adventurers, artists, entrepreneurs and landowners. In the arts, just as in real life, they believe in interdisciplinary work.

At the beginning of this innovative enterprise, two artists who graduated from the prestigious Valand School of Fine Arts (University of Gothenburg) in Sweden and needed a stable base to work, after moving from one art residency to another throughout the world.

An interdisciplinary way of life

In 2012, after exposing and creating in Sweden, Ireland, Germany, the UK, Finland, Iceland, Malina Cailean and Steven Ladouceur decided to come back to Montreal – Steven’s birthplace and Malina’s city of adoption – to look for a storing place which would also serve as a working studio.

“We considered our buying options and decided to go for an entire building – two floors and four condos.”

The building, on Notre-Dame in the new popular area of Saint-Henri, was in need of major repairs, in fact it had to be entirely reconstructed starting with the wood support pole. When normal people would have considered the help of carpenters, electricians, architects, or bricklayers, Malina and Steven decided to do it themselves. These two autodidacts went through hundreds of books, learnt the composition of walls, fire resistance of components, and completed the Autocad Training in Montreal for Interior Design.

“We saw this reconstruction challenge like artists – we know we can do it all, we just need the proper tools”.

Multidimensional entrepreneurship: a do-it-yourself pulse

To finance this massive project, Steven & Malina received a Major Residential Renovation grant from the city of Montreal providing them with 60% of the total cost of renovation. To receive the grant, they had to work with an official General Contractor so Steven went through the whole training and got the official certificate to become his own general contractor.

However, they still had to find the other 40% to renovate the building and both worked in diverse environments to earn money: Malina became a designer for a stationery shop while Steven worked as a projectionist or telemarketer.

Last year, as they were working on their endless renovation task, Malina looked on the other side of the road and noticed that a slot was for rent. Then again, following their surge for adventure and entrepreneurship, they decided to rent it, renovate it and launch a coffee shop – Café Tome –  with the perspective of selling coffee to pay the renovations. But wait, if they have to sell coffee… why wouldn’t they make it themselves?

 

More challenge, more innovation, more originality. After working on an innovative concept of cold brewed coffee, Malina was awarded a grant to follow the Self-Employment program at SAJE Montreal, a management consulting organization whose mission is to stimulate, promote and support the expansion of small and medium-size businesses in Quebec. Soleil Mouvant will be a cold brewed coffee produced, bottled and distributed in different places, one of which will be her own coffee place.

“Cold brew has many advantages: we don’t use any preservatives, we do not need any costly equipment and it can be consumed within 7 days of preparation”

Today, Malina & Steven have many projects underway: they have to finish the renovation of the building by end of March while Malina resumes cost studies and seeking suppliers for Soleil Mouvant. But nothing is impossible for these promising entrepreneurs and it is with a sweet (Steven lives up to his name, Ladouceur) and untroubled perspective that they consider their future.

If you want to know more about the project, you can always contact Malina on her website and follow our Instagram feed as we post pictures of the building’s renovation.

 

 

Shaking the world of food entrepreneurship, meet Amélie Morency

“When I was 8, I started selling potpourri baskets in the street one day, and I got 50 bucks out of it. I thought: that’s it, I’m an entrepreneur!”

 

Amélie Morency is 24 today and she has already launched two startups, and one on the way. This time, she is ready to change the face of food entrepreneurship in Montreal through the FoodRoom an innovative culinary co-working place to open this spring.

Entrepreneurship, a means to achieve independence

photo by Foodivine Photography

Amélie is impatient, passionate and ambitious. Entrepreneurship has always been her way of achieving autonomy. Realizing the importance of earning money at 8, she had a bank account to keep her savings at 14 and started a landscape gardening company while studying. Her family gave her great examples: her father and grandmother were entrepreneurs and have always been supportive. “I didn’t need to do all this, but I have so many aspirations and I always want more responsibilities, more challenges”.

When her mother wanted her to go to university, Amélie preferred the more pragmatic Cegep program. She then graduated from Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec (ITHQ) and started working in a restaurant but moving up the ladder was too slow for her, she needed to achieve her goal faster and the solution was in entrepreneurship.

Amélie knows that entrepreneurship is not for idealists and sometimes you will break your neck. However, she did succeed in launching a successful first startup, A toutes les sauces, an eco-friendly catering company, and she earned several prizes and awards from the prestigious Founder Institute, Coop HEC and Fondation ITHQ…

The FoodRoom, an innovative solution to entrepreneurs’ problems

When Amelie launched A toutes les sauces, she quickly faced a major issue which wasn’t cash flow but a stable location to cook to meet the needs of her clients and fulfill impending contracts. Lack of infrastructure is what inspired the FoodRoom.

