The bottom line from Startup Canada
It's all going to be about the ecosystem. Alone we are weak - but together....
So on PEI, please set up an organization to do this. Hope is not a method and good intentions are not enough. I appeal to the PEI BioAlliance and to the Queen Street Commons to form a nucleus. This would be a great start.
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Small is beautiful but rarely offers much of a living. The new secret sauce of the Artisanal Industrial Revolution is Network Aggregation. This can happen online such as when Artisans aggregate in sites like Etsy or Knitters in Ravelry. But what is really new, and what I think will make a huge impact of Foodies, are face to face aggregators.
Here is what is happening in New York. This example tells me that entrepreneurs can do this anywhere - Put some business oomph behind local food.
Source: New York Times
"Perhaps more than any other entrepreneurs in a borough chock-full of kale and crafts, Mr. Butler and Mr. Demby have helped create, curate and nurture the booming Brooklyn artisanal complex. In just five years, the 40-something fathers have turned the Flea and Smorgasburg into a small-batch empire. They operate four markets in Brooklyn each weekend from early April to late November. Smorgasburg also runs concessions at Central Park’s Summerstage concerts. After Thanksgiving, the Flea moves indoors to the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank building.
On a sunny weekend when the stalls are filled to capacity and thousands of tourists, hipsters and chowhounds come to graze, the business can gross as much as $60,000, based on the fees the vendors pay.
Mr. Butler and Mr. Demby — whose friends jokingly call him Artisanal Eric — maintain a modest profile when observing their weekend markets with their children in tow. But during the week, the two are doggedly focused on moving beyond their borough’s over-the-top identity as the home of white truffle mayonnaise.
Now they are wading into Manhattan and into the corporate world, at a time when small-scale food makers belong to one of the fastest-growing industries in New York.
Last week, coolness made the reverse commute. The two men began a partnership with the upscale food retailer Whole Foods Market that will bring one vendor a month to the second floor of Whole Foods’ Bowery store in Manhattan. In February, a retail stand, also on the floor, will begin selling packaged items from other Smorgasburg vendors. The plan is for the relationship to continue in Brooklyn when Whole Foods opens in Gowanus and Williamsburg in the next two years."
This approach is I think the keystone of the new artisanal world. 100 years ago artisans made most things we need but were restricted to their local market. Henry Ford replaced them with a process that took the skill out of the work and offered the product to the world. Don't believe me? Here is the story. Now we can take back the skill but also offer scale - by using aggregation and trust.
Few artisan enjoy or have time for the larger business issues. On their own, it is too hard for customers to find them. Trusted Network Aggregators offer a win win solution for us all.
More about this idea in my new book You Don't Need a Job
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Traditionally success in Atlantic Canada has been to get money from government. Provinces lobby the Feds and Entrepreneurs lobby the Province. But the new reality is that this system has broken down.
So what next?
This short video of film maker Mark Sandiford I think shows the way. PEI film makers have got together not to lobby but to create a network that will enable them to make films! To use their network to give them the capital and the social resources and to go all out to use the new technology and the new work processes that can enable the small to make the big.
Here is the organization that they have created to help each other operate this network - The Island Film Factory
I think that this story works for all and not only for film makers. Here is Mark telling us why and how they did this.
My new book - You Don't Need a Job will explore the use of the network in a lot of detail.
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The big lessons of the tour were:
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PEI punches way above its weight - Why?
Few places in Canada could be further away from the main markets of North America. Few places have less resources than PEI. But I found last week, as I travelled with StartUp Canada around PEI, that our entrepreneurs are doing very well.
Many have operations, such as Marks Work Warehouse and Island Abby Foods, that are amongst the best in class. Many have businesses, such as BioVectra and DME, that have found a niche that makes them unrivaled in the continent. Many are astonishingly novel like Thinking Big and Screenscape.
Why should small businesses in a small place be so competitive?
It's in the Island DNA
PEI is too small and too far away to attract large mature businesses from away. So business on PEI is naturally always small and owner operated. And because PEI itself is small, PEI business has always had to find a place in the larger markets off Island. It's been like this for 200 years.
