October 6 2015 | catherine | Rockstart introduces the Netherland’s First Digital Health Accelerator
Rockstart introduces the Netherland’s First Digital Health Accelerator
AMSTERDAM – 6 October 2015 –  Rockstart, the Global Startup Machine, today announced the first 10 participants of its new Digital Health Accelerator. The accelerator is the first of its kind in the Netherlands and will be taking place in Nijmegen to take full advantage of the highly innovative healthcare ecosystem that exists there. The unique program is patient-focused, includes global ambassadors and mentors and will integrate field labs to quickly validate and scale. Rockstart’s Digital Health Program Director Maarten den Braber says, “This is Rockstart’s first accelerator taking place outside of Amsterdam and we’re looking forward to tapping into the resources that Nijmegen’s Health Valley offers. The program we’ve put together ensures our participating startups will have access to an international mentor base and healthcare ecosystem partners, who are focused on market validation and fast-tracking innovative digital health startups.”
Participants in the program will receive €20,000 in investment and in-kind assistance. Rockstart Digital Health begins on 14 October 2015 and culminates in a Demo Day in Nijmegen on 25 February 2016. The 10 participating startups come from six different countries with ideas that span wearables that can help patients with chronic conditions to monitor the temperature of their medicine to social robots that assist adults with dementia. Bruxlab (Netherlands) – Bruxlab develops diagnostic tools to detect and track sleep bruxism, a condition where sufferers grind, gnash or clench their teeth. The Bruxism app records and filters tooth grinding sounds. Cognilab (United States) – Cognilab is a research suite for the scientific study of the human mind. Users can create cognitive tests, collect data and analyze results in days instead of months and Cognilab research-grade tools capture participant responses with millisecond precision. Dinst (Netherlands) – Dinst is a platform for connecting elderly, disabled and housebound people with home service providers. With just a few simple clicks people can find, compare and book reliable professionals who can help them with their needs. Fuelling (Spain) – Fuelling is a simple, fun & customized app for HR leaders that rewards employees for their physical efforts. Fysio24 (Netherlands) – Fysio24 is an instant online assistant to injury prevention and recovery. Through the app, people can directly access a library of tailored do-it-yourself programs and live online physical therapy coaching. Med Angel (Germany) – Med Angel provides patients suffering from chronic conditions and relying on temperature-sensitive medications (like insulin, hormones or modern expensive biologics) with a solution to monitor the temperature of their medications when stored in the fridge and when in use. MOUNT (Netherlands) – MOUNT; a user-friendly app linked to the EHR (electronic health record), provides insight and transparency in the decision-making process for patients, clinicians and healthcare institutions. Picto Connection (Spain) – Picto Connection eases communication to people who cannot communicate. The application utilizes big data, artificial intelligence and neuropsychological analysis and is connected to a collaborative platform that can be customized based on the users’ needs. Tinybots (Netherlands) – Tinybots are small social robots that assist the elderly with dementia by providing systematic reminders, personalized music, storytelling, cognitive therapy, and spoken instructions for daily tasks. Using an app, the formal and informal caregivers can configure a Tinybot for personal needs and wishes. Teamscope (Chile) – Teamscope is a multi-platform app that makes it possible for medical researchers to gather and store their data on the go, efficiently, securely and efficiently. To learn more about Rockstart’s Digital Health Accelerator, please visit us online and follow the team’s progress on Twitter and on Facebook
About Rockstart
Amsterdam based Rockstart ‘’The Global Startup Machine’, was founded in 2011 by Dutch serial entrepreneur Oscar Kneppers (formerly Emerce & Bright). The first Rockstart Accelerator program launched in 2012. Rockstart has accelerated 68 startups in 7 programs: 4 in the web & mobile domain, 2 focused on the smart energy industry and 1 in Digital Health. To date, over 70% of Rockstart alumni (including 3D Hubs and Peerby) have attracted over €18 million of funding from national and international angel and venture capital investors including Greylock Partners, Balderton Capital,XAnge Private Equity and Walvis Participaties. Press contact:

Rockstart introduces participants of NL's first Digital Health Accelerator

6 hours ago
Today Vancouver's Launch Academy announced today the six finalists of its 2014 Student Startup Challenge. Launched at the beginning of May, the Student Startup Challenge encourages student entrepreneurs to pitch their startup ideas for a chance to receive three months of office space and mentorship at Launch Academy and compete for $5,000 in cash prizes at Launch Academy’s Pitch Day in August. This year the SSC site received 17 startup videos that went on to accumulate over 2,700 votes. After reviewing the selection, judges selected the following six finalists:
Fetch : A platform where ethical breeders can create pages, list their litters, and connect with people looking to find the right dog. SafeRing : Provides you with an emergency call button right at your fingertips. Loodo Analytics : Provides real time customer traffic insights for all retail spaces. Blue Perch : "Tinder for jobs": sending jobs straight to your phone so you never have to search for a job again. Simply swipe and apply. Cloudy Robotics : A platform that will enable users to get data, see real-time video and control robots from their web browsers. Propel Swim School : A custom online registration, CRM, and online report card system that will change the aquatic industry forever. Last year’s 2013 SSC finalists Cognilab and HelpHub both went on to achieve significant milestones, with HelpHub raising $250,000 from Sora Capital and Cognilab gaining acceptance into Vancouver's GrowLab accelerator. “We’re very proud of the success stories that came out of last year’s Student Startup Challenge, and we’re excited to see some great companies emerge from this year’s program once again,” says Launch Academy’s Executive Director Ray Walia. "Building a company isn’t easy, and we’re happy to support students and recent grads in their journeys to becoming amazing entrepreneurs.”
Company:

