You want to start a new business or social enterprise, how do you launch your dream? Should you apply for a commerce degree or perhaps an MBA to learn the tricks of the trade? Should you forego school and work from your basement or coffee shop central? Increasingly, both new and experienced entrepreneurs are turning to business accelerators to jump-start their visions.
The idea behind an accelerator is simple: starting a new business or social enterprise is difficult, success rates are low. Only 20% of new businesses make it past five years. Only about one in a hundred IT startups "exit" successfully.
Rather than being Lone Ranger entrepreneurs working in stealth mode from their garages, people are discovering the benefits of immersing themselves and sharing their ideas with others close by, getting daily feedback and advice, getting the support of experienced veterans and even just getting the basics of affordable office space and professional services like legal, finance and accounting.
It's important to have a professional physical presence.
"Potential clients often don't take you seriously when you are working from your home or from coffee shops," said Kenny MacKenzie, president of digital agency Vandrico Solutions, which is breaking some exciting new ground with mobile and augmented reality.
"With accelerators, you get affordable access to creative workspace, development tools, meeting rooms and boardrooms and the chance to network with like-minded professionals. Most importantly, you get the space you need to be free of distractions and more productive."
Accelerators can also give you powerful business analytics according to Reza Ghaeli, founder of LogicsPro.
"The areas of machine learning, artificial intelligence, data mining and modelling can be applied to the startup to perform knowledge discovery and predictive models."
These spaces used to be called incubators. They were so cosy no one wanted to leave. Now it's all about speed to market.
Even if your idea doesn't become the next Google, if you're going to fail, it's better to do it fast. The gradual growth approach can be dangerous, taking years to grow your venture only to discover when you're finally ready that someone else beat you to the punch. Successful entrepreneurs almost always need to "pivot" from their original idea once they get better feedback from early customers.
"We wanted a space where we could get mentorship and support in a collaborative environment" said Chris Wong, Canadian Olympian freestyle skier and co-founder of Athlete Direct and incoming entrepreneur at Zen Launchpad. "We knew if we wanted to take our venture to the next level we had to surround ourselves with other entrepreneurs and get the support from industry veterans".
The startup journey can be a dangerous one without the right help at the right time.
"There are a number of important legal issues that new and growing ventures face," said Ardeshir Darabi, lawyer at Sager Legal Advisors.
"You can save yourselves a lot of time, grief and money by putting some legal resources into your venture early on, to structure things right from the beginning."
Nkosi Khumalo, a seasoned entrepreneur and president of KSM Technology agrees.
"If you want to succeed in your new venture, it requires full focus. I have seen so many people try to bootstrap their ventures. They get 95% there and then run out of money and fail.
"You need to focus from the very beginning and show the world you're serious. When you are trying to get your first customers, working from home makes you look like an amateur. They look up your address on Google Map, they see a house or apartment and they think this person isn't serious".
Setting up good technology infrastructure can also make or break you, said Matt McKinney, manager at CA Cloud, a leading provider of cloud hosting.
"It's important to learn early on the options you have for scaling out your platforms. If things go wrong, you often don't get a second chance." These are the kinds of things you can learn from accelerator partners and entrepreneurs in residence.
"Accelerators give new entrepreneurs an invaluable jump-start, and Vancouver's growing startup culture is already recognized as world class," said Myles Gavin, co-founder of both Time Tagg and Woeigo, an interactive search engine for social justice.
In fact, according to a study by Startup Genome, Vancouver placed ninth on a list of the 20 top cities globally for the best startup ecosystems. •
Lower Mainland accelerators
Alacrity Foundation (www.alacrityfoundation.com): Associated with the University of Victoria, this accelerator helps business and engineering students and grads that want to start companies. Participants can get a master of applied science while in the program.
ARLO (www.bcit.ca/appliedresearch): Focuses on connecting industry with BCIT students and faculty, helping commercialize applied research and early-stage technologies.
Entrepreneurship@UBC: (www.entrepreneurship.ubc.ca). This is for students attending the University of British Columbia or for UBC students that have recently graduated.
Grow Lab (www.growlab.ca): Actively searches for talent and young companies who need support.
instituteB (www.instituteb.com): Business accelerator that puts profit and societal value on equal footing.
Launch Academy (www.launchacademy.ca): One of the first Vancouver startup hubs.
Peter Thomson Centre for Venture Development (www.bcit.ca/business/venture): Helping entrepreneurs since 1986, it can be accessed from anywhere via its virtual business hub.
Venture Labs (www.ventureconnection.sfu.ca): This is Simon Fraser University's treatment centre that focuses on SFU students and recent alumni.
Wavefront (www.wavefrontac.com): Wavefront is a government and industry-sponsored accelerator focused on mobile.
Zen Launchpad (www.zenlaunchpad.com): A new accelerator. In addition to helping startups and social enterprises, it helps established companies develop innovative offerings with a focus on leveraging business analytics.
