Happy Canada Day, everyone. We hope all our readers have had a safe and happy weekend celebrating the country’s 146th birthday.
Of course, July 1 is also the first day of the second half of the corporate calendar, and a good time to look back at what’s happened in the East Coast Startup Community in the first half. What’s been especially impressive is that the community has made so many strides on so many fronts in just six months.
The biggest news is probably that there is now a network of co-working and incubation centres around the region where virtually nothing existed before. Volta in Halifax has quickly established itself as ground zero of the tech community in that city. And it is complemented by Common Ground in St. John’s and soon by two Fredericton incubators, ACcelr8 and mLab. The offices ramp up the possibilities for peer-to-peer support, mentoring sessions and small events. What’s more, Launch36, the regional accelerator, flung another cohort of graduates into the big, wide world.
The ecosystem also benefited from the launch of several events that will likely become fixtures on the calendar each year—the Big Data Congress in Saint John, East Coast Startup Week in Fredericton, Atlantic Venture Forum in Halifax. All exceeded expectations, and the AVF succeeded in bringing investors from other parts of the continent to Atlantic Canada to witness the startups.
Big Data itself became part of the scenery as T4G
On the financing side, the big local news was Build Ventures, the long awaited regional venture capital fund, finally set up shop in Halifax and made its first investment, a $1.5 million deal with Introhive of Fredericton and Washington, D.C. What’s important is that Build actually has money. Most Canadian VCs are the opposite of people who bought into the Facebook IPO – they have more brains than money. The Canadian VC industry is saddled with fully invested funds, but not Build. It has a clean ledger and is in the process of building a portfolio.
News about funding tends to seep out slowly, but so far we have heard about 28 Atlantic Canadian startups that have raised or will soon raise equity financing so far this year. The bonus is that we’re starting to see more VC investors from outside the region backing Atlantic Canadian companies, such as Rho Canada Ventures sinking $2.5 million into Karma Gaming.
Other factors that have boosted the region’s links to the broader world are the creation of Canadian Entrepreneurs in New England and the Canadian Technology Accelerator in Boston. The fact that CENE launched at the Atlantic Venture Forum in Halifax shows that there will likely be strong links between these New England-based entities and Atlantic Canada.
The region’s universities continued to contribute to entrepreneurship. Four of the top five competitors (including winners TotalPave) in the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s Breakthru competition came out of University of New Brunswick. St. Mary’s University unveiled its Masters of Technology, Entrepreneurship and Innovation program, which will open in the autumn. And Dalhousie University launched Canada’s Business Model Competition, which it plans to roll across the country next year with the help of Deloitte, and said its Starting Lean class will be held three times in the next year.
And how have the past two quarters treated Entrevestor? Very well, thank you. We’ve partnered with McInnes Cooper lawyer Rob Cowan in publishing the Startup Lawyer blog, and with Progress Media on the publishing Entrevestor Intelligence supplements. Our monthly unique visitors were up 55 percent in June from six months earlier.
Here’s the point I want to make: all of this has happened in just six months. This torrid rate of growth is bound to slow down, but people are already planning how to build the community to something more, with bigger companies selling to broader markets. Stay tuned.
