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Despite economic headwinds and investment unease in the global tech community, Collision 2022 was a whirlwind of inspiration, big client wins, and reconnection.

By Angela Bourne, Altitude Accelerator Entrepreneur-in-Residence

When I first heard the news (during a virtual team meeting, of course!) that Altitude Accelerator would be attending Collision in-person with our Brampton Innovation District partners, I could barely contain my joy.

After spending the last couple years in a pandemic cocoon with my hubby and two toddlers, I may have even half-fallen off my dining room chair while exclaiming, “this is SUCH A BIG DEAL! A HUGE DEAL!” into my computer screen to my equally excited colleagues.

And a huge deal it was. For Collision, for Canada, and for all of us in the tech startup space. And wow, did it feel great.

With over 35,000 attendees from all over the world – 1,500 startups, 1,200 journalists, investors from every sector, and smart, big-name speakers you absolutely want to listen to, it’s no wonder Politico calls it “the Olympics of Tech.”

Huge kudos to the conference organizers: registration was a breeze, well-staffed by friendly and helpful employees and volunteers, and production design was impeccable. A+ all-around, and every detail was thought of – even the coffee and food trucks from some of Toronto’s most popular restaurants lined the streets with ample tables and seating to catch up with colleagues and friends.

I’ve certainly been to more tech conferences than I can count during my career, and this one was in a league of its own.

A few days before the conference I read an article on Linkedin by Paddy Cosgrave, Founder & CEO of Collision & Web Summit, in which he shared how he managed to keep his company alive during the pandemic when all in-person events were cancelled. Read it when you have a moment, and given the current news cycle, it is particularly poignant. (Spoiler: he didn’t lay off a single one of his 220 employees, navigated the depths of the pandemic, and emerged stronger than before.)

Here are some of our team’s favourite moments from Collision 2022

The Brampton Innovation District Booth with Batman & the Batmobile was THE place to be!

Our booth was non-stop activity with prospective clients, partners, investors, and media during the entire conference. A huge thank you to Brampton Economic Development for bringing together the Brampton Innovation District partners in this incredible showcase of talent and exciting opportunity.

Source: Perspective

Cleantech Prominence

Three days before the conference kicked off, Collision conference organizers shared which startups were already the “most requested startups” by the 850 investors in attendance, based on meeting request data from the conference app.

It should be no surprise that many of these startups were in the Cleantech space. Cleantech is a $2.5 Trillion opportunity and this is an area where Canada excels.

Altitude Accelerator Entrepreneur-in-Residence James Sbrolla and Cleantech domain expert shared, “I loved how there was a Cleantech area at Collision. It was the main attraction for me, and I was very happy it was concentrated and there were many people for me to engage with in one place, which resulted in some excellent conversations.”

You can learn more about our Cleantech superstar clients and programs at Altitude here.

Women in Tech & Investor Energy

It was standing room only in the Women in Tech and Investor Lounges, with lineups 20+ deep to be admitted over the course of the conference.

The strong showing of women entrepreneurs and investors at Collision 2022 was especially meaningful for Danielle Brewin Graham, Lead Advisor for Altitude’s Investor Readiness program, and Managing Partner of Phoenix Fire angel fund and Co-Founder of The Firehood.

Danielle shared with us, “After the time warp of the past few years at home, Collision was an energizing opportunity to reconnect with my network, reignite relationships, and once again move at the pace of a startup! The Women in Tech Lounge and Investor Lounge were particularly helpful spaces for women entrepreneurs looking to connect with the right people for fundraising efforts.”

Geoff Simonett, Altitude Entrepreneur-in-Residence and President of Pinelands Capital, was enthusiastic about the investor experience: “I had a terrific time at Collision this year. It was amazing to see so many active investors in one place at one time, and there’s nothing like being able to walk up to multiple great companies and hear their story live. Those types of real-time ‘collisions’ will no doubt lead to new investments that may have otherwise not happened.”

Our Startups Clients Won Awards & Made National News Headlines 

Many of our Altitude Accelerator clients were in attendance, with several featured in the official Collision startup showcase. EnvAI Solutions was selected as an official Impact Startup, in the Environment, Energy & Cleantech showcase,  MOSEA, Phoenix, and Startup Fuel were official Collision Beta startups, and Doc Clik, EnvAI, Smart Cocoon, ROCarbon Labs, Expancio, AssetFlo, XAHIVE, SUBSKRYB, and Tenamint were official Collision Alpha startups! Congratulations to these awesome teams.

