BC Business
John Jacobson, B.C. Innovation Council | BCBusiness
A lifelong British Columbian, John Jacobson is no stranger to startups. As a career entrepreneur, he has a wealth of experience accrued over a career that included stints at Monexa Services Inc.; MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. and PSC Group. With an eye on growth and dynamic change, Jacobson is leveraging his new position as president of the B.C. Innovation Council to ensure that British Columbia maintains its reputation as a breeding ground for heavy-hitting entrepreneurs.
As a career entrepreneur, he has a wealth of experience accrued over a career that included stints at Monexa Services Inc.; MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. and PSC Group. With an eye on growth and dynamic change, Jacobson is leveraging his new position as president of the B.C. Innovation Council to ensure that British Columbia maintains its reputation as a breeding ground for heavy-hitting entrepreneurs.
What is the mandate of the B.C. Innovation Council? We are here to create better entrepreneurs. We’ve got a mandate to help startup companies and help entrepreneurs take ideas and turn them into businesses and make those businesses successful.
The BCIC recently underwent a review by the provincial government. Did the results of that review change the organization’s vision dramatically? The actual legislation that creates us wasn’t changed. It still says that we encourage the development and application of advanced or innovative technologies to meet the needs of B.C. The mandate within that has shifted from pursuing science to pursuing commercialization of innovation. That’s how we got from putting money into programs at universities to building community opportunities for new businesses in, say, Fort Nelson.
The BCIC recently partnered with the Kamloops Innovation Centre. Is focusing on innovation outside of Vancouver part of the plan moving forward? It’s a very explicit part of the plan. We operate on that continuum of creating these new businesses and assisting entrepreneurs across all of the segments of the Jobs Plan [the provincial government’s initiative designed to create jobs in B.C.], as well as all of the regions in the province. So we have had regional partners out there for a long time.
What should the government’s role be in supporting the technology sector as a whole? The government has a role in making B.C. an attractive place to do business and I think it does a good job of that. I’ve been an entrepreneur in B.C. for 30 years and my own experience has been that it’s been a great place to be. You’ve got access to U.S. markets fairly easily from here, it’s a good place to get to where your markets are and you can also get out and raise money wherever you have to go. I’ve found it’s been a great place to do business and I think the province has done a good job of making it even better.
This summer Vancouver hosted the GROW Conference. How valuable is an event like that to the startup climate in the province? From talking to people at this conference and at Startup Canada, they really like being able to get out and find other people like themselves. It’s really hard to find people that are doing what you’re doing, the way you’re doing it. All your friends have jobs and they’re all doing completely different things than you are when you’re an entrepreneur. I can appreciate that. I was an entrepreneur myself and you really are very much alone when you’re doing that. You have to have partners, you have to have a supportive family and all of those other elements, but it’s great when you run into somebody else who’s doing what you’re doing and you can just talk about it with them.
Some think there are too many tech accelerators in B.C. Do you think that’s a problem? Does it dilute the talent pool to have so many startups launching simultaneously? I don’t think it dilutes the quality at all. I think there’s been a lot of pent-up demand. I don’t think there’s a problem with as many of these [accelerators] as there are. They’re all busy and their programs are filling up pretty quickly. The evidence is that there’s a strong demand and I think we need to continue to meet that.
What in particular do you look for when trying to determine if a company is going to be successful? The venture capital guys will tell you that one of the biggest factors in success is the management team. We enhance the capability of the management teams with our programs by matching them up with entrepreneurs in residence in the various regional programs and with mentors. By building that capacity to manage these ventures, we’re actually enabling those ventures to go and find financing and to be successful. In the end you can have a really great management team and a good business opportunity and you’ll end up with a successful company. Even if it’s an opportunity that might not be the perfect one, with a good management team you can pull it off.
How will your entrepreneurial experience inform your decisions as president of the BCIC? It’s a handy bit of background for the role in that we’re here to help entrepreneurs be better entrepreneurs. I have a very recent memory of what are the big issues when you’re trying to make a company grow and I understand that at a visceral level. I think it’s going to help us focus our programs on the things that entrepreneurs really will value. At the same time it’ll make it easier to have a conversation with them about what they think is useful to them because, frankly, I’ve been there.
If you could give one piece of advice to an entrepreneur just starting out, what would it be? Start with the customers and build from there. What I mean by that is, the most important decision that I’ve ever made has been to be really, really particular about choosing the customers that you’re going to pursue and win business with. Once you’ve got customers, you can get financing. Once you’ve got customers, you can get more customers. Everything flows out of getting customers.