A familiar face on the East Coast startup circuit, Sean Wise had a limited time to answer a range of questions at Invest Atlantic and summed them up in a simple sentence: it’s a great time to be an entrepreneur.

Wise is a professor of entrepreneurship and venture capital at Ryerson University, and served as a consultant to Dragons’ Den when the CBC program was getting off the ground. And he’s appeared frequently at events in Atlantic Canada – including the Propel ICT Demo Day in September 2015.

And he was one of the speakers at Invest Atlantic last Wednesday and Thursday in Moncton, where he was asked to answer five questions for entrepreneurs. They ranged from “Do I really need to raise money, and if so when and from where?” to “What can founders do today, to increase the probability of their success tomorrow?”

In answering these questions, Wise kept returning to his central theme that entrepreneurship in the last 20 years has called for less and less capital and greater and greater access to markets.

“The most import thing to realize is that now is the best time to be an entrepreneur,” said Wise in an interview last week. “When I started in entrepreneurship in the 1990s, you needed $1 million to get your startup out the door.  Over the decades that followed, I have seen the cost to test your concept drop to about $5,000.

“You rarely need outside investors. You just have to go prove your startups to customers.”

Cape Breton Startups On Display

Using lean methodology and surveying potential customers, Wise said it is now possible to test a product “before you write a single line of code.” He added that if there are 100 steps in launching a digital business, hiring a programmer doesn’t have to happen until about steps 50 through 60.

Wise also said that modern consumers are willing to pay for a good idea before it’s even produced, as is shown by the regular success that new products frequently have on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter.

A driving force behind Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone, or DMZ, Wise said he’s made about five to 10 trips to Atlantic Canada in the last few years and has noticed the progress being made in the region.

“I see a lot of things happening here,” he said. “I’m seeing a lot of diversification. Ten or 15 years ago, there were not a lot of tech founders. They’re seizing the concept that we’re no longer constrained by geography. You can have the high quality of life that you enjoy here in the Maritimes and still have a global company.”

Bob Williamson, the founder of Invest Atlantic, applauded Wise’s speech before a packed room, and said the conference in Moncton was a great success. There were 275 registrants and every session was busy with lots of questions and answers.

 “Moncton proved to be a great host and we look forward to going back to New Brunswick,” he said in an email. “The Genesis Centre on behalf of St. John's has invited us to host Invest Atlantic in 2017 in St. John's and we have accepted the offer based on doing due diligence with logistics.”