The founder of a unique accelerator lab in Vancouver has been named the new president of the BC Innovation Council (BCIC), a Crown corporation tasked with spurring innovation in sectors across B.C.
Danny Robinson, founder of Bootup Labs, said the accelerator is on pause for now, but not necessarily finished.
Bootup was among a new hybrid breed of accelerator funds filling an investment and support gap for digital media startups.
Companies that joined Bootup were given a line of credit in exchange for an equity stake. Bootup was paid from the line of credit to cover Robinson’s salaries, rent, day-to-day expenses, financial and accounting tasks, corporate legal expenses and web hosting.
Bootup’s portfolio companies stayed with the firm for up to eight months, at which point a new cohort of companies was financed and brought into Bootup’s working space.
Robinson said Bootup finished working with its last cohort in September, so none of Bootup’s portfolio companies are being left in the lurch as Robinson transitions to the BCIC.
He said Bootup’s operations may be moved into Bootup Entrepreneurial Society, which is a non-profit founded alongside Bootup.
The society’s mandate is to inspire entrepreneurship and help Internet startups take their idea from concept to commercialization.
“We were already planning on moving the accelerator into the non-profit,” said Robinson, noting that, as a non-profit, Bootup would have access to a broader range of funding sources. “All these plans are still in play, and all the people are still there to make it work.”
He’s joining the BCIC because he feared “that the BCIC was going to return to the irrelevant category. Over the past few years, it has become an extremely important part of the community here.”
“I’ve already been working at building the ecosystem here, At BCIC I’m going to do the same, but now I get to influence all of the other sectors and other regions in B.C.”
BCIC’s former CEO, Dean Rockwell, left the organization earlier this year to take an executive role with Vancouver’s Pulse Energy, which makes energy management software for buildings.