CanCon Podcast Ep. 116: Is the party over for Canadian incubators and accelerators?

Vancouver-based Wavefront “centre of excellence” shut down suddenly this month, entering receivership after running out of money. Innocuous Canadian tech news, perhaps, were it not for the fact that Wavefront had secured significant federal and provincial government funding and support. It’s the latter part that has many people in Canadian tech upset and asking questions.

Firstly, is the incubator/accelerator model unsustainable in Canada? Should there be better vetting of which tech hubs call themselves incubators vs. accelerators (and what’s the difference)? Do government funding programs like CAIP have so much red tape they actually constrict the Canadian tech ecosystem they seek to support? Where’s the public reporting and accountability on the impact of that funding (over all the announced activity)?

And the scariest question (submitted to BetaKit by one source familiar with Canada’s incubator/accelerator ecosystem): could this be a precursor to problems with the Superclusters?

Join us as the CanCon crew – Erin Bury, Managing Director of Eighty-Eight; Rob Kenedi, General Manager of TWG New York; Matt Roberts, Partner at ScaleUP Ventures; and Douglas Soltys, BetaKit Editor-in-Chief – gives Wavefront its last rites before learning about influencer marketing.