Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne came to the Burroughes building in downtown Toronto, where the Toronto Standard office is conveniently located, to announce that the Government of Ontario will be contributing up to $50 million dollars to benefit startup tech companies in a fund called the Ontario Venture Capital Fund (OVCF) II. Building off its predecessor OVCF, this fund will be matched by the federal government and the hope is that private investors will contribute up to $200 million, for a total of $300 million in new capital to flow to burgeoning companies.
Wynne met with three startup companies– My Shoebox, Brika, and Koge — operating under Extreme Startups, a startup incubator offering promising new companies mentoring and capital they need to get off the ground. (Extreme Startups and Toronto Standard are both located on the third floor of the Burroughes building but are otherwise unaffiliated.) Throughout the photo op, the Premier looked expectedly enchanted and issued many compliments, though all the companies did indeed offer intelligent products. In her speech, Wynne trumpeted the need to keep Ontario innovators working in Ontario and the importance of making the capital they need available. However corny the political platitudes sound about creating the circumstances where innovators can thrive, it is hard to argue against it. Indeed, can anyone oppose funding that enables our smartest innovators? Wynne said she felt optimistic in that room, as sometimes, she said, politicians have cause not to.
I spoke to Andrew Yang, the Managing Director of Extreme Startups about working with the government as a partner. “We want the best investors, what we call ‘smart money.’ From a pure capital standpoint and from a ‘been there, done that’ perspective.” And is this government fund smart money? “The jury’s still out… I believe OVCF was successful… if OVCF II has the same mandate, then there’s no reason they can’t be too.”
Premier Wynne Examines the wares offered by Brika, a home decor and gift marketplace.Premier Wynne told me of the three products on display her favourite was My Shoebox, a program that allows you to back up all your photos for free, as well as consolidating them all into one place. But she issued a sensible caution: “I know all my pictures are out there…for private citizens, you have to know what you put on [the Internet].”
After looking at these three encouraging products was the press conference wherein she announced new tech funding. Her theme was keeping the Ontario tech ground fertile, and afterwards the media promptly hounded her about many unrelated topics including the OLG and the upcoming budget. When asked about the closing of gas plants, Wynne said that the discrepancy between the old and new numbers point to how difficult getting these numbers is in the first place. “There are different ways of looking at numbers…I’m not an accountant.” There was applause when the final question finally came back around to the tech sector, the reason everyone was ostensibly there. This moment made it easy to understand how a politician in her position may not feel optimistic every day.
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Jeff Halperin is a Toronto-based writer. You can follow him on Twitter @JDhalperin.
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