NEW YORK
To walk in Manhattan is to wonder if the ground carries some kind of electrical current.
If there’s a break in traffic you cross the street, red lights be damned. Twenty blocks feel like a neighbourhood stroll. And somehow, those eight hours of sleep you needed at home shrink to five or six, with no apparent effects.
When Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided his city needed to wean itself from an over-dependence on the financial sector, New York went all in with a big bet on tech. Now, less than five years later, the Big Apple is the largest centre of venture activity in digital media outside Silicon Valley, and is gunning for top spot.
This push is creating huge opportunities for Canadians, which explains why Communitech chose New York as a landing spot and potential launch pad for entrepreneurs in its HYPERDRIVE incubator program.
HYPERDRIVE’s seven-company first cohort has been in the city since Wednesday, and kicked off Day 2 at the Canadian Consulate on Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) in Midtown.
The team could not have received a more encouraging welcome than the one delivered by Consul General John Prato in his offices’ wood-panelled boardroom.
Prato, a former investment banker on Bay Street, has made innovation a priority for his consulate, and he was emphatic that Canadian entrepreneurs take full advantage of his team’s capabilities, as Communitech has done.
“You’re the first accelerator to actually come down here,” said Prato, who took up his diplomatic post in March of 2011. “I congratulate Communitech and HYPERDRIVE for seeing the merit in being leaders here in New York.”
Prato’s two-woman innovation team of Miriam Bekkouche and Iréna Harris have been aggressive in planting the Canadian flag in the NYC startup scene. They recently launched the Canadian Technology Accelerator, a three-month program that gives Canadian entrepreneurs a landing spot at General Assembly, plus access to mentors and consular programs.
Now is a great time to use those programs, Prato said, because Canada’s brand has never been stronger, given its low debt-to-GDP ratio and business taxes among the world’s major economies. At the same time, “our productivity as a country has lagged,” he said, “and it’s going to impact all of our lives.”
Global-minded Canadian startups can play a key role in improving the country’s productivity, and can boost that role by tapping into New York’s white-hot startup investment environment, he said.
“You are key to our success in Canada,” Prato told the HYPERDRIVE group. “You’re really, really important to us here at the consulate. There’s no lip service; that’s the truth.”
Before donning his HYPERDRIVE T-shirt, Prato urged the group to “talk to people in Canada and tell them about the work we’re doing here in New York.
He closed with a reminder that his official home – a swanky and spacious apartment on Park Avenue – is also “your official residence in New York”, and followed through a few hours later by hosting a cocktail reception and pitch session for team HYPERDRIVE.
Up next at the morning meeting was Jim Estill, a Canadian entrepreneur-turned-investor based in New York, whose firm, Canrock Ventures, has pledged $2.25 million to HYPERDRIVE’s three-year, $30-million-plus program.
Estill, who started selling computers out of his car as a University of Waterloo student in the late 1970s, then built EMJ Data Systems into a $350-million company, delivered an hour’s worth of practical advice in a free-form Q+A session with the HYPERDRIVE companies.
Among his many tips was one Canadians hear often in the U.S: “Don’t talk small. Talk big.”
He went on to offer insights into everything from tech investing trends and VC behaviour to the importance of executing on “the little things” and the potential pitfalls of owning too much market share, all based on his 30-plus years of experience.
Watch this space in the coming days for more on HYPERDRIVE’s experience in New York.
