Business founders compete for development cash at Indie Ignition Accelerator pitch session

Participants in Bow Valley College's Indie Ignition Accelerator Program got to show their digital skills over the weekend for more than $50,000 in prizes.

A group of innovators and creators got a chance to polish their elevator pitches in front of an audience of experts on Saturday.

Participants enrolled in the school’s Indie Ignition Accelerator program pitched a panel of industry experts at Platform Calgary in an effort to snare one of six prizes worth $54,000.

The first $30,000 will be distributed among the top three startups, with another $24,000 earmarked for the top three female-led teams.

The school says ideas range from traditional video games to interactive learning tools designed to provide realistic training and education solutions.

The college’s Indie Ignition Accelerator program has graduated close to 50 startups in an effort to help grow Calgary’s tech and digital creative economy.

Project lead Ryan Coutts explained that Indie Ignition is a little different from other academic endeavours.

“Indie Ignition is a non-academic program, so it’s designed to face industry as opposed to students,“ Coutts said. ”It’s designed to help anybody who wants to start a business in those industries I mentioned before.

“It’s open to anybody,” he added. “It’s a free program as well, supported by the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund, which allows us to do this and (offer) all the prize money.

“All the participants are business founders,” he said, “so entrepreneurs who want to start businesses in those fields. It’s very zero to one so these are new entrepreneurs, they don’t necessarily know that much about business maybe, but they do have that creative or technical background -- design a game for example – but don’t necessarily know how to start a studio."

Building business skills

One of those pitching a new video game was Dylan Harder from Nvnt Studios, who was pitching Whispers of Westgrove, which he described as a “psychological horror game,” set inside a psychiatric hospital from the 1960s.

“It’s a journey about isolation and overcoming trauma,” Harder said, and is both a first-person and third-person experience.

Harder said the Ignition Accelerator program has given him insight into how to turn an idea into a business.

“I’ve learned how to plan a project effectively,” he said. “I knew how to make a game going (in) when I started this but I didn’t know the business skills and this program really helped me understand those skills and apply them.”

For more about Indie Ignition, go here.