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.
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
