There is a singular reminder of the Atlantic Canadian startup community in the reception area of the Communitech hub in Kitchener, Ont. In the dim, atmospheric space lit mainly by mechanics lamps hanging from the ceiling, there are digital art installations and notices of peer-to-peer learning meetings, and there is a huge video monitor broadcasting goings-on at Communitech.

The video display runs off software provided by Charlottetown-based ScreenScape Networks, whose technology is powering such devices across the continent.

Sitting in the reception room of the famed accelerator on Monday, it was somehow reassuring to know that Atlantic Canadian technology had made it into such a hallowed spot in the tech universe. But it was also a reminder that East Coast startups don’t do enough to capitalize on the resources, talent and customer base offered by the massive Toronto-Kitchener-Waterloo tech corridor.

“The reality is that most, if not all, their customers are based in the Toronto area,” Damien Steel, a director with OMERS Ventures, said in a later interview in Toronto. “So companies in the Atlantic region should naturally be spending a good deal of their time here. You need to be close to your customers because that helps you understand them better.”

In a sense, the Toronto-KW corridor has the Canadian equivalent of New York and Silicon Valley blended into one location, joined by Highway 401. The scale is smaller than the U.S. centres, but it has the country’s leading tech entrepreneurs AND its corporate headquarters. It’s the perfect spot in this country for business development, even for companies based on the East Coast.

What’s more, it’s home to Canadian tech meccas like Communitech, the Toronto-based accelerator OneEleven and Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone, or DMZ. These are the type of places that get any geek’s blood racing.

The Communitech hub is the centre of the startup space in Kitchener-Waterloo, one of the world’s great tech startup clusters. It’s housed in a former tannery in the centre of Kitchener, a yellow brick behemoth than is an emblem of new digital businesses growing out of the ruins of fading industries. Within its walls are the Communitech accelerator, the University of Waterloo’s Velocity accelerator, and the Canadian Digital Media Network. It’s the centre of a tech cluster that now comprises more than 1,000 companies.

One hundred kilometres to the east, Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone is completely different but no less enthralling. The DMZ is perched in the upper storeys of a commercial building (including movie theatres, a Good Life gym and huge food court) overlooking Dundas Square on Yonge Street. It’s the home to 70 student-led startups, each given its own space and all coming together to form a massive, simmering hive of digital innovation.

In some respects it’s easier for Atlantic Canadian companies to capitalize on the proximity of Boston and New York than Toronto. There are programs like the Canadian government’s Canadian Tech Accelerator program that supports our startups in the U.S. centres. But Toronto is too often overlooked when Atlantic Canadian startups plot their path to market or are searching for talent.

“Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo are full of these little hubs like Communitech and OneEleven,” said Steele. “They all attract like-minded people, and it helps to be around them.”