View from the 'Loo: The world outside our door

NEW YORK

They call it the capital of the world, and for good reason.

Long a beacon for doers and dreamers, New York is the kind of place that takes all comers and gives opportunity in return – at least to those willing to chase it.

It’s fitting, then, that all 11 companies from Cohort 2 of Communitech’s HYPERDRIVE accelerator are here in this week - plus another from Cohort 1 - making contacts, learning from mentors, pitching investors and seeing how things get done in the Big Apple.

Like all serious tech entrepreneurs, they know the whole world is their market, and that if you’re going to think, you might as well think big.

To those unfamiliar with the global imperatives of building a technology business, these might sound like over-the-top ambitions for a bunch of startups from Waterloo Region.

We’re not New York, after all.

But, instead of dwelling on what we’re not, let’s think for a moment about what we are and always have been – a community of industrious, innovative and entrepreneurial people, with one eye on the job at hand and the other on the horizon, scanning for opportunity.

We were like this in the early days, when we made whiskey and saddle leather, furniture and sausages, car frames and tires, and we’re like that today, as we build mobile computing platforms, cutting-edge devices and life-changing software.

And so we find ourselves in New York this week, looking to capitalize on a visit to the capital of the world, and to enrich Waterloo Region in the process.

With us this time is Dan Silivestru, whose name will be familiar to many in our tech sector as the mobile-development maestro who helped lead tinyHippos, a startup he co-founded in 2009, to acquisition by BlackBerry in 2011.

Last Friday, Silivestru’s post-acquisition contract with BlackBerry ended, so he left the Waterloo-based smartphone giant to return to the startup world and take up mentoring duties as a Communitech executive-in-residence for three days a week.

I think Silivestru embodies the crucial balance of worldly ambition and community commitment that has assured Waterloo Region’s prosperity in the past, and is pointing the way to the future.

On Tuesday, as we walked north on 7^th Avenue through Times Square en route to a gathering at the Canadian Consulate, Silivestru was reflective as he told me his story, why he’s staying in Waterloo Region, and why it’s good for all of us when our entrepreneurs travel to places like New York for opportunities.

“I was born in Romania, left there at the age of six to go to Israel, lived in Israel until the age of 13 and then moved to Montreal, where I did all my high school and whatnot,” said Silivestru, who is 36. “Then, in ’95, I came to Waterloo to the University of Waterloo, and haven’t left since.”

He stayed for family reasons; specifically, for his daughter, but there was another factor: “This whole startup community really burgeoned and grew,” he said. “If you’re into tech and you have an entrepreneurial mindset, it’s the place to be.”

No other place in Canada has the same vibe or comprehensive infrastructure to help very early-stage companies “all the way through to the big boys,” Silivestru said. “That whole ecosystem has really been built up a lot over the past five years, so that’s why I’m sticking around.”

Silivestru expects to launch another company eventually, but not before he takes some time to recharge after “doing 80-hour weeks since about ’97,” a period during which he worked on three startups.

It was a highly rewarding period, though stressful at every stage, for one reason or another. Early on, there were concerns about repaying the investments of family and friends, followed by the challenges of building, scaling, and ultimately changing course at times when things weren’t working out.

While an acquisition sounds like a lottery win, “A lot of founders don’t realize there’s a whole other set of stresses that come with having been acquired,” Silivestru said.

“Yes, you stop worrying about where payroll is coming from, and you make rent this month, and that’s great,” he said. “But, often times, especially if you’re one of the founders…those are usually the people who are tied at the hip” to the acquiring company for a set period afterwards, a period marked by benchmarks that must be met before it expires.

“And the interesting part with that is, whoever was the perceived leader of the group prior to acquisition, a lot of the pressure is on that person, because they’re the ones who have corralled the troops before.”

Silivestru will now turn his efforts to helping startups through and past the many pain points he encountered as an entrepreneur, via his role as a Communitech EIR.

“It’s a very interesting, and I would even say unique, position,” he said. “Up until I joined Communitech as a member company, I didn’t even know that position existed, because I’d never heard of anything like this before.”

EIRs meet regularly with several companies, listen to their problems, give feedback and help with skills such as pitching to investors, “and whatever else they’re struggling with at the time,” Silivestru said, but there are no hard deliverables, and EIRs remain outside the companies they help.

Of the current HYPERDRIVE cohort, he has been helping Inception Mobile officially as an EIR, and informally mentoring The Dandy Co. and Groupnotes. All three companies are among those taking part in this week’s New York meetings, and Silivestru is glad for that fact.

Waterloo Region runs a risk, he said, of “suspending reality a little bit” due to a risk-averse Canadian investment mentality.

“Getting these companies out of that bubble that is Waterloo, and getting them exposed to the more risk-friendly investors, and exposed to other startups that are not just within our ecosystem, is really, really important,” Silivestru said, “because this is a global society, and that applies to startups as well.”

The increasing trend of Canadian companies looking beyond their own communities to places like New York for investment and business development bodes well for Waterloo Region, which can only benefit from access to such a large capital pool, he said.

“I think doing things like this is how we get exposure for our companies, how our companies get to see what others are doing,” Silivestru said. “You never know where that next kind of big idea or introduction is going to come from, whereas if we just stayed in our own little bubble, we’d miss out on a lot of stuff, I think.”

Waterloo Region companies aren’t about to take Manhattan overnight; “It’s going to take a lot of these meetings; it’s going to take a lot of these guys, like Dandy, who go out on their own and set up a whole bunch of extra meetings,” he said.

These companies, like the few who have gone before and the many more to come, can’t help but enrich the local ecosystem whenever they make the effort to experience someplace different, he suggested.

Venture capitalist Brad Feld made a similar point during an interview with Communitech in February, pointing out that the vibrancy of a startup community increases with the number of people moving in and out of it, by building strong connective tissue between places.

“When you live in different cultures, people do things differently,” Silivestru said, “and when you’re exposed to that at an early age, all of a sudden someone doing something differently is not the outlier; they’re not the really weird person.”

That likely explains why, in cities as large and diverse as New York, nothing seems to faze anyone – and why opportunity appears to be in such abundance.

“It’s like, ‘That’s kind of cool; I want to learn more about that,’” Silivestru said. “And so I think it helps to carry a more open mind.”

Anthony Reinhart is Communitech's senior staff writer. View from the 'Loo is a weekly look at the issues, people and events that shape Waterloo Region's technology sector.