{"id":66640,"date":"2015-12-09T00:31:38","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T05:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=66640"},"modified":"2025-01-07T16:23:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T21:23:04","slug":"b-c-turbo-charges-tech-sector-and-jobs-strategy-with-100m-venture-capital-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/12\/09\/b-c-turbo-charges-tech-sector-and-jobs-strategy-with-100m-venture-capital-fund\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C. turbo charges tech sector and jobs strategy with $100M venture capital fund"},"content":{"rendered":"
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VANCOUVER \u2013 The British Columbia government is betting on the potential success of technology startups to boost job creation across the province.<\/p>\n

Premier Christy Clark announced a $100-million venture capital fund to give early-stage tech entrepreneurs access to money that will help grow their businesses.<\/p>\n

She said the money will address the difficulty entrepreneurs face when trying to bankroll their innovative but untested ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cTech tends not to be guaranteed bets,\u201d Clark told a news conference on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis seed fund is going to be proof that the British Columbia government has faith and confidence in our tech industry. It will allow us to attract a lot of investment from around the world that we hope would match it.<\/p>\n

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\u201d<\/p>\n

The BC Tech Fund is the first part of a three-pronged strategy by government to enhance the technology sector’s role in the government’s broad economic plan.<\/p>\n

Provincially, the industry already employs 86,000 people, and their wages are 60 per cent higher than B.C.’s industrial average. The sector’s 9,000 companies added $13.9 billion to the gross domestic product in 2013.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s forecast to continue growing faster than the overall economy.<\/p>\n

While Vancouver is the province\u2019s largest tech hub, technology is the No. 1 industry in Victoria and already generating more than $1 billion in the Okanagan.<\/p>\n

Now, the province says it wants to support entrepreneurs in transforming their startups into medium and large companies that can compete globally.<\/p>\n

Technology Minister Amrik Virk said investing in the technology sector will not reduce the role that natural resources play in the economy.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not an either\/or equation, this is a symbiotic relationship,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s with tech that we have a cleaner, greener, more effective, more efficient natural resources sector.<\/p>\n

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\u201d<\/p>\n

The last major bid to attract innovative companies that would potentially boost the economy was in 2008, with the $90 million BC Renaissance Capital Fund.<\/p>\n

The new fund builds on the province\u2019s current community of so-called angel investors, who provide startups with private funding.<\/p>\n

The province must still hire a private-sector manager to administer the fund, which is planned for operation in 2016.<\/p>\n

Clark said the government consulted widely within the industry and examined similar funding models around the world. The biggest lesson was not to put the fund in a civil servant\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to maximize the chance that an early investment is going to pay off big because you invested in a Mobify or a Facebook,\u201d she said. \u201cFor a company that starts small and gets really big, you need to get experts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The announcement garnered support from dozens of the region\u2019s high-profile tech entrepreneurs who gathered at the headquarters of Mobify, a growing mobile commerce firm that has already raised massive capital.<\/p>\n

CEO Igor Faletski said the fund is significant enough to support a good number of B.C. companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely fills a funding gap and gives us more fuel to compete with our competitors in Silicon Valley, because they have unlimited capital,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The government plans to launch the remainder of its technology strategy when it hosts the first BC Tech Summit in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VANCOUVER \u2013 The British Columbia government is betting on the potential success of technology startups to boost job creation across …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":66641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[9636],"class_list":["post-66640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-cp","mauthors-tamsyn-burgmann","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280313,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66640\/revisions\/280313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}