Through its Market Readiness Investment Program, Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) invests directly in companies to further their early-stage commercialization and support their growth into a scalable business.  The Investment Program supports companies in both the Customer Creation (CC) and Company Building (CB) stages of the Customer Development Model, as defined by Lean Start-up principles.  The OCE investment de-risks other investment opportunities and helps the company attract the private investment and other funding it needs to grow.

This program is designed to support early-stage companies that:

•  Are an academic spin-off that was created for the purpose of commercializing Intellectual Property (IP) developed from research conducted in an Ontario-based academic institution (university, college, and/or research hospital);
• And/or, have been based at, and actively engaged with an OCE- supported Campus-Linked Accelerator (CLA) or On-Campus Entrepreneurship Activities (OCEA) accelerator any time within the last three years;
• And/or, have previously received funding from OCE (excluding through the TalentEdge Program)
• Are incorporated for fewer than five years; and
• Have not exceeded thresholds of $1,000,000 for arm’s length third-party investment prior to applying for MR (Note: Companies that exceed these thresholds by successfully acquiring MR investment in a concurrent round are considered eligible). 

Applications to this program are accepted on a continuous basis.

More details on the Market Readiness Program.