As Duncan Shaw told me about his family, “Few people ever had a job. We come from a long line of pioneers, farmers, fishers and small business owners."
Potatoes were run to the Caribbean in exchange for the official cargo of molasses and the unofficial cargo of rum. Fish was run to Boston. Lumber to the UK. Fox fur and lobster to Upper Canada.
So like their forefathers, Lorraine MacAulay had to start her Mosquito repellent business by breaking into the large national stores. Peter Toombs had to sell his brewing equipment all over the world. They had to begin by being very clever and persistent.
So how did they get so smart?
It's not school - It's Family and Mentors
We think that having great schools are key to developing smart people. But most of the entrepreneurs I met last week told me that they did not fit into school culture. Some never finished school. Others had to force themselves to finish. Dico Reijers took 7 years to do his BA.
All told me that culture of entrepreneurship was set at home. All told me that they grew up in a family where running your own business was the normal. The dinner table was their classroom.
Some entrepreneurs went to business school. But for most, the best business lessons were taught by mentors. They learned the old fashioned way, like an apprentice, from advice given by a person who lived their life. Entrepreneurs helping Entrepreneurs.
I asked all of them about whether school needed to be changed. None of them dismissed school. They acknowledged that not everyone should be or even could be an entrepreneur. But they hoped that the school system would see that it could help by identifying the characteristics of kids, like Matt below, who were destined to be entrepreneurs. Then the entrepreneurs could help.
For entrepreneurship on PEI is a personal and individual thing. All the older PEI entrepreneurs I spoke to want to reach out and offer more of their time as mentors to the young up and coming new class of rebels. What they want is a better way to connect.
If PEI stays true to its business DNA - we will do well
Large bureaucratic structures are dying. Youth unemployment in Canada and the US is over 20% and in Europe is close to 50%. Many middle aged workers are being made redundant. Pensions that many have relied are being diminished. For societies that have more embraced the job and the bureaucracy, the transition will be very hard.
But here on PEI, I see now that we could adjust quite well. The modern PEI entrepreneur is already competing in the new networked global marketplace. They are hiring. They are growing. They are doing what Island business people have always done.
All they need to do now that is different is to work together.
If the PEI entrepreneurs get together and work with each other to boost the local ecosystem.
If those in government do the same. Then this little Island could do very well.
This insight is the great gift that the visit of StartUp Canada brought. They held up the mirror to who we really are. Now we must not waste this gift. Time to act .
It’s up to us now.
PS Next week I will start a 2 week series on what I have learned from our wonderful entrepreneurs
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The Earthquake that is StartUp Canada (Victoria Lennox and Cyprian Szlalankiewicz) - has just left PEI.
I will be starting a series on what happened next week when I get the videos of our interviews. But here is a summary of what I saw take place.
In short the Entrepreneur community has started to see itself. Until now most of its members had their heads down and fully focused on their own bit. Now they are starting to see the ecosystem and how they can help each other. Now the supporting people in government also has seen the full power of this sector and they too see that it is better to work together to support the system as a whole.
Silos = not good. Ecosystem = Good!
Trying to bring big mature business to PEI = sub optimal. Supporting local entrpeneurs - Optimal!
Looking to government for everything = sub optimal. Looking to the community - Best!
Here is a more detailed summary:
10th, Startup Canada traveled across Prince Edward Island to connect with and bring together the province’s entrepreneurial community. With each meeting and event that was hosted, one message began to ring loud and clear: PEI’s entrepreneurial spirit is awakening and with the right tools, resources, and mentors in place, it has the potential to thrive.
Startup Canada is a grassroots, entrepreneur-led initiative to support and inspire entrepreneurship across the country. The Startup Canada team is on a six-month tour to celebrate entrepreneurship, identify key challenges facing Canadian startups, and ignite new community-led solutions to those challenges. In PEI, the Tour engaged more than 300 Islanders, and more than 200 entrepreneurs from a variety of sectors, including well-known Island entrepreneurs Ray Murphy, President of Murphy’s Pharmacies, John Rowe, President of Island Abbey Foods and Timeless Technologies and Regis Duffy, Founder of Diagnostic Chemicals Ltd. and Chairman of BioVectra.
