It’s a celebration of sorts for Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone (DMZ), as the startup hub that houses an incubator and a new accelerator in Ryerson Futures, has turned four years old. The DMZ opened its doors in April 2010.
The DMZ at Ryerson University is one of Canada’s largest incubators and multi-disciplinary coworking spaces for entrepreneurs. It’s located atop Yonge-Dundas
Square (and it recently expanded its space), and acts as a main Toronto hub of digital media innovation, collaboration and commercialization. Both startups and industry solution-providers reside there.
The organization recently released some impressive stats on the impact it’s had on both Canadian innovation and the nation’s economy. Probably most encouraging is that the DMZ has led to the creation of 1080 jobs in four years, averaging 270 jobs per year.
The DMZ has 62 current companies and 75 alumni companies and half of the member base is split evenly between Ryerson students and graduates, and non-Ryerson affiliates.
Check out the infographic:
Ryerson Futures, meanwhile, is looking to expand its footprint on startups after launching earlier this year. Ryerson Futures is an accelerator program that selects the most scalable companies from the DMZ and gives them up to $80,000 in funding and $30,000 in benefits (to successful companies). Companies can be related to Ryerson University or not.
Ryerson Futures has already produced a few “success stories”, notably Figure 1, a medical imaging app that recently hit 30 million uploaded images; Soapbox, an innovation management tool that helps you maximize engagement through ideas; and Sensorsuite, a tool that provides Real-Time Building Intelligence that allows property managers and owners to improve efficiencies, reduce operational risks, and save money.