Ride Buddie

As COVID-19 dominated headlines and monopolized public consciousness, a significant shift in Canada’s transportation network went mostly unnoticed.  In May 2020, Greyhound Bus Lines quietly shut down all service until travel demand recovers. No one is sure when that will be.
Some cities still have passenger rail service, but tickets can be expensive, if they aren’t purchased well in advance.

Yet people will still need to travel, and for those who don’t have a vehicle, ride shares are one of the only remaining ways to do that. Finding rides on Facebook or Kijiji is notoriously unreliable. A driver can ask for a deposit, then skip out on the ride. Or they can overbook their vehicle, and leave a passenger stranded. Or even worse.
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Blade Barber

Three hockey-mad rugrats, three big games . . . and one very substantial backlog for skate sharpening at the local pro shop.
For the parents of active children, there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, and skate sharpening is an easy thing to let slide.
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With the Blade Barber hand-held skate sharpener, Tim Maxwell is trying to make hockey logistics a bit easier.

After more than a dozen prototypes, hundreds of tests and a trial run with beta testers, the inventor and graduate of Carleton’s Bachelor of Industrial Design program is shipping his first production run of Blade Barbers. Already, there’s a second run in the works.

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Desk Nibbles

Plant-based, celiac, peanut allergic, lacto-ovo vegetarian . . . somewhere along the line, ordering food for a large group became almost comically complex.
Ours is an age of dietary limitations, and while providing snacks as a perk for a staff of dynamic young professionals might sound straightforward enough, meeting everyone’s dietary needs is anything but.
Enter Desk Nibbles, a startup incubated at Carleton’s Lead to Win accelerator.  They’re using artificial intelligence to create customized boxes of snacks and drinks that ensure the entire staff is well fed.

“We help offices understand what their employees preferences are — who’s vegan, who’s kosher, who’s halal, who’s gluten-free,” says Cassy Aite, CEO and co-founder.

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