OKGN Angel Summit | High Altitude Happy Hour

The inaugural OKGN Angel Summit launched on January 28th, 2019. A collection of 27 investors, each willing to invest $5,000, created a venture capital fund worth upwards of $125000 and have spent the last 6 weeks assessing 40 of OKGNtech’s best and brightest startups. The investor group then narrowed it down to the final 5 and on April 11th the finalists presented their final pitch to the 27 participating investors

After almost an hour of deliberation, the winner was announced and Kelowna-based startup Trellis Social Enterprise took home the $130,000.00 prize. There was also an opportunity to vote for the people choice award. Daniel Rondeau, founder of 925 Freelancing took home that prize.

Accelerate Okanagan recently hosted former Summit participants and potential new investors at the Innovation Centre to announce the second annualOKGN Angel Summit as well as the new funding agreement. The event was hosted at Spaces Innovation, the new coworking space located on the ground floor of the Innovation Centre and the room was buzzing with excited companies, investors and supporters excited to kick off the next season of the summit.

Programs Manager, Thuy Tran took the opportunity to highlight some of the success following the inaugural event. “Not only was the OKGN Angel Summit responsible for a $130K investment in Kelowna-based company Trellis, but it was also the catalyst for more than $4M in committed investments with multiple participating startups,” Says Tran. “We knew this Summit would be an amazing opportunity to connect local investors with local startups but we are blown away by the resounding impact of this project and overwhelmed by the amount of community support we have been able to attract”.

Accelerate Okanagan’s Acting CEO also announced the recently signed funding agreement with National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) that will support the continuation of the OKGN Angel Summit over the next two years.

“Investments like this help support entrepreneurs in Canada’s technology and innovation sectors,” says Brea Lake, Acting CEO of Accelerate Okanagan. “Based on the success of our inaugural OKGN Angel Summit, we have no doubt that this funding will have a significant impact on the OKGNtech community for years to come”