Getting out of the Hong Kong humidity, seeing my family and working on the ground in Vancouver during the Summer leads me to these annual visits. This year, Vancouver bore some great insight into the growing startup ecosystem— so here is a quick walkthrough of the cool stuff I saw this time (August 2018):
Traction conference
This annual conference by Launch Academy is a great spotlight for Vancouver — focusing on growth startups in Canada I learned more about how most startups are generating great revenue (audience poll looked like 50% were in the $1–$50mm ARR dept.) and the speakers, mostly from the Bay Area, came in to talk about next steps of growth. Highly recommended for startup founders on a growth curve. We don’t have this in Asia — but many founders have asked me for something like this as we are now getting to that stage that the “inspiring talks” type of conference aren’t as valuable.
Co-working in Vancouver
I visited more last year, but worked from Invoke Labs mostly and visited WeWork. They are building 3 new locations so the main one that is open is packed with people — it does look like every other WeWork but good to see the set up in Vancouver. But reading what they are doing to Seattle is incredible. The Pacific Northwest area is on a tear!
Likewise Spaces is coming in as well and are ready to take over the iconic Tom Lee Music building on Granville Street. I wouldn’t call this section of South Granville Street the Tenderloin of Vancouver — but it is an interesting section of downtown that might be rejuvenated by a global cowork setting up.
Tech Schools
I noticed a lot of coding and digital services school ads around the city — the coolest one I saw was BrainStation who also had their own coffee shop — Quantum Coffee — and event space in the building.
The Future of Vancouver
There’s so much happening and I feel like the next 5 years is going to be the Age of Transformation for my home city. I am excited for Vancouver and Canada as a whole — more so than any other ecosystem I have visited — it just feels like all the pieces for the machine to work are in place.
Here’s a snapshot of what British Columbia looks like now:
And I grabbed this from this month’s Monocle magazine list of Most Liveable Cities — as a resident of both I would argue that Hong Kong and Vancouver should be the other way around but I’m sure it will change soon.
All-in-all this is just a brief look at Vancouver — I’m looking into the Startup Visa and the tax credits for startups which look to be a gamechanger — expect me to be tweeting about Vancouver more and will be visiting Toronto next month for Elevate to compare.
Some online reading resources:
