Bonjour Startup Montréal, a unique platform for Montreal innovators – Innovation Montreal
Creating a platform for the city’s startup ecosystem
Not all startup ecosystems in the world have one single organization that gathers all the key stakeholders, because it is really hard. Gathering all initiatives is a real challenge.
Bonjour Startup Montréal is not a shadow organization created and funded by the government, it is not an incubator, an accelerator, or a coworking space. It is much more than that and it draws inspiration from other cities’ initiatives with very positive results. In Amsterdam, StartupAmsterdam was created by the city to strengthen and showcase Amsterdam’s ever-evolving startup ecosystem. In Paris, Frenchtech creates links between French startups and international markets, in London, TechNation presents itself as a national network for ambitious tech entrepreneurs.
In a startup community where key players are often very specialized, where financial resources are fragmented, it is inevitable and it is recommended that some resources join to improve their services to entrepreneurs. The concept of creating links and dots leads to stronger and more impactful organizations. By joining forces, we make our ecosystem more impactful.
Celebrating Montreal diversity
In Montreal, it is essential to define what makes us unique to efficiently promote our city and our international results. Incubators have developed complementary skills: La Piscine has specialised in culture while L’Esplanade is focused on social impact. This diversity is what makes our ecosystem stronger. These different incubators find strength and added-value in this “coopetition”. This unique identity built in cultural diversity is perhaps what Montreal can raise as a key asset to establish as a launching platform for European startups in North America.
To give a better understanding of this diverse ecosystem, Bonjour Startup Montréal is working towards aggregating information. It has developed a mapping of the ecosystem organized by type of key player: financing, support organization, accelerators/incubators, media, corporate innovation, physical hubs, events, government programmes, clusters.
This precious map is part of an exclusive report developed through a series of interviews and surveys of +350 startup founders. It provides unique and verified data on the Montreal startup ecosystem (download it here).
This is only the beginning and Bonjour Startup Montréal has big ambitions. As the platform works towards gathering all initiatives, it also aims to position the city back in the top 20 most dynamic ecosystems worldwide (more specifically according to the annual ranking released by Startup Genome)
Join Bonjour Startup Montréal’s community on Slack and contribute to discussions around the future of the startup ecosystem in your city!