Northern Angel Summit: An opportunity for northern BC innovators, investors
Keeping ideas and people in the North, by creating opportunities for investment in innovation is the focus of a new Dragon’s Den-style competition launched this spring in Central and Northern British Columbia.
“How do innovative ideas get funded? Not just innovative ideas, but any ideas, especially if you’re up in an area of the province which is sort of forgotten by a lot of the investment capital that exists in British Columbia,” Shannon Stange, Northern Innovation Network’s Northeast Regional Innovation Liaison said at a recent Fort St. John & District Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
Most of the investment capital in the province is focussed on the southern part of British Columbia, leaving the innovative, hard-working people of the North without the opportunity to capitalize on their ideas. Southern BC investors don’t understand the northern market or want to take the time to learn it, Stange said. So, innovators and inventors end up going to Alberta for early-stage capital funding, where they do understand and that talent is then ultimately lost to northern BC.
Some of the most creative and innovative people in BC are in the North, Stange said, and the Northern Innovation Network wants to give them an opportunity to get their ideas to market while keeping that innovation and business in the North.
“To get an idea off the ground up here, takes millions of dollars,” he said. It’s not like developing apps. “Our needs for investment capital are very different than that digital start-up app that’s going to be selling for five bucks.”
That’s where the Northern Innovation Network (NIN) and the Northern Angel Summit comes in.
“We’re trying to create a different environment, so we can avoid having an exodus of business ideas and job creation out of our region and into provinces very willing to fund that sort of stuff,” said Stange.
The Northern Angel Summit, he said, is using the idea of the CBC show Dragon’s Den and creating a competition to “create our own economy around investing in Northern ideas, by Northern people, with Northern money.”
“If we’re able to create an economy around that, basically spearheaded by a competition, we’re able to then attract ideas from our own people, get those ideas funded by our own businesspeople and keep those ideas here in our communities.”
The Northern Angel Summit is open to what Stange calls business founders, visionary founders who have an idea for an innovation, or someone who wants to grow their business, and creating a Dragon’s Den type of situation, where the founders give up an equity stake in their company in exchange for early-stage capital.
To be a founder, all you need is a business idea or innovation that requires a minimum investment of $100,000.
In addition to the 24 founders who will be pitching their ideas and businesses, the Northern Innovation Network is looking for up to 20 Northern Angel investors, who are willing to fund early-stage capital. But capital is not the only thing these Angel investors will bring to the table. Stange and NIN are looking to these investors to bring their experience to the Summit as well.
“The Angels themselves are bringing their money in as the funding source for the winner of the competition,” Stange said. “Only one of these pitches is going to be successful, and that one will win an investment in their business of up to $100,000.”
The business need must be between $100,000 and $1 million, and the Angels need to be accredited investors, he said.
These investors are entrepreneurs themselves, businesspeople who can bring to the founders their insights, marketing expertise and ability to make connections in various industries.
“They’ll leverage those relationships as well as the money, to get the idea off the ground.”
The competition will take place over a ten-week period, over that period, the Angels will choose who continues, until there is only one Founder left.
Stange says that point of this competition is not to fund one business, but to create the economy around investing in the North. Heavy on the relationship building side of things because goal is not to create a competition but to raise up a network.
The competition ends on September 25, and so on September 26 and afterwards, founders who have been networking with the investors all summer, participating in training programs, learning from industry experts on how to pitch to investors and being mentored by them, will then have access to all the wisdom and capital in the competition.
“That’s the ultimate goal of where we’re going with this,” Stange said. “To create an innovative space around guys who have ideas, and the collaborative relational connective network of start-up capital available through an Angel network.”
Northern Innovation Network, formerly HubSpace, is a non-profit, primarily government-funded organization similar to Community Futures, which helps those with innovative business ideas, especially ones that involve technology get funding and training, in Northern and Central BC. Works with people with innovative ideas, can help with patenting of those ideas and inventions. Not just companies that are starting, but ones in the growth phase, where they might need mentoring to get their company stable and strong all the way up to getting ready for their first IPO (Initial Public Offering).
There are still spots open for both founders and Angel investors in the inaugural Northern Angel Summit. Although funding to run the competition has been secured for the first of three years, sponsorship opportunities are available.
For more information on becoming a Founder, Angel Investor or sponsoring the competition, contact angelsummit@northerninnovation.ca or call 250-563-2663.