Propel ICT set to launch program

By Geoff Bird – Telegraph Journal | link to original article

Propel ICT's project to launch a whack of New Brunswick's startups has evolved. This time, it's not only looking for scientifically-minded, it's also looking for entrepreneurial-minded.

Launch36 builds on the Propel ICT's similar project from six years ago, which has launched 20 successful companies, including New Brunswick's celebrated Radian6, by linking people with ideas to seasoned entrepreneurs with the know-how to get those ideas off the ground.

The new program will look to repeat that success, though its now expanding its reach to those who might not have the ideas, but do have the entrepreneurial gumption to launch a successful firm.

“The universities have a lot of intellectual property that's just sitting on the shelf,” said Trevor McAusland, Propel ICT's executive director.

The group is looking to hook up budding entrepreneurs with intellectual property to try to bring concepts to commercialization.

Propel ICT is working with the University of New Brunswick, the Pond-Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation to see what's possible. One idea that's being floated is pairing university students with a piece of intellectual property during their summer break.

“Instead of getting a summer job, they'd work on starting a company,” McAusland said.

There's no shortage of ideas waiting within the province's schools. Roughly 70 pieces of intellectual property have been identified as having good potential for commercialization.

“Researchers, that's what they do, that's what they love,” McAusland said. “A lot of them recognize they're not necessarily entrepreneurs and that intellectual property is just sitting there waiting to be capitalized on.”

Propel ICT will still be looking for people with ideas for Launch36, though.

This time around, the program will work with cohorts of five or six indivudals. The groups will go through a two-day boot camp that will challenge them to conceptualize the market for their product and get them to articulate the problems that must be solve to bring it there.

The boot campers will then pitch their ideas to program mentors such as Radian6's Chris Newton, former NBTel CEO and serial tech investor Gerry Pond and Dan Martell, CEO of Flowtown. They'll decide whether the idea is promising enough to begin Propel ICT's five month-long Accelerator program, which teams people with seasoned entrepreneurs, financial experts, lawyers and potential future board members.

Currently being mentored through that program, there are six firms that collectively have 40 employees and have raised $3.5 million within the last 18 months through Propel ICT's connections. Those firms also have plans to hire another 35 people within the next six months.

“When I started with Propel, I pretty much had only myself and a good idea,” said Yan Simard, CEO of Zaptap, a firm that has designed a smart phone app that provides product information to shoppers.

“What Propel brought very early on was good people to throw ideas at and good people to help you refine those ideas into a good business model,” Simard said.

Simard was teamed up with Pond, former Propel ICT executive director Jeff Roach and people from T4G Ltd., who help guide Zaptap's development early on.

“As an early-stage startup, it's absolutely critical to get access to that expertise right away,” Simard said.