The success of the Startup Weekend St. John’s this past weekend is matched by the buzz in the startup community in the Newfoundland and Labrador capital overall.

I was lucky to attend the Startup Weekend in St. John’s and it gave me a chance to catch up on what’s going on in the burgeoning community. New companies are coming into the community, and established ones are moving toward traction and funding. In broad terms, there’s excitement that something is building.  

“There’s a strong buzz here with new companies forming all the time,” said Jason Janes, the head of Startup St. John’s, said of the city’s startup community overall.

They are forming in spite of a challenge that is unique in the region: a super-tight labour market. Young people in St. John’s, especially those with a technical background, have a range of opportunities due to the strong economy in the province, and many choose a dependable paycheque rather than the risks of a startup, said Leanne Kelly, of the Newfoundland and Labrador Angels Network..

Yet new companies are forming, and in the coming weeks we’ll be profiling some of the new startups at the Genesis Centre, the incubator at Memorial University. Some young companies are finding funding partners through individual investors, often outside the purviews of NLAN.

“What we’re seeing from the angels is there’s lots of stuff happening, but it’s not happening through the official network,” said Kelly.

Similarly, some of the entrepreneurs approaching NLAN lately have been in the resource sector, looking for financing for such ventures as mineral exploration. Many members are not interested in such opportunities, preferring instead innovative young companies.

NLAN has an active pipeline and is working with young companies to prepare them for investment, but has not made a new investment since its funding of stock-market data analytics company Afinin Labs last year.

The startup segment has established a presence within the city and its larger business community. That was evident from the range of sponsors and volunteers that came out to support the Startup Weekend.

The elegant Coffee Matters coffee house was packed late into Saturday evening, many of its patrons using the Brownie Points digital customer loyalty program, developed by a St. John’s startup of the same name. Common Ground, the co-working space for St. John’s startups, will soon open and no doubt have the invigorating effect that Volta and Planet Hatch have had on Halifax and Fredericton respectively.

Less than a year old, Startup St. John’s now has more than 200 members, and holds regular meetings. It was the driving force behind the Startup Weekend.

Several established entrepreneurs I spoke with reported healthy progress for their ventures, including Daniel Hoyles of wave-action energy developer Grey Island Energy, and Kris McNeil, of Solace Power, which is developing a system to deliver electricity without power cords and batteries.