After opening their office in downtown Kitchener only a few months ago, Atomic Labs already has ambitious plans for their future growth within the KW region. Atomic Labs is a San Francisco based venture capital firm that uniquely blends the roles of founder and investor. With a focus on quality over quantity investments, they successfully launched eight start-ups within its last four years including companies such as ZenReach, Ever, TalkIQ and Rested.
Just last week, Andrew Dundum and his partners announced Atomic’s growth strategy in the KW region, where they hope to capitalize on the young entrepreneurs and tech talent emerging from the universities. Dundum is looking to double the number of employee’s within the next six months from around 80 to 160 and make a more concentrated effort grow all sectors of their companies. Eventually Dundum wants Atomic to become the “second largest player [in the region] next to Google” (Daniels, 2016).
Clearly, Dundum has a lot of faith in the KW region. He believes that by scaling his company to a much larger size it would by extension help grow the KW regions tech economy, which for him has as much potential as Silicon Valley. By creating such a large and reliable company – and in turn, spurring new developments in the region – Atomic is hoping that the local talent will no longer feel the need to depart to Silicon Valley.
With the stability of a company like Atomic, increasing access to funding and support, and the already existing educational infrastructure of the KW region why would local talent wish to flee to the States? The answer for Dundum, is that now they simply won’t have to.
References:
http://www.therecord.com/news-story/7095755-venture-capital-firm-atomic-labs-opens-office-in-downtown-kitchener/
http://news.communitech.ca/news/atomic-vc-lays-out-aggressive-growth-strategy-for-waterloo-region/
I wonder if Atomic Lab's goal to attract more talent within the tech industry in the KW region would be facilitated if they offered incentives for employees within the industry who are debating where they should set up camp. I mean, Silicon Valley is partly attractive because of the vibrant city that it is located within and, unfortunately, KW is not yet as lively (nor as visually appealing). Maybe if Atomic Labs made an attempt to highlight the creative appeal of the city, as well as the facilities it has to offer for an individual's entertainment and pleasure, they would have more success at attracting people to fill their positions. While KW isn't as readily identifiable as a cool place to live, attempts could definitely be made to address the appeal of the city.
ReplyDeleteOr, something that might be easier for them would be to offer some sort of incentive - like I mentioned above. Maybe they would be open to that, because I'm sure their prospective employees would be.