2017 — Building Momentum and Gaining Market Presence
My thoughts on where the L-SPARK portfolio is headed in the year ahead.
2016 was a landmark year for L-SPARK on many fronts. The L-SPARK team reflected on our most notable milestones and I will take a stab in predicting what is to come in 2017.
We made great strides in bringing together Canada’s SaaS community.
The inaugural SaaS North conference — which L-SPARK co-founded — was our largest event to date. The conference brought together 800 individuals (founders, investors, and executives) to learn about SaaS successes and the unique challenges the industry poses.
In total our flagship events drew in over 1,600 attendees — a testament to the fact that the Ottawa’s tech scene is heating up once again.
The L-SPARK team also met with over 100 promising SaaS companies across Canada during both our spring and fall SaaS Roadshows.
What’s also exciting to me is to see that more and more companies from innovation hubs like Montreal, Toronto and Waterloo are keen on growing their SaaS businesses in Ottawa.
In recruiting for our winter 2017 Foundation program half of our applicants were from outside of Ottawa — most notably from the Toronto and Montreal areas.
We are thrilled in these prospective companies’ interest in what L-SPARK is doing, and it bolsters our mission of continuing to connect and unite Canada’s SaaS community.
We are committed in building a central destination for SaaS in Canada, and we’ll have further exciting updates to share on this note in the near future!
The SaaS companies coming out of Ottawa haven’t gone unnoticed by investors, and this will be an upward trend in 2017.
In late November FIleFacets announced a $4 million Series A round, the largest investment raised in the portfolio to date.
Looking ahead, in 2017, I predict that 30 per cent of L-SPARK’s portfolio will be following FileFacets’ lead in raising their Series A rounds, with a projected total of $24M in raised investment.
I also envision 8 companies closing their seed rounds for a projected total of $4 million in seed investments for 2017.
Of course, these investments will be as a result significant revenue growth, and I foresee companies generating a total of $2 million in incremental revenue growth in 2017. And as we say again and again, the goal of L-SPARK is to build sustainable companies. A key measure of our success, and one of our prime focus areas is our companies’ revenue growth, coupled with quality SaaS growth metrics.
Government support for incubators and accelerators will double.
With Prime Minister Trudeau’s Innovation Agenda in motion, I think we’ll see more funding diverted to supporting accelerator and incubator organizations and strengthening innovation clusters.
For instance, the KanataNorthBIA just hosted the Ottawa Autonomous Vehicles Summit with the support of both the city and provincial governments.
As Trudeau paid a visit to QNX’s newly-opened autonomous vehicle innovation centre in Kanata late last year, we’ll continue to see the government pay close attention to the region.
With companies like Amazon and Apple also moving into the neighbourhood to take advantage of the talent and knowledge that exists in Ottawa, I’m confident that we’ll also see more eyes on the city’s transition to a bona fide software hub.
2017 will be a year of building momentum, and establishing a stronger presence in the SaaS marketplace. Let’s work together to make these prediction be true!
