Connecting the Dots: February 2022

Each month, the team at Switchboard Public Relations connects the dots between the trends, headlines and narratives informing the B.C. tech sector.

For February’s Connecting The Dots, the team looks back on the month’s raises, BCs Top Employers for 2022, and the release of the StrongerBC Economic Plan.

Flurry of funding continues

The Short: After a strong start to 2022, the funding momentum continued in February with announcements from Vancouver-based Elastic Path and Operto Guest Technologies, as well as from Silicon Valley-based Productboard, which opened a Vancouver office in 2021.

The Long: Elastic Path announced a $60-million growth financing round from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock with participation from existing investors led by Sageview Capital. With this new capital, the 22-year-old company has now raised over $120 million, and is positioned to build on year-over-year growth that exceeded 400 percent in 2021 as the market shifts to Composable Commerce.

Operto Guest announced a $15 million Series A funding round led by FUSE, with follow-on investments from Watchfire Venturers and BlackPines Capital Partners. Operto will use the new funding to accelerate the development of its Connect operating system, and continue its expansion across all accommodation verticals and into new geographies.

Productboard announced the closing of a USD$125 million Series D funding led by Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global, with participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, and Credo Ventures. The company will scale its product offerings while continuing to move upmarket in order to serve product leaders and more complex enterprise product organizations. The Silicon Valley startup  also intends to hire 70 employees between Vancouver and Toronto, where it is preparing to open a second Canadian office.

Tech firms among ‘BC’s Top Employers’

The Short: Our team was excited to see Clio, Copperleaf and MacroHealth on the 2022 BC’s Top Employers list.

The Long: Clio offers a monthly $150 wellness benefit that can be spent on enhanced WiFi, yoga classes, gym memberships, or anything else employees deem beneficial to their wellness. The company offers ongoing mental wellness support through its health plan, and provides a separate allotment of $2,000 per year for mental health practitioners. Last but not least, Clio helps employees save for the future by matching RRSP contributions and offering a share purchase plan.l

Copperleaf maintains a health and wellness committee, and recently created a HealthFlex program that includes an annual spending account that can be used to cover everything from gym memberships to fitness equipment and clothing. The company encourages employees to recruit friends with generous new employee referral bonuses of up to $2,500. Finally, Copperleaf provides parental leave top-up payments of up to 100 percent of salary for up to 18 weeks, and offers onsite child care operated by the local YMCA chapter.

MacroHealth offers a generous health spending account of $4,000 per year, providing employees greater flexibility in determining appropriate levels of coverage; supports mothers-to-be with maternity leave top-up payments to 100 percent of salary for up to 12 weeks; and provides a top-up for fathers and adoptive parents for up to four weeks. Finally, MacroHealth encourages its employees to adopt an ownership mentality with a share purchase plan.

New economic plan is a big win for tech

The Short: Released alongside the 2022 provincial budget, the StrongerBC Economic Plan is based on two “overarching goals” – inclusive growth and clean growth – that encompass six “missions” rife with opportunities for the tech sector.

The Long: Two-thirds of the plan’s missions are very much focused on tech. For instance:

• “Fostering Innovation Across Our Economy” is an obvious slam-dunk for the sector. With tech now employing more than 130,000 British Columbians earning more than $12 billion, support for talent development, tech adoption, scale-up of small businesses, and collaboration between the innovation ecosystem and other sectors are all front and centre. Highlights include a $500-million strategic investment fund through InBC; a new B.C. Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy; a Quantum Algorithms Institute at Simon Fraser University; 2,000 new tech-relevant spaces in public post-secondary institutions; investments in B.C.-based carbon capture and storage and other low-carbon tech, and the development of an intellectual property strategy.

• “Building Resilient Communities” is about helping communities thrive with modern infrastructure that’s resilient to changes in the climate and the economy, as well as ensuring that every B.C. community has access to high-speed Internet. Among other things, this will involve launching a “Future Ready: Skills for the Jobs of Tomorrow” plan, and building a $136.6-million Trades and Technology Complex on the British Columbia Institute of Technology campus in Burnaby. The new BCIT complex will provide the resources and equipment needed to train for the tens of thousands of new, highly-skilled trade jobs that will open up in B.C. over the next 10 years in tech-related sectors ranging from agrifood to transportation to health care.

• The closely related “Meeting B.C.’s Climate Commitments” and “Leading on Environmental & Social Responsibility” missions are focused on forming a life sciences and biomanufacturing strategy, establishing integrated marketplaces to amplify innovation, creating an Agritech Centre of Excellence, and supporting industries to become low-carbon.