Mover is making cloud storage solutions in Edmonton

moverCan you build a successful, scalable technology company in Edmonton? Local startup Mover thinks so, and yesterday they received validation of that goal in the form of $1 million in seed financing from an impressive list of American and Canadian investors.

“Absolutely” was Mover CEO Eric Warnke‘s response when I asked if he thought he could find the necessary talent and other resources to grow the company here in Edmonton. The tech landscape is a lot different today than it was five or six years ago when Eric was at Nexopia, the hot local startup at the time. “Realistically we’d have to double salaries if we relocated to the valley,” he told me. Not that Mover isn’t paying a fair wage, it’s just that the cost of living there is much higher and the competition for talent is much fiercer. “A lot of people ask us if we’re going to move, but there are good incentives to stay here.” The footer of Mover’s website carries the message “proudly made in Edmonton.”

Mover is barely a year old, but it certainly doesn’t lack history. Walk around the office on the second floor of the revitalized Mercer Warehouse building and little reminders of the past consistently pop-up. A Free Wi-Fi magnet on a metal divider, a Firenest coffee tumbler on top of the fridge, a Mesh Canada brochure hanging on one of the beautiful wooden beams. Even the Launch Party sign front-and-centre as you walk across the creaky floors offers insight into how the growing local tech scene made it possible for Mover to go from idea to reality.

Mover Office

In 2004, Eric was employee number four at Nexopia and wore a number of hats there over the years, everything from customer service to ad management. A few years later, while working full-time at the social networking site and also going to school, Eric found time to start and run an Internet café on Whyte Avenue. It was the Internet café that sparked an interest in wireless networks and led to the creation of the Free Wi-Fi Project. Through that initiative Eric met Mark Fossen, a former partner at ThinkTel Communications. The two decided to join forces and launched Mesh Canada in 2009. They sold it to a Calgary company last year.

In January 2012, Eric & Mark decided to participate in Startup Edmonton’s Startup Hackathon. They built a utility called Backup Box that helped users move files from one place to another (such as an FTP server to Dropbox), and eventually showed it off at DemoCamp in March. A few months later, they were part of GrowLab‘s spring 2012 cohort in Vancouver. Renamed as Mover, they refined the product and when they got back to Edmonton, realized they needed to grow. That’s when Ben Zittlau joined as a partner and the VP of Technology. He had previously worked on Firenest, a web-based tool for non-profits, and for a short time worked at Yardstick Software too.

In the space of a year the team has grown from four to ten. They’ve mostly hired people they know, and that was a deliberate decision. “Slowly but surely we’re putting Nexopia back together,” Eric half-joked. He stressed how important it is to hire strong people. “They had a lot of great people working at Nexopia.” Mover plans to stay in the Mercer Warehouse as long as possible, and already have their eye on some additional space on the second floor. “It’s walkable for almost everyone on the team,” Eric said. “There are great amenities here, and being downtown and close to Startup Edmonton is really great.”

Mover Office

I asked Eric to describe the culture at Mover. “Pretty awesome” was his response. The fridge is stocked with groceries in addition to beer, so that everyone on the team can have a healthy lunch at the office if they choose to (today the team had a craving for Oodle Noodle). The company is flexible on working hours and vacation, and employees get ownership options. Eric cited Box, Dropbox, and Singly as companies he admires with Jobber and Granify as local examples. “One day we’ll be the example others mention,” he added.

Mover has a strong technical team. Greg Bell, Graham Batty, and Sean Healy are all former Nexopia employees. Derek Dowling was a programmer for The Gateway. Jacob Straszynski worked at Mediashaker. Eric thinks they’ll add a few more technology folks, but where the new funding will really help Mover is with marketing and business development. Aside from Eric and Mark, there’s just marketing intern Aidan McColl at the moment.

Mover Office

Mover has quickly become a leader in the growing world of cloud storage migration and backup. With support for about a dozen popular services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive, Mover is carving out a unique middleware position for itself in a rapidly growing market. Steve Jobs famously said Dropbox was just a feature, not a product, but today the company has more than 100 million users who collectively save more than 1 billion files each and every day. And they’re just one of many options available to consumers and enterprises. Back in 2010 a series of Microsoft commercials featured the refrain “to the cloud!” Today more than ever, that’s exactly what’s happening, and Mover is hoping to play a key role in the space.

