Chasing the future of New Brunswick innovation

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (NBIF) is entering its third decade as New Brunswick’s champion for technological business development.

As the province’s pre-eminent venture capital organization, we invest in high-growth startups headquartered in New Brunswick focused on ICT, advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, energy innovation, digital health, agritech, forestry and oceans.

In each of these sectors, we are pursuing a common goal: helping New Brunswick entrepreneurs catapult their ideas into global enterprises rooted here.

Our organization is guided by three concepts: Innovation, investment and impact. We’re building on 20 years of success in fostering the development of New Brunswick ingenuity with the potential to change the world…and we’re just getting started.

A storied history of ingenuity

I see NBIF’s mission today as a continuation of more than 100 years of entrepreneurial spirit in New Brunswick.

Problem-solving through innovation is in our DNA. Every time you turn on a hot water faucet, flush a toilet, or clear your driveway with a snowblower, you are using transformative technology invented right here in this province and sold around the world.

Over the last 30 years, New Brunswick’s spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation has given rise to some of the greatest technological innovators in Canada. People like Mariner Partners’ Gerry Pond; John Manship, the founder of Spielo Gaming; Roxanne Fairweather, co-president of Innovatia; Radian6 founders Marcel Lebrun, Chris Newton, and Chris Ramsey; and Keith McIntosh, Founder of PQA and Plato Testing.

Each of these entrepreneurs has led multiple ventures, expanding our province’s reputation as a place where digital innovation can thrive, driving economic development and job creation, and drawing in out-of-province investment to fuel further economic growth and fund New Brunswick’s increasing social prosperity.

Today’s tech entrepreneurs are leveraging innovative products and services off the analytic and creative capacity of AI. But they are still following in the footsteps of celebrated New Brunswick innovators like the McCains and the Irvings, and the ingenuity of people like Wallace Turnbull, who developed a variable pitch propeller that enabled planes to fly faster and at higher altitudes.

For two decades, NBIF has been connecting people with promising innovative ideas with the advisors, research collaborators and investors they’ll need to turn ideas into marketable products and services.

We’ve helped create a dynamic support system with a large number of successful businesses led by repeat entrepreneurs – a system in which one commercial venture inevitably generates others, growing our province’s economy.

Innovation. Investment. Impact

Since our founding in 2003, NBIF has invested more than $175 million into startup businesses and applied research in New Brunswick. And we’ve gone through three distinct stages, each of which has added to the evolution of our province’s tech industry.

Our early R&D focus was designed to spur greater investment in innovation between and across the private and public sectors. This foundation phase – which I think of as NBIF 1.0 – prepared the way for future growth in innovation, research and development.

In our second decade, NBIF 2.0, we deepened our impact by increasing the number and scale of our investments. We fostered stronger partnerships with academic institutions and enhanced our support services, developing stronger partnerships and creating a more robust support system for entrepreneurs.

Dawn of a new era

The result was a series of high-profile successes such as social media monitoring platform Radian 6, which was acquired by Salesforce for $326 million; advanced cybersecurity software firm Q1 Labs, which was acquired by IBM; AI-enabled public safety video analytics firm EhEye, which was acquired by Patriot One Technologies; and computational fluid dynamics software developer Envenio, which was bought by Juul.

These startups established New Brunswick’s national reputation as a place where entrepreneurs could accelerate a company’s development from “idea to exit,” emerging as millionaires with abundant capital to invest in future business ventures. This brings us to today – the dawn of NBIF 3.0. With NBIF 3.0, we seek to propel sustainable growth in New Brunswick by helping entrepreneurs transform their ideas into global companies that are headquartered right here.

Accelerating success

Over the next decade, NBIF will be investing venture capital directly into early-stage technology companies that align with the highest potential growth areas in the economy. We’ll partner with later-stage venture capital funds to attract new investment, and create a new venture capital pool to stimulate investment for startups.

We’ll continue to invest in the adoption of technology that improves the profitability and competitiveness of small and mid-size enterprises.

And we’ve taken on a new responsibility.

For the first time, NBIF will lead a province-wide approach to business accelerator and incubator funding. Taking a common approach will increase the likelihood of future success for new and scaling New Brunswick technology companies.

Leading edge of innovation

I know we’re up to the challenge, because I can see how far we’ve come as an organization and a province.

When NBIF was created, we set out to foster greater collaboration between academic researchers and businesses. Today, we have top-flight researchers working at our colleges and universities and inside our tech firms. They are collaborating at the leading edge of innovation in AI and related fields such as cybersecurity, advanced computing and data analysis. They are also making a major contribution to the modernization of skills in New Brunswick’s high-tech labour force, giving people and businesses the opportunity to grow. Each increase in the capacity of our labour force makes New Brunswick businesses more globally competitive and better able to attract outside investment.

NBIF has helped forge our province’s strong entrepreneurial spirit into an ecosystem that encourages and enables innovation, fueling economic growth and creating opportunities for New Brunswickers.

World-class entrepreneurs

We now have world-class, serial entrepreneurs who have built – and are building – AI-enabled companies. They’re investing the earnings from successful ventures into bold new ideas and the creation of new businesses, building the capacity of our tech sector.

As that capacity grows, New Brunswick businesses will grow in scale, taking on bigger economic opportunities and generating greater economic impact here at home as they succeed in global markets.

Jeff White is President & CEO of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.