Pam Banks, the head of the Mississauga RIC Centre has been growing and guiding its activities for the past 14 years.  She spoke to us by phone on what the RIC Centre has to offer for startups.

Please give us some context on what the RIC Centre is

The RIC Centre is a not-for-profit organization working to support innovative businesses within the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs.  As the Entrepreneur and Innovation Hub for Mississauga, Brampton, and Caledon, co-located with industry partners Xerox Research Centre of Canada and GreenCentre Canada, the RIC Centre offers a comprehensive range of support services to entrepreneurs for free, including mentorship and advisory services, hands-on workshops and networking events.  Our charter is given to us through the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation, and Trade.

At its core, our organization seeks to help build commercial value for companies that reach out to us.

In the past 14 years, we’ve had close to 600 clients in all stages of business. Although we’re open to all industries, we are strategically focusing on the following sectors this year:

• Advanced Manufacturing & Materials
• Clean & Green Technologies
• ICT & Internet of Things

We tackle any next steps our clients need: we can review their product or validate their market, we can help commercialize, we can help with strategic partnerships or sales.

How are you able to help these companies moving along successfully in making an impact?

We have three very skilled part-time entrepreneurs-in-residence.

• Geoff Simonett – helps companies get to the financing-readiness state (Software, Marketing, Financial Services, IT, CleanTech and MedTech)
• James Sbrolla – helps companies through the commercialization process (Financial Services, Environmental, Publishing, Communications, and Media)
• Paul Barter – helps companies take advantage of technology trends and to discover the strategic value in overcoming technical challenges (Innovative Tech)

We also have about 100 volunteer advisors who offer their time for one-on-one mentorship.  The volunteers are domain experts who want to give back to the community others are cashed-out entrepreneurs wanting to share what they have learned.

Give us some idea how you capture or filter companies 

We use the Startup Genome to quantize the clients choosing to enter our program.  We have a continuous intake for our broad service offerings, but for the incubator program, we do an intake twice a year in Winter and at the End of Summer.  We have room for 5 in-house companies and 10 non-resident companies in each cohort.  We filter based on giving the client the highest potential impact from our services and we plan everything around a 6-month milestone like a first sale or a key partnership.

Do you have any programs for companies that don’t want to be involved in the incubator?

We have one or two in-house workshops a week.  These are topic-based sessions on specific aspects of being a startup.  These would be things like the basics of running a small business, validating your business model, or talent acquisition and retention.  We have lots of space to chose from and we also run events outside of the Centre throughout Peel Region.

Any big successes you want to mention?

There have been many but let’s look at a recent company like AOMS Technologies.  They just placed funding from OCE and GreenSky Capital.  They’re an optical sensing company with hardware that works in the harshest environments.  The started in Waterloo but went through our incubator in 2016 and received their funding during their tenancy and the year following.  In total, they have received just under $1M in funding.  Another company on a similar trajectory is Meemin Inc and their product vGIS.  It’s an Augmented-Reality tool for field personnel to see in real-time where pipes, underground cables, and valves exist to limit damage and improve the speed of inspection.  They were showcased at our First Look event at City Hall in Mississauga last month.

You can reach the RIC Centre tucked away on the South side of the Xerox Research Centre on Speakman Drive, or through their contact page on their site.

I spoke with Sharon Zohar, the founding partner last week.

They have a strong value proposition.  Most incubators promise you mentoring, but The Big Push basically gives you a seasoned expert in a business lane (finance, marketing, operations, public relations, sales, partnership development, legal, HR).  I can’t tell you how much I could have done with an expert salesperson who could help a junior team ramp lead generation and filtering prospects.  Instead, we were hiring endlessly and always got someone willing to learn because we couldn’t afford the high-salary and commission of a veteran sales rep. Then the endless hours training.  Clearly, there is something here.

The one weakness in this model is that the founding team bringing the startup to The Big Push, needs to truly accept mentoring and giving up part of their big idea to seasoned co-founders.  Just seeing the number of obstinant male-led teams who wanted to do it their way, my guess is they would have no one knocking on their door.  But, that obstinacy might be more present in males.  All of the women founders and co-founders I have worked with were willing to learn and were eager to work with partners.  Now that I think of it The Big Push looks even stronger when you realize it’s women for women.  I didn’t get a sense that men will be excluded as the company develops, but instead, that this was a very positive and broad action to help women become strong founders.

The program runs 4-6 months.  They currently have 2 startups and want to have that up to 10 by the end of the year.  Zohar said, “we have 10 senior execs within every lane.”  Their 10 experts might be tasked if they grow to 10 companies, but she added: “there are plans to grow their management bench to 50”.

They are also looking for Angels and VCs who understand the value they offer (from their service-for-equity model) to help build out their follow-on abilities with a Series A.

If you’d like to meet with some of Zohar’s team or see what The Big Push is all about, they have an event at Uberflip on Dufferin on the 31st of May – Hiring Practices to Increase Diversity and Inclusion.

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I think the model is sound, the niche is receptive, and there should be a considerable interest from the follow-on environment when the start-ups develop.

Sharon Zohar was interviewed by Andrew Opala.