Village Gamer

Healthy and vibrant entrepreneurial communities at a local level are the heart of supporting and driving the growth of startups.  Startup Canada Communities is a pan-Canadian network to provide entrepreneurs with a single doorway to enter their local entrepreneur community to access mentors, space, funding and support to start and grow their businesses and to connect with other startup founders online and on the ground. This initiative is a response to the call-to-action from more than 20,000 entrepreneurs in 40 communities who made their voices heard during the Startup Canada National Tour last year, calling for stronger, more connected and more active local startup communities to accelerate entrepreneur success.

In May 2013, Startup Canada launched 15 pilot communities as the first wave of its national network. This pilot has built the framework and infrastructure to support the roll-out of Startup Communities across a second wave Startup Communities to begin in 2014. The Application process is now open and the deadline for applications is November 8th. The selected 2014 Startup Communities will be announced live on November 21st during Startup Canada Day on the Hill.

The 2014 Startup Communities Information Document is available as a PDF via DropBox, and the Application form is available as a DOCX, also via DropBox. Two information sessions will be held next week online on October 21st (2pm -3pm EST) and October 24th (12pm – 1pm EST). Email Hello-at-startupcan-dot-ca for any questions or to register for an information session.

Background on Startup Communities:

Startup Canada is building a national network of hyper-connected grassroots startup communities to accelerate entrepreneur success in Canada. We accelerate the growth of grassroots startup communities through:

• Monthly working group sessions for best practice sharing, learning and nation-building;
• A private online group;
• National coordination, promotions and advocacy;
• Access to world-leading experts and advisors;
• White labeled network websites and branding; and,
• Impact measurement tools and reports.

Having launched just six-month ago, this month we released the first impact report and health check of the pilot communities and created their online community dashboards. The National volunteer team is focusing now on setting in motion the call for proposals for the 2014 cohort of Startup Communities.