When Andrew Cherwenka first showed up in New York to market his Toronto-based startup Authintic, he worked out of coffee shops, always on the lookout for a spot with free wi-fi.

Today, he’s working in shared space in the city’s Flatiron district and enrolled in one of the leading initiatives of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs to develop Canadian startups.

Authintic is one of six Canadian tech companies now enrolled in the Canadian Tech Accelerator at New York City, or CTA@NYC. Though none of the current participants are from Atlantic Canada, the 30 or so companies that have gone through the program thus far have included Ooka Island of Charlottetown and Adfinitum of St. John’s. (Vidcruiter of Moncton is now in a CTA program in Silicon Valley, while two Halifax companies, Mindful Scientific and Equals6, are attending the program in Boston.)

“I can’t say enough good about the program,” said Cherwenka as he concluded a tour of the facility where it’s housed last week. I was in New York on a personal visit, Cherwenka was kind enough to meet me, explain the system and show me the facility.

Through its consulates, the Canadian government now operates three accelerators in the U.S. – one in Silicon Valley, one in New York and the most recent in Boston.  The thinking behind them is that there’s nothing better for young Canadian companies than to operate for three months in some of the world’s hottest innovation markets. It allows them a chance to learn from leaders in their field, meet with potential clients and seek out funding from the world’s largest venture capital industry.

Cherwenka says he’d rather be in the New York accelerator than the others because it is the best place to meet decision-makers at corporate head offices, and therefore get the best feedback on Authintic.

“The businesses we meet here are real businesses, and you get to test [the product] out every day to see if it works,” he said.

The company helps major brands mine the data of their social media followers in order to increase sales, and it does this largely by asking followers permission to do so. Two weeks ago it launched its first campaign with the outdoor clothing maker North Face, which has 3 million followers on Facebook, and it is working with BMW as well. It works best with companies with customers that could be considered evangelists for their brand.

CTA@NYC operates out of a shared office space called the General Assembly at Broadway and 20^th Street. There are 32 companies comprising about 250 people working there at any one time. The smaller outfits (including the six Canadian companies) work at a long table in the communal area, where they can interact, bounce ideas off each other, and learn from each other. The larger companies work in other rooms portioned off from the main area. The facilities include a quiet room, conference rooms and small booths where you can make quiet phone calls.

Cherwenka said the biggest thing about the space is the space itself, because finding affordable office space is such a big deal in New York. On top of that, members of the accelerator have had a variety of mentoring events, including the three-day introductory session, which included such experts as Permjot Valia, the founder of Halifax-based MentorCamp. Miriam Leia Bekkouche, the director of CTA@NYC, attended Mentorcamp as a mentor last September.

Having spent most of her life on Prince Edward Island, Joelle MacPhee of Ooka Island said in a recent interview she was awestruck not just by Manhattan but by the experience of camping out for months on end in a bee hive of entrepreneurs. She said every day at CTA@NYC was an inspiration and helped her to understand the potential of her company’s software, which is a game that promotes literacy. “What New York opened up for me is just how many digital media companies want to break into education,” she said.