Too bad Bumptop wasn’t actually an ExtremeU company. However, the recent acquisition of Bumptop should help raise the profile of the 2010 Extreme University.
If you’re a student, a founder or just thinking about starting something you should apply to Extreme University. This is a world-class program, from an up-and-coming venture capital firm in Canada. They have a track record of selling companies to big players (Bumptop to Google, J2Play to EA). The Extreme Ventures, XtremeLabs, and Extreme University programs are building into a fantastic training and breading ground for a new generation of mobile and Internet startups. It feels like something big is happening inside the walls of Extreme Ventures.
Extreme University 2010
Who?
We are looking for four smart and fast moving teams to participate. Typically all members of the two-three person team will be deep technically, but at least one of the founders should have a technical background.
What?
- Get an initial $5000 + $5,000 (US) per founder in exchange for a 10% ownership stake in your company
- Move your team to our shared ExtremeU office space at Yonge & King (downtown Toronto)
- Have weekly mentoring sessions by industry experts in technology, funding, legal, PR, marketing and HR
- Meet a who’s who of experts at our weekly socials and have an opportunity to practice your pitch and demo your in-progress prototype
- Have access to local shared resources to accelerate product development (mentors, servers)
When?
Applications are due by June 4th, 2010. The program starts Monday June 14th, 2010 to Thursday September 10th, 2010 at the ExtremeU offices in Toronto at Yonge and King. The final demo day will be Tuesday September 16th, 2010 at DemoCamp
How?
It’s a great program located in downtown Toronto for early-stage entrepreneurs and founders. The Xtreme Labs has a great track record. If you’re interested, make sure you apply before the June 4, 2010 deadline.
Alumni – The Class of 2009
- Uken
- Uken Games makes highly addictive games for social and mobile platforms.
Uken Games was born in March of 2009 when two normal guys decided they wanted to have super powers. Given real world limitation, they turned to the virtual world to make their dreams a reality. They built Superheroes Alliance, their first game, which eventually grew to over 150,000 monthly active users. Since then, they’ve launched 2 other games: Villains and Twisted Treasure have amassed over 300,000 total users. Going forward, they are committed to building a strong community around each of their games, expanding across other both social (Facebook) and mobile (iPhone, Blackberry) platforms. Uken Games has received a follow on investment and are driving hard towards this goal.
- Assetize
- Assetize is a Twitter ad network that enables publishers to monetize their social content. Publishers within the Assetize network range from large news and media organizations to individual users. The company has also partnered with a premiere sports agency to launch FanWaves – a Twitter monetization network exclusively for the sports world. The growing list of FanWaves publishers includes the NHL, NY Knicks, Phoenix Suns, Washington Capitals, as well as several professional athletes.
Next, the company plans to extend their monetization solution to other social networks, as well as other links stemming from media websites and blogs. Given the nascency of this space and lack of history, one of the challenges Assetize has faced is partnering with advertisers willing to market through social channels – a difficulty that is expected to decrease as brands realize the immense potential of social networks. Following Extreme University, Assetize is generating revenue and has secured a seed round of financing. The company is also currently in the process of syndicating a larger round from local and US-based VCs.
- Locationary
- Locationary is changing the way that data on local businesses and other places is collected and verified.
This data is fundamental to the local search and local advertising markets which have revenues approaching $50 billion a year. Google and other local search engines currently buy the bulk of their local business data from aggregators that have employees copy the printed yellow page directories. The current process can’t scale and results in expensive, stale and outdated information typically 1 to 2 years old. Locationary has created a patent-pending, crowd-sourced solution to collect and verify this information across the globe.
Locationary is growing quickly and now has users in over 70 countries. They’ve collected data on over 20 million places and are now updating over 100,000 places a day. In this business, the fresher the data, the more valuable it is; and that’s what makes them special. Locationary has raised a Series-A investment through the connections made at ExtremeU.
Extreme Labs has a history of bringing great mentors and presenters to interact and engage with ExtremeU participants. In 2009, participants met some of the best lawyers, founders, VCs and others in Canada.
The list of already confirmed speakers in 2010 is amazing:
- Anand Agarawala, Founder of Bumptop
University of Toronto alum
- Austin Hill, Founder, Akoha & Partner, Founder Fuel
- Chamath Palihapitiya, VP of User Growth, Mobile and International Expansion at Facebook
University of Waterloo alum
- Dinesh Moorjani, SVP, Mobile at IAC
- Leonard Brody, Founder of NowPublic
Venture Partner at GrowthWorks
- Rob Balarhura, Founder of J2Play
University of Waterloo alum
