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actualize your ideas

Ready to move from idea to actuality and see your startup thrive?

Discover who we are

achieve your goals

What we offer

Community: connection to mentors, investors, and other founders

Our thriving community offers in-person and virtual platforms that enable programs, funding opportunities, and access to partners with expertise, so you're never going it alone.

Access the AC community

What we offer

Acceleration: your hub for action

Our acceleration programs help you actualize your idea faster and connect corporations to the world's most energizing and impactful startups. Let us help you increase the pace of innovation for your startup or corporation.

Accelerate your idea

What we offer

Global Frontier: bringing the magic of Waterloo to the world

Set up your business in one of the world's most thriving startup ecosystems through the Startup Visa Program. Or build your own innovation ecosystem based on our proven model through the Global Hubs Program.

Go global

Want to get involved?

Apply in 4 easy steps

You have a vision to improve and change the world. We’re here to help. Give us a little bit more information about you and your business, and we’ll be in touch soon with next steps.

1

Are you a startup or a corporation? Or maybe you’re interested in our global initiatives. Let us know who you are.

2

We’ll ask you for some simple info about yourself so we can follow up with next steps.

3

Tell us more about you. What’s your company’s name? Who is your target market? What impact are you trying to make?

4

Let us know what type of support you’re looking for, so we can offer the right pathway for you to build a business that thrives.

The AC

In numbers

Different’s good—real change never happens without it. It’s through pushing the envelope and turning big ideas into worthwhile risks that we’ve become Canada’s #1 Private Business Accelerator.

Our programs and pathways, combined with our world-class team of mentors and customizable opportunities, are proven to build and scout businesses that are set up to thrive. See for yourself.

750+
startups supported

20,000+
hours of one-to-one mentorship

5,000+
jobs created

5B+
portfolio valuation

$1.7B+
in investment raised

85%
survival rate

400
alumni companies

Awards

One of the World's Top 5 Private Business Accelerators

We're among the World's Top 5 Private Business Accelerators Since 2017. We own these awards because we’re reimagining what a startup hub looks like. We help turn big ideas into worthwhile risks. Through our founders and alumni community, courage and grit change the world.

Top Business Accelerator Linked to University award

Top Business Accelerator Linked to University

UBI Global | 2017/2018 | Worldwide

Top Private Business Accelerator award

Top Private Business Accelerator

UBI Global | 2019-2020 | World Top 5

World Top 5 Private Business Accelerator

UBI Global | 2021-2022 | World Top 5

Our alumni

For Corporations

Truly transformative partnerships

Access to the expertise and network of a variety of industies and services providers is a key component of a full-stack startup hub. Connect with us to learn how we work with larger companies to support founders, increase the pace of innovation, and create a truly connected startup hub.

Success Stories

Client Spotlight: Cameron Waite, Founder and CEO of Real Life Robotics

Real Life Robotics is working to change how businesses manage labour by developing and deploying robots for cargo and last-mile delivery work. Founder Cameron Waite is using his decades of robotics experience to commercialize the startup’s robot, BUBS, which can be used in a multitude of industries like healthcare, retail, restaurants, and hospitality.

Learn more

Success Stories

Client Spotlight: Jerry Mailloux, Co-Founder and CTO of enVgo

enVgo is bringing electrification to boating with its innovative battery-powered propulsion system.

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Success Stories

Client Spotlight: Pat Chaisang, Founder and CEO of Isempower

Isempower provides universities and colleges a platform to support international students at scale. The platform connects students with job opportunities and tailored resources while helping employers hire ethnically diverse candidates across Canada.

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Success Stories

Nominal Controls Contributes to Advancements in Space Industry With New Testing Rig Delivery

Fast forward to today, Nominal Controls is celebrating its 7th year as a company. After recently delivering a solid-state test rig for one of Elon Musk’s companies, Nominal Controls officially begin R&D of aerospace/space variants of their solid-state contactors.

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Success Stories

Founder Spotlight: Stuart Mooney, Founder of Utradea

Utradea is leveling the playing field for investing by combining artificial intelligence and real-time market data to provide its customers with investment insights.

