Congratulations to NE alumnus Moin Ahmed (NE Class of ’16) whose team, Membio, won $25,000 in equity-free financing at the Velocity Fund Finals in November. Moin Ahmed, who went on to earn his Master’s of Chemical Engineering at UWaterloo, and Shane Kilpatrick, who recently earned his Master’s of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology at UWaterloo, formed Membio to develop their scalable biological manufacturing platform.
Their prize includes space in the Velocity Garage startup incubator in downtown Kitchener, which is home to more than 80 early-stage startups. In addition to the rent-free space, Membio will benefit from a dedicated business advisor team, membership in a supportive community of high-performance startups and founders, and access to the Velocity network of alumni companies, investors and industry experts.
Moin Ahmed and Shane Kilpatrick celebrate Membio’s $25,000 Velocity Fund Final achievement.
About Velocity
The Velocity Fund is a grant program for startups that was established in 2011 with a $1 million donation from Kik founder and Velocity Residence alumnus Ted Livingston. Since then, other successful and generous local businesspeople have added to the endowment fund. Each year it provides $390,000 in equity financing to support local startups.
Velocity funds are awarded through a process that incorporates an application, an interview and a pitch to a panel of industry professionals. Every applicant benefits from the practice involved in honing their business skills. As further evidence of the Velocity program’s encouragement of the entrepreneurs among us, Velocity takes no equity and no intellectual property in return for its grants.