Silicon County

Innovation anglers: With unique and timely insight Kyle Reid (left) and Dan Campbell have created Pro Angler a smartphone app targetting the large sport fishing market in North America. They have already lured more than 40,000 subscribers. The business is just one of a growing number of successful startup stories emerging from the PEC Innovation Centre in Picton.

Province drags feet, but promised funding is in the works

Conrad Guziewicz and Mauro Lollo had big things planned for Prince Edward County when they started First Stone Venture Partners, a group of private investors. Their goal was a to establish a scaled down Silicon Valley of the north, taking advantage of new fibre-optic Internet, wide-open space and a burgeoning desire to escape the rat race of the city to draw new technology-based businesses to the County.

“One of the problems that we have in rural Canada, particularly in rural Ontario, is that people who have grown up in smaller towns and such, because there’s a lack of work, if you will, or being able to create a career in technology, they tend to move away from home,” says Lollo.

They began raising money and bringing on private investors to create a capital fund for new entrepreneurs, with the caveat that those who applied for funding must set their business in Prince Edward County, and that business must have the potential to expand, creating local jobs.

Three years ago, the group began investigating government funding, and found a program through FedDev Ontario—a federal agency created to improve economic development in this province—which would match the amount First Stone raised, to be distributed in partnership with the Prince Edward Lennox and Addington Community Futures Development Corporation (PELA-CFDC).

Reaching out to local funders, including Lanny Huff of Huff Estates, First Stone raised $5 million. They gathered with MP Daryl Kramp and PELACFDC executive director Craig Desjardins at Huff Estates last Thursday to announce that, with the government matched funds, $10 million would be injected into the local economy to fund start-up companies, either made up of County residents or those interested in moving their homes and business here.

The money will go toward 25 start-up companies, with a goal of creating 150 new jobs. PELA-CFDC, in partnership with First Stone, will choose those companies.

It seems an odd place to invest in technology based businesses, but the investors see opportunity here that may not exist in the city.

“Seven of our investors are actually in the County,” says Lollo. “Most of them are retired into the County from their careers in the past, but they’ve all been either professionals in large enterprise or independent entrepreneurs that have had their own business.”

And for Margo Langford, who works for First Stone in Picton, the fact that these investments are not happening in cities is the most important part.

“That’s kind of the point. There is a lot going on in the cities, and there isn’t much going on in rural areas. And there’s no reason why jobs can’t be created and people can’t do work that is online,” says Langford. “Why not here? It’s a great lifestyle; it’s a great place for people to work. It’s nice to be able to offer jobs to people who live here and graduate from the local colleges.”