(Cobourg, ON) August 9, 2018 – As part of the continuing lineup of events at Venture13, Northumberland Community Futures Development Corporation (Northumberland CFDC) in partnership with Cobourg Police Service (CPS) held its first “Pitch to the Chief” competition for technology entrepreneurs.
The Pitch to the Chief event saw five startups presenting to Chief Kai Liu and senior CPS personnel, along with Northumberland CFDC Executive Director Wendy Curtis in the Innovation Commons at Venture13. They pitched innovative solutions relevant to policing in the twenty-first century from predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to emergency systems and social blockchain. Each presenter was awarded 10 minutes to pitch to the Chief with time at the end for the Chief and panel to ask questions.
Qoints emerged as the winner of Wednesday’s competition in an award ceremony hosted by the Chief.
“We were beyond impressed at the inspiring mix of innovative minds sharing their ideas for collaboration with us,” said Police Chief Kai Liu. “The Cobourg Police Service is committed to supporting entrepreneurship and innovation, and is proud to be a part of this pioneering event held at Venture13.”
A past winner of N100 with operations at the VentureZone at Venture13, Qoints has developed a benchmarking platform for digital marketers that has placed the startup at the forefront of a new wave of marketing technology startups in Canada. Featured in BetaKit and VentureBeat, Qoints recently launched a powerful social influencer marketing tool in partnership with IBM Watson.
“As part of our pitch, we illustrated how Qoints’ technology provides insights into the Cobourg Police Services’ social media presence that are relevant to their strategies for community building and outreach,” said Cory Rosenfield, Co-Founder and CEO at Qoints. “And through the Q&A with the panel, we were able to develop further ways to leverage our platform to assist Chief Liu in his mission and vision. Pitch to the Chief was a great experience and we were truly honoured to have won the first edition.”
Chief Liu also named Austin McNeil (of Austin’s Creations) Runner Up, and announced that CPS would purchase the police bike emergency and lighting system developed by the Durham College student, as well as enter into a design project collaboration to apply McNeil’s system to the four Segways deployed by the Cobourg Police Service.
The next Pitch to the Chief event is set for November 28, 2018 at Venture13.
For more information on the programs and events being offered at Venture13 please view the Programs and Events calendar at www.venture13.ca.
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