The plan was always to raise money. But like many technology startups, Mover was probably too ambitious last year in trying to build an impressive technical solution to a problem that not enough people have yet. The lesson was to focus on the areas in which they already had traction, Eric told me. “We’ve got this really interesting thing here, and we need some money to figure that out so that we can get to the next stage.” That approach, combined with a realization that it’s okay to say “I don’t know” to certain questions, led to the new investment.

Mover currently thinks about two primary categories of customers. There are individuals who are mostly self-service but have a wide range of needs. Then there’s enterprises, with lots of users and fairly well-defined problems. Both offer lots of opportunities and are expected grow significantly in the years ahead. Balancing the feature set between them is one of the challenges Mover will face. “We’ve got a fantastic backend,” Eric said, “but we need to make some improvements to the user experience.”

The team is well aware there is lots of work to be done. Every Friday afternoon they meet in the “conference room” for a retrospective led by Ben. Each person has the opportunity to share something positive from the past week as well as something that needs to be improved. The admin dashboard they’ve built is displayed on a large television and allows the team to monitor performance, identify potential bugs, and highlight areas of improvement.

Mover Office

Eric and Mark took part today and used the opportunity to talk about the new investment, thanking everyone for their hard work. “It was a team effort,” Eric said. “Each of you have played an important role in getting us to this point.” Mark added some thoughts about what the investment means for the company, and there were smiles all around. But that was the extent of the celebration. Minutes later they were back to discussing some workloads that had been flagged on the display. The message was clear: the investment helps a great deal, but it’s not the endgame. Mover has lofty goals and there’s a lot of work to be done to achieve them.

Should MSI funding be used for Edmonton’s downtown arena?

Even if you’re optimistic and think the Katz Group and the City can resolve their current differences, let’s not forget that the arena project is short at least $100 million. Under the current agreement, that amount is slated to come from “other orders of government” such as the province. Over the last year or so, various ministers have stated that the province will not be providing any new funding for the arena. In May, Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths said:

“The province is not going to write a separate cheque for a particular project. We provide MSI funding for every municipality in the province, which is $896 million this year. We have proposed that’s going to increase. The reason why we do so is municipalities can choose what their priorities are.”

While the downtown arena project would certainly be eligible under the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI), I have long wondered if it would really make sense to use our limited funding for that purpose. How much MSI funding do we have? What have we already spent? Can we really count on an increase? These are some of the question I’ll explore below.

What is the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI)?

MSI is a way for the province to provide cities, towns, and other municipalities in the province with funding for infrastructure projects. From the MSI website:

In 2007, the $11.3 billion MSI program was announced to provide predictable, sustainable funding for our province’s municipal infrastructure projects to keep our municipalities strong.

The objectives of the program are:

  • To work in partnership with municipalities to manage growth pressures;
  • To provide municipalities with sustainable funding; and
  • To support infrastructure needs.

All eligible municipalities in the province receive an amount each year that is calculated based on the following formula:

  • 48% is allocated on a per capita basis;
  • 48% is allocated based on education property tax requisitions;
  • 4% is allocated based on kilometers of local roads.

A wide range of municipal projects are eligible for MSI funding, which means that each municipality can decide where the money is best spent.

How much MSI funding will the City of Edmonton receive?

Edmonton is slated to receive a total of $2.1 billion by the end of 2021. From 2007 through 2011, we received about $567 million. In order to take advantage of favorable economic conditions, Council also decided to fast-track another $250 million or so, which means we have used roughly $850 million in MSI funding already. This chart shows the amount of funding per year (with FT designating the fast-tracked amount):

That means we have roughly $1.3 billion still to come over the next ten years. The projected amounts for 2012-2021 take into consideration repayments on the fast-tracked amount. The City’s fast-tracking strategy requires an annual repayment of $57 million, including interest for five years, reducing the amount of MSI available in 2012-2016 by $285 million.

What have we spent our funding on so far?

The MSI website provides a list of accepted projects by year for each municipality in PDF. I extracted the data for Edmonton, and organized it in a spreadsheet. Based on the description, I categorized each project as either “new” or “existing” to indicate whether it was for a new asset or to rehabilitate/upgrade/repair an existing one. I also assigned each project a category such as “Parks” or “Transit”. Here’s what we have spent per year:

The total spent is roughly $850 million. The big jump in 2009 was the fast-tracked funding, which allowed us to take advantage of lower construction costs.