Launch Academy Announces Finalists For 2014 Student Startup Challenge

There’s been enough talk about the perceived shortcomings  of the federal government’s Startup Visa program since it was unveiled last year and now that talk can be put to rest. Vancouver-based accelerator GrowLab has officially “nominated” three startups to receive the fast-tracked visa in  Cognilab , Retsly  and Zeetl . The news coming after last week’s announcement from the feds explaining that the Startup Visa program had been expanded to include an “Business Incubator Stream”, where startups accepted to selected Canadian accelerator programs can have a shot at the visas. GrowLab was one of the “chosen ones” under the Canadian Association of Business Incubation (CABI). “I am incredibly proud for GrowLab to be a part of this initiative with CABI and CIC. I am happy for the founders and excited for the opportunities to come,” said GrowLabs’ Mike Edwards. “The Startup Visa Canada – Business Incubation stream gives Canada a clear competitive advantage in attracting talented entrepreneurs that will go on to build impactful companies.”
GrowLab said in a release that since its beginnings, it has supported bright foreign entrepreneurs to accelerate their businesses in Canada. According to the release, “Ukranian Stanislav Korsei, co-founder and CEO of Zeetl shared that he chose Canada for the better environment to grow businesses… ‘As an entrepreneur, I feel more empowered by the Startup Visa Canada program. I can now focus on growing an innovative company in Canada to disrupt telecommunication industry world wide instead of worrying about visa applications and extensions for me and my family. '”
Meanwhile Cognilab’s José Barrios said that foreign entrepreneurs growing their companies the US lose valuable time dealing with “a broken immigration process that often takes years to complete.”
“Thankfully, Canada gets it – the recently announced Canadian startup visa allows foreign entrepreneurs to easily move their companies,” he said. The Startup Visa Canada program was introduced on April 1, 2013. The program currently has three streams to help foreign entrepreneurs to migrate to Canada: VC stream, Angel Investor stream and Business Incubator stream. The Business Incubator stream is the latest addition to the program, which was announced by Minister Chris Alexander last week at Canadian Business Incubator Association (CABI) annual conference.

Three Startups Nominated to Get a Startup Visa From GrowLab

By Joseph Czikk Canadian Startup News , Changes , Funding , Launches , Tech Innovation September 5, 2013
GrowLab Reveals New Fall Cohort Along with New “Farm Teams”
Vancouver-based startup accelerator GrowLab has announced its new Fall 2013 cohort, and it includes one startup we reported on yesterday. In total seven teams were accepted, including two that will be part of the “farm team”. The two-year-old GrowLab accepted these five companies to its full, three-month program:
Cognilab , an online laboratory for creating, crowdsourcing and sharing psychology experiments;
Farm at Hand , a multi-platform, cloud-based farm management program allowing producers to manage production activities and agribusinesses to exchange real-time information with their customers;
Retsly , which normalizes real estate listing data from multiple sources and implements a cohesive and consistent real time API accessible to developers;
Skift , a travel intelligence company that offers news, information, data and services to professionals in the travel industry and professional travelers to help them make smart decisions about travel;
Zeetl , a social telephony and messaging platform that allows its users to call and message their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn friends for free without a need to know or dial phone numbers. Meanwhile the two “farm teams” were selected with reasoning likely tied to the pro sports term: they show high potential now, but are probably not ready for the big show just yet:
SMART Pics , which builds interactive physical experiences that connect consumers to brands they love. Just Parts , a patented platform that simplifies online buying and selling of parts and accessories
Previous GrowLab teams have raised over $6 million in funding after going through the accelerator. It was founded by four investors: Boris Wertz (Version One Ventures), Leonard Brody (Clarity Digital), Debbie Landa (Dealmaker Media) and Jason Bailey (East Side Games). The program provides entrepreneurs a “unique wealth of wisdom, knowledge, and connections,” and has invested in 14 companies. With this cohort, GrowLabs is welcoming 3 international startups: Restly, Skift and Zeetl. “Entrepreneurs everywhere have begun to see Vancouver as a great place to build their businesses,” said GrowLab’s Mike Edwards. “It’s great to see talents from around the world wanting to a part of GrowLab. It solidifies us as a leader in accelerating tech startups.”
The Zeetl team may actually be one of the first lucky recipients of the Canadian Startup Visa program, which was criticized on CBC recently for not living up to its goals, six months after it’s inception. Nevertheless, the Ukraine-based startup reached out to Wertz and was accepted into both the accelerator program and the Startup Visa program. Meanwhile our John Gray reported that Cognilab received an offer from Silicon-Valley accelerator Plug n’ Play, but chose Grow Lab . “Both offers were identical. We may have surprised a few people by not going to the Valley,” said Cognilab’s Jose Barrios. “There’s no cookie-cutter solutions to the challenges and opportunities that startups face, and GrowLab knows that. Out of hundreds of applicants, GrowLab only choses five companies per cohort. This means that they are able to spend a significant amount of time understanding and advising on the unique challenges and opportunities of each company.”
GrowLab cofounder Jason Bailey even made noise in July’s International Startup Festival when he raised $500,000 in less than two days after pitching his startup L33dr.ly at the Festival’s $85,000 pitch competition. The entrepreneur won the competition, but the decision stirred up controversy online since Bailey was a former judge at previous International Startup Festivals. Critics generally consider GrowLabs be a “true” accelerator. Other notable Canadian programs on this list are Montreal-based FounderFuel, Toronto-based The Next 36, UTest, Extreme Startups, [In]Cubes, Jolt and Waterloo-based Hyperdrive.