“This week we met with artisans, farmers, and successful technology, real-estate and manufacturing entrepreneurs who are powering the Island by creating jobs and innovating new products,” said Victoria Lennox, Startup Canada Co-Founder. “The importance of getting entrepreneurship into schools, creating a education track for entrepreneurship, supporting the mentorship of students, and creating a one-stop service shop for entrepreneurs, were some of the salient ideas on how to create a more prosperous and sustainable PEI.”
The PEI leg of the Tour began with a Charlottetown Town Hall facilitated by Startup Canada Board Member and Founder of Relish Gourmet Burgers, Rivers Corbett. Together, more than 70 entrepreneurs began building the provincial vision for PEI’s entrepreneur community. Rob Paterson, an entrepreneur who has lived on the Island for more than 17 years, said he has never seen such a mixture of passion, vibrancy and forward-thinking in one room.
“I saw a giant awakening where the local community of entrepreneurs and policy-makers can now see themselves as key to our economic future,” said Paterson. “Many entrepreneurs told me that, until now, they had been too busy to see that they were part of a large sector here – a sector that creates most of the real jobs for Islanders and a sector that offers our young people a real future. I think Startup Canada’s visit is inspiration for the leaders to start working together to help newcomers to the sector and a catalyst for the key policy makers to start seeing entrepreneurship as central in their plans to create a better economy for PEI.”
Another action item from this week is to develop a province-wide communications strategy to increase awareness of entrepreneurship as a viable career path. This strategy will include the training, education, and convening of the PEI education sector to equip Islanders with the knowledge, skills and networks required to create entrepreneurial schools, colleges and universities.
Throughout the week, spotlight interviews were conducted with local entrepreneurs including, VITRak Systems Inc., Island Flow, ScreenScape, Prince Edward Distilleries and a number of others.
“I think the Startup Canada PEI Tour was a fantastic success,” said Duncan Shaw, Startup Canada’s PEI Patron and owner of the Summerside Storm. “We saw new energy in experienced entrepreneurs and great excitement in younger people focused on the future. It’s great to see so many people dreaming big and focused on making those dreams a reality.”
Alongside Startup Canada, the PEI BioAlliance co-hosted the PEI events.
“We’ve been able to celebrate the tremendous spirit of entrepreneurship that lives and breathes in PEI, and we have provided a window for the next generation of entrepreneurs to see what their future might look like in the exciting and rewarding world of running their own businesses,” said Rory Francis, Executive Director of the PEI BioAlliance
Next week Startup Canada is moving to Ontario to visit Toronto, Waterloo, Windsor and York Region, before heading back to Atlantic Canada to round off the month of May in New Brunswick.
Funding assistance for the PEI Startup Canada tour was provided by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and Innovation PEI. The PEI Startup Canada Committee is made up of the PEI BioAlliance, ACOA, Innovation PEI, The Greater Charlottetown & Area Chamber of Commerce, PEI Newcomers Association, Resources West, ITAP, PEI Business Women’s Association, CDC, Mi’kmaq Confederacy, UPEI, and Junior Achievement.
Startup Canada is proudly sponsored by Microsoft, Gowlings, Ernst & Young, Best Western Hotels, Artik Promotions, KA Media, VideoBooth, PubliAir and OTTN.
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What a day we had yesterday as a group of PEI Entrepreneurs met. What I saw happen was this. As we met and talked, we could feel the power. We could see that we were not alone. We could see that there is a critical mass of people who want to create some thing. People who would not wait for "Them" but take action.
Something started to awaken. The understanding that the future of PEI was in our hands. That we could regain our historic self reliance.
Over the next 3 weeks I will share many stories from these people and I hope then that you will see what I saw yesterday. The Sleeper Must Awaken - and it will.
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