Here’s the breakdown of new vs. existing:

As you can see, roughly 53% of our MSI funding has been spent on “new” projects.

Here’s the breakdown by category:

The bulk of our MSI funding has been spent on transit and roads. Parks and recreation facilities are the only other two categories that have received more than $100 million in funding.

A total of 82 capital projects were listed, with an average project cost of $9.9 million. No project has cost more than $100 million. The largest project we have constructed so far was the new Centennial Garage in southwest Edmonton, which had a total project cost of $99 million ($89.3 million of which came from MSI). It would be fair to call that project an anomaly however – only one other project, to rehabilitate several roads for $61 million, came with a price tag greater than $40 million.

Can we count on an MSI increase in the future?

MSI funding has always been tied to the economy. The amount allocated to municipalities over the first five years of the program was reduced due to weaker than anticipated revenues. The City of Edmonton had expected to receive $802 million over the 2007-2011 period, about $235 million more than the $567 million it ended up receiving. That does not bode well for an increase in the future.

Both Calgary and Edmonton have been pushing for an improved funding framework with the commitment to develop a big city charter. The outcome of that initiative, slated to be considered by the Legislature in the spring, could impact the way Edmonton receives funding from the province.

Should we use MSI funding for the arena?

According to the City, the average age of Edmonton’s infrastructure assets is 30 years. At the end of 2011, more than 150 neighbourhoods required renewal. An average annual reinvestment of $400 million over the next three years, plus an average annual reinvestment of $450 million over the 2015-2021 period, is the minimum amount of funding required to renew Edmonton’s existing infrastructure to achieve a reasonable state of repair. This is a big challenge, and MSI funding provides only a piece of the pie.

As shown above, our MSI spend has been more or less equally split between new projects and upgrades or rehabilitation of existing assets. A total of $87.5 million was spent on seven new recreation facilities (either brand new, or additions to existing) from 2007 through 2011. Would we have rather spent all of that on the arena? A number of new projects would need to be postponed if funding was allocated instead to the arena. A total of $384.8 million was approved by Council for recreation and cultural projects in the 2012-2014 Capital Budget.

In a poll earlier this year, two-thirds of Edmontonians opposed provincial funding going toward the new arena. An equal number supported fast-tracking the southeast LRT line to Mill Woods. It would seem that the use of MSI funding thus far more or less aligns with the desires of Edmontonians, with the largest share going toward transit projects (though not all of that was LRT-related).

This decision would ultimately need to be made by City Council, and as we approach an election next year, I’m not sure many councillors would be willing to take money away from important neighbourhood renewal projects or new facilities like libraries and parks for the arena.

Millions of dollars for shorter links

So much for the recession – bit.ly, a URL shortening service, has raised $2 million in funding. TechCrunch did the math (back of the napkin, natch) and figures that bit.ly is worth about $8 million, while its more well-known competitor TinyURL is worth at least $46 million. Who knew there could be so much money in building a simple service to shorten really long web addresses and perform automatic redirects?

I used to be a TinyURL user, but switched a few months ago to bit.ly in order to get better analytics about the links I post to Twitter. These services are really a dime a dozen, however. I’m pretty amazed that investors would sink that much money into bit.ly.

Here’s what Peter Kafka wrote about the deal today:

So where’s the money? bit.ly is free to users, and the company says it doesn’t plan on selling its analytics or other tools to publishers. Team bit.ly says revenue will come sometime down the road, from something else–when they figure out what that is.

This is great news for bit.ly, obviously. And for me it means that my favorite URL shortener will be around for a while. Beyond that, I’m not sure what to think. Do the investors see a buy-out in the future, or do they really think bit.ly will be able to generate revenue at some point?

It also makes me wonder what kind of service will get some investor love next. A simple copy-paste service? TwitPic?

I want some of whatever Union Square Ventures is smoking!

meetup I cannot recall when exactly I happened upon Meetup.com, but it seems like a long time ago. I thought it was a neat idea and signed up. I never got much use out of it though, as there weren’t many other users in the Edmonton area. I forgot about it for the most part. Eventually I checked the site out again when they announced that it was no longer free to organize a meetup. It’s been on my radar since then, but I still don’t pay it much attention.

