There are other organizations like Startup Canada across the world. There's StartUp Britain, Start-Up Chile, and Startup America. When I was seeing what they were doing, it was very top-down government led, and I actually felt the government was doing an okay job supporting start-ups.
I came back to Canada through the recruitment of policy leaders program and I worked at Industry Canada. I felt, well, there's stuff we can do, but actually we need a culture shift, and that has to come from the bottom up, mobilizing entrepreneurs. One of the biggest challenges Canada faces is our geography, so we need to really connect the ideas and connect the different pieces. We are far too small of a population to be so siloed, so we really need to leverage resources.
I felt a lot of the work that needed to be done had to happen on the ground floor with entrepreneurs connecting with each other, so that's what we set out to do. I feel like I'm a public servant working outside of the public service, and that's what motivates me to continue to drive Startup Canada. It's really just connecting the pieces so that we can move forward faster together.