BBA Chantelle Buffie wins national entrepreneurship competition

A new student venture that will provide a dedicated communications channel for residential property managers and tenants has won the Newcomers category at the National Business & Technology Conference entrepreneurship competition.

The venture, FIXO, is being developed by Beedie School of Business student Chantelle Buffie, a member of the 2014 cohort of the Next 36, Canada’s leading undergraduate entrepreneurship development program.

FIXO will allow property managers to receive maintenance requests, send out electronic building notices, respond to general inquiries and gather feedback from tenants through a mobile application.

With the venture currently in the beta stage, Buffie and her co-founders Jonatham Yam and Armin Mahmoudi will be working with several property managers that have access to over one thousand rental units to test the system.

Held on March 22, the National Business & Technology Conference entrepreneurship competition is one of Canada’s largest entrepreneurship competitions. It provides aspiring entrepreneurs with the platform to present to a panel of industry judges and network with patent firms, venture capitalists, and angel investors.

FIXO beat off competition from 19 other ventures to earn top spot in the Newcomer category, for entrepreneurs with an idea that is yet to go to market. Their pitch earned a prize of $2,000 cash, $4,000 in coding workshops, and $1,500 in mentorship.

“We are thrilled and confident in the potential of FIXO, and winning the Newcomers category reinforces that we are building a product that others find valuable,” said Buffie. “The support and feedback from our mentors in The Next 36 program have greatly contributed to our progress to date. Our success in this competition is another boost that will help us move forward.”

Along with fellow SFU student Sonam Swarup, Buffie co-founded Fusion Kitchen, a social venture aimed at empowering immigrant women to obtain jobs by working with them to teach cultural cooking lessons.

The Next 36  addresses Canada’s deficit of high impact entrepreneurship by providing resource-rich education programs to promising young entrepreneurs. It is supported by over 300 Canadian business leaders and academics and is championed by Founding Patrons W. Galen Weston, Jimmy Pattison and the late Paul Desmarais, Sr. SFU is an academic partner of The Next 36, whose ventures have created over 150 jobs and raised over $18M in funding since 2010.

For more information on the National Business & Technology Conferenceentrepreneurship competition, visit http://nspire.org/nbtc/entrepreneurship