Learn more

Success Stories

Client Spotlight: Erica Shelley, CEO of Best for Bees

Best for Bees works with researchers, producers, and supply companies to improve bee health, make beekeeping easier, and save the world's bees—one hive at a time. The startup offers a subscription service delivering bee health products to beekeepers worldwide.

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Success Stories

Client Spotlight: Phil Ballyk, CEO of Caddie Health

Caddie Health is helping physicians make more time for patient care by using AI to automate medical billing. Its product analyzes physician chart notes to predict the optimal billing and diagnosis codes, saving time, increasing revenue, and improving billing staff efficiency.

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Success Stories

Founder Spotlight: Kyle Collier, CEO of Phaze

Phaze provides large enterprises with a secure payment API to issue digital gift cards, cash cards, and prepaid mobile top-ups to their users. Phaze supports digital gift cards in over 100 countries, making it the go-to platform for digital wallets, neo-banks, and gaming platforms.

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Success Stories

Founder Spotlight: Mila Banerjee, CEO of Pronti AI

Pronti AI is an AI-powered stylist that helps fashionistas and the fashionably challenged alike find the perfect outfits using the items from their closets.

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Success Stories

Founder Spotlight: Andrea Edginton, President and COO of MAPflow

MAPflow is a new platform designed to help pharmacists assess patients and prescribe medication for 13 minor ailments under a recent provincial change. It's a platform built by pharmacists for pharmacists.

Learn more

Success Stories

InheritChain Launches Product Beta of New LegalTech Platform Utilizing Blockchain and AI

Based on their own experiences, expertise, and market research they agreed that there was a need in the market to build a groundbreaking, Blockchain protected, legal software involving Wills and Estates. Collectively, they founded InheritChain, a LegalTech startup that is building a Blockchain-backed Will Management software for Lawyers.

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Success Stories

Founder spotlight: Brad Reid, founder of Brighter Future Homes

Brighter Future Homes has developed and patented organic air cleaning systems that increase oxygen levels, lower CO2 levels, and filter harmful particles without the use of replaceable filters.

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Success Stories

Vambora is empowering newcomers

In 2016 Amadeu and Laura Ferreira emigrated from Brazil to Canada. They experienced firsthand the challenges and barriers newcomers face in securing housing in a new country, and the vulnerability housing insecurity causes.

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Success Stories

Visionary Semiconductor Inc. Showcases Autonomous Parking Solution at VSemi Inspiration Day

Visionary Semiconductor Inc. (VSemi) is challenging the way we use 3D sensing solutions by developing high-tech LiDAR sensors to streamline and automate processes across all industries, including agriculture, robotics, drones, etc.

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Success Stories

Urban Stalk is creating a new generation of food production systems

Urban Stalk is creating a new generation of food production systems that improve crop health while lowering the environmental impacts of traditional large-format farming operations.

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Success Stories

Dialectic is creating inclusive workplace cultures and mental health supports

Today, through Learning Snippets, Dialectic offers a full suite of e-learning tools that help businesses use science to build inclusive workplace cultures, help their teams develop inclusive habits, and address biases in a remote and asynchronous way that works for leaders and teams alike.

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Success Stories

Baneks creates the world’s first Uber-like currency exchange platform

Baneks is the world's first Uber-like currency exchange platform focused on providing clients with the ability to make foreign exchange transactions without money actually crossing the border.

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Working through the program with the mentors gave us the confidence to grow our business knowing that whatever challenges we ran into, someone at the AC would be there to help us.

Dr. Abdul Rehman, CEO, SSIMWAVE

I came to the AC because of their focus on long-term success and their stellar mentorship team. They are incredibly experienced, can shift focus easily, and go as deep into my business as I need them to.

Mary Pat Hinton, CEO, Emmetros

A tree can’t grow unless it has strong roots and is part of a supportive ecosystem. The AC provided us with a foundation to transform our passion into a thriving business.

Matt Randell, CEO, Clearpath Robotics

What's new

Sept 28

Media Advisory

On Friday, September 30th at 10 a.m. Waterloo MPP Catherine Fife will be at the Accelerator Centre as it announces exciting enhancements to its...

Learn more