The Rockies' Report - Issue 8 (June 2024)

THE ROCKIES' REPORT

A Note from Heather Marshall

Welcome to The Rockies' Report, a newsletter that showcases the CDL-Rockies community, its work and its impact.

May is a month of wrapping up for CDL-Rockies, as all three of our program offerings come to a close for the cohort year. Congratulations to this year’s participants: 17 graduates of CDL, eight Haskayne ScaleUp companies, and 111 Nurture participants. Watching you all grow and learn throughout the year has been a pleasure!

As we head into summer, our focus is shifting to recruitment. While we recruit year-round for Nurture, CDL and ScaleUp, applications for our eighth CDL cohort year officially opened in April. This year, we remain focused on tapping into the untapped potential thatexistslocallyandglobally.

We know that only about 10% of startups succeed (Startup Genome). Many factors contribute to the low success rate, including a lack of support for founders building a high-growth company. Our goal is to increase the likelihood of success for the most promising deep science and technology early-stage companies—from across Canada and around the world—by providing them with the opportunity to work with CDL's greatest strength, our highly accomplishedmentors.

By pairing founders with highly curated teams of mentors who share their wisdom, accumulated over decades of experience, these teams solve challenges toveryrealproblemsthatblockmeaningfulprogress.

Our programs give the most promising founders their bestshot atbuildingsuccessful,scalable businesses.

Our team is working hard to find founders who fit specific criteria across our program offerings, and we love getting referrals from our community. If you know of founders with great ideas and technology that have the potential to disrupt industries and solve global challenges,please sendthem our way!

The CDL-Rockies community has enabled significant impact, from our alumni generating $5.7 billion in equity value, raising nearly $2 billion in capital, and creating more than 2,000 jobs to supporting the expansion of our program offerings to be responsive to founder needs and gaps in the market. None of this would be possible without the continued support of our community. We are grateful to all of you - our mentors, partners, alumni and the broader community - forcontinuing this journey withus.

Sincerely,

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT

Highlighting our community

MENTORS OF THE YEAR

Every year, the CDL network recognizes mentors who go above and beyond program expectations and make significant contributions to both the site and the network. This year, CDL-Rockies has selected Gary Griffiths and Wilf Keller as our mentors of the year. Thank you for sharing your time, knowledge and expertise with our ventures and our community!

G A R Y G R I F F I T H S

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:

ASSOCIATE OF THE YEAR (2023/24)

TITLE:

Founder & Managing Director, Wisdom LLP

W I L F K E L L E R

My career reflects my tendency to be easily bored; therefore, I’ve had a lot of mostly different jobs. And while financial success has come via multiple positions in Silicon Valley high-technology companies, a number of which I’d founded, the most important was the least lucrative: a Naval Intelligence Officer during the Cold War. In short, the physical and mental challenges, stress, and the sense of doing something bigger than a paycheck have frankly made other roles rather pale in comparison.

PASSIONS:

I think friends would say I’m ridiculously curious and, as a result, I’m frequently discovering new subjects to immerse myself. I love the outdoors - most any sport, and especially fishing, which has been a shared passion passed down by my father and one which I’ve shared with my own children, who’ve passed it on to their kids. Our decades-long annual fishing trip to the Canadian wilderness would certainly be considered the cornerstone of our family. I also enjoy reading - wide subjectswriting, running, and general and varied forms of fitness.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:

1.

Development of a method for fusing plant cells from different cells to produce hybrid cells and, ultimately, hybrid plants.

2. Participation as a team member in the development of the world's first commercial genetically modified canola variety.

Development of methods to produce haploid plants and genetically pure lines of canola and related species from immature pollen grains

PASSIONS:

SCIENTIST OF THE YEAR (2023/24)

TITLE: Vice President of Outreach, Agri-Food Innovation Council

3. Organization of networking events, both formal and informal. 1. Shopping for food and preparing new recipes. My monthly specialty is Greekstyle cooking, which includes personalized recipes for chicken souvlaki and lamb or beef stews. I also host an annual event that features smoked beef brisket, which I have an eight-hour-long process to prepare. (The steps of which are a trade secret!)

2. Armchair discussion on approaches to improving science and innovation in Canada 3

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT

Highlighting our community

Stories from the community

The Big Idea: Neurochips will fix our brains

Angel investor proving Calgary is a rewarding place to do business

5 Schulich researchers to be inducted as Engineering Institute of Canada Fellows

Now Innovating: The past, present, and future of innovation at UCalgary

Lead the Charge - Dan Balaban

Thin Air Labs co-founder James Lochrie shares why he bet on Calgary

Stock markets signal a growing gap between Canadian and American clean tech firms

Google Canada announces new research grants to bolster Canada’s AI ecosystem

Simpson Centre at UCalgary launches program to increase adoption of digital technologies in Alberta agriculture

Alberta earmarks $55 million to build tech, science hub at the University of Calgary

Calgary airport, airline, investment community combine to boost aerospace innovation hub

Meadow Lake Tribal Council to collaborate with Carbon Alpha on carbon dioxide removal in Canada

VENTURE VIEW

Solving big problems and building something massive

Creating more affordable, reliable and clean energy solutions through partnership

Chevron Technology Ventures (CTV), the venture capital arm of Chevron, joined CDL-Rockies in 2023 as an Energy stream partner.

