VANCOUVER — A group of entrepreneurs, investors and other tech-industry insiders frustrated with a lack of government support for the emerging metaverse sector has formed a collective to fill the void. Their plan—backed by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Vancouver-based incubator Launch Academy and the law firm McMillan LLP, among others—includes creating a roughly 100,000-square-foot innovation hub in Vancouver to help startups in the nascent field.

“In the frontier-technology ecosystem, we have the chance to become global leaders—but we could lose it all,” said Dan Burgar, co-founder and CEO of the new Frontier Collective. Many of the “fastest-growing industries in the region” are linked to the metaverse, the emerging form of online experience some believe will become the new internet standard.

Burgar points to the province’s expansive virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) and gaming sectors, and NFT and Web3 leader Dapper Labs, among other newly minted unicorns, to demonstrate B.C.’s promise. “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grow these industries. Otherwise, a lot of these companies will go to more welcoming environments.”

B.C.’s tech industry has long complained about a lack of government funding to help local startups grow into anchor firms and find employees with the right skils amid a talent crunch. For those working on emerging technologies, these problems can be heightened. Over the years, Burgar, who also heads the Vancouver chapter of the VR/AR Association, has heard from others working in the space about those obstacles, and started working on the collective last spring. 

They are turning first to the private sector for backing. “We’re going to try to get this moving without government first,” he said, hoping once they solidify a plan all three levels of government will “be inclined to invest” in the collective’s vision.

The group is already active. They’ve hosted some events, and travelled to Portugal and Silicon Valley on trade missions near the end of last year. Members have been chatting up candidates in Vancouver’s upcoming municipal election and key figures within the B.C. government. But they’re now ready to launch officially and tackle three priorities: growing the talent pool, access to investment and the region’s profile.

The talent problem is one that local entrepreneurs most commonly cite. Firms in the province struggle with finding experienced, senior talent, said Natalie Cartwright, co-founder and COO of chatbot firm Finn AI, and a member of the collective, as well as selling prospective hires on the strength of the tech ecosystem here. 

Burgar anticipates another hurdle. Post-secondary institutions don’t move as quickly as these emerging industries, he said, and a shortage could be imminent. The collective wants to increase talent for what they’re calling the “frontier-technology ecosystem” by 250 per cent within the next few years, through partnerships like one it has struck with the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s Tech Collider to teach the skills required to work in these industries and then connect new graduates with jobs. 

Capital can also be hard to access, especially for relatively new companies. “I believe that Canada as a country is woefully undercapitalized at the earliest stages,” said Chris Neumann, one of the collective’s strategic advisors and a partner at Panache Ventures. (Panache is not involved with the Frontier Collective.) Canadian startups have to rely more on angel investors, making it harder to acquire adequate funding, he said. The investment funds that do exist tend to focus on Toronto and Montreal, said Thomas Park, also a strategic advisor for the collective and the lead of BDC’s deep-tech venture fund. 

The Frontier Collective wants to add $3 billion to early-stage funding in the province by 2025, mainly by brokering connections. Neumann and Park said the collective’s work could lead to investments from their firms, and the profile BDC in particular brings to the effort—the Crown corporation is Canada’s most active VC and seeds investment funds across the country—could elicit pitches for funding. All investors benefit when the ecosystem grows, said Neumann. “Anything I can do to increase the success of the VC ecosystem and the Vancouver ecosystem in particular will have opportunities for me.”

Bringing in new investment and talent requires people in the tech community from outside B.C. to know about the area’s tech scene. Ray Walia, CEO of the Launch incubator and another Frontier Collective co-founder, said people are “dumbfounded” when he speaks at conferences about Vancouver’s frontier-technology companies, and the community’s potential.

The group wants to accomplish all this work from a proposed 100,000-square-foot innovation hub similar to Toronto’s 1.5-million-sq.-ft. MaRS Discovery District or New York’s 120,000-sq.-ft. (across two locations) Newlab. Burgar envisions it “as the centre of gravity of innovation for generations in Vancouver.” 

So far, it’s mostly a vision. The collective relies on funding (or donations of time) from its founding partners to operate. Burgar wouldn’t disclose how much it has raised so far, but said “it’s not enough.” They will have to raise more money or strike more partnerships to create the hub. Burgar would like to partner with an institution that could provide it with a space and said he’s connected with some partners “interested in this vision.” There’s also interest from government and other stakeholders to help make the hub a reality, he said. 

Two founding partners, McMillan and BDC, confirmed they had provided some initial funds to the group, though they declined to say how much. Both told The Logic they might be interested in supporting the hub, but had not yet been approached. Aside from financially, McMillan might be able to help with the hub by providing legal work required to secure a space, said Robert Piasentin, who heads up the firm’s national technology group and is the collective’s strategic-law lead. The group is already exploring some possible locations, he said. Still, it’s hard for Burgar to pinpoint when the hub may open as “a lot of things need to really hit the mark.” He hopes to make an announcement in the next couple of months.

This part of the collective’s plan may prove hard to execute. Vancouver has been home to several failed innovation hubs. In April 2019, the BC Tech Association announced it was shutting down a 6,000-sq.-ft. space for the AR, VR, and mixed reality community, less than two years after it had opened to much fanfare. A little more than a year after that, the association closed its last physical location. Both times, it cited a lack of government funding. More recently, Launch shifted its LaunchPad program to a virtual model and shut down its 12,000-sq.-ft. space. CEO Walia said the incubator downsized its space as he was “footing the bill myself,” with Launch receiving an estimated more than $1 million in government subsidies and funding over 10 years. But he hopes the collective can learn from Launch’s experience.

“Everything I wish happened for Launch should be happening for this,” said Walia, questioning whether he was too early—or perhaps a bad storyteller and unable to convince the right people. “Hopefully … times have changed and people realize that that opportunity is too big for us to miss.”