IO Immigrant Catalyst
More than half of the unicorn companies we know today – including Shopify, Zoom, and Calendly – were built by immigrant founders.
You’re part of a powerful movement of immigrant founders shaping the future. Invest Ottawa is here to fuel that momentum.
Through the five-week program, you’ll access specialized education, hands-on workshops, and funding opportunities designed to accelerate your business growth.
The bootcamp culminates in a live pitch competition, where you can compete for the chance to take home $10,000 in non-dilutive, non-repayable grant funding.
To apply, your business must be:
Have questions about your eligibility?
Don’t count yourself out! Contact us to discuss further.
Through the IO Immigrant Catalyst, you will have access to several tools and resources to support your business’ growth, including:
Applications are now closed! Join the waitlist to stay connected and get notified when the next intake opens.
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We will accept up to 10 companies.
An individual that was born in another country but resettled in Canada at some point in their life (this could have been as a child or an adult).
No. Canadian citizenship or permanent residency is not required to qualify.
No. What matters is that you and your business are currently based in Eastern Ontario or Gatineau, Quebec.
There will be a combination of required and optional sessions throughout the program. The most important thing is that you come ready to engage and learn!
Formal programming will start on November 10, and will wrap up in mid-December, giving you a chance to relax and refresh before the pitch finale in January!
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DevOps are in high demand with these companies:
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ivuto helps schools go digital. Kivuto Cloud streamlines the management of educational resources such as e–texts and license keys, saving 20K+ schools an average of $50K. Kivuto partnered with educational giant Pearson in 2019 to bring digital education resources to academic institutions. A passion for education paired with skills in .NET Core Web API, AWS, Azure, React, SQL, and other tools and technologies make Kivuto a great place to grow your DevOps or Fullstack Engineering career.
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Full stack developers are in high demand with these companies:
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Field Effect monitors cyber threats. Amongst many organizations who trust Field Effort to safeguard their cybersecurity, Canadian Internet Registration Agency (CIRA) teamed up with this scaling Ottawa firm to deploy its new API. Talents with an agile and test-driven approach as well as skills in C/C++, Objective-C, and Java are invaluable in helping build and improve Field Effect’s key security products: Covalence, Cyber Range, and Noble. As one of the top Ottawa employers who scored the highest in the Employee Net Promotor Score Initiative commissioned by Invest Ottawa’s Scale-Up program, Field Effect is appreciated by its employees for its commitments to transparency, trust and openness.
Rewind Backups provides automated backup services, so businesses don’t lose their hard work. The development team at Rewind is made up of four teams of two to three people. Developers implement, test, document, and maintain back-end systems for high-traffic back-up services, delivering quality code and improving the development and deployment processes using AWS. A day at Rewind on the development team could look like anything from supporting Shopify’s new bulk APIs to creating Rewind-Connect; a wrapper for AWS SSM for connecting to Rewind staging and production systems. As the winner of the Ottawa Business Journal’s Employee Choice Award two years in a row, Rewind is an ideal place to work and grow.
Recently securing $10M in financing, Tehama is on the cutting edge of developing tools for the remote workforce. Tehama’s service delivery platform enables organizations to easily onboard, manage and scale a distributed workforce in a secure way. 150 companies are using Tehama. 600,000+ hours of IT services delivered. Zero breaches. Under the leadership of VP Engineering, Jacopo Toccacieli, you’ll be working as part of Tehama’s agile development team and immersed in developing new features for its cloud–based solutions. This will include helping define company-wide API standards, working in React and Angular, and having the ability to work with SQL. You’ll have the option to work remotely or at Tehama’s beautiful offices in the heart of Westboro, steps from some of the best shopping, coffee shops and restaurants in Ottawa.
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