Other similar shared kitchen initiatives exist in Europe and the United States (the San Francisco’s Underground market was a pioneer). Montreal is a fertile ground for such innovative initiatives: Amélie is part of a broader community of young immigrants and Quebecers willing to build a food patrimony for themselves (on this subject, read Alix Food’s terrific blog), and she wants to provide her fellow entrepreneurs with the physical and social infrastructure to create delicious products, build partnerships with producers.

The 7500 sq feet coworking space will be located in the Ahunstic area in Montreal. Half of the space will be dedicated to cooking and half will be transformed in offices and a multipurpose hall to organize events and trainings.

“We want to become more than a kitchen rental project, we want to create a community with high quality equipment”.

Through monthly subscriptions, members will get access to customized services. Caterers, small-scale producers (salsa, cookies, ice cream), chefs or food-truck owners’, everyone need a space to cook and in fact, the FoodRoom has already secured 23 contracts with clients and 65 are on waiting list.

“Getting investors to believe in you and your company is the toughest part.”

Investments for the FoodRoom came from Amélie’s private funds, from private investors and bank loans, but today, more than 500 000$ have been invested in the company and the building permit is settled so nothing will stop this exciting project from blooming this spring!

For now, you can visit their website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and you can meet Amélie at La Gare co-working if you’re in the area.

Bastien Poulain, innovating the cola industry

It might be cold in Montreal but the city is bustling with hot innovative projects. Bastien Poulain is one of these dynamic young entrepreneurs surfing on the wave of innovation. He has launched 1642, the first cola made of maple syrup, in a country where the soda industry is clearly dominated by multinational firms.

Entrepreneurship? It runs in the family

Bastien is not from Montreal but his heart now belongs to the city. Born in the French city of Rennes, he was raised in Brittany in a family of entrepreneurs.

“My father and grandfather were both entrepreneurs. It runs in the family. I spent my childhood immersed in this world. Every Saturday morning, I opened the cheques with my father and gave him the amounts.”

However, Bastien knows that having childhood memories is not enough: to be an entrepreneur, you need to have an original idea, and be passionate about it. Bastien started his professional life in China and Montreal in the hotel industry and the idea of a Quebec cola only came to his mind in 2013.

Innovative financing tools

Like many startupers and entrepreneurs, Bastien had to juggle with several financing tools: although he had put money aside before the project, he launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo and raised $7,111 CAD in a month. He also earned a grant from Fondation Montréal Inc, and credit from Banque Nationale and from private investors through the TV show “L’Oeil du Dragon”. Bastien knows that money is the backbone of his effort: “financing is a continuous goal that we have to consider on a daily basis to manage our growth”

Producing a local soda through social entrepreneurship

Producing alternative sodas is not a new idea and there are many examples in the world, such as Breizh Cola, a soda launched in Bastien’s original region of Brittany, but what is so innovative and special about 1642 is that (almost) everything about it is local.

“In Quebec, we have the chance of having the most natural and healthy sugar so when we asked ourselves what we would put in our cola, the answer was crystal clear”.

Not only is the product local but it is also perfectly adapted to the changing market: Today, consuming local products is not a trend anymore, it is a fact.

Bastien is dedicated to working with quality local actors: his company is the only one in the soda industry working with the best Canadian micro-distillery, Le Domaine Pinnacle. All providers and employees are local. The cola itself is named after the foundation date of Montreal, and Bastien has already developed strategic language elements and strong communication.

“We want to tell a story with our 1642, a story for all Montrealers, whether we were born here or made it our home. This is the story of our proud city”.

Consumers become influencers

Bastien started his adventure by targeting the Canadian market and neighbour states who have a good image of Canadian products. His target consumers are in their twenties and thirties, they are striving for innovative products and they like to tell all about it. “1642 is not a luxury product, it is a quality product”. Although an individual bottle will cost around $2 CAN in Canada, it is distributed in more than 600 locations in Quebec (you will find a helpful interactive map of Montreal on the website), in prestigious restaurants (Le Toqué, l’Européa in Montreal), in supermarkets and delicatessen shops. 1642 wants to create a niche on the fizzy drink market.

Next steps?

There is no doubt that 1642 will continue to grow in Canada but the company wants to develop sales in Europe, China and the US. They have also started to expand the range of products with 1642 Tonic, their new soda. In the short term, communication and PR remain a key issue and Bastien will represent Canada as a delegate at the G20 Young Entrepreneur Summit (G20YEA) in Beijing in August 2016, along with 16 other entrepreneurs.

1642 is sold in more than 600 locations in Quebec and 20 in France and Belgium, you can also buy it online. It is very active on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Personally, I have tasted it at L’Intermarché Universel, 89 av. du Mont-Royal Est.