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2014 PyCon Montréal Startup Row Honorees

Having new companies build around Python has tremendous impact on our community and the wider world. Not only do these fast growing startups employ a growing community of Python engineers, but they deliver products and services that touch everybody's lives and improve modern commerce. Yelp, Eventbrite, and Dropbox -- founded since 2004 -- are three companies that use Python and in aggregate represent over $16bn in total value.
Yelp, a public company, is worth approximately $5bn. Dropbox and Eventbrite have gone through private financing events that imply valuations totaling in excess of $11bn. PyCon Startup Row seeks to assist new Python-using startups that will in a decade break $1bn in value.
For the 2014 event, for the first time Startup Row produced live pitch events to select companies for PyCon Montreal. A common phrase heard at all of our events was "community." Community often came in answer to the question as to why companies chose Python. Already Python is a choice for startups because it's possible to use existing libraries and tools to deliver full-featured products and services quickly. The community will continue to contribute and build onto existing libraries and launch new tools that will continue to fuel the future honorees of Startup Row.
Now announcing our twelve startups selected for Startup Row for 2014 at PyCon Montreal. Come meet them in the expo-hall.

Friday:

  • Airmailplus: Charter a private jet while sipping a sipping a latte – small-group air transportation has never been that simple.
  • Tenscores: Tools to automate PPC/SEM, building a virtual PPC consultant
  • AppThwack: A platform which enables developers to rapidly test their mobile applications across hundreds of devices in parallel
  • Trinket: Generates interactive course websites that version teaching materials and let students run code in the browser.
  • Procured Health: Our objective is simple - to be the preferred partner of hospital supply chain organizations - and we work tirelessly to achieve it
  • Inbox: Tools and applications to bring email into the 21st century. Our first product is an open source email toolkit which provides an ORM-type layer around existing email accounts, allowing rich querying and listener-style APIs for building apps with deep email integration

Saturday:

  • CheckiO: A game for coders. We build a community of developers around the world who come to play a fun coding game, compete whose code is more elegant and whose AI is smarter.
  • Tindie: A community marketplace built around buying & selling anything that empowers you. In over 60 countries, we are a diverse community with interests ranging from 3D printing to electronics.
  • transporter.io: Route optimization for small and medium transportation fleets, founded by Techstars alums, beta testing with customers
  • ChallengeU: Share Knowledge. Pose Challenges. Get Results. Let people participate in the sharing of skills and ideas. Captivate with activities that promote learning by doing. Find motivation and enjoyment in your own personal development.
  • Quietly: Discover and curate great recommendations
  • Mist.io: Provides mobile management, monitoring and automation for servers across clouds. Emits actionable alerts so users can address operational issues from anywhere, using any web device.

Honourable Mentions

Some companies really impressed us and almost made it to the Startup Row. Unfortunately, we could not bring them to PyCon and the least we can do is acknowledge their effort here.
  • Informion: Informion is an Amazon like relevance engine helping mobile product managers send timely and relevant push notifications resulting in high click-through-rates. Founders Ritwik Tewari and Avilay Parekh cannot make it to PyCon Montreal for Startup Row in 2014, but they are working hard to contribute towards growing the Pacific Northwest Python community. They are organizing PuPy, Puget Sound Python. A founding sponsor of the group AMD has pledged a Seamicro server with 768 cores in a chassis the size of two mini-refrigerators for PuPy.
  • MyHealthSensei.com: Ariana Vargas pitched at PyCon Startup Row's Chicago event as part of Startup Row's invitation to women and minority entrepreneurs to solicit help from ChiPy members to build a MVP by March 20th. She connected with three ChiPy members and a former group creative director of the global advertising firm DDB.
Though Ariana made a lot of progress in only 23 days, she's limited by her reliance on her current employment from presenting MyHealthSensei.com in Montreal. Her plight highlights the difficulties women and minorities face in launching new companies. She produced a video explaining her vision of connecting cancer patients with resources. Please show you support women founded businesses and contribute to her IndieGogo campaign to pay for the crew that produced her video. Contribute here!

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