Kinza Mawji, the 20-year-old son of Ashif Mawji — a prolific Edmonton investor who sold the Upside Software company he started for US$22 million in 2012 — has started his own platform to help startups find investment, called ScaleupMap.
ScaleupMap is a platform with artificial intelligence-powered tools for startups, investors, accelerators, and those holding pitch competitions. Startups create an account, fill out a profile, and then ScaleupMap creates an investor memo using AI to send to potential funders. ScaleupMap also has two public, agentic AI tools that offer scoring based on comparisons against best-in-class peers, and goal-setting. A third agent is in the works. The platform has directories of startups, investors, competitions, and funding programs, among other things.
Kinza, who's two years into his finance and computer science studies at the University of Alberta, launched the platform in January after a summer student-preneur program with Edmonton Unlimited.
Despite competitors in the market, Kinza said he felt he could offer something different. "What I've noticed from the competitors, which are not growing as fast as I guess they would hope, is that they focus quite a bit on the investor side, and making the investors happy, because they're the ones with the money," Kinza told Taproot. "Our thesis, and what we're building here, is a tool and a coach for the startup."
The Mawji family is made up of Kinza, his younger brother Aariz, 15, his mom, Zainul, and his dad, Ashif. Each is an entrepreneur or interpreneur, Kinza said, and the self-starter spirit is a family affair. Fittingly, NAIT's entrepreneurship centre is named for the Mawji family because they donated $1 million to the school in 2017.
"Everyone helps with advice," Kinza said. "We always have a good chat about whatever any of us are doing at the dinner table. Ashif has been pretty heavy on the advice side of things and helping us as a user … Aariz has been super helpful with some of our AI-generated images for content."
ScaleupMap is free to use right now, and Kinza said he will likely only end up charging $10 to $20 per month for startup users in the future. Revenue will instead come from investors, pitch contests, and accelerators — basically any user that isn't a startup — he said.
"Startups are cash tight and time tight," Kinza said. "This tool is really based on getting startups and founders information, coaching, and guidance and (showing them) how to raise and how to do anything else that comes with building a startup. It's basically a business co-founder in your pocket."
Ashif and Kinza Mawji at The ESPY Awards in Los Angeles in 2024. Kinza has since created the ScaleupMap platform for startups, investors, and accelerators, and his father, Ashif is the site's top user.
Ashif, Kinza's dad, is now the managing partner at the ScaleGood Fund, which has provided venture capital to 47 companies focused on social impact since it began in 2022. He's also the board chair of the Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator.
Ashif uses ScaleupMap for requests for investment, and for the CSW's management of the Alberta Innovates Scaleup GAP Super Session Pitch Competition. Companies can submit to the competition until July 31. Ashif said he uses the platform because the AI tools save him time and money when assessing investment applicants.
"I would easily pay $100, $200, even maybe $500 a month for something like this, because it negates my need to have a certain level of analyst and research team members," Ashif said. "If I'm paying $100 to $200 a memo, that's well worth it."
Ashif is the most active user on ScaleupMap's reviewer leaderboard, writing more than 60 startup reviews.
Upcoming on the ScaleupMap platform is the Super Session Pitch Competition, which sees application close on July 31, and the finale event in Banff on Oct. 22. As of June 30, 83 applicants have signed up. Among them are Nanostics, which holds the leaderboard's top rank thus far. Also in the top 10 are FireSafe AI, which recently held a pitch competition for students, and 2S Water, which won Summit XI by Startup TNT.
The top 20 contestants in the pitch competition will go to the Banff Venture Forum for the finale, where the organizers will gather global investors and offer a total of $150,000 in prize money. Ashif said the format is inspired by the Creative Destruction Lab's annual Super Session event, which most recently took place in Toronto on June 24 with people such as Richard Sutton from the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute and the University of Alberta.
"The best of the best go there, so we said, 'Well, why don't we have a best of the best from all the accelerators in Alberta?'" Ashif said.