Driving innovation in Canada (and finding the next Canadian unicorn) is a mission shared across the country’s hungry tech ecosystem. But relying solely on angel investors or venture capitalists to give founders the capital they need to achieve growth is a short-sighted and misguided strategy.
Businesses need to leverage an array of capital sources to build exciting products and services while ensuring they don’t lose sight (or control) of their goals. This includes leveraging key sources of non-dilutive funding (ie. SR&ED tax credits) but also tapping into your customer base—whether it’s future customers or existing use cases—as source of investment.
By leveraging everyday consumers to both vet and help finance your projects, teams are executing market research in tandem with building a capital strategy that will help fortify their success.
At FrontFundr, Peter-Paul Van Hoeken and his team have built the leading equity crowdfunding platform in Canada, empowering everyday Canadians to invest in companies they believe in, providing entrepreneurs with the essential funding to drive growth. To date, more than 40,000 users have joined the FrontFundr community to help businesses raise more than $200 million.
But FrontFundr is just one of the many organizations that Peter-Paul has been a part of that are helping drive innovation across the Canadian and global tech landscape. In this episode of What The Tech, we pick his brain on the state of funding, building a business in Canada, and the nuances of crowdfunding versus other financing channels in our chat.
Turning potential customers into investors
Gaining buy-in from potential customers is already a vital part of the research that needs be conducted during product development and R&D. And when customers truly love a product or services potential, they may even want to help invest directly in the company’s success.
Look no further than Blossom Social as the perfect example of how powerful raising capital from the public via crowdfunding solutions can be to accelerate growth and startup success.
There’s a two-sided market problem that the team at FrontFundr is aiming to address. For starters, teams can’t just rely on venture capital and angel investors to fortify their capital strategy.
Along with tapping into critical sources of non-dilutive funding (ie. SR&ED tax credits or IRAP grants) entrepreneurs can tap into their own future customers to as a source of capital to help extend their runway, drive innovation and unlock more long-term brand loyalty.
This also gives the public a say in informing the products and solutions that they want to consume, and that could be the next unicorn in Canada.
Check out the full interview with Peter-Paul on Boast’s YouTube channel here:
To learn more about how to access non-dilutive capital to drive more innovation, talk to an expert from Boast today.
