It’s hard to believe that the end of Q2 2021 marks the halfway mark of 2021. It appears the tech ecosystem in Atlantic Canada continues to be firing on all cylinders.  

After all, it isn’t every quarter that $150m+ of financings are announced!

The headlines are plentiful of record-breaking fundraises in the region and rumours of more to come… Consequently, these fundraises are translating into huge employment gains in the region. The number of jobs increased by about 926, bringing the number of employed by the sector to 11,716. Over the past two quarters, startups in the region have created a total of 1,185 net new jobs.

Of the companies that I’m tracking 38% hired employees, 43% had no change and 19% had less staff over the past quarter.  In addition, startups at the top of the list have been smashing previous quarterly hiring records.

There was some big news out of the region in Q2 2021:

• Regional News:
  • The Rise of Mega Rounds
  • NASDAQ Elevates META to Unicorn Status
  • Startups Land $1b of funding in 30 months
• Funding Announcements:
  • Introhive announces $100m financing round
  • Cape Privacy raises $20m USD round
  • BDC backs SmartSkin with $10.7m round
  • Arcturus raises $5m USD round
  • Milk Moovement closes $4m round
  • QRA closes $3m USD round
  • S2G Backs ReelData with $2.5m
  • Anessa closes funding round
  • CBCF backs Liferaft Again
  • Audioptics closes $1.9m round
  • Riddl raises $1.3m
  • Tenera raises $750k
  • Habit Forming Tech raises $500k
  • GoAhead invests in MetricsFlow
  • Sandpiper backs Denova
  • PEI’s Sentry closes Series A round
• Acquisitions:
  • Carnegie acquires Zorbit Math

We release job creation data each quarter for Atlantic Canada. If you’d like to receive future job data from the industry, please subscribe to our newsletter, by clicking here.

Top Tech Atlantic Canadian Employers in Q2 2021

Sorted by net new job creation

IntroHive, New Brunswick

Verafin, Newfoundland

CarbonCure, Nova Scotia

Dash Hudson, Nova Scotia

Sonrai, New Brunswick

Proposify, Nova Scotia

Milk Moovement, Nova Scotia / Newfoundland

Protocase, Nova Scotia

A year ago, most of us began our year just like any other year, only to end the Q1 2020 in full lockdowns and uncertain of what the future would look like.  Fast forward a year – the markets continue to hit new highs, vaccinations are being rolled out globally, and our industry continues to add to the growing job creation.

Here in Atlantic Canada, there was a large increase in job creation in the tech ecosystem in Q1 2021.  The number of jobs increased by about 493, bringing the number of employed by the sector to 10,790.  

To put that in perspective there was a total of 654 net new jobs added last year.  Funding in the region in 2020 hit $90M according to CVCA. From my count $55M in funding has already been publicly announced in the region in Q1 2021.

Of the companies that I’m tracking 27% hired employees, 48% had no change in staff and 25% had less staff than the previous quarter.

There was some big news out of the region in Q1 2021:

• Funding:
  • Region raises $90M in 2020
  • McCain Invests $30M in TruLeaf
  • Arlene Dickson in Outcast’s $10M round
  • SomaDetect unveils $6M round
  • ClearRisk announces $3.3M growth round
  • Talem Health Closes $2.3M round
• New Funds:
  • NS Invests $5M into Sandpiper
  • Natural Products Canada launches $50M Fund
• Acquisitions:
  • Manifold acquired by Snyk
  • ScreenScape Acquired by Spectrio
  • 2k acquires HB Studios
  • Blue Charm acquires Symbi

We release jobs data each quarter for Atlantic Canada. If you’d like to receive future job data from the industry, please subscribe to our newsletter, by clicking here.

Top Tech Atlantic Canadian Employers in Q1 2021

Sorted by net new jobs created

IntroHive, New Brunswick

Verafin, Newfoundland

Dash Hudson, Nova Scotia

Simply Cast, Nova Scotia

LuminUltra Technologies, New Brunswick

Mysa, Newfoundland

Clear Risk, Newfoundland

Sonrai, New Brunswick

Vid Cruiter, New Brunswick

Swarmio, Nova Scotia

Viewpoint Realty, Nova Scotia

Kraken Robotic Systems, Newfoundland

2020… A year all of us will surely remember!

Future generations will ask us what it felt like to live through a global pandemic with lockdowns, not being able to see loved ones, and economic disparity.

The COVID-19 Impact Survey

In March, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, many of us went into worst-case scenario planning.  At Concrete Ventures, we even launched a COVID-19 Impact Survey to try to better understand what impacts this may have on the ecosystem.

There was definitely an air of optimism in the results of that survey. In hindsight, perhaps those optimistic entrepreneurs could sense that they would get through this just like any other roadblock they’ve encountered.

When I look back at the results from our COVID-19 survey, I remember thinking how optimistic the entrepreneur’s views felt. Meanwhile somewhere inside, I was much more pessimistic.

Looking back at these results and how I was interpreting them definitely reinforced to always trust the entrepreneur. After all, they seem to have an incredible ability to predict the future.

A good year for job creation in tech startups

As the months went on, it became apparent that the technology industry would remain unscathed (other than of course key industries like hospitality and travel).  You could almost even now say the industry is quite frothy.

It ended up being a good year for the startup industry in Atlantic Canada as the number of jobs grew to over 10,337 jobs with 654 net new jobs being created in 2020.  Of the companies that I’m tracking 40% hired employees, 29% had no change and 31% had less staff than the beginning of the year.

More good news

In addition, there was some impressive news that came out of the region in 2020:

• Verafin acquired for $2.9B USD
• Kinduct acquired by mCube
• CarbonCure raising from Amazon and BreakThrough Ventures
• Proposify raising from CBGF, after hitting $8m ARR
• Our very own SalesRight was acquired by FastSpring

Naturally, I’d like to be upbeat about the job creation data in Atlantic Canada for 2020. However, it is challenging given the high numbers of unemployment across the region, our nation, and the globe.

While our industry has seen a boom, there are many other industries that have seen a bust and many are still displaced from work.  If you happen to be an entrepreneur who had a good 2020 and is planning on a good 2021, I would implore you to consider taking a chance on that recent graduate who has shown you a lot of grit, or that unemployed individual who could be a great employee if you just invested in the development of their professional skills.

If we all did that, our industry would have a blowout year compared to previous years, and who knows, it could even make a dent in those unemployment numbers.

We release job creation data each quarter for the Atlantic Region. If you’d like to receive future job data from the industry, please subscribe to our newsletter, by clicking here.

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Top Tech Atlantic Canadian Employers in 2020

Sorted by net new job creation in 2020.

Verafin, Newfoundland

Biovectra, PEI

LuminUltra Technologies, New Brunswick

Genoa Design, Newfoundland

Mariner Partners, New Brunswick

CarbonCure Technologies, Nova Scotia

VidCruiter, New Brunswick

Proposify, Nova Scotia

Dash Hudson, Nova Scotia

Mysa, Newfoundland

The Rounds, Nova Scotia

Sonrai, New Brunswick

Colab, Newfoundland

CeltX, Newfoundland