It was also wonderful to have many founders speaking with prospective startup entrepreneurs visiting our booth, answering questions, and offering guidance and a behind-the-scenes look into “startup life” and our program offerings. Thank you to Tossdown, Phoenix, MOSEA, Smart Cocoon, SpaceRyde, ROCarbon Labs, AposSys Technologies, Doc Clik, Expancio, AssetFlo, ROVE, Knnct Markets Corp, XAHIVE, Carpollo, Gametime Technologies, SUBSKRYB, Quanta Vici, Tenamint, Biofect Innovations, PathtoCareer, CarbonCap, Startup Fuel, and EnvAI.

Congratulations to SUBSKRYB who won a 2022 Impact Startup Award for Top 100 Startups!

It was a HUGE week in the news for our client SpaceRyde!

CBC: Meet the husband-wife duo competing with SpaceX to send cargo to the moon.
Global News: Canada’s 1st space rocket factory opens with aim to be more eco-friendly.
CTV News: How a Canadian husband and wife team plan to send satellites into space.
Financial Post: Up, up and away: Space industry startup is using balloons to launch rockets.
blogTO: SpaceRyde just opened Canada’s first orbital rocket factory near Toronto.

And that’s a wrap on Collision …our team is busy setting up meetings with people we met and looking forward to this fall’s Incubator 18 applications. Want to learn more? Drop us a line, we’d love to chat. Altitude Accelerator offers programs for startups at any stage, customized for your specific needs. We look forward to hearing from you. And, of course, seeing you at Collision 2023 in Toronto next year!

The post Altitude Accelerator: Collision 2022 Highlights appeared first on Altitude Accelerator.

The SDTC is a foundation of the Government of Canada. They support Canadian corporations with the tools to become world leaders in their efforts to create and develop new environmental technologies and address issues like, climate change, clean air, water, and soil. SDTC is funding $58.6 million into 14 Canadian clean technology companies.

Li-Cycle is a clean technology company that aims to solve the problem of lithium-ion battery recycling and meet the growing demand for critical battery materials. It uses a low cost recycling solution, unique from existing methods. Their technology consumes a low amount of energy, produces no landfilled waste, and minimal to no GHG emissions.

It is capable of safely dismantling commercial li-ion batteries through an automated process without risk of explosion. Li- Cycle Technology is ‘future proofed’ because it processes all li-ion batteries to recover enduring intermediate products like, lithium, cobalt, and copper.

Their pilot plant is a feature of Li-Cycle’s Centre of Excellence for Advanced Resource Recovery, located in Kingston, Ontario. The Centre is the first in the world that focuses on closed-loop recycling and resource recovery of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

Through SDTC’s funding Li-Cycle will be able to further develop Li-Cycle technology through the pilot plan and launch the Li-Cycle Centre of Excellence as a platform for end-market material development. Raising awareness to Canadians to properly recycle lithium-ion batteries.

The investments support the advice of industry leaders from the Clean Technology Economic Strategy Tables which is the necessary growth of Canadian clean tech companies. Experts anticipate the clean technology market to grow to $2.5 trillion by 2022.

Li-Cycle was recently a part of Altitude Accelerator’s Incubator program.

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In the coming years, there will be tens of millions of electric cars on the road worldwide. It’s a boon for the environment. Lower greenhouse gas emissions will help ease the growing climate issues we’re seeing today.

In Ontario, incentives of up to $14,000 have helped the province double electric vehicle sales since 2016. Quebec also introduced a new law stating that 15.5% of car sales in the province have to be EVs by 2025.

Demand for battery-powered vehicles is clearly growing. But how do we supply all these cars with the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries they need? And what happens when they reach the end of their lives?

The wide-ranging uses of lithium-ion batteries, including electric vehicles, translates to over 11 million tonnes of batteries that are expected to reach the end of their useful lifecycle between 2018 and 2030 globally.

Currently, smelting is the best available technology to recycle lithium-ion batteries. The process typically of 30-40% of the mass of lithium-ion batteries, targeting cobalt, copper and nickel recovery. The remaining material is either burnt and emitted to the atmosphere or ends up in solid waste like slag. Critical materials like lithium partially end up in slag and consequently are not economically recoverable. Slag may be useful in road base but it won’t be reused to make new batteries.

