Ontario has built one of Canada’s most substantial innovation ecosystems. Our universities and colleges conduct world-class research. Regional Innovation Centres, incubators and accelerators help entrepreneurs develop their businesses. Organizations such as OCI, MaRS, IPON and TBDC provide important commercialization, intellectual-property, mentoring and company-building support.
There is, however, another critical part of the commercialization system: the private investors who are prepared to put their own capital at risk.
Angel Investors Ontario (AIO) represents a network of 23 not-for-profit angel investor groups and approximately 2,300 active investors across Ontario. Over AIO’s 18-year history, investors within its network have invested more than $800 million of their own at-risk capital into Ontario startups.
These investors provide something fundamentally different from traditional government-supported entrepreneurship programs.
They don’t simply advise entrepreneurs about raising capital. They evaluate management teams, markets, technologies, intellectual property, competition, valuations, capitalization and financial forecasts. They conduct due diligence. They challenge business plans. They frequently mentor entrepreneurs for years.
And ultimately, they decide whether they are prepared to write a cheque with their own money.
Ontario Has Built the Pieces. Now We Need to Connect Them.
Ontario has made substantial investments in innovation infrastructure.
The province supports 17 Regional Innovation Centres, which provide entrepreneurs with mentorship, training, market intelligence and connections to resources, funding and partners. Ontario has committed $71.6 million over three years to this network.
Ontario Centre of Innovation provides commercialization programs and investment capital.
Intellectual Property Ontario helps Ontario innovators understand, protect and commercialize their intellectual property.
MaRS Discovery District, TBDC, universities, colleges, incubators and accelerators help thousands of entrepreneurs develop technologies and build companies.
These organizations perform important functions.
Angel investors perform another one.
Consider OCI’s Ready 4 Market program. It is explicitly a co-investment program requiring private-sector investment, including investment from angels and other private investors.
That illustrates how the system should work.
Government and government-supported organizations can help de-risk technologies and prepare companies. Private investors provide independent market discipline, additional expertise and private risk capital.
The two are complements, not substitutes.
Mentors Who Become Owners
Ontario appropriately invests substantial resources in providing entrepreneurs with experienced mentors and advisors.
Angel investors bring a particularly powerful variation on mentorship.
An experienced angel may spend dozens or even hundreds of hours evaluating and assisting a company. That investor may then invest $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 or considerably more of their own money.
That changes the relationship.
The investor’s advice is accompanied by personal financial accountability for the company’s success.
And angel involvement often continues well beyond the initial financing. Investors may help recruit executives and directors, introduce customers, identify strategic partners, assist with subsequent financings and prepare companies for institutional venture capital.
AIO’s network therefore represents far more than a source of cheques.
It is a distributed network of experienced entrepreneurs, executives, scientists, professionals and investors contributing capital, expertise, contacts and time to Ontario companies.
From Research to Ontario Companies
The commercialization challenge can be described as a simple chain:
Research → Intellectual Property → Entrepreneur → Company → Investor Readiness → Angel Capital → Follow-on Capital → Scale-up → Jobs and Wealth in Ontario
Ontario has invested heavily throughout this chain.
The opportunity now is to ensure that the different parts connect seamlessly.
A promising entrepreneur emerging from a university, college, Regional Innovation Centre or accelerator should have a clear pathway toward experienced private investors.
Likewise, investors throughout Ontario should have efficient access to promising companies emerging from the province’s publicly supported innovation infrastructure.
That is where a province-wide angel network becomes particularly valuable.
Unlike many programs that operate within a particular institution, geography or sector, AIO’s network can connect investors and opportunities across Ontario.
AIO is also developing sector-focused virtual angel groups that can bring investors and entrepreneurs together regardless of geography, while educating both sides about sector trends, financing milestones, valuation and investment requirements.
The Power of Leverage
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of organized angel investing is leverage.
Government does not provide the investment capital deployed by AIO’s angel investors.
The investors do.
By 2018, AIO’s experience indicated that every $1 of provincial support for angel infrastructure helped catalyze approximately $90 of investors’ own capital into startups.
That is an extraordinary model for public-private economic development.
The public sector supports the infrastructure that brings entrepreneurs and investors together.
Experienced private individuals make the investment decisions.
Private individuals provide the capital.
And those same investors frequently provide the mentorship and business expertise needed to help those companies grow.
A Province-Wide Opportunity
Ontario does not need to choose between universities, Regional Innovation Centres, OCI, MaRS, IPON, accelerators or angel investors.
We need all of them.
The bigger opportunity is to make them operate as an increasingly connected commercialization system.
AIO believes Ontario can become one of the world’s best jurisdictions for taking intellectual property, research and entrepreneurial ideas and turning them into globally competitive companies headquartered and growing here at home.
Ontario already has the research.
We have extraordinary entrepreneurs.
We have sophisticated innovation organizations.
And we have thousands of experienced Ontarians willing to mentor those entrepreneurs and invest their own money alongside them.
Our opportunity is to connect them.
After 18 years of building Ontario’s organized angel-investor community, AIO believes that to continue to have an Ontario centric delivery platform of investing assistance, a province-wide private-capital infrastructure can become an increasingly important part of that connection.
Because ultimately, commercialization doesn’t happen when an entrepreneur completes a program.
It happens when somebody believes strongly enough in that entrepreneur to invest.
Please let your local elected representatives know about this article.
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