Growing the ICT sector in BC would at first glance appear to be relatively easy to undertake. After all we have great communications systems, many bright entrepreneurs, a gifted IT community and most importantly a neighbor to the south hungry for solutions. Given all the natural talent one would think it would be a slam dunk. Yet we struggle to grow the sector. Some people say it is a lack of talented managers with domain knowledge, some others say it is our culture to create good technology but we can’t market it. From my seat it is really about a lack of support from the Canadian finance community for projects that have longer time frames and a lack of willingness by Canadian business/government to embrace innovation.
There are exceptions to the rule, though the reality is that BC is littered with companies that made it to 2 or 3 million and were either sold or acquired. Very few make it to $10 M let alone $100 M or $1 B. Why is that? It can’t be that we don’t have enough talent as I can point out some great people that can not find work (which is another story). It can’t be that there are not enough tech parks as the ones we have can not be filled. And it can ‘t be tax structure as we now have, according to the liberals, the lowest taxes in Canada. So what is it? My question is — Where is the VC and Angel is these stunted ambitions?
