The founders of startups like Clio, Unbounce and Mobify are used to making lightning pitches to angel and venture capital investors.
But later this month they will be making a different kind of pitch. They won’t be trying to raise money; they’ll be trying to hire people.
They will be among the CEOs and staff managers of local startups who will be trying to convince prospective employees to come and work for them at a November 28 job fair hosted by Techvibes. Some will also participate in a collective job fair at Brooklyn Gastown on November 12 under the “Startups Unite” banner.
Meanwhile, Clio has been busy setting up new offices in Toronto and Dublin, in an effort to tap those cities’ tech talent pool.
In other words, Vancouver’s tech talent crunch is no longer looming – it is already here, and it is particularly pronounced for small, low-profile tech startups that are competing with the likes of Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN) and HootSuite, both of which are on a hiring spree.
“This is our fourth startup in Vancouver in the last 10 years,” said Stephen Ufford, co-founder and CEO of Trulioo, a Silicon Valley-backed startup that makes identity verification software for websites.
“Last year’s startup – it felt like real estate – it was a buyer’s market at the time. Now it’s the opposite. When we have job fairs here by ourselves, the turnout has been quite dismal. We’re all competing with the big guys.”
“I think every company has different challenges, but I think what we all have in common is definitely engineers,” added Rick Perreault, co-founder and CEO of Unbounce.
Unbounce employs 36 people, 15 of whom were hired just in the last three months. The company is planning to double in size over the next year.
For venture capital-backed startups like Unbounce and Turlioo, money is not an issue – they can offer competitive salaries.
And in some ways, there is an allure to getting in on the ground floor of a hot tech startup, like HootSuite was four years ago.
But when Amazon has 87 openings posted on its Vancouver jobs board and HootSuite is trying to add 100 new employees, it can be tough for unknown newcomers to even get noticed.
Even Hootsuite – one of the brightest stars in Vancouver’s tech firmament – is fighting for space in Vancouver’s high-tech talent pool, which is at risk of being fished out.
Seattle and Silicon Valley giants like Amazon, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT), Facebook (Nasdaq:FB), Twitter and Mozilla have all opened development offices in Vancouver to take advantage of its talent pool.
“Obviously, it validates that Vancouver is an very interesting centre,” said Mike Edwards, founder and CEO of LX Ventures Inc. (TSX-V:LXV), which buys and grows tech startups. “But in that validation, it exposes our weakness, and our weakness is that we just don’t have enough talented engineers to fill all those positions.”
In its 2012 TechTalentBC report, the BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) predicted B.C. technology companies would create 3,000 to 4,000 new jobs.
“That was before the arrival of companies like Amazon, Facebook and now Twitter,” said BCTIA CEO Bill Tam. “It’s clear that we’re at the upper end of our forecast range and likely even a bit higher.”
Amazon has 87 jobs posted on its Vancouver jobs board – most of them software engineer positions. Those jobs will at least stay here, as Amazon is planning to take 91,000 square feet of space in the new Telus Garden building.
Facebook, on the other hand, appears to be here on a poaching mission. In a recent opinion piece in the National Post, HootSuite founder Ryan Holmes said Facebook’s Vancouver office is not permanent but a “pop-up boot camp” designed to recruit, train and “siphon off” programmers from Vancouver.
One way of addressing the tech talent shortage is to lure entrepreneurs from other countries. Three such entrepreneurs – one from Mexico, two from the Ukraine – were recently nominated for permanent residency status under the federal Startup Visa Program, based on their acceptance into the Vancouver tech accelerator GrowLab.
“I’m looking at bringing in talented individuals that are going to build tomorrow’s HootSuite,” said Edwards, GrowLab’s outgoing executive director.
“Today, there’s a problem. The problem is HootSuite is here. HootSuite’s executing, and they can’t execute as fast as they need to because they cannot get enough engineers, management – talented people – to execute on that business.”
Added Tam: “We need to seriously look at the long-term requirements for increasing capacity at our post-secondary institutions to meet the growing demand for talent in the tech sector.” •
