Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the invitation to join you today.
My name is Avvey Peters and I'm the chief strategy officer for Communitech. We're a tech organization in the Waterloo region of Ontario. It was established in 1997. I also lead something called the Canadian Digital Media Network, which is a group of 26 of Canada's leading innovation hubs.
At Communitech we work to build a pipeline of companies that have scaled and will continue to scale into globally competitive firms. They start in the Waterloo region and then they grow and stay in Canada to create jobs and economic opportunity.
Over the last decade we've supported more than 3,000 companies, helping them to attract $1.7 billion in investment and create 16,000 new jobs. This has helped Waterloo region create the second-highest density of start-ups in the world and to attract companies like Google, Shopify and NetSuite to the region.
Our job is to help start-ups and scaling firms do everything from raise capital, to recruit talent, to build out sales and marketing processes, and to help them export to global markets. It's that last area of activity that I want to highlight for you today, given that part of your work is to delve into the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises to maximize the government's assistance in benefiting from trade opportunities.
To that end, there are two ideas I'd like to share with you related to helping those SMEs. They are the importance of early-stage support for Canadian firms and that of partnering to effectively connect firms with the help that they need.
Tech firms are born global. They seek customers outside Canada from the outset. Often they look first to the U.S., but increasingly we see those firms moving beyond North America to explore sales opportunities. From our work to help more than 5,500 companies across Canada each year, we've come to recognize that the most important assistance we can give them is to help them understand how to effectively navigate new markets at the earliest moment possible.
Small firms need market intelligence data and analysis to help them evaluate market opportunities and the potential for customer attraction. They need advice from experienced business leaders who have current networks and a strong understanding of regulatory environments, business culture and supply chains. They need support for travel, so they can meet directly with customers and investors and develop their own in-market perspective. They need pre-flight training and follow-up programming so they can maximize their participation in other programs like Techstars, Y Combinator or the Canadian technology accelerator program. They need to learn how to leverage the brand of Canada when they do business abroad.
The government supports these needs already through the trade commissioner service, Export Development Canada, and through a number of programs offered by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. In fact, many of these ideas were highlighted in the recent fall economic statement. The challenge that faces many small firms is, first, how to become aware of these supports and figure out how to access them. It is also to quickly understand whether they are good candidates for these programs or not, so that they don't waste time that could be better spent on building their businesses.
This is where the notion of partnership comes in. Government agencies and departments can't have an on-the-ground relationship with every single promising tech company in Canada, but there are organizations that have those working relationships.
Innovation hubs, chambers of commerce, boards of trade all engage on a daily basis with firms to help them attract talent, raise capital and find customers. Closer collaboration among those regional organizations and the Government of Canada would create a more seamless experience for companies by providing local training, coaching and preparation in advance of their global sales efforts, and a coordinated hand-off to in-market experts and resources.
These kinds of partnerships can also help to surface points of friction in existing programs, the limitation of CanExport, for example, to be available only to companies entering a market for the first time. What of the company that has piloted online sales in a new market to test customer attraction before moving heavily into that region?
For many small firms there's a great deal of pre-work required before they can take full advantage of the resources made available by the Government of Canada. Regional partners can help with these preparations. We can act as a funnel of strong candidates to the right opportunities and we can make sure that firms know about the resources and supports available to them.
We run something called the soft landing program, where we provide travel support and connections to experts and resources in market. Since 2012, more than 480 Canadian SMEs have done business in 58 different countries. They have reported $86.7 million in new revenue as a result of those landings. They have reported more than $84 million in investment opportunities and they have created 235 new jobs. These results are modest relative to the scale of the work done by the Government of Canada to support firms in their efforts to export, but they're a good test of firms' capacity to enter new markets and be ready for more advanced services.
I share these two ideas in the hope that they will be useful to you in your work. I'd be happy to answer any of your questions and share any further background about our work.
Thank you very much.