Today they announced that they have accepted funding from Union Square Ventures:

So why take an investment? Because the world needs more Meetups — and more powerful Meetups.  We’re at-risk of living in front of screens, endlessly Twittering and not forming powerful local community groups. There’s endless possibilities to make Meetup  better able to help people self-organize powerful local groups! With a shaky economy, it’s best to secure and strengthen Meetup for the future with an investor.

I feel obligated to point out that “endlessly Twittering” can in fact lead to worthwhile and enjoyable face-to-face meetings with others, both individually and with a large group such as the EdmontonTweetup.

The justification for the deal makes sense from Meetup’s point-of-view. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t taken funding until now. The justification from USV made me do a double take though:

Organizing people online to make a difference offline has been the central mission of Meetup since the beginning. The team there has always understood that there was a difference between collective intelligence and collective action.

So we are thrilled to be an investor in a company that has been organized since its inception around the key insight that we believe will drive the next several years of innovation on the web – the need to solve real problems in the real world for real people.

I’m confused. A company that charges $19 a month in exchange for a glorified mailing list is going to “drive the next several years of innovation on the web”? I don’t think so.

I agree with the argument that Tim O’Reilly, John Battelle, and indeed USV themselves are making about harnessing collective intelligence on the web and using it to make a difference in the real world. I get that.

What I don’t get is how Meetup is supposed to help us accomplish that, nor how they are supposed to drive innovation on the web while doing it? Last time I checked, we didn’t need Meetup to organize the EdmontonTweetup, or DemoCamp, or BarCamp, or Northern Voice, or smaller meetings for drinks, or coffee, or lunch. I don’t think any of the major fundraising initiatives (such as the CIBC Run for the Cure) use Meetup, though all of them certainly use the web.

Granted, there are certain niches that Meetup is very successful in. As Brad points out, the company “organizes over 2300 moms Meetup groups in 1100 cities in 11 countries.”

Still, I’m confused. Meetup is taking the money basically to stay afloat during a shaky period in the economy, and hopefully to grow. USV is giving them money to make a difference in the real world and drive innovation on the web. Something doesn’t add up.

Either Brad and Fred know something the rest of us don’t, or they’re smoking something really good.

Do you really need a business plan?

Twitter announced a round of funding last Thursday, from Union Square Ventures and a few others. Michael Arrington did some digging and is fairly certain the amount was $5 million on a $20 million pre-money valuation. That’s not too bad, especially when you consider that Twitter is perhaps most famous for not having a business plan.

No business plan?! It’s true. At least no formal business plan. Biz Stone tried to assure everyone last week that the company has in fact thought about a business model, but I am not sure how many people bought it. The investment started a small “you don’t need a business plan” meme in the blogosphere, and it really got me thinking…do you need a business plan or not?

Paul Kedrosky says you don’t need one, and thinks that “business plans are overrated, and profits perhaps even more so.” Don Dodge says that “investors invest in people not business plans.” Fred Wilson, one of the investors, admits that they “don’t know yet” what the business model will be for Twitter. He claims they have time to figure that out. Charles Hudson says the meme is “crazy talk” and thinks it is worth writing some ideas down. Robert Scoble says that “if you REALLY think you can get funded without having a business plan you’re probably smoking something illegal.”

After reading dozens of these posts, and looking back at what I learned from the business plan competitions we competed in last year, I’ve come to the following conclusion: I think business plans are useful for internal use, and mostly a waste of time otherwise.

I think what Charles says in his post makes a lot of sense. There are certain questions that entrepreneurs should answer and write down. Really though, no one needs to see those pieces of paper. When it comes time to market your business or your idea to someone else, you’ve got to tune your message. And you’ve got to market yourself more than anything else. That’s why it’s a waste of time to have a complete, polished business plan (unless you’re in a competition I guess). If no one is really going to read it but you, does it matter what it looks like?

I think the trick is to remember that investors are people too. You need to relate to them, and you need to excite them. A heavy, thick document is probably not the best way to do that.

We haven’t really updated our business plan since the competitions in 2006. That’s partly due to the fact that it’s tedious, and partly due to the fact that we haven’t had a need to. A smaller executive overview, a quick slide deck, or an actual conversation are far more useful.

