Start-ups from UWaterloo Class of 2009

I was curious to know how many companies were founded by UWaterloo’s class of 2009, so I put together a list. It’s probably incomplete (let me know in the comments), but it may be of interest to anyone who follows the entrepreneurial community in Waterloo.

NeverBored Studios is a Waterloo-based game company founded by Velocity “alumni” Jimmy Ho, Thomas Ang, Orin Bishop, and Steve Truong. They are working on an iPhone game called ThreadBound, which they demo on YouTube. They were recently covered on TechVibes.

EightyTwenty Group, founded by Ray Cao and Aditya Shah in Toronto. They are working on enterprise software for law firms. Ray is a former president of Impact. I had the pleasure of working with Ray at Polar Mobile (another UWaterloo start-up) last summer. He and Aditya are smart and capable guys, so I’m looking forward to seeing EightyTwenty Group progress. EightyTwenty Group was featured in a National Post article in March.

Giftah originated as a Velocity project. Although it is only a part-time project for founders Rezart Bajraktari, Nick Belyaev and Henry Finn, they’ve managed to create a functional site that has been featured on CTV and The Montreal Gazette. They also won $2,000 at the Velocity Project Exhibition.

Unsynced is a Toronto software start-up founded by Ted Livingston, Vassili Skarine, and Vick Yao. They are developing BlackBerry software to allow users to sync their music collection and listen from their BlackBerry. Unsynced won free patent filing services at the (Winter 2009) Velocity Project Exhibition. They were also featured on TechVibes.

Mississauga-based Soeie is developing a tool for organizing research called Thinkpanda. I can’t find names of the entire founding team, but I do know that Fahd Butt has the title “CTO” (“Chief Thinker Officer”). Technically I think these guys are class of 2008, but since Thinkpanda is a new product and looks promising, I’ve included them anyway. They also have a cool logo.

Update: I found another (thanks, Peter)

Allerta started as the Velocity project of Eric Migicovsky. They are working on a wristwatch which, among other things, displays the caller ID from your BlackBerry when you get a call. Eric was profiled in The Record last October after winning a $1,000 pitch competition. Allerta is based in Waterloo.

A few observations:

• Most start-ups left Waterloo to go to Toronto.
• Three of five were part of Velocity. To me, this is some validation for Velocity after just two terms.
• Two consumer web apps, two mobile apps, and one enterprise software company.
• Most of the founders were engineering students.

Update 2: corrected Fahd Butt’s title (thanks, Rajesh)