Hello INNOVATEwest Community,
Vancouver’s unique mix of geography and traditional industry provides a clear path to becoming a global leader in creative tech industries. But getting there requires more than potential. Speaking with INNOVATEwest (IW), Dan Burgar—Co-founder and CEO of Frontier Collective, an IW partner—shared more about what he thinks is necessary to capture Vancouver’s innovation moment.
Key takeaways:
- Vancouver has a high concentration of 3D and spatial computing talent because of industries like film, visual effects, and gaming, but the city has dealt with brain drain for years.
- Despite brain drain, the city has an opportunity to lead the world in AR, VR, 3D creation, and SaaS.
- To capture Vancouver’s innovation moment, the city needs to build the infrastructure to support bleeding edge technologies and startups to thrive—and a global campaign to invite the world to Vancouver.
Dave Tyldesley
Co-Founder/Producer SAAS NORTH & INNOVATEwest
Editor INNOVATEwest PULSE
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So what if a startup has potential? What separates potential from those who achieve greatness is execution from founders and support from an ecosystem. Vancouver has the former in spades; the latter might finally be getting the boost it needs.
Dan Burgar, the co-founder and CEO of Frontier Collective, a partner of INNOVATEwest explained more about Vancouver’s innovation opportunity and how he is hoping to build a new “gravitational centre” for startups in the city.
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From traditional industry to innovation talent cluster
Vancouver is one of Canada’s largest cities, is driveable to Seattle, is only a quick flight to the Bay Area and LA, and a key connection hub to Japan. It also has some of the best universities in Canada for creative and technical talent.
But on top of these traditional advantages, Vancouver has a secret weapon: its film industry.
“Our film industry spawned subsets of visual effects, animation, video games, and 3D [development],” said Dan. “Those pillars have spilled into some of the new technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual and augmented reality, which has given us a foundation of talent that can build in these environments.”
With a key geography and an already-existing concentration of talent, you’d think that Vancouver would be a natural global success story. And it is, to some degree: Vancouver is one of the largest hubs in the world for VR, AR, and spatial computing; the city also boasts multiple companies on the Narwhal list—meaning valuations in excess of $1 billion.
Yet despite all those benefits, Dan said the city has experienced both brain drain for years; he’d also like to see governments getting more actively involved to help startups thrive in a globally-competitive environment.
“We need all levels of government to amplify, support and take meaningful action to spur the frontier tech ecosystem,” said Dan.
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How to build an AI strategy that gets results
AI can do a lot and add a lot of value, but only when you have the right strategy in place. Here’s how to create it.
Step 1: Describe your outcome with contextual detail
All AI success stories have one thing in common: the people implementing AI had a clearly-defined problem they wanted to solve or an end-state they wanted to attain. In the CPG example, it was about producing the right number of products in the most cost efficient way.
Step 2: Create hypotheses so you can run tests
If you have existing insights from customers, you might already have a strong hypothesis in mind—for example, a bank might have a goal of more multi-product customers, since those correlate to higher revenues and profitability. In that case, a hypothesis might be that existing multi-product customers typically start with a chequing account and then add a credit card or a line of credit.
If you’re in a smaller startup or launching a new offering, you’ll need to start from a new hypothesis. For instance, if your ultimate goal is more revenue through driving B2B revenue rather than your traditional B2C path, you might come up with a hypothesis that B2B buyers prefer a more concierge approach to selling (via calls) rather than your buy-now landing page that had succeeded in the B2C space.
Supporting frontier technologies
While Dan acknowledged a lot is changing in terms of government support and reversing brain drain, it isn’t coming fast enough for his taste—in particular, he doesn’t like Vancouver locals’ demure attitude toward sharing their own success.
“We need to be proud of the wins that are coming out of this region,” said Dan. “We need to scream from the rooftops of the incredible things that are happening in the innovation ecosystem here.”
To accomplish that, the Frontier Collective takes both a global and local approach. Globally, Dan said he and his team routinely travel to major tech hubs around the world to do “Vancouver takeovers,” like the one planned for the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.
The goal of Takeovers is to share Vancouver’s story with global partners, whether that’s corporates and investors looking to work with startups. Dan also tries to encourage people to relocate or set up offices in the city.
Talking about why he wanted to go global first, Dan said it was for two reasons: first is simply scale, noting that Canada is a relatively small market, but also adding that “global corporations are more willing to take risks than Canadian corporations” when it comes to startups.
On the local side, Dan said Vancouver is lacking the kind of physical space that exists in cities like Paris (Station F), New York City (Newlab), and Toronto (MaRS Discovery District). To that end, he hopes to build a 150,000 square foot space in Vancouver that will enable the kind of “serendipity” between founders, corporates, investors, and other ecosystem partners.
“It’s about how we can foster this ecosystem and really give it the injection of growth it needs for the future,” said Dan.
Inviting the world to Vancouver
Dan hopes his work will help more companies in Vancouver thrive on the global stage. But in order for that to work, he cannot do it alone—Frontier Collective already has a large roster of partners, but Dan is working to grow it further through his own efforts and through community platforms like INNOVATEwest.
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity in Vancouver to become a global leader,” said Dan. “And if we falter, we could easily lose out to other cities, other regions, or other countries. So what we’re going to be doing over the next few years is really scratching and clawing and making sure that we do seize the moment.”