What happens when you walk into a tech hub in Halifax and find a team from Vancouver delivering a workshop? You see evidence of Canada’s digital network in action.
This was the sight that greeted Heather Perry and me when we dropped in to visit Volta in Halifax. The Wavefront team of experts was on site, delivering the first part of a three-day market validation course designed to help entrepreneurs get to market faster with less risk.
Given that Heather and I were on the first leg of a cross-country tour designed to help us better understand what’s going on across the Canadian Digital Media Network, we were delighted to see this partnership at work.
‘Say yes to everything’ is the ethos of Volta in Halifax, says Melody Pardoe. (CDMN photo: Heather Perry)
We’ve set a goal to visit every CDMN member hub before Canada Day. Last week we visited three provinces and four hubs in three days – though we did manage to make it through Atlantic Canada in the small reprieve between snowstorms.
Armed with a set of questions about each hub’s programs, services and priorities, our visits are designed for us to learn about what’s happening in tech communities across Canada.
Rather than wait until the end of our tour to write about all we’ve learned, I thought it better to share as we go, and give you a sense of where we’ve been and who we’ve met along the way.
We talked to people at the hubs about the challenges facing Canada’s digital companies, like access to talent and access to capital. And we heard some other common themes emerge during our swing through Atlantic Canada (quite apart from the legendary warmth of Atlantic hospitality).
Say yes to everything
We heard over and over that the secret to successfully cultivating a healthy ecosystem is to seize every new program, service and opportunity to support tech companies. Whether partnering with another organization, hosting visitors in your space or being a test customer for one of your startup clients, trying new things is the recipe for building a strong, supportive ecosystem. This was summed up succinctly for us by Melody Pardoe at Volta: “Say yes to everything.”
Collaborate rather than compete
Canada’s digital landscape is too small and too far-flung for our hubs to compete with other players in their local ecosystems. Michelle Simms from Genesis Centre confirmed this approach for us – sharing how Genesis supports the efforts of Common Ground, a co-working space for entrepreneurs in downtown St. John’s, and actively promotes monthly partner days to help local startups tap into expertise from legal and accounting experts in the St. John’s community.
Put founders first
Both 20-year-old Innovacorp in Halifax and five-year-old Venn Innovation in Moncton told us about the importance of focusing on our customers – digital technology companies and the entrepreneurs behind them. And both hubs emphasized the importance of finding enough seasoned mentors in the local ecosystem to help founders grow their companies.
As we travel, we’re also gaining some insights about what the CDMN team can do better to help support the work of the hubs, and are making ourselves a “to do” list for the coming year. So far the list includes:
- Help hubs communicate more effectively with one another across the network
- Provide more resources for high-value programs like Soft Landing
- Help with storytelling and measuring success
The next leg of our tour will include visits to Winnipeg and Northern Ontario.
Avvey Peters is Managing Director of the Canadian Digital Media Network. This is one in a series of dispatches from her tour of CDMN hubs across the country.