Companies such as Thalmic Labs and BufferBox are living proof that you do not need to stay in Silicon Valley to operate a successful startup once you have received the correct funding and incubation assistance. With innovation and work culture being such a dominant theme throughout this course, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the insights of tech startup founders from the Kitchener-Waterloo region. The article I chose to share with the class provides a number of insights on why the founders of Thalmic Labs and BufferBox chose to operate in Waterloo instead of Silicon Valley.
The most pertinent feature that appeared throughout this article was the ecosystem that Waterloo provided for these companies to succeed. With a tremendous startup culture and support system, Waterloo is home to some of the world's most talented engineers. For the founders of Thalmic Labs and BufferBox, operating in Waterloo made the most financial sense. They were able to establish strong relationships with the University of Waterloo and acquire talented engineers that were loyal to the company and cost half the amount that engineers in Silicon Valley would.
Article Link: http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/why-three-innovators-are-running-their-companies-in-waterloo-instead-of-silicon-valley?__lsa=6cda-f592
Great blog post! I really like and agree with your point of how Waterloo has a tremendous startup culture and support system. Especially with UWaterloo, Laurier, and Conestoga being within the region, there is an abundance of talent at these school. Definitely in more recent years, these schools have been helping students become entrepreneurial thinkers with new programs and course offerings. Also, there are other programs that these institutions offer to help students with their entrepreneurial ambitions, such as Laurier LaunchPad which helps students with validating their business ideas through the Lean Startup methodology. UWaterloo has many programs including Velocity (Garage, Start, Residence) that creates this tech/entrepreneurial community and helps students and alumni grow their startups.
ReplyDeleteActually, the new Director of Velocity is Jay Shah who co-founded BufferBox along with Mike McCauley and Aditya Bali. The article you reference was from 2013 and the other companies listed (Thalmic and Vidyard) are exponentially growing and both have their head offices in Kitchener. However, Thalmic does have an office in San Francisco, with a focus on marketing and sales and BufferBox was acquired in 2012 by Google. After the acquisition, the BufferBox founders all worked at Google, which in 2014, they permanently shut down the BufferBox product. McCauley and Bali are still working at Google in Silicon Valley today, but Shah left last year to come back to the place he started his company, and is now helping other young Waterloo entrepreneurs grow their businesses.