Deadline: July 22, 2025
Applications are open for the Invest Nova Scotia Accelerate 2025. Invest Nova Scotia Accelerate is delivered in a five-month sprint. Participating companies each receive up to $40,000 in non-dilutive, non-repayable funding to address key technical and business milestones. Companies are eligible for participation in one cohort of the Accelerate program.
The program is focused on five sectors where Invest Nova Scotia can leverage their deep in-house expertise and their network of experts and investors to deliver value to their clients:
- Software: start-ups working on software solutions leveraging artificial intelligence, computer vision, blockchain, or data network effects to solve large unmet market needs.
- Agriculture Tech: start-ups addressing the global food production challenges while reducing dependency on fossil fuels or petrochemicals.
- Clean Tech: start-ups addressing climate change and clean air, water and soil.
- Health Tech: start-ups developing new therapeutics, medical devices or digital health technologies solving large unmet healthcare needs.
- Ocean Tech: start-ups developing solutions in ocean health, fisheries and aquaculture, offshore energy, shipborne technologies, and marine bioresources.
Benefits
In addition to funding, companies get access to a series of acceleration activities and resources. Resources are tailored to the cohorts to provide support where participants need it most. Participants should make every effort to take advantage of all the activities and resources offered, which include:
- Meetings with advisors matched from Invest Nova Scotia network of sector-focused investment and technology commercialization executives.
- Workshops on a variety of investment-readiness topics. Topics will be tailored to the cohort participants’ industries and needs. Subjects covered during previous cohorts include human resources, IP strategy, term-sheets, raising capital, storytelling and more.
- Perks Program offers discounts to 100+ vendors such as Hubspot, Google Cloud, Zoom, Slack, AWS, and more.
A minimum of five awards is expected in the current round of Invest Nova Scotia Accelerate.
Eligibility
- Invest Nova Scotia is seeking companies that they see as pipeline for their investment fund in the five sector streams described above. Invest Nova Scotia investment portfolio companies are ineligible for this opportunity.
- Be Nova Scotia-based. Applicants must be a Nova Scotia-registered business in good standing (current registration on the Registry of Joint Stock Companies), have a permanent establishment, and have most of its workforce and the majority of its senior leadership residing in Nova Scotia. Details on how to register with Nova Scotia Registry of Joint Stock Companies (RJSC) are available from Service Nova Scotia.
- Less than $1 million in cumulative sales and less than $250,000 in equity investment (including convertible debt) raised to date.
- In addition to having identified a large market pain and market opportunity and having established a company around a customer-validated solution, competitive applicants have conducted a thorough competitive analysis and achieved proof of concept or minimum viable product (MVP) that has demonstrated value to early adopters.
- Entrants must be the majority owner(s) (51% or more) of the company and plan to work full-time with the business. Exceptions may apply.
Evaluation Criteria
Submissions will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
- Management team – Skillset of key individual(s); entrepreneurial track record; capacity to develop the company, and handle risks associated with the venture. They expect applicants to have strong technical and business team members.
- Market pain and value proposition – Problem and size of the market pain (i.e., large international market); solution (i.e., how it works, how it solves the problem, how it is unique); value proposition (i.e., how much time or money the customer will save/generate by using the solution).
- Market opportunity and business model – Description of target customers; quantity of customers; customer validation; revenue model; size of the market opportunity.
- Competition and go-to-market – Competitive analysis; barriers to entry (e.g., IP, proprietary data collection); pricing; go-to-market strategy.
- Accelerate milestones and success metrics – Plan and timeline for Invest Nova Scotia Accelerate milestones; list of key activities to achieve milestones; detailed budget for up to $40,000; evidence of execution on past key milestones.
- Capital requirements and investment potential – Feasible, clear plan of execution; venture capital investment potential (i.e., high-growth potential, large market opportunity, attractive return prospects).
Application
For more information, visit Invest Nova Scotia Accelerate.