There’s a difference between a business plan and a business model, however. I still think it’s important to have some ideas about how you are going to monetize your product or service. And it’s important to know that there really is someone out there willing to pay for whatever it is you’ve created. Even better if you know who that someone is.

The realization that a traditional business plan is useless simply reinforces the idea that getting face time with investors is important. And for technology, that generally means the United States. Or perhaps BC or Ontario, but definitely not Alberta.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Congrats to Twitter on the funding!

Read: Twitter

5 Things Edmonton Should Invest In Before a New Arena

Post ImageRumors of a new hockey arena in Edmonton have been floating around since at least November of last year. The latest news, released yesterday, is that a new “arena feasibility” committee has been struck to determine whether such a project should go ahead, and if so, where, for how much, and who should foot the bill. Jerry Bouma, president of Northlands and a member of the new committee, said:

“You have to build a world-class facility. The Oilers have already said they need a new arena.”

I’m not sure there is anyone on the committee who is against the idea of a rink. So much for the word “feasibility” – it looks like we’ve moved past that. Seems also that most of the members are convinced it should be downtown. I’m all for revitalizing our city’s downtown core, as I’ve stated before, but I am not sure if a new arena is the best idea. There are good arguments on both sides of the debate. For some good discussion, read: here, here, here, here, and here.

Either way, I don’t think taxpayers should foot the entire bill. Certainly the city should contribute something if a new arena is built, but I think it should be the Oilers that pick up the bulk of the expenses. In my opinion, there are better things that Edmonton should be investing in (these are in no particular order):

  1. South Edmonton Common. Talk about congestion! Seriously, we need an overpass/underpass at 23rd avenue and Gateway Blvd. Especially once the new business park just to the south of SEC is built.
  2. LRT. Finish it faster! Or keep it on track, and add a West Edmonton Mall to Downtown line. I think an East-West line would be great for the city, especially if it were to go to WEM.
  3. Potholes. There are far too many of them around the city. What happened to that research with rubber/asphalt roads? Did it work or not? Let’s get the roads fixed!
  4. Startups. Alberta just isn’t the best place to start a company, oil & gas related or not. Everything I have learned suggests that Ontario, B.C., and other provinces ofter much better incentives for entrepreneurs. Certainly this is a provincial issue, but there’s no reason that Edmonton can’t get the ball rolling. Let’s help individuals take advantage of the hot economy.
  5. Housing. Speaking of our hot economy, how about more money for housing? You can’t turn on the news these days without hearing about the housing crunch in our city.

Or how about making our city cleaner? Five Canadian cities made this Forbes list, Edmonton was not one of them. And don’t forget about the ring-road project that continues. Obviously you could add new schools, hospitals, and other “usual suspects” to the list. I am tempted to mention city-wide wifi too, because I think it would have a positive impact.

The point is that a new arena benefits the Oilers first, and Edmonton second. Funding should follow that order. I’m not against a new arena (I have to admit I am a bit excited about the prospect) but I am against it being funded entirely (or even mostly) by taxpayers.

Raising Money for Tech in Alberta

Post ImageAn incredible number of tech startups have been created in the last year or so, as evidenced by the existence of blogs like TechCrunch and The List to track them all. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, some people are starting to get turned off. Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, recently suggested that it’s a bad time to start a company. She outlined six reasons:

  1. Everybody else is starting a company.
  2. Your competition just got funded too.
  3. Talent is scarce again.
  4. You can’t operate in obscurity anymore.
  5. Web 2.0 isn’t all that.
  6. There’s too much going on.

With the exception of number five, I have to respectfully disagree. And judging by the comments she received on that post, many others do as well. More and more companies are being launched every day, and while not all of them will succeed, some will.

The vast majority of these companies are located in Silicon Valley, or at the very least, in the United States. For a while it seemed that Canada was missing out on this time of growth in the tech sector, but thanks to conferences like Mesh and the odd VC deal, that perception is starting to change. We still have a long way to go though, before Mark Evans will be satisfied:

What I want to know is when is Canada’s Web 2.0 party going to start? When can I start writing about super-cool start-ups strutting around with a multi-million dollar VC deals? When do I get to attend parties with an open bar, a great band and a nice “loot bag” when you finally decide to leave?

I have been wondering the same thing, especially given the fact that I have been creating a “cool startup” here in Canada. Through VenturePrize, Wes Nicol, and all of the people and organizations we have met along the way, I have learned a lot about investment and raising money, both here in Alberta and elsewhere.

