Canada is becoming a deliberate next stop for European startups looking to expand to North America, and the Toronto Business Development Centre (TBDC) is helping them quickly establish a foothold here.
Through its Horizon program, the non-profit organization works closely with European founders to navigate market entry and build traction quickly, compressing a process that can usually take years into just a few months. The idea is simple: attract international innovators to help grow Ontario’s innovation economy.
TBDC now spans more than 20 sectors and runs eight programs dedicated to scaling startups. Since 1990, it has supported over 10,000 domestic and newcomer founders. More recently, the focus has shifted to attracting innovators that can make a positive impact on Ontario in key sectors such as defence, AI, and AgTech, to name a few.
BetaKit spoke with three European participating founders in TBDC Horizon to understand why they chose to establish in Canada over other North American options.
Authologic: Verifying a market for digital IDs
According to TBDC, 28 percent of European founders in its Horizon program said they chose Canada due to its welcoming policies. For Warsaw, Poland-headquartered Authologic, those policies extend far beyond tax incentives.
Authologic offers an API to simplify the increasingly complicated process of identity verification for regulated businesses in FinTech, betting, and banking, among others. The company’s product aggregates various methods of ID checks, including government-issued digital IDs, digital wallets, and traditional document verification, to help businesses reduce fraud and stay compliant.
According to Authologic’s product marketer Bartek Kuban, growing in Canada was very intentional.
“Canada is fascinating because it feels like it’s at an inflection point,” Kuban said. “Many organizations are still relying on legacy, fragmented onboarding methods, but there’s a clear push toward fully digital solutions.”
That push includes Canada’s Pan-Canadian Trust Framework, which sets out rules and standards for digital identity services. It also includes recent conversations between Canada and the European Union focused on strengthening their digital partnership, which includes a memorandum of understanding on digital credentials and trust services, signed in December.
“Canada is fascinating because it feels like it’s at an inflection point.”
Kuban said this recent momentum toward digital ID solutions made it an “exciting moment” for Authologic to make inroads. “The market is ready, the ambition is there, and the energy is great,” he said.
TBDC Horizon helps European founders identify opportunities like this through the first phase of its program: Scout. During this initial phase, Authologic mapped out the digital ID opportunity in Canada. The Horizon program also arranged meetings with potential partners during the program’s Sprint Week, where Kuban connected with potential customers directly.
“The Horizon Program basically compressed a year of business development into a single week,” Kuban said. “We had a full calendar, packed with meetings with exactly the right partners and potential customers.”
“It reinforced our belief that Canada is ready for this next phase of digital identity adoption,” he added. “You can really feel that this transformation is coming, and it’s exciting to be part of it.”
BraveX: Charting a flight path for drone use cases
European founders participating in Horizon also pointed to Canada’s business-friendly environment as a big draw. As high-growth firms look outward, many are seeking clear market signals, helpful feedback, and accessible entry points. That was the case for BraveX.
Founded in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, BraveX designs and manufactures drones for a wide range of applications, including security, defence, and environmental monitoring, among others. That breadth is so large because the company specializes in both fixed-wing and vertical-takeoff-and-landing drones, which means they can operate in both long-distance and limited-space environments.
The startup was keen to explore new and dual-use cases for its drones and assess the needs of potential customers in Canada. Thanks to the help from TBDC Horizon, it did both.
Sprint Week, part of Horizon’s modular program, is a five-day process that guides founders on market readiness and ecosystem access. Over the course of a week packed with masterclasses and networking, participants connect one-on-one with the program’s mentors to develop their sales and customer acquisition strategies and familiarize themselves with new regulatory regimes. This fast-paced phase also puts startups directly in front of potential customers, partners, and investors.
“Exploring the Canadian market was really good for us.”
It was during those meetings that BraveX learned “there is a strong need to cover large areas of land, either for critical infrastructure or environment monitoring, defence, or security surveillance,” said Mircea Vădan, their co-founder and co-CEO.
“Exploring the Canadian market was really good for us as we learned about the various needs and use cases related to long-range drones for monitoring and surveillance directly from potential clients,” Vădan added.
BraveX is now working to raise funding, develop production capabilities in Canada, and secure its first Canadian partner. So far, Vădan is encouraged by what he has seen from the country’s business environment.
“I appreciate a lot the willingness of people for dialogue and feedback,” Vădan added. “The business community is very open to foreign startups, and it’s so easy to get new contacts. It seems like Canada is an ideal place to start a company in North America with a lot of resources at hand to kick off operations.”
Fluosphera: Getting biotech into the field
Another factor attracting European startups is Canada’s strengths in applied research. Canada is well known for commercializing breakthroughs from its many universities, including McGill University, the University of Toronto, and the University of British Columbia.
TBDC found that 18 percent of founders in the Horizon program cited Canada’s diverse and highly educated talent pool as a basis for their decision to expand here. That is what attracted Fluosphera to Canada.
The Geneva, Switzerland-based healthtech startup has built a drug testing platform that uses 3D models of human biology to show how drugs actually behave. Its goal is to help drug developers quickly decide whether or not to move forward with specific candidates.
“Canada is a particularly strong environment for translating breakthrough science into scalable platforms, with a rare concentration of talent across life sciences, advanced imaging, and translational research,” said Flusphera co-founder and CEO Clelia Bourgoint.
“Canada is a particularly strong environment for translating breakthrough science into scalable platforms.”
After the team identified an opportunity to bring its preclinical testing solution to Canada, Fluosphera worked with Horizon program experts to sharpen its messaging for drug developers and test its market fit.
“The market insights and feedback loops were particularly valuable in sharpening how we communicate value,” Bourgoint added.
Today, Fluosphera is specifically focused on building relationships with contract research organizations, which Bourgoint said could make the platform accessible to a broader set of drug developers.
“The biggest impact was the quality of market access and the practicality of the [Horizon] program,” Bourgoint added. “The curated meetings accelerated our customer discovery significantly and helped us pressure-test our positioning with the right stakeholders.”
Building strength at home
During Horizon Sprint Week in December, TBDC Chair Vikram Khurana told BetaKit he believes Canada is well-positioned to tap into Europe’s innovation pipeline.
“By bringing these scale-ups here, we’re strengthening our tech ecosystem and deepening trade and research collaborations with one of our next most important economic partners,” Khurana added.
Programs like Horizon are part of TBDC’s work to turn European interest in Canada into something that attracts innovation and investment, underscoring Canada’s importance as the natural next step for companies with North American ambitions.
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TBDC’s Horizon program supports ambitious European founders looking to expand into Canada. Learn more.
All images courtesy TBDC.