Mark your calendars for the evening of June 9th and plan to join us in Toronto. We’re working with the folks at The DMZ to host a pre Ontario Startup Train event. You can register for the event here, more details are coming soon as we plan the evening….

Who should attend?

1. If you’re curious about what the Startup Train is and want to find out more, make sure you join us.
2. If you’re an alumni of our train, having attended one of our previous three years, then please join us as well. We want this to be a Startup Train reunion and a chance for us to catchup with friends from previous trains.

A Chance to Pitch at Startup Festival?

12 companies will have the chance to pitch on the main stage at this year’s Startup Festival. We, at Startup Train, have 1 ‘wildcard’ spot that allows us to put one of our startups on stage.

There are many reasons to take the train with us instead of travelling alone, add this to the list! We’re going to be hosting several of these pre-train events. These events will include a pitch event. We will be selecting the company that gets our wildard spot from these finalists.

So, if you want this wildcard spot, the first step is to attend one of these in-person events and win the night!

We’ll announce more events as we nail down the details. For now, register for June 9th and we’ll see you in Toronto. PS, one of our startups won $100K for their company last year.

Register for Toronto event June 9th.

Buy your tickets for this year’s Startup Train!

Tickets are now on sale for our 4th instance of the Ontario Startup Train. What’s a Startup Train? Basically we charter our own private train cars with VIA, including our own bar car. We fill them with 120+ startups, funders and entrepreneurs. After enjoying a first class meal service, we break into some one on one mentoring and networking while enjoying drinks.

We are likely going to sellout well in advance again this year, grab your tickets now!

Trust me, regardless of where you’re departing from, you’re going to want to connect through Toronto and travel to International Startup Festival with us!

Long time no speak. We took the fall off but now that the NHL is back we figured it’s time to get back to it. I have a great story to share about this summer’s soldout Startup Train. End of day, it sums up what our train is attempting to do.

Last summer, in speaking to the folks at Shopify about sponsoring the train they mentioned that they’d like to sponsor some tickets for startups to attend. They purchased two tickets on our train which we gave away to two local startups.

One of those startups decided to pitch at the conference. By the time the dust settled and the conference was handing out their prizes, Susie Pan from Blynk had walked away with their top prize of $100K towards her startup. Talk about ROI!!

So, no the Startup Train didn’t exactly win $100K but it kinda sorta feels like we did. Honorable mention to another Startup Train company Redtree Robotics who won the FounderFuel Fall 2014 Cohort award.

Thanks for Shopify, we gave away two tickets on next week’s Startup Train to International Startup Festival. We ran a twitter contest to award them. After a random draw from all entrants, our winners are Susie Pan and James Mclean…

I’m on @startuptrain to explore the depth of the start up ecosystem in Canada and what role youth can play to shape this future

— Susie Pan (@susieshier) June 23, 2014

I’m on @startupTrain to learn and connect with Ontario’s startup community. Bonus points – bringing @homefed to all the Montreal foodies 😉 — James Mclean (@Toyesm) June 20, 2014

Susie is a recent grad from business school and has chosen entrepreneurship over a traditional job. “I want to attend Startup Train to bring the youth perspective into the ecosystem and to engage in a creative non traditional setting of networking (eg. on a train). My current start up is a fashion mobile app that acts as your personal stylist.”

James is a local designer who views the trip as a “good opportunity to learn via workshops and other startups that are trying to solve similar problems. We are always recruiting too – so I’ll be on the look out for those who cook and code.“

Thanks to our sponsor Shopify, we’re giving away….

Two free startup tickets on this July’s Startup Train.

These tickets include your first class travel on the Startup Train to Montreal and full access to the International Startup Festival. You will only need a place to stay and a way home after the conference.

We’re giving these tickets away using Twitter. To enter, simply post to twitter what value you would get out of the Startup Train, between now and June 23rd at 5pm. Be sure to include “@startupTrain” in your update or simply finish the twitter update “I’m on @startupTrain to”

PS…This year’s train is almost soldout, and could sellout this week before this contest ends. If you can afford a ticket and want to be on the train, you may not wait until next week.

Fine Print

• These tickets are intended for ‘starving startups’, who otherwise couldn’t afford the trip. If you’ve already purchased a ticket on the train, or to startup festival, then you’re ineligible.
• The winners will be selected at random from all entries.
• Contest closes Monday June 23rd at 5pm.
• To qualify, you must post a meaningful answer for why you should attend. The response must be posted to twitter and include “@startuptrain” in the post.

We tried something new for last year’s Startup Train aimed at helping our passenger’s avoid the boondoggles. When you attend startup conferences, you can’t simply show up and send a report to your boss after. Unfortunately you’re on your own now and you need to decide what you’re hunting for and go find it!

To that end, we asked our Startup Train passengers to decide what their one metric of success was for coming on Startup Train. Then record and share it with the world. The goal being that by the time you board the train, we all know what you’re after and we can help you achieve it.

To add some fuel to the fire, submitting a video also entered our passengers into a draw for $1500 in travel vouchers from our sponsor VIA Rail. As well, this year our friend’s at Vimeo will be giving away a pro account worth $199 to their favourite video.

You can see some of our video’s from last year here. As this year’s passengers record their videos, we’ll share them on twitter with you.

We’re well over halfway soldout for this year’s train and expect to sellout for the 3rd year so make sure to get your ticket shortly if you’re joining us!