The Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund announced on May 12 that $3.5 million would be used in a new OCIF Express program to help small and medium-sized businesses with easier access to capital.
That funding, through OCIF Express, would be used, in turn, to provide staff training or staffing up in business projects identified by the fund that have a high impact and also a life cycle of under 24 months.
Brad Parry, CEO of Calgary Economic Development and the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund, said that OCIF Express funding would be used to increase the number of jobs in Calgary.
“We’re not funding people to poach people from other companies. That was one of the big criteria as part of the program,” he said.
“It’s about leadership training. It’s a training. It’s also about bringing the right kind of talent that they need.”
Among the companies that were the recipients of OCIF Express funding was Carbon Upcycling, a Calgary-based clean-tech company. It received up to $33,750 from OCIF for leadership training.
Arlette Watwood, Director of HR and Administration of Carbon Upcycling, said that employees don’t leave companies, they leave their leaders, and that the funding would be used to train leaders with the effect of retaining employees at a critical time for the company.
“We’re currently building our first commercial-scale plant, which is really a huge milestone for our company. And we have a goal—a very big, hairy, audacious goal, to have 15 plants up and running by the end of 2030. This is a steep growth for our company. It’s exciting, but it’s also challenging,” said Watwood.
“The funding we have received from OCIF is for developing a robust leadership development program that will help us de-risk that growth.”
That firm, along with partners Newlight Technologies, won an X Prize in 2018 for their innovative way of cultivating C02 to create nanoparticles that can be used in a wide range of applications.
Parry said that the recent news from CED about having an X Prize Hub at the University of Calgary was complementary to the OCIF Express announcement because of the further economic development that would occur from attracting more businesses to the city.
“Carbon Upcycling was part of that program where they went another place to win that, but to actually have the hub here, it means we’re going to bring innovators here, we’re going to build innovation in our cit, and that’s going to help grow that community for us,” he said.
Other recipients of OCIF Express funding included fintech company ZayZoom, with up to $250,000 to hire 10 staff, data centre cooling company CoolIT Systems with up to $385,000 to hire 20 new staff, and custom aviation cable manufacturer MRO Electronics with up to $300,000 to support 18 new jobs.
Future rounds of OCIF Express funding are possible
Parry said that the goal was to learn from the first round of recipients.
“The whole idea was how to get capital out into the market more effectively, more quickly, and keep it to one single metric. Some of our deals are fairly complex. We have multiple metrics around them. This was designed to help make it streamlined, make it easy for entrepreneurs to get access to that capital, to get the talent they need,” he said.
Those metrics for the OCIF Express program were based on either talent acquisition or training, as opposed to the multiple metric models used for larger OCIF grants.
Mayor Jyoti Gondek said that OCIF and CED had done a lot of work in understanding where the opportunities for economic diversification were in the city and how to pursue that goal.
“I just need to thank the Board of Directors at Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund for having so much vision in terms of what we can do as a city. We’re supporting businesses that people hadn’t even thought of a few years ago, and now it’s an integral part of how we do business and how we live our lives,” the mayor said.
She said that if Calgary city council had not had the foresight to create OCIF in 2018, there wouldn’t be as much economic activity in the city.
“If Councillor Chabot and I had not advocated to reinvest in the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund to the tune of $60 million, we wouldn’t see more announcements like this. So it’s important to understand that when something’s working well, you invest in it. Do we have some momentum going? We absolutely have momentum going,” Mayor Gondek said.
“We have seen that when we stepped up and showed the world that we could be a hub for tech talent and for people with creative and innovative ideas, people paid attention. They took notice and they started to invest in this city, alongside us.”
A full list of OCIF investments is available at www.opportunitycalgary.com/portfolio.
