The organizers behind INNOVATEwest, which held its inaugural event this past April in Vancouver, have put the new tech conference on indefinite pause due to Web Summit’s arrival in the city next year.
Cube Business Media sent out an email Thursday to speakers, partners, and ticketholders notifying them of the decision. “It is our opinion that the arrival of Web Summit in Vancouver will draw substantial attention and resources from the market, impacting the quality of the INNOVATEwest experience for our sponsors and attendees,” the email reads.
“Currently, we are choosing to focus on other initiatives until the right time presents itself to relaunch INNOVATEwest. This decision was made in the best interests of our ticketholders, sponsors and imperatively, our team, who we can now unleash to focus on our other event brands,” it continues.
“Our best-case scenario would be three years from now, we’re dusting [INNOVATEwest] off again.”
David Tyldesley
Cube Business Media
David Tyldesley and Mark Stephenson, co-founders of Cube Business Media, said in an exclusive interview with BetaKit that they launched INNOVATEwest because they felt there was an opportunity to create another tech-focused conference after BC Tech Summit stopped running once the pandemic hit.
“We did something that was really special and hadn’t been done for the market here,” Tyldesley said, adding that his team, which also runs SAAS NORTH, TechExit.io, and Tech Talent North, put INNOVATEwest together in 10 months (BetaKit has been a media partner for Cube events, including INNOVATEwest, SAAS NORTH, and TechExit.io).
BetaKit broke news in June that Collision would move to the West Coast under the new Web Summit Vancouver name. Parent company Web Summit, which had hosted Collision in Toronto since 2019, received up to $14.8 million CAD combined from the federal, provincial, and municipal governments and inked a three-year deal to move the event. Web Summit Vancouver will be held at the same venue as INNOVATEwest, the Vancouver Convention Centre.
Stephenson said INNOVATEwest received no funding from Vancouver’s municipal government, but a few weeks prior to the conference, the provincial government gave “a small drop in the bucket at the 11th hour.” However, he wanted to make clear that he and the Cube team weren’t waiting in line “with our hands out to get money.”
“We build conferences and communities for them and when there’s government support, great, but it’s not something we rely on to produce our events,” Stephenson said. “But it became abundantly clear—hindsight being 20/20—that the City of Vancouver and the province had other plans in mind as it relates to Web Summit Vancouver.”
In its official announcement, Web Summit said that Destination Vancouver anticipates Web Summit Vancouver will generate $172 million in direct spending and $279 million in overall economic impact for the province. Destination Vancouver confirmed to BetaKit in June that those figures were Destination Vancouver’s projections for the first year, tripled by Web Summit.
BetaKit has reached out to the City of Vancouver. PacifiCan declined to provide comment.
Brenda Bailey, the BC minister of jobs, economic development, and innovation, said in an interview that she appreciates the work Cube put into creating a “good, local” conference and that she enjoyed attending it in the spring. However, the minister emphasized a desire to attract a conference run by an established brand that has international recognition in order to elevate Vancouver’s status as a tech hub.
“The Web Summit brand is extremely strong,” Bailey said. “We’re paying for the level of attraction that a Web Summit can bring to Vancouver, and that’s why I was very intent on landing this particular conference. It’s no slight to INNOVATEwest that we wanted a big event. It’s not a criticism of them in any way.”
The minister also called Cube’s framing of its provincial financial support “unusual.”
“The province doesn’t go around sprinkling money. People have to come and lobby and apply for it,” she said, adding that Vancouver made its desire to pitch for Collision known well before INNOVATEwest was held in April.
The BC government provided $50,000 CAD to sponsor INNOVATEwest on March 1, with a further $10,000 provided by Innovate BC, a provincial spokesperson confirmed.
Cube had invested more than $1.5 million CAD into INNOVATEwest, Tyldesley and Stephenson said, running the event at a loss to invest in the brand with the hope of future growth. The conference attracted more than 2,500 attendees and 1,000 new and established companies, including sponsorships from Microsoft, RBC, VoPay, Deloitte, National Bank, and AWS.
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Last year, in response to BetaKit’s exclusive reporting on the financial pressures surrounding Collision’s bid to remain in Toronto, the founder of Startupfest Philippe Telio penned an op-ed in The Globe and Mail arguing that Canadian governments regularly opt to fund flashier, foreign-run conferences that stifled homegrown ones.
“This underscores a deeper truth: We secretly believe we can’t do it ourselves. The lesson we’re teaching Canadian entrepreneurs is simple: You can’t be world class, and your governments will literally pay foreign companies to compete against you,” Telio wrote.
When asked if they agreed with Telio’s assessment, Stephenson noted, “We could have absolutely built a first-class event if we were given the chance by the various levels of government.”
Tyldesley added that he was proud to pull off a conference in such a short amount of time, which made the decision to pause INNOVATEwest more difficult.
“Our best-case scenario would be three years from now, we’re dusting [INNOVATEwest] off again,” he said.
Editor’s note (08/09/24): this story has been updated with commentary from BC Minister Brenda Bailey.
Images courtesy INNOVATEwest. With files from Douglas Soltys and Josh Scott.