When Eric Schmadtke found himself living in Canmore several years ago, he noticed there was a unique ecosystem within which the community existed and it was not related to the environment.
The ecosystem that Schmadtke recognized, as a successful business executive, was one in which there were entrepreneurs, financers and business mentors, but nothing was connecting them with each other.
That’s where Rocky Mountain Ventures came into the scene, formed in 2014 by Schmadtke as a non-profit organization focused on Bow Valley-based entrepreneurs to help them succeed and grow their businesses.
However, Schmadtke moved back east last year and six months ago he passed away. It has been a tumultuous time for RMV and its board, according to chair Isabelle Daigenault.
“To say it has been a tumultuous six months is a bit of an understatement,” she said at a recent RMV gathering. “You are all aware Eric passed away in fall, so with a grief filled passion we were driven to a renewed vision and a mission. We decided we really wanted to see it happen and some of us felt we owed this to Eric because he believed in it.”
One of the biggest changes in how the organization functioned was a shift from having an advisory board to having a fully engaged board of directors. The second thing the board then undertook was to better understand its role in the Bow Valley for startups and entrepreneurs and defining what parts of the business lifecycle the organization wanted to influence.
“We thought we needed a good foundation to put things into action and then we went into planning mode and this involved understanding our role in creating the startup culture here in the Bow Valley, defining who we want to serve and defining the part of the lifecycle of a business we want to play in matching actions to goals,” Daigenault said.
She said the major role RMV wants to play in the Bow Valley is to act as a facilitator, convener and catalyst for small businesses. The way RMV does that is by connecting entrepreneurs with experts in the community and investors to make their ideas into reality and promote economic diversification.
Rocky Mountain Soap Co. founder and owner Karina Birch, who sits on RMV’s board, is one example of the types of business acumen and expertise that exist in Canmore.
She said the passion Rocky Mountain Ventures has is for supporting small business owners to grow or scale their business and achieve growth here in the valley. Maximizing growth potential for Bow Valley businesses means networking for support, and mentorship programming.
Birch said RMV hosts two events each year that contribute toward this goal: the Grizzly Den, as part of the Banff Venture Forum, and the annual spring fling that involves speed mentoring.
“We are connecting entrepreneurs with other experts and supports, as well as other entrepreneurs to help them get to the next stage,” Birch said. “We have built a strong network, not just at the board level, but through contacts we have with experts in fields like marketing, human resources, finance, scaling, growth, startups, technology and innovation.”
With an event RMV held at artsPlace in April, Daigenault and Birch spoke about how the organization has launched its formal mentoring program as well.
Areas where mentors would help entrepreneurs include consulting on how to pitch a business, as well as how to source seed funding. Daigenault said the goal is to start relationships between 10 mentors in the community and 10 entrepreneurs.
“Basically, we are facilitating the entrepreneurial growth process,” Daigenault said. “We have to really channel our focus because we cannot be all things to all people, we are still a startup ourselves.”
The pitch assistance helps startups, the mentoring process assists more established businesses and the goal of RMV is hopefully one day to have an angel investor fund as well.
Daigenault said the ecosystem in the community is unique because it has all three: entrepreneurs and those looking to start a new business, mentors and experienced business owners, and venture capital potential.
Canmore-based lawyer Karen Hanna, who is an RMV board member and leading the mentor program, said the difference a mentor can make in the growth trajectory of a small business is significant.
“We at the Rocky Mountain Venture group here really would like to have an amazing mentor program that will take elements of a couple of different successful programs to create something that works well for this ecosystem and the culture we are trying to create here,” Hanna said.
She said another area RMV wants to focus on is mental health supports for entrepreneurs, as a way to also remember Schmadtke, who was affected by mental illness.
Dave Parsell with Localintel spoke at the event about how RMV and the Spring Fling two years ago changed the direction of his life and turned him into an entrepreneur. Originally from Tasmania, Parsell was waiting for a Canadian work visa to start a new job in Calgary after moving there with his wife and two children.
But as a former municipal government civil servant, an idea was bouncing around in his head that he thought was a problem that needed a solution.
Fast forward to 2017 and Parsell, along with a technical partner, have successfully launched Localintel as a web portal or microsite for municipalities to offer businesses information about economic development.
For him, it is the transformative nature of data that opened the door to the idea and that municipalities and governments not only have the data, but should be making it accessible for businesses to make informed decisions about their future.
“I saw an opportunity there,” he said. “The fact is, there is more and more data, but only a small number that have the time, money and resources to use that data to make decisions.”
Municipalities, regions and economic development agencies can help businesses, he said, by providing information online. Localintel is a business that creates low-cost microsites for municipalities, large and small, to share information about economic development.
Officially launched five month ago, so far Parsell has created sites for the City of Edmonton and Calgary’s economic development agencies, the City of Seattle’s business decision centre, sites for Kingston, Ont., Olds, Cochrane and Smithers B.C., to name a few.
“What we are essentially doing is building a catalogue of economic development tools and these tools help municipalities promote themselves and share market research and data that businesses find useful,” he said. “This helps municipalities support local business growth.
“We heard this is what customers needed: low maintenance and low cost.”
What helped him reach these goals? Parsell said a critical part of his story was attending the RMV event and finding business mentors, including Hanna, who is now his lawyer as well.
He said the advice and mentoring he received after attending the event helped him get his idea off the ground.
Got www.rmventures.ca for more information on Rocky Mountain Ventures and keep up to date on their upcoming events.