GrowLab Reveals New Fall Cohort Along with New “Farm Teams”

By John Gray Canadian Startup News , Funding August 20, 2013
Cognilab: Joining GrowLab and Crowdsourcing the Answers to the Brain’s Biggest Mysteries
The brain is big business. Both the NHL  and the  NFL  are grappling with the impacts that concussions are having on their business. Last April, President Obama announced plans to map the human brain’s circuitry. With $100 million in funding, the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies initiative is slated to start in 2014. Vancouver-based Cognilab also believes the brain is big business and wants to own a seat in this arena, too. Cognilab is creating the world’s first virtual laboratory for psychology research, believing that crowdsourcing will provide us with answers to the biggest mysteries of the human brain. Jose Barrios and Kelsey Hannan, Cognilab co-founders , attended the University of Victory and recently joined together by the belief that academic researchers shouldn’t have spend months of time and millions of dollars to design, test and analyze experiments. Cognilab is making psychology research cheaper, easier and faster. Early signs of success has seen the company bring on customers that include the University of Victory and Vanderbilt University. In today’s terms psychology research is expensive and time consuming, taking an average of 120 days to run participants through an experiment in a physical lab. The aggregate cost per participant for these running experiments is $25.00. Cognilab has developed the technology and process that shrinks these metrics to 7 days, and $1.00 respectively. According to Barrios “Cognilab is inspired by the desire to make it easier for researchers to conduct experiments”. He sees a future “where we’re realizing the platforms power to make research collaboration easier.” Barrios also acknowledges the role that one of UVic’s most awarded researchers, Dr. James Tanaka has made, saying “Tanaka always had a passion for innovation, and it was in part to his vision and contributions that Cognilab was founded.”
For Hannan and Barrios they’ve moved along the startup continuum at a head spinning pace. From being selected as one of the five finalists for the Student Startup Challenge , to selling all of their possessions, moving from Victoria to live out of backpacks in a somewhat “run-down” East Hastings St. Hostel home, while working out of Launch Academy and to now just choosing which startup accelerator to join. Both Vancouver’s GrowLab and Silicon Valley’s Plug & Play Technology Centre made offers to the Cognilab team. The partners said that “while both offers were identical, we may have surprised a few people by not going to the Valley, and instead choosing to grow our company in Vancouver.” Barrios shares his the reason for joining GrowLab’s newest cohort of companies is that “as an international student (from Mexico) and CEO of a promising startup company, I decided the company should remain in Canada and help strengthen the Canadian economy. Canada gave me the team of people, the training and the education necessary for me to launch my company. I think it is only fair for me to return the favour and help create jobs in this economy.”
With paying customers, quality prospects in the pipeline, a functioning technical platform, and a new cheque in the company account, there’s no doubting Barrios and Hannan’s head will keep spinning during their time in GrowLab, plus continue to give answers to the body’s most precious asset.

Cognilab: Joining GrowLab and Crowdsourcing the Answers to the Brain’s Biggest Mysteries

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University of Victoria

The digital health collection includes vendors developing software, platforms, sensor & robotic hardware, health data infrastructure, and tech-enabled services in healthcare. The list excludes pureplay pharma/biopharma, sequencing instruments, gene editing, and assistive tech.

Digital Health

Seed

Cognilab offers a software platform for cognitive research within the social sciences sector. The platform allows researchers to create cognitive experiments and recruit participants globally, utilizing a point-and-click interface that does not require programming knowledge. It provides tools for data collection and analysis for academic research. It was founded in 2013 and is based in Canada.

Date	10/7/2015
Round	Seed
Amount	$0.02M
Investors	Rockstart
Valuation	$XXM
Revenue	0 FY undefined
Sources	2

First funding	10/7/2015
Last Funding	10/7/2015
Investor	Rockstart
Rounds	1 Seed
Board Seats
Type	Incubator/Accelerator
Location	Netherlands

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