Of more than 300 applications from fledging small businesses around the world, only five were chosen to be among those first to gain support from GrowLab on Monday.

Winning teams joining the Vancouver-based startup accelerator’s inaugural class are the makers of a cloud-based education platform called Matygo, an email plug-in called Ecquire, a photo collage automation program called Shape Collage, an analytics platform called SunnyTrail and a travel review service called Placeling.

Each will receive between $20,000 and $25,000 in funding, unrestricted access to a vast mentor network of seasoned industry veterans and three months of free office space in downtown Vancouver’s Gastown district. At the end of a fourth month spent networking with industry leaders in Silicon Valley, successful graduates will be eligible to receive up to $150,000 in follow-on funding from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).

In exchange, company founders give over a small amount of equity to GrowLab and commit to the program for its duration. It begins immediately in Vancouver and concludes in San Francisco in mid-December.

Having only been accepting applications since shortly after the self-described startup boot camp launched in late May, the final selection process was not made lightly.

“It was a pretty intense process,” said Michael Tippett, GrowLab’s executive director who himself has been involved in Internet startups for nearly two decades.

Selection criteria was three-fold, he explained, with the first two factors being size of the addressable market and relative ability of a given team to commercialize their idea.

“But the primary and overriding consideration is really the quality of the people,” said Mr. Tippett.

“The difference between succeeding and failing is the team’s capacity to not get emotionally attached to a particular way of doing things, listening to the market and achieving the right fit into that market.”

“It requires a lot of belief in what you’re doing but also the ability to leave your ego at the door,” he said.

Major Canadian venture capital firms such as BlackBerry Partners Fund, Rho Ventures, iNovia Capital and Yaletown Venture Partners are among the primary financial backers of GrowLab, Mr. Tippett explained. Although a handful of angel investors such as Mike Edwards and Chris Albinson have made investments as well, he said.

What Mr. Tippett believes sets GrowLab apart from other recently launched accelerator programs such as Montreal’s FounderFuel — which is backed by seed-funding specialist fund Real Ventures and also announced its inaugural cohort last week — is the ability to receive more funding once the program is complete.

“It gives you a bit more runway when you get out of the program to keep working and go out and find more investors,” Mr. Tippett said.

“Then you can make sure you don’t die at the end of the process.”