Smelting is not a very sustainable model in the long-term, and the low recoveries, not a very profitable one either for the entire lithium-ion battery supply chain.

Li-Cycle Technology is an advanced lithium-ion battery resource recovery solution that is low cost, safe, and environmentally friendly. It can process all types of lithium-ion batteries with unparalleled recoveries of 80-100%. Li-Cycle’s closed loop process enables dramatically improved recoveries of all components from lithium-ion batteries.

How it started

Ajay Kochhar, CEO of Li-Cycle, has a background in chemical engineering. Kochhar gained in-depth technology and project development experience during his time at Hatch, a global engineering consultancy based in Canada. He also worked alongside Tim Johnston, co-founder of Li-Cycle, as part of Hatch’s Advisory/Management Consulting practice.

Prior to that, Kochhar and Johnston had the opportunity to develop multi-billion-dollar mining and metallurgical projects in the energy metals space, from engineering, through to construction and operations.

As part of the Advisory practice, they helped financial institutions and multinational corporations assess investment opportunities in the metallurgical, mining and infrastructure industries. While working with a major lithium producer, Kochhar and Johnston were able to assess over 220 lithium assets and technologies. Projects such as these provided them a global and unique view of the lithium-ion battery market.

After leaving their careers at Hatch to pursue entrepreneurship, the urgent global challenge and opportunity of end-of-lifecycle lithium-ion batteries particularly stood out to Kochhar and Johnston. They subsequently decided to start Li-Cycle in 2016.

Since then, the company has successfully developed Li-Cycle Technology – a proprietary and proven process to improve resource recovery from lithium-ion batteries.

Approximately 5% of global demand for cobalt and less than 1% of the global demand for lithium is currently met through secondary or recycled supply. Despite being a small portion of the current industry value chain today, lithium-ion battery recycling could play an integral role in minimizing raw material bottlenecks and price swings into the future.

Li-Cycle has completed two scale-up phases to date and is currently in its final scale-up phase to build a 1 tonne/day pilot facility. The company has grown quickly with help from Seed and subsequent Series A funding. Li-Cycle has established connections with global partners like OEMs, battery manufacturers, experienced advisors, as well as the cleantech ecosystem in Ontario and globally to help support the push to commercialization.

Li-Cycle’s business model is focused on operating at commercial scale to produce appreciable amounts of end-products (e.g. cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper, and much more) to sell back into the lithium-ion battery supply chain and the broader economy.

Ultimately, Li-Cycle aims to improve the efficiency of the global lithium-ion battery recycling industry through its closed loop resource recovery solution. In turn, the recycling of lithium-ion batteries could meet 10-20% of global demand for critical materials such as cobalt and lithium by 2025.

To go back to the issue of meeting the demands of electric vehicles, Kochhar says, “By enabling sustainable recycling of lithium-ion batteries and reintroducing materials into the supply chain, we can enable the global transition to electro-mobility and reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.”

Cleantech in Canada

Cleantech is a very broad industry that doesn’t get much attention in mainstream media. The outlets that do talk about it, tend to focus heavily on renewable energy sources like solar or wind power. But there are limitless amounts of renewable and recyclable products from car tires to everyday plastics.

“There is an evident and urgent need to transition away from a carbon-based economy,” says Kochhar. “Entrepreneurs and the broader industry need a change in mindset. Climate change represents the greatest economic opportunity of our time. If entrepreneurs and their funders are incentivized to focus on selling ads or similar, who will address the truly hard problems facing our world? Improved resource recovery from end-of-lifecycle materials to conserve natural resources and offset greenhouse gas emissions is just one of the key pieces of that puzzle.”

The Canadian government has recently allocated close to $2 billion towards the research and development of clean technologies. As Kochhar mentions, Canada punches above its weight in its support for cleantech.

Given the make-up of the country itself and the variety of ecosystems that span across it, clean technologies are an important area of investment and one that will certainly grow as an industry in the coming years.

Li-Cycle is part of the Altitude Accelerator Incubator. To apply to the Incubator Program, click here.

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If you’re interested in technology in Canada, it’s hard to ignore the bright lights at either end of the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor. But at the epicenter of that corridor, Mississauga and the Peel Region is quietly establishing itself as an innovation hub for Advanced Manufacturing/Materials, the Internet of Things and Clean Technologies.

