For someone who doesn’t have a pulse on the
tech ecosystem environment they may assume that for most start-ups it seems
like a dream for them to expand into Silicon Valley from the KW Technology
ecosystem. I know that when I began this course that was my preconceived notion.
This assumption usually comes from the fact that Silicon Valley is a way more
complex ecosystem and if a firm moves there it could be suggested that they are
growing to large for their current ecosystem and would benefit from the talent
that is in the Silicon Valley ecosystem.
The article that can be found below by Quentin
Casey of the Financial Post suggests that companies that are within the Valley
are finding value in expanding their operations into the K-W tech ecosystem. In
the article, it is discussed how the firm Everalbum, out of Silicon Valley,
acquired the Waterloo-Kitchener born start-up Pout. After acquiring, Everalbum
decided to stay within this ecosystem and hire the co-founders of Pout,
creating a Waterloo office instead of shutting down operations in this region
and continuing their growth in the US. The reason they decided to stay? The talent.
“If you can find a high concentration of amazing people, you have a good
shot at building something great” (Casey, 2016) is what co-founder of Everalbum,
Andrew Dudum had to say about
staying north of the border.
Although both Canadian companies, BuildDirect
out of Vancouver acquired Waterloo start-up DraftingSPACE which is an online
home renovation application. After being acquired “DraftingSPACE is
looking at office space outside of Velocity and also expects to expand its team
to 10 by the end of the year.” (Betakit, 2015) This is another
great example of how K-W is a desirable destination.
I also have to mention Google, Intel,
Electronic Arts, etc. which are “…global tech companies [that] set up
shop in Waterloo even if it was just to recruit and ship out talent.” (Dingman, 2015) Come to recruit the
talent and stay to contribute and grow the tech ecosystem, sounds good to me.
I think that it is awesome that K-W is
attracting companies, creating jobs and building a larger ecosystem! To check
out the topics that I discussed in this post for yourself, they can be found at
the following links:
Works
Cited:
Betakit. (2015, June 10). Canadian Startup News
& Tech Innovation. Retrieved March 15, 2017, from Betakit:
http://betakit.com/draftingspace-has-been-acquired-by-builddirect/
Casey, Q. (2016, February
12). Why more Silicon Valley startups will find their way to Waterloo.
Financial Post.
Dingman, S. (2015, July 17). Startup city: The
high-tech fever reshaping Kitchener-Waterloo. Retrieved March 21, 2017,
from The Globe and Mail: https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/technology/kitchener-waterloo-startup/article25558263/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&service=mobile
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