New central place for new technology companies in main downtown Montreal area (35)
Like many tech people in Montreal, Ian Rae (@ianrae) went through Coradiant in the early 2000’s, before eventually starting his own business. He now runs a successful company which I’d describe as the “Jaguar of web hosting companies”. It might not be affordable for all companies, but it does offer top of the line expertise and service that would be hard to find in more “mainstream” companies like Rackspace.
Ian Rae has had many ideas, and one of them was to get technology entrepreneurs and companies together in a space. I actually met him 2 years ago, and my immediate answer was that he wasn’t the first one to think about this, and the hardest thing was covering operational expenses and marketing, like Mark McQueen from the Wellington Fund pointed out in an earlier MTW post.
Unlike many in Montreal tech scene, who make much more noise than Ian Rae on starting incubators and the like, it seems actually Ian Rae got things starting off the ground, quietly. He now has a large space, in a University Street building. The office is of course Syntenic’s headquarters, with its staff setting up servers hardware and also Syntenic daily operations, but it also is home for several Montreal startups, a few funded by MSU, plus also companies where Ian is an active contributor, and also consulting companies providing key advice to startups.
Not shown in the pictures are the variety of office spaces being occupied by the various Montreal startups.
If you see this, it’s immediate to conclude that it’s a de-facto startup incubator, with all the advantages (proximity of entrepreneurs, people focusing on innovation, technology-oriented allowing quick development, having a central space for discussion and meetings), and none of the disadvantages (since everything has been managed very informally so far, with tech companies coming in by word of mouth). There’s also no marketing at all done, and it’s easy to see the national & international potential of such a place, plus the immediate benefits for any entrepreneur who’d move in there.
Ian Rae says he doesn’t want to compete at all with projects like Station C ; he’d just want to “let’s get things working right now, we’ll see how things go in 90 days…”. Seeing the success so far, I’m asking myself questions if the entire community wouldn’t be better after all to support that space, and see if it’s possible to present it as the main hub for Technology in Montreal … although it probably needs a clear plan and clear intentions before being presented as such.
2020 University FTW!!
DokDok moved in in June and we’re very happy. New people teams moving in this week, the place is starting to be increasingly lively.
Big thanks to Ian and Alistair
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big thanks to Ian and Alistair indeed, Bruno
Great idea - and good job on getting de-facto startup incubator going. But whats wrong with business centers or exec spaces as they are also known as? How different will it be?
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Alex Kovalenko
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alex@kovasys.com
Tel: 888.568.2747 x701
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@Alex
The office is perfect if you’re looking for office space for a small team vs. business centers targetted at independent workers and freelancers. You have best of both worlds: a private space for a small startup but the atmosphere and “dynamisme” of a larger shared space.
Mind you, I haven’t visited that many business centers and exec spaces, maybe they also offer this.
@bruno They do offer many services and a great way to company to get up and going right away. That is how we started back in 2005, and that is how many of my entrepreneurial friends have started as well and since have grown into 20+ employees companies.
You can look at Regus for one: http://www.regus.com/offices/options/default.htm#menuOne
They do provide many services among them VoIP, conference board use, secretary, mail, fax, etc.
–
Alex Kovalenko
Director of Operations
http://www.kovasys.com
alex@kovasys.com
Tel: 888.568.2747 x701
“IT Recruitment & Consulting”
“Recrutement et Consultation en TI”
READ ABOUT US IN THE NEWS:
http://www.kovasys.com/IntheNews/tabid/130/language/en-US/Default.aspx
Alex, the most important thing you can get out of an incubator is the presence of other entrepreneurs, the friendly competition/race, and thus getting motivation to deliver. Plus also key advice.
Because after all, an entrepreneur could set up in a Starbucks, get free wireless, somewhere in South Africa or Thailand…
True that @heri ;)
Alex
[...] Ian is in the news! He was interviewed by Montreal Tech Watch about his company and the space he is creating at 2020 University. [...]
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Thanks for the writeup, Heri. Those photos make it look like a real office ;-)
Rednod and Bitcurrent are both based out of the space. It’s hard to define what makes it more of a “startup fit” than an office on demand (like Regus.) Of course, one aspect is the huge amount of bandwidth and the awesome coffee, but those are just perks.
I think what’s different is the dialogue and shared spaces. Having areas where different companies can chat and ask questions of one another is great — yesterday, for example, I had discussions with one company about financing; another about taglines and positioning; and one of the other startups was helping us with some Wordpress issues.
Of course, this flies in the face of the “open” co-working model, because we have doors. Tara Hunt was nice enough to stop by yesterday, too, and give us her thoughts on what works and what doesn’t in shared space. She has a lot of experience from Citizen Agency. What we’ve found is that there’s a certain size of startup that’s too big for shared tables, but still wants the interaction and speculation that comes from shared areas.
Right now, as you point out, Ian has just been trying to grow the area. Now that there’s a critical mass of startups, we’re hoping to organize “lunch and learn” events among the startups, and hopefully to the Montreal tech community at large.
[...] here to see the original: Montreal Tech Watch » New central place for new technology … Share and [...]
I visited this place a few times and it is definitely a great place for startups. You can’t find a better environment, location, people and Internet connection anywhere else!
[...] a good article about Book Oven and the new publishing landscape, with a nice pic out the window of the office (with me blocking the view, unfortunately): Before the Internet, when a writer could not find a [...]
[...] a good article about Book Oven and the new publishing landscape, with a nice pic out the window of the office (with me blocking the view, unfortunately): Before the Internet, when a writer could not find a [...]
[...] BookOven is funded by MontrealStartup and is based in the “no-name” shared startup space [...]
Accounting & Finance: account, accountant, accountants, accounting, accounting finance, accounting software, accounts, accounts payable, asset, bank account, banking, banks …
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