FedDev Q4: TribeHR, big contributions in Woodstock and Brampton ... and a lot of community infrastructure

After spending the last year focused on helping businesses, FedDev turned its attention back to infrastructure for its new contributions in the period ended March 31.

With the rollout of the Community Infrastructure Improvement Fund, there was a ton of activity disclosed in the quarter, with over 100 projects funded in Southwestern Ontario alone. The largest was a $775,224 toward the City of Waterloo's upgrade of Waterloo Park. You can see the full list of funded projects.

There were only three new disclosed repayable contributions for Southwestern Ontario businesses in the quarter.

First, there was the $542,399 in Investing in Business Innovation funding for Kitchener's TribeHR that was announced not long after it happened (still a rarity with government funding of all kinds).

The other two were large contributions under FedDev's Prosperity Initiative—$2.5 million to Woodstock's NASG Canada (North American Stamping Group) and another $2.5 million for a company in Brantford listed as 1818155 Ontario Inc. (a Google search only turned up sketchy details and no operating name).

And that was it for the quarter.

Across the province, the largest new contribution was $2.7 million for the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, also through the Prosperity Initiative program. That funding was announced a couple of weeks ago.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can Windsor use a non-snub to energize a focus on innovation?

OMG, did you hear? There's a new $100 million "Innovation SuperCorridor" initiative from the province introduced in the budget ... AND WINDSOR'S BEEN SHUT OUT! Snubbed! All that money and Windsor need not apply.

Well, that was the story in the Windsor media, anyway—led by the Windsor Star, which rang the alarm bells, soon followed by other media outlets. The president of the University of Windsor, Alan Wildeman, wrote a rebuttal, but to little effect. Apparently, the chamber of commerce is now preparing a lobbying campaign to make sure Windsor gets its fair share of the funds.

Which will be a challenge, since there actually is no $100 million initiative. Either the Star invented it or they cribbed it from someone who did, because it certainly wasn't in the budget.

It's true that the budget described an area it called the "Innovation SuperCorridor"—it "extends from London and Waterloo region [sic] in the west [I'm pretty sure one of those is…
Read more

Zero to One: Some useful insights in a sea of dross

Many people have said good things about the Peter Thiel (with Blake Masters) book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, and there were several parts I found worthwhile, but I can't add it to the recommended reading list for startup founders.

There's nothing particularly objectionable about the major theme—have a bold vision and a plan to get there—but there's very little in Thiel's underpinning for that theme that's going to be of much value. It's heavy on personal ideology—which may be enjoyable to read if you share the same views—but not so useful as a guide for startups.

I'm sure I could pull a dozen good tweets from the book (and will do, below ... 10 of them, anyway), but I found the first half to be largely a waste of time. Thiel's recollections of the late 90s dot-com boom are very different from mine. He looks back with nostalgia at a golden era characterized by big visions that he rarely sees these days. I remember the pe…
Read more

A lesson Adam Chowaniec helped me to learn

This was going to be a set of tweets, but ended up being a little long.

I'd been reading observations and recommendations from Adam Chowaniec for over ten years when he died a couple of weeks ago. He was one of the leading figures in the Ottawa tech community and had spoken at at least a couple of Communitech events over the years.

He was always worth hearing, and at the same time, would occasionally say things that made me think we lived in alternate universes.

It was an important lesson to learn. Tech communities—even in the same province—have different experiences and priorities. Chowaniec was very Ottawa, very telecom. Ottawa and Waterloo collaborate a lot, and aren't that far apart in distance, but are also very different.

You have to be cautious when drawing conclusions for the province or the country based on your one region. You can't avoid it—most of us live in one place, and that shapes our experiences—but you can watch out for your own overgeneralizations.

(At …
Read more