Conference Information

News from Alumni Companies

Congratulations to the winners of the Banff Venture Forum 2009
Best Presenting Company Awards:
Information Technology: Tynt Multimedia Inc.
Energy Technology: SWITCH Materials Inc.
Life Sciences Technology: enGene Inc.

Banff Venture Forum alumni companies among Canada's Top 10^TM 2009 competition winners!

Banff Venture Forum 2008 presenter Quadra Solar, and 2007 presenters Sempa Power Systems Ltd. and Data Gardens were recently awarded the honours in CleanTech and IT categories.

Theracarb Inc., 2008 presenting company, receives $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations Grant for Innovative Global Health Research from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (see press release). 

5 Banff Venture Forum 2007 companies received investment from AVAC Ltd. in 2008. AVAC Ltd. announces 2008 investments.

Aksys Networks Inc.
Calgary Scientific Inc.
Datagardens Inc.
IntelliView Technologies Inc.
Userful Corp.

IT Alumni

Redwood Technologies presented at Banff in 2007, and were voted "Best Presenting Company” in the IT Stream.   As part of CBC's event coverage Redwood was interviewed for CBC Radio.   At the time of the Forum, Redwood had an open round of funding, which was successfully closed 2 months later, including a six-figure investment from one angel investor that attended Redwood's presentation at the Banff Venture Forum!  Redwood went on to be shortlisted globally as True Mobile Start-Up by the GSM Association at their annual awards in February 2008.  As a result of these recognitions, Redwood has experienced a lot of publicity including magazine and newspaper articles and most recently a national interview and feature on CBC Television.   Since the Banff Venture Forum Redwood has used the funds raised to commercialize its products and services, to build out the core team, and most importantly to secure traction with some of the world's biggest wireless carriers and handset manufacturers, in preparation for the launch in Q2 of 2008 of "momentem" , mobile telecom expense management and call tagging.  For more details on Redwood Technologies, visit their website at www.redwoodtechnologies.com

Mixpo  won audience favourite at Banff Venture Forum 2005 (Mixpo was named How2Share at the time).  Initially angel financed, the company secured USD $6.5M in its first venture capital financing in mid 2006, backed by Yaletown Venture Partners, Growthworks, and Madrona Ventures (Seattle).  The popularity of online video advertising is driving most of the growth in local online ad spending and Mixpo is a pioneer in online video advertizing.  Mixpo’s video advertising platform enables interactive agencies, ad networks, publishers, directories, and marketplaces to easily and affordably create, deploy, and optimize online video ads that drive measurable results and fuel more effective marketing campaigns for their clients.  Mixpo has been recognized by Red Herring as one of “’s 10 Hottest Start-ups”. For more information on Mixpo visit their website at www.mixpo.com

Energy Alumni

6N Silicon won the award for Best Presenting Company in the Energy Technology Stream at Banff Venture Forum 2006.  6N Silicon secured $6M million in its initial round of venture capital financing from Yaletown Venture Partners and Ventures West in early 2007 and an additional $20M in a second round of venture financing with those investors and Good Energies in 2008.  In addition to strong venture backing from a global syndicate of cleantech investors, 6N has received multi-million dollar investments from EnCana, Sustainable Development Technologies Canada, and the 6N is a developer of true solar grade silicon for the photovoltaic (PV) industry. The global market for solar grade silicon is projected to grow to $10.4 billion by 2010 from approximately $2.3 billion in 2006.  For more information on 6N Silicon, visit their website at www.6nsilicon.com

Life Sciences Alumni

Please Check Back for Updated Information



Banff alumni companies are "HOT" in the USA.   In the cover story "Hot in Canada", Red Herring’s New York City-based correspondent identifies 10 Canadian start-ups that kept coming up in conversations with investors and entrepreneurs during his research - two of them are past are both featured in the September 2007 issue of Red Herring magazine as two of the 10 Hottest Start-ups to watch in .   Check the magazine cover story, and top 10 story, both focused on Canada, here: http://mag1.olivesoftware.com/am/welcome/RDH/RedHerring_0827_2007.asp