Celebrating 5 years of Awake Labs!

Awake Labs turns 5!

Today, Awake Labs celebrates our fifth birthday. As we hit this milestone, we reflect on the last 5 years – the progress we’ve made, the partnerships we’ve built and the mission we continue to pursue.

Where we began

Awake Labs started at the University of British Columbia in a class called New Venture Design. This course paired engineering and business students to create viable business ventures.

The Awake Labs team joined together because of our shared desire to have a lasting impact. We all wanted to focus our efforts on building a successful company that centred on helping people.

Even in those early days, we understood that stress and anxiety have a large scale, detrimental impact for many communities. Five years ago, we decided to first focus on the autism and autistic communities. We wanted to build a solution for people whose needs are often misunderstood. Our solution was designed to help them and their care teams better understand stress and provide timely, effective mental health support.

The early lessons in business and entrepreneurship taught by Paul Cubbon, Blair Simonite, and Antony Hodgson continue to be implemented to this day!

After graduating from UBC, we continued to receive emails from parents and self-advocates reminding us how important this problem was to them. On September 16, 2015, Awake Labs officially became a real company. We dedicated ourselves to building solutions to manage stress and improve well-being.

We sought out programs led by experienced entrepreneurs and problem-solvers. This brought us to Chile, for the Start Up Chile incubator and Toronto for the 2016 cohort of the NEXT36.

Awake Labs went on to graduate from world-class accelerators including the Creative Destruction Lab – AI Stream, the DMZ, and the OBI ONtrepreneur program.

We grew with the help of our partners

During the last five years, our product has taken many forms. However, we have always stayed true to our mission – helping people with unmet needs and their caregivers better understand stress and provide timely, effective mental health support.

Awake Labs grew with the support of our many partners and early investors. We built lasting relationships with Steph from BC, The Village BITO, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, the Ontario Brain Institute, You X Ventures, Community Living Ontario, and last but certainly not least, Community Living Windsor.

Your dedication and hard work have helped Awake Labs grow from an idea in a classroom to a company that is impacting the lives of people across Canada.

What we’re doing now

Today, Awake Labs focuses on helping adults who have an intellectual disability manage their daily stresses. Our mobile and wearable apps measure stress in real-time and send an alert for more timely, effective mental health support.

As we celebrate our fifth birthday, we are excited that our technology is being used by self-advocates, families, and agencies across Ontario. We engage with our users in order to improve our product and we value all the feedback and guidance we receive from them.

Where we’re going next

Awake Labs continues to help people with unmet needs and their caregivers understand stress and provide timely, effective support. Our goal is to help everyone get access to the right type of mental health support when they need it.

We look forward to celebrating the next five years with you!