The Fort Distillery won at least $150,000 in investment at Startup TNT's Summit X on Nov. 14, held at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute.
"Selling booze is fun, (and) building a data room, even funner," said Nathan Flim, founder and CEO of The Fort Distillery, explaining the work he had put in to convince the judges.
Flim's pitch at the event focused on three growth opportunities for the company: Retail across North America, contracts with companies like Porter Airlines and Fairmont Hotels, and brand representation.
The other finalists that pitched to the Startup TNT judges were: CANDLE Lithium Corporation, which is unlocking lithium reserves in brine from North American oilfields; Colabmacs, which helps manage physical resources in open access spaces; Elementiam Materials and Manufacturing, which uses AI software to enhance industrial robots, improving their productivity and automation; and Theragraph, which has developed a program that unites separate medical records into a single visual to aid healthcare professionals.
The Fort Distillery was founded in Fort Saskatchewan in 2018 and uses local ingredients to make whisky and spirits, as well as pre-mixed cocktails through its Tumbler and Rocks label. This year, the company's Mountain Pass Whisky won Canadian Artisan Spirit of the Year. The whisky is 30% corn and 70% malted barley, and aged for 40 months.
Startup TNT has run investment summits since 2019, where 20 to 40 angel investors commit $5,000 in advance. Winners are guaranteed to take home that money and potentially more if they can make side deals. The TNT Capital VC Fund invests $50,000 into the total investment prize.
In 2023, Startup TNT was the most active pre-seed stage investor in Canada and the fourth most active for the seed stage. At the event, Startup TNT co-founder Zack Storms said the organization is on track to raise more money for startups in Western Canada in 2024 than in any other year.
"This is a special summit because this is our tenth summit," Storms said. "For the last two weeks, I've spent almost all my time talking to founders, talking to other investors, trying to negotiate deals, trying to figure things out, trying to raise money for companies, and it's reminded me how much fun it really is."
In addition to Summit X, Startup TNT is also hosting the Startup TNT Life Sciences Summit Powered By API on Nov. 21, also in Edmonton.