Perspectives

I met with someone yesterday who has an office at WeWork and was pleased to see the relaxed atmosphere, posters advertising Meditation Hour, and beer on tap. (It was morning so I couldn't have any beer.) That visit reminded me that I wanted to look at their prospectus...

There has been a lot of action in the Canadian tech scene over the last six months. Deals are happening with increased regularity and for bigger amounts. We thought it would be worthwhile to update the Narwhal List for July 2019 to show what has happened over the last...

Today's article in the Globe and Mail about Sonder, the San Francisco based travel company tells a great story. Founded in Canada in 2012, they moved quickly to the US where 90% of their 560 or so employees now reside. (Employee data from LinkedIn.) They are heading...

Three years ago, I started doing research at the Impact Centre at the University of Toronto to discover the root causes of Canada’s challenges in creating a world-leading innovation economy. I thought it would be useful at this juncture to summarize our findings. This...

Over the last four years, there have been substantial changes in initial public offerings (IPOs) in the software world. Firms tend to wait longer to go public, while raising larger late-stage private rounds and eventually experiencing high public market valuations. We...

This report on Entrepreneurship Education in Canada was primarily authored by Tihana Mirkovic. Higher education institutions have always played a major role in discussions on R&D and knowledge creation activities that are thought to contribute to a country’s...

This report on Tech Founder Education was written primarily by Tihana Mirkovic. With the recognition of entrepreneurship playing a key role in economic growth and relevance for society, it has climbed up on the governments’ priority lists and a growing interest in...

2018 was another remarkable year for Canadian Narwhals and we are pleased to introduce the Narwhal List 2019 here. In brief: 17 new companies joined the list last year, replacing others that no longer qualify for the list. 17 new companies joined the list last year,...

This report entitled Physical Technologies Part 2 is a continuation of another report you can access here. In November 2017, we issued a report on the challenges that companies in the physical technologies face in obtaining government support for commercialization....