Thank you for the question.
As Dr. Archibald mentioned, this is one of the areas we identified early on in the agency that we felt was a place where we could play a role in making a change. Angel capital has declined quite substantially in Ontario. It was difficult for good ideas, good businesses, to find the capital they needed to get going.
It took a number of things. A strong innovation ecosystem was encouraging people to start up businesses and look at commercializing new IP and new technology. That was happening as there were various things at play. Certainly it's something that communities, post-secondary institutions, and the province were very involved in.
To address the capital issue we had a lot of discussions with some of the existing angel networks and some of the key venture capitalists in southern Ontario. We heard from them that if we helped them in matching some of the capital they put in to these companies, that would encourage more activity. We devised a program called investing in business innovation, which was launched a couple of years ago. We now have funded over 80 start-up companies through that program with repayable contributions, repayable loans. Our funding is one-third of the total cost of the project, up to $1 million.
The unique thing about the program, though, is that these start-up businesses have to come to us first with either angel or venture capital, or both types of funding in place. We're not picking them. They're being picked by the investment community as good prospects and then they come to us. Then if everything's in place, we put in our one-third of the funding.
The model has worked, I think, because stakeholders had a lot to do with it and because the timing was good. It was really needed. It's generated a lot of response.
The interesting thing early on was we thought most of the funding would come from angels, private individuals who are working perhaps in a network and investing in these start-ups. As time went on, the venture capital community joined in. About half the funding that's gone into these over 80 start-up companies is from the venture capital community and the other half from angels.