Finding technology and innovation is one of the main reasons Kemal Anbarci, General Manager, Venture Capital, CTV, believesthepartnershipiscrucial.

“Our scope is to be the headlights. We have to be able to see what's coming ahead as well as around the corner to understand the startup ecosystem and help the ecosystem grow. Being part of the CDL community allows us to do that,” he says.

Along with an investment portfolio, CTV also supports the Catalyst program, which helpsearly-stagecompaniesreachtheirfirstinstitutionalfinancinground.

CDL-Rockies alumni company INGU experienced the benefits of both CDL and CTV, afterparticipatinginbothprogramsin2017.

“CDL-Rockies focused on how to bring our tech to market and get customers, whereas CTV’s Catalyst Program focused on fine-tuning the product-market fit, both for us and them. They were the perfect combo,” says John van Pol, CEO and Founder,INGU.

Readthefullstory onLinkedIn.

ALUMNI COMPANY DEAL FLOW

O P E N F U N D R A I S I N G

If you are interested in connecting with any of the companies below, please email us with the company name(s) of interest. Are you raising? Share the details with us here.

Seed

EmGenisys (AgriFood 2020/21) IS Energy (Energy 2023/24)

LyfeMD (Prime 2022/23)

Xander (Prime 2021/22)

ANNOUNCED THIS QUARTER

Seed extension

Amphoraxe Life Sciences (AgriFood 2020/21)

Index Biosystems (AgriFood 2020/21)

ROYBI (Prime 2020/21) SenseNet (Energy 2022/23)

Carbonova Raises $6M to Convert Emissions into Carbon Essentials

Calgary’s LyfeMD Wins Big at DMZ’s Women Innovation Summit

Series B

Interface Fluidics Limited (Prime 2017/18)

Fuelled by new funding, RetinaLogik wants to prevent vision loss with AI and VR Eavor Partners with the Government of Alberta to Launch the Alberta Drilling Accelerator CANGrow™ wins the Deep Space Food Challenge's grand prize for a sustainable food system that could help sustain life on moon or Mars

Maia Farms raises $1 7m in pre-seed round to expand mycelium production

Carbon Upcycling delivers first 200 tonnes of CO₂-enhanced fly ash to BURNCO Ltd for low-carbon concrete development

Galatea secures $2.7 million to help oil and gas companies tackle waste disposal

AROUND THE CORNER

EVENTS

June 11 - 13, 2024: Global Energy Show

June 13, 2024: Haskayne Business Exchange

June 17 - 20, 2024: Collision

INITIATIVES

CDL-RockiesOpportunitiesScholarship

June 18, 2024: Precision Health Symposium

June 21-23, 2024: Startup Weekend

October 2-3, 2024: qConnect 2024

The CDL-Rockies Opportunities Scholarship was created with the guidance and support of CDL-Rockies AgriFood stream Founding Partner and Fellow Alison Sunstrum and in partnership with MindFuel.ca. Its goal is to contribute towards closing gapsforunderrepresentedindividualsinSTEM.

The scholarship is open to Grade 12 students planning to enroll in an undergraduate STEM-related program at an accredited post-secondary institution located in Alberta, Saskatchewan, or Manitoba. Two applicants will be selected to receiveatotalof$2,500overtwoyears.

Studentscanapply here.ApplicationscloseJune30.

AROUND THE CORNER

Community events, initiatives & resources

INITIATIVES

Haskayne ScaleUp Program

The Haskayne ScaleUp program is filling an essential gap in the ecosystem by pairing executive teams with mentors who have led and contributed to the growth of companies at a global scale. Cohort #3 launches in September and we are recruiting companies looking to fortify their business foundations to withstand the pressures of growth at scale. Company referrals and recommendations are welcome! Please contact the CDL team.

Nurture

“One of the main things teams will get out of ScaleUp is the ability to shortcut some learning by working with other teams and mentors who have done it before. There’s lots that happens as you grow that’s hard to learn unless you’ve done it before. In many cases, most teams don’t have that depth, and that’s where ScaleUp can help.”

- Marcos Lopez, CEO, CreditApp and ScaleUp mentor

We wrapped the third year of Nurture programming with a CDL application boot camp designed to highlight best practices for ventures that are approaching readiness for the upcoming CDL intake cycle. Sixteen high-potential ventures attended the event. Participants also heard from Dan Zuniga, a partner with CDL-Rockies Prime stream legal partner Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, who shared legal best practices for early-stage ventures

The 2024/25 CDL-Rockies Nurture program will focus on common gaps seen in early-stage deep-science and-technology ventures Next year ' s programming will include opportunities for participants to learn more about:

Building trust with and understanding customers

Ideal customer profiles

Product positioning

Funding

Ecosystem connections

For more information about upcoming Nurture programming, reach out to Dora Tamas.

As of April 2024