A number of organizations are teaming up to help provide a temporary home for Canadians working in Silicon Valley, but one these partners is not like the others.
RBC announced last week that it was teaming with MaRS Discovery District, Commmunitech, the University of Waterloo’s Velocity, as well as the non-profit Canadian entrepreneurship development program C100, in creating Canada House, a co-working space for Canadian entrepreneurs visiting the Valley.
The Canada House opened its doors on Jan. 27 with the goal of building connections among Canadians working in the region while giving Canadian organizations the opportunity to offer resources, such as mentorship and investment.
Though RBC is the only partnering institution not built specifically for supporting Canadian entrepreneurship, Gabriel Woo, the bank’s vice-president of innovation, said that the partnership continues RBC’s ongoing commitment to supporting Canadian innovation.
“We have a belief that RBC has a real role to play in terms of advancing the conversation in Canada around bringing our country into the 21st century as a knowledge-based economy, supporting entrepreneurialism and innovation, especially among young people,” he said. “The Canada House is something that aligns well to that, because a lot of young entrepreneurs and young talent will go through there, and they will see that RBC is supportive of what they’re trying to do.”
Woo said RBC partnered with C100 a number of years ago in an attempt to help the non-profit expand Canada’s contributions to the technology industry. The Canada House, he explains, is an extension of that partnership, providing benefits to both parties.
The other partnering organizations are all based in Southern Ontario. But Woo said “we obviously have a national network, we’re a bank across Canada, so we can potentially bring a way for other companies who are not Southern Ontario-based to get connected to the C100 and the Canada House,” he said.
At the same time, the initiative helps establish RBC as a leader in the technology and entrepreneurship communities, said Woo. “From a marketing or a branding perspective, we want to make sure that potential partners, startup companies, investors, and the talent — the people that are working for those companies — can start to recognize that RBC is quite active in this space, that we’re absolutely serious about looking at these partnerships as a major way of supporting our own innovation.”
Furthermore, RBC hopes its commitment to supporting entrepreneurialism in Canada will allow the bank to work with some of the best and brightest in the financial technology ecosystem. Technology has become a hot topic among financial institutions that are trying to reach younger Canadians, with several banks investing in new tech over the past few years, RBC among them.
“The way that clients expect to be served is changing, and clients are much more mobile, much more digital, they expect more personalized and contextual experiences, and we need to be there to serve them in a way that they expect to be served,” said Woo. “We don’t have a monopoly on smart people or good ideas, and while we have smart people and good ideas, there are lots of smart people and good ideas out there too, and we need to be engaged in the ecosystem and working with them as partners.”
