When Axtion founder and CEO Tracey McGillivray’s father started falling at the age of 82, he was never hurt on the way down. Getting back up proved to be the bigger problem.
McGillivray’s mother, barely a year younger, wasn’t strong enough to help him. When no one was home, they would call 911 or plead with neighbours for assistance. McGillivray scoured the market for something simple, lightweight, and intuitive that her parents could use independently. But every option was either impractical or too cumbersome.
“Many ventures punch above their weight, because they find a way to a lot with very little funding.”
Talis Apud-Martinez, Emera ideaHUB
Seeing “a solvable problem going unsolved,” McGillivray decided to address it. She called an old acquaintance, Liam Maaskant, a mechanical engineer and former university hockey captain, and pitched her idea to join forces. Maaskant readily agreed.
Weeks later, Maaskant returned with a rough concept of a walker with an integrated elevating seat that could help users move safely from floor to standing.
The team would spend the next five years refining this concept through wooden mock-ups and bare-metal prototypes while completing their residency at the Emera ideaHUB in Dalhousie University.
This year, Halifax-based Axtion Independence Mobility is finally closing in on a market-ready device.
But McGillivray and Maaskant’s approach to building their company has been interesting. Instead of turning to venture capital, they have leaned on grants, bootstrapping, and a network of non-dilutive supporters.
Talis Apud-Martinez, Associate Director of the Emera ideaHUB at Dalhousie University, explained that venture capital isn’t always a practical option for deep tech startups in Atlantic Canada.
“While we are under-capitalized in this region, there is a unique set of opportunities to get started with different government and provincial entrepreneurship-focused grants. Something I never encountered as a founder in Silicon Valley,” Apud-Martinez said.
“At the same time, many ventures punch above their weight, because they find a way to a lot with very little funding and are able to find helpful partnerships like free prototyping tools and space at the Emera ideaHUB amongst many other resources in the Atlantic Canada ecosystem,” Apud-Martinez added.
According to data from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, Atlantic Canada saw $143 million CAD in venture capital investments across 42 deals in the first three quarters of 2024—a small slice compared to provinces like Ontario or British Columbia.
For Axtion, the comparative lack of venture capital meant finding other ways to fund their early work. McGillivray started by putting up her own money, and later secured startup grants from groups like Invest Nova Scotia and Mitacs.
“We applied for everything that was out there,” McGillivray recalled. “And we were pretty successful.”
Axtion’s early prototypes reflected the team’s approach: pieced together with department store scraps, car jacks, and plywood. Though unconventional, it allowed them to refine the design without external pressure to scale too quickly.
“From the outset, our objective was to have a market-ready, cleared product, and then we would look for investment,” McGillivray said.
By the time they reached their fifth prototype—a near-market-ready model—the team had spent years gathering input from occupational therapists, patients, and industry experts. According to McGillivray, getting there took “twice as long and three times as much money” as she initially thought.
“That early phase when you need non-dilutive funding to get started is so crucial,” Apud-Martinez added.
For innovation startups in Atlantic Canada, opportunities for non-dilutive funding are surprisingly plentiful, according to Apud-Martinez. Programs like the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency provide interest-free loans and innovation grants through initiatives like the Business Development Program and the Regional Economic Growth through Innovation fund.
The National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) also offers grants and mentorship to early-stage ventures, while provincial initiatives like Invest Nova Scotia supports startups with milestone-based grants targeting sectors like healthtech and ocean tech. Other organizations, such as Springboard Atlantic, also provide tailored support for scaling research-driven businesses.
Axtion certainly isn’t alone in its founders’ view on fundraising. Tech startups from across Atlantic Canada have foregone venture capital in their early years to fuel growth through bootstrapping and grants.
Halifax-based healthtech software startup Curv Health, founded by Shea Balish during his PhD at Dalhousie University, raised $1.5 million in its first equity financing round in 2019. But before that, the startup was largely supported by technology licensing, research grants, and industry awards.
Another Halifax-based startup, MOC Biotechnologies, which specializes in 3D printing artificial tissues like cartilage and heart valves, relied on non-dilutive funding from organizations like NRC-IRAP to avoid early equity dilution. The startup also received support from Halifax innovation hub Volta after completing its 2021 cohort program.
For McGillivray, avoiding venture capital early on was also about keeping the company’s goals aligned. “VCs are all looking for significant returns in a fairly fixed period of time—three years, five years—they want a 10x return,” she said. This often leads to “artificially forced exits, like buyouts,” she said, which frequently benefit foreign companies.
“That actually doesn’t help the local economy,” McGillivray added. “One of our secondary objectives was to try and help the Nova Scotia economy.”
For founders like McGillivray, success means more than just a quick exit, rather it is about creating something sustainable. Apud-Martinez believes that this approach is emblematic of the Atlantic Canada playbook.
“There’s a deep commitment and desire here for people to build a company and have it be a sustainable business, generating jobs and contributing to our province’s vision and growth,” Apud-Martinez said.
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All photos provided by Emera ideaHUB.