How the General Consulate of Canada Helps Companies Tap US Capital, Customers, and Culture
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StartEd CEO and Co-founder Ash Kaluarachchi spoke with Isabella Schilpp, Trade Commissioner in Los Angeles for Global Affairs Canada ― the Canadian government’s business development sector.
Prior to partnering with StartEd, she had received many client inquiries from Canadian EdTech companies asking to connect with US EdTech investors, K-12 schools, Universities, and Corporate L&D teams. She saw an opportunity to help companies break into the US market but had difficulty making the right connections to help. After meeting with a StartEd team member, she partnered with StartEd and found an efficient solution to supporting companies.
What’s your role and how do you work with startups?
My role is focused on helping Canadian companies enter the US market in a variety of different ways. It can be through channel partners, customer acquisition, fundraising, or connecting with investors and I'm always looking for partners to help me do that. As much as I can build a network in the US, I can't cover the whole of the tech sector and cannot know everybody.
EdTech was an especially difficult sub-sector to penetrate. Schools and the way they work is so complex and specific to the region. Enterprise was a little bit easier to understand since it involves similar B2B mechanisms that work with other sectors, but that isn’t the core of what a lot of Canadian companies are looking for when they enter the market.
How does the Consulate General of Canada typically deliver EdTech programming?
Our Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) is the only dedicated accelerator program that's run by the Canadian government. Before we consider deploying a program at that level, we like to run a series of programs with a partner to help us understand and build the network and explore new sectors that we haven't yet explored.
Originally our plan was to provide high-intensity service programming for EdTech, where we have a local partner who runs the programs and builds out the network for us and see if it's something that resonated with the Canadian EdTech community. Now that we're in the second year of our partnership with StartEd, I'm realizing more and more that EdTech is quite different from other subsectors within tech.
EdTech is not the kind of sector where you establish your network and you can plug and play any startup that might focus on that sector in the future. With EdTech, the network fluctuates a lot and it really is so dependent on who you're working with and who you need to fill the gaps for each company. When we were initially looking at who to partner with, I liked having a partner who is an expert in this space because education is such a specific sector.
When I heard about what StartEd was doing, I did a bit more research and saw that you really cover all of the EdTech industry. If I were to search for something EdTech related, StartEd typically pops up.
Why work with StartEd’s ecosystem instead of another?
I talked to other accelerator programs and other companies that worked with startups that could potentially facilitate a program in this space. Ultimately the reason that we went with StartEd is that the program was the best that we found in terms of the network, structure, and time commitment. While it's a really intensive program, it works really well for tech founders who say, “I can't dedicate months and months to this and have that slow burn.” It's more like “jump in, this is all you're doing for this short period of time.” Then you get the follow-up to the intensive to internalize things, connect with who you want to engage with, and apply what you learned.
The virtual delivery makes it so that it's not cost-prohibitive for the companies, it makes our offering more focused and we can offer to more companies. Not having to dedicate resources to travel or housing and instead put it towards effective programming like this is really important for us.
The program structure really worked for us, and so did the pricing structure. A big part of what we do is the funding mechanism. We want to make sure we're getting a bang for our buck because ultimately it's tax dollars at play. We have to be able to show that what we spend is returned tenfold. We're already seeing it with this cohort and I'm sure we'll continue to see it with future cohorts. A lot of what we do with first programs is, “let's try it and see what works.” We were lucky that we tried it and it worked and continues to work.
I'm also happy that we were able to convince my colleague Safia Morsly-Fikai from the Consulate General of Canada in New York to join forces to offer a bi-coastal program and we're hoping to continue to grow it, not just from a regional perspective, but also from the number of programs we can offer, especially as we're going through this year’s and the sort of initial feedback that I'm already getting from the companies. We can make a really great case that this is a program we would grow in terms of the expanse of our offering and/or size of the cohort.
What have participating startups said about their experience?
One of the things that we're hearing the most from the companies this year, I've had at least four companies say to me is that it saved them between six and 12 months of strategic thinking and spending. The mentor connections have really helped them figure out how to pivot and monetize it in a better way or decide how they’re going to raise funding. But they've really attached the 6 to 12 months of time-saving to it, which is really interesting because while a lot of these companies are startups, some of them have been doing this for a while. To be able to save that much time when you're already devoting every day to it, I think is really, really valuable.
The other benefit is the value of being able to spend time with other EdTech startups and to hear what they're doing. They've mentioned that it's been really cool to be able to have that interactivity between, not just Canadian startups, but startups in general who are in the same space. A lot of them often feel alienated in the industry. There isn’t a lot of support for EdTech companies, so having this dedicated support, the interconnectivity with other startups who are doing this same thing, and mentors who have done this before has been invaluable. So far, the feedback has been wonderful. We haven’t had a negative piece of feedback, which is great!