I first saw Gerry Pond in action on Feb. 19, 2015, at a post-secondary education conference hosted by the Association of Atlantic Universities.

I’d met Gerry before. In fact, I've been lucky to chat with him often over the last fifteen years, and was one of the legion of friends and admirers saddened last week to learn he had died at the age of 82. His impact was felt more in the Maritime provinces than in Newfoundland and Labrador, but I still feel comfortable in saying that he did more than any other individual (and most organizations) to make the Atlantic Canadian startup community what it is today.

An entrepreneur to the marrow, Gerry spent a career identifying problems and finding solutions. And I witnessed how he did it during that education conference in 2015.

It was your typical conference with your typical functionaries delivering their typical speeches crammed with your typical platitudes. This was an education conference so the platitudes dealt with the importance of education and the need for more funding. I was one of a handful of journalists on hand, all of us wondering how we’d leave there with a story for the next day’s publication.

Gerry Pond was the 15th speaker of the day. He identified a problem: too few business school graduates entered the workplace with international sales skills. Then he announced a solution: he would personally donate $500,000 to any Atlantic Canadian university that set up an international sales program. (He said the winner could add the words “and marketing” if it liked, but the goal had to be the training of sales people.)

The effect on the crowd was astonishing. This guy wasn’t just talking. He was proposing a solution and doing something to improve the business environment in Atlantic Canada. It set wheels in motion that eventually led to UNB Saint John offering an MBA program in Business Development and Professional Sales.

I’d first met Gerry when he was the Chair of the second Invest Atlantic conference, which took place in 2011, shortly after Radian6 had announced its US$326 million exit. During his keynote, Gerry outlined a vision of a pan-regional startup community. He argued that none of the four Atlantic Provinces was big enough to do it on their own, and everyone needed to help each other.

It’s a theme I heard from him frequently. We met for breakfast once in Fredericton and it turned into a three-hour discussion, during which he compared the startup community to the settlers of old. If you needed to build a house or a barn, your neighbours would all come around and help, in part because they knew they’d need your help when the time came for them to build a barn. No one could do it on their own.

As with the UNBSJ sales program, Gerry was integral to the launch of several startup support organizations, such as Propel and the Pond-Deshpande Centre. More than anything, he invested directly in companies and spent countless hours mentoring entrepreneurs and serving on their boards.

I can speak with some authority here as Gerry Pond was a huge supporter of Entrevestor, especially in our early days, serving as the keynote at an event we held in Fredericton. He invested in our daughter’s company, Aurea Technologies, and served on its board. I could never have thanked Gerry enough for the support he showed our daughter, Cat.

This really hits at the core of Gerry Pond’s legacy. For the past 150 years, Atlantic Canada’s leading export has been its young people, with the most promising being the most likely to leave. Gerry Pond worked tirelessly to create opportunity for young people in this region–not just the emerging entrepreneurs but also their employees, many of whom got their first work experience at a startup.

He invested in scores of companies, and I can’t think of anyone who did more to help young Maritimers learn and prosper here, at home. These young people and their companies will continue to thrive, as will the legacy of Gerry Pond.