If you can raise money for a tech venture in Alberta, you can raise it anywhere.

The main thing I have learned about where to raise money is that in Alberta, raising money for a technology based venture is next to impossible. Alberta sees something like 3% of all tech funding done in Canada, which doesn’t jive with our incredible economy. The problem is that the Alberta economy is really a one-trick pony – we’re almost entirely dependent on oil and gas (and real estate which becomes valuable because of the oil and gas). And with generous tax and royalty programs like the Innovative Energy Technologies Program and the Generic Oil Sands Royalty Regime (more on these here), why would an investor put money into anything but oil? They can get a significant portion of their investment back through these and other royalty programs. I have been told that in some cases an investor can get almost half of what they invest back in credit!

One advisor I spoke with suggested that the way our provincial economy is setup is really “punitive” for technology based firms. It’s bad news for the future of our province too, as oil and gas are simply not sustainable over the long haul.

This web page appears to have been written in 1996, and yet the three issues identified at the very top still affect technology commercialization in Alberta (not to say that nothing has been accomplished in the last decade):

  1. The shortage of financing for SMEs, primarily for seed or early stage companies with a capital requirement of less than $500,000.
  2. The lack of financing options related to commercialization and early growth situations, where public offerings or other forms of institutional financing may not be appropriate.
  3. The lack in Alberta, relative to other jurisdictions, of tax related incentives, to stimulate investment in the technology sector.

They match up with everything I have learned thus far anyway. More recent publications seem to confirm things as well, such as Ernst & Young’s Alberta Technology Report from 2004:

“Limited funding is an issue that needs addressing,” says Ian Robinson, who as team leader of Ernst & Young’s Technology, Communications and Entertainment group heads up the report. “Locally based angel investors are improving the picture-in 2003 we saw a quarter of companies supported by angels, an increase from 17% the previous year. But few Alberta companies are receiving support from venture capitalists, and small companies-the majority of Alberta’s technology sector-are not able to access funding from these sources. Not surprisingly, perhaps, 38% of companies suggest a willingness to leave Alberta, in part to gain better access to capital,” he says.

So what can you do to raise money for a tech venture in Alberta? Turns out there are still a few options, one of which is of course to simply look elsewhere! In addition to personal or family and friends capital, debt funding, and the other traditional methods of raising money, here are some of the programs available in Alberta:

  • Alberta Deal Generator
    “Alberta Deal Generator (ADG) has established the largest network of accredited investors in Canada who are actively pursuing opportunities in Alberta’s early and growth-stage companies. We work to facilitate investment in high-growth Alberta technology companies.”
  • VenturePrize
    Having gone through the competition, I can confirm that it is a reasonable way to attract investment. At the very least you will likely be introduced to some of the individuals and groups in Alberta that might be interested in investing.
  • Scientific Research and Experimental Development Program
    “The federal government provides income tax incentives to Canadian taxpayers that conduct scientific research and experimental development (SR&ED) in Canada. The program encourages industry, including small business and start-up firms, to develop technologically advanced products and processes in Canada.”
  • Industrial Research Assistance Program
    We have consulted with IRAP here in Edmonton, and it turned out that we just weren’t at the right stage for funding (though they have helped us in other ways). If you’re getting started with a technology based company, make sure you talk to IRAP early so you can plan to use their services and funding.
  • Tech Focused VC Firms
    Organizations like Venture Alberta and SpringBank TechVentures are focused on technology based firms, though I have no idea how successful they have been.
  • Venture Forums
    There are lots of forums that are open to any company in Canada, no matter where you are located, such as the Canadian Venture Forum. There are some local ones too, like the Keiretsu Forum for Calgary and Edmonton.

Hopefully that gives you a good overview of the funding situation for technology companies here in Alberta. There is lots of room for improvement, and until things do improve, I would not be surprised if we end up losing some good technology firms to other locations.

That said, I guess I should point out that starting a company in Alberta is not all bad. There are many advantages to being here, such as excellent access to labor, reasonably good tax rates, and very little threat of natural disasters (such as flooding destroying your data center or something).

In terms of funding though, if your venture is oil and gas related, Alberta is the place to be. If instead your venture is technology based, you might be better off elsewhere unfortunately.