OBAA Profile: Young Entrepreneur of the Year

About the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award:

The Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award is awarded to a young Ontario entrepreneur who has successfully built a unique and game-changing venture.

Finalist: 5Crowd Inc.

Industry: Production

About: 5Crowd provides on-demand marketing production to a growing list of clients like Labatt, J&J, Hershey, Twitter, CIBC and Telus. 5Crowd operates a curated network of freelance professionals in over 150 cities through their own digital platform, which lets enterprise marketing teams bring their strategy to life, faster and for less.

Why is 5Crowd a young entrepreneur success story? With changing media habits and the need for more marketing content than ever, 5Crowd co-founders Rachel and Bram felt the need to do more with less. Since 2014, 5Crowd has been working hard to make marketing execution faster, cheaper and smarter than traditional counterparts.

“We’ve been really fortunate at 5Crowd to work at the intersection of a lot of emerging trends including the explosive growth of digital marketing, the rise of the sharing economy, and the widespread adoption of cloud collaboration tools. It’s given us a unique opportunity to make a real impact.”

Bram Warshafsky, Co-Founder of 5Crowd Inc.

For more information on 5Crowd Inc. go to:
www.5crowd.com

Finalist: CHAR Technologies Ltd.

Industry: Technology

About: CHAR Technologies Ltd. product, SulfaCHAR, is a charcoal like material used to filter renewable natural gas (like biogas). SulfaCHAR converts the contaminants in the gas to beneficial fertilizer products, creating a closed-loop, zero-waste solution for renewable natural gas energy.

Why is CHAR Technologies a young entrepreneur success story? CHAR Technologies was launched in 2011 and co-founded by Andrew White, then a UofT engineering student. Under the supervision of White’s supervisor Prof. Don Kirk, they developed the product that solves a number of problems and also a very profitable business opportunity.

“CHAR Technologies is successful because we have been able to develop strong collaborative relationships with people and companies across the Cleantech spectrum. By embracing and fostering these incredible collaboration opportunities in Ontario, we’ve been able to move our technology from the lab to commercialization. Collaboration is critical for success in Cleantech.”

Andrew White, CEO, CHAR Technologies Inc.

For more information on CHAR Technologies Ltd. go to:
www.sulfachar.com

The 2016 OBAA’s are taking place on Tuesday, November 29th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.