At Bump Into The Future, key players in the region came together to talk about the future of innovation in Ontario. The event also stressed the importance of collaboration between government, corporate and startups and its role in making Canada a global leader in technology. In case you missed this great event, we’re going to cover some of the talking points discussed over the course of the morning.

Artificial Intelligence

Continual innovation is critical for growth. Companies that fail to adapt to changes in technology, most likely find themselves overrun by a lively startup. It’s the classic David and Goliath story, happening around us every day.

Artificial Intelligence has been the latest emerging technology that can threaten companies now and in the future. It’s part of what Barter describes as a general purpose technology.

General purpose technologies are a base level of technology that can be applied to any industry or area of life.

Think of steam as an example. The steam engine led to the industrial revolution, which in turn disrupted every industry imaginable and gave us the cities we live in today.

Information Technology is the steam engine of today. With the development of personal computers, we’ve opened up the possibility of hundreds of applications for it, from Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, to the Internet of Things and Advanced Materials.

Big organizations can no longer feel safe in an environment ripe for disruption, not even banks. Apple and Google’s mobile payment systems are just as much a competitor for financial institutions as FinTech startups are. And the biggest competitor for airlines trying to target business travelers? Skype.

In the current technological landscape, competition can come from the most unlikely places. And if you’re not sold on the need for corporate innovation, just remember, 52% of Fortune 500 companies from 15 years ago don’t exist any more.

Paul Barter
Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Altitude Accelerator

Global Connectivity

International traffic to Pearson International Airport has seen significant growth over the last year. Much of this is coming from emerging markets such as China, Russia and India.

These and other emerging markets are the perfect opportunity for the future of global connectivity and can have a direct impact on Canada’s economic development.

Kim Stangeby talked about the GTAA’s contribution to Toronto’s bid to house Amazon’s second global headquarters.

Toronto was named in the Top 20 finalists considered by Amazon and was the only non-American city on the list. This was largely in part to the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor’s connectivity to the rest of the world.

Most people may not realise how big a role Pearson plays in connecting the region to the rest of the world. But that’s not all they’re focusing on.

As part of a larger vision, the GTAA is also trying to alleviate congestion within the region by opening up roadways to the outskirts of Toronto, to places such as Mississauga, Vaughan and Richmond Hill. This can help business as a whole to operate more efficiently.

Kim Stangeby
Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at the Greater Toronto Airport Authority

Student-Led Startups

The Xerox Research Centre of Canada, is one of two research global research facilities for the company. In the last 40 years Xerox and Fuji Xerox have spent roughly $1 billion on research and development.

In 2012, the leadership at XRCC decided to open up a client services business so that they could use their expertise to help startups commercialize their products without any overhead costs for lab equipment. This also led to the partnership with Altitude Accelerator to help nurture innovation in the region.

During his presentation, Dr. Paul Smith, touched on the topic of student-led startups. Canada leads the world in the number of student-led startups according to the OECD. And the growing innovation hub in the area is perfectly geared up to help these startups commercialize and scape up their ideas.

For example, two Altitude Accelerator-supported startups, Suncayr and Anomera, moved to conduct much of their R&D in Mississauga.

The XRCC is also developing the Canadian Campus for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing with the National Research Council, who work closely with academic labs. Along with hub partners like the Altitude Accelerator and others, there is unlimited potential for new startups to grow and scale up in the Peel Region.

Dr. Paul Smith
Vice President, Xerox Global Labs

NRC Mississauga Research Facility

Advanced Materials underpins many emerging and disruptive technologies. Just like the general purpose technologies we covered earlier, advanced materials can be applied to many fields like robotics, 3D printing, IoT and more.

Diana Facchini, spoke on the $25 million facility being built on the Xerox campus. This is the first time in the NRC’s one-hundred-year history that it’s opening up a facility in the Greater Toronto Area.

The new NRC Mississauga Research Facility will be a hub for advanced materials manufacturing and integration in Canada and a catalyst for advanced materials innovation and commercialization.

Partnerships with industry, academia and government will help bridge the gap between R&D processes and commercializing products.

Last year, the National Research Council supported over 1000 small-to-medium enterprises and with the construction of the new Centre of Excellence Advanced Manufacturing and Materials, they hope to support even more in the coming years.

Diana Facchini
Strategic Advisor, National Research Council Canada (Mississauga)

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