Cochrane a poster child for innovation as Alberta targets tech sector | Calgary Herald

COCHRANE — At first glance, it’s an acreage like any other in rural Alberta — exceptional only for its stunning views of nearby mountains, pumpjacks and hay bales.

But the converted garage on the property just outside of Cochrane offers more than just quintessential Western imagery. It’s also the headquarters of mcThings, a thriving tech startup that’s bringing IoT (Internet of Things) solutions to business, industrial and agricultural clients.

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The company’s founder, 30-year-old Tom Groenland, is a Cochrane High School graduate and says this town — with its easy access to both big-city amenities and mountain adventures — is precisely where he wants to be.

“Obviously, I’ve considered, ‘What if I move to Calgary?’ But ultimately why I don’t move there is because I know at the end of the day, Calgary can’t ignore the oil industry,” says Groenland, who successfully secured $2 million in seed funding for his company and now employs nine people.

“Even though they say, ‘yes, we want to attract all these tech companies here,’ they can’t ever ultimately put the focus on it. So that’s been a huge part of my decision.”

Garmin is not only the biggest tech company in town, it’s also the reason Cochrane has a tech sector in the first place.

The company that’s now Garmin Canada got its start in 1998 as a Cochrane-based tech startup called Dynastream Innovations, which was acquired by Garmin in 2006. Over the years, the company has outgrown six buildings in Cochrane and its current headquarters is designed for future growth, with a capacity for more than 200 employees.

Two of the company’s founders, Kip Fyfe and Victoria Brilz, have since gone on to found another company, 4iiii Innovations, which also works in the wearable tech space developing products for elite and casual athletes. 4iiii’s cycling technology has been used in professional road races around the world, including the Tour de France. The company employs about 70 people.

The small-town nature of Cochrane and the inter-related histories of some of its most prominent tech companies means that nearly everyone involved in the sector here knows each other. They play hockey together, cycle together on weekends, and mentor and encourage each other.

“I’ve always had an interest in electronics,” says Groenland. “But I think growing up in Cochrane made the idea of launching a start-up a little more real for me. It feels a little bit more like, ‘OK, I can do this,’ because the guys down the street are doing it.”

“A lot of us have relationships that go back 20 years. So it’s not just business, it’s personal,” adds Jim Rooney, managing director of Garmin Canada. “But we also really feel that passion to help this sector continue to grow and make it sustainable.”

Challenges and opportunities

There are challenges to growing tech in small-town Alberta — not the least of which is recruitment. Communities everywhere are competing to attract highly-skilled, technologically literate workers and Cochrane is no exception.

“Garmin’s a global company and hiring tech workers is challenging everywhere, including here. So we’ve cast the net really wide, we draw from Alberta and B.C. but we’re also recruiting internationally,” Rooney says.

Local companies also have to compete with financial incentives offered by other jurisdictions, says Fyfe. For example, in last fall’s provincial budget, the UCP government eliminated the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit, a program which 4iiii used to be able to use to cover some of the costs of an engineer’s salary and which other provinces still offer.

“I now have to pay 10 per cent more for an engineer than someone in B.C. does and 30 per cent more for an engineer than someone out of Quebec . . . so it’s a pretty big hit to our economy in the tech space,” Fyfe says.

“The DNA of people in Alberta is very can-do, get-it-done — that hard-working ethic,” says Brilz. “So Alberta has what we need (to build the tech sector) but we do need those programs and incentives in Alberta to help us leverage all that talent so it doesn’t leave.”

According to Genung — who has travelled to the Canadian tech hotbed of Waterloo, Ont., several times to get ideas about how what he can do as mayor to support Cochrane’s tech companies — it takes more than just low taxes to encourage the growth of a budding sector.