Quebec’s future prosperity will come through the solidarity of its entrepreneurs.
It’s not easy to start a business. It takes courage. When an entrepreneur perseveres, he’ll go through each step one by one that will allow him to build a successful business.
On the road to success, the entrepreneur will learn many unique lessons. He will learn to build a team, raise funding, master marketing, sell internationally and possibly even lay off teammates in tougher times. After a number of years, he will accumulate a wealth of knowledge regarding the launch and growth of businesses.
Sharing the Knowledge
The entrepreneur will then have two choices regarding this knowledge: share it with his peers, or do nothing. We must encourage the entrepreneurs who choose the first option.
To me, peer-to-peer entrepreneurship is the most powerful way to develop a dynamic ecosystem of entrepreneurship in Quebec for the next decade.
Peer-to-peer entrepreneurship is simply the decision to share and reinvest in the community around you. It’s giving back some of what you have received. It’s helping one another.
In a recent editorial for La Presse, I suggested that a new business culture is emerging in the Quebec entrepreneurial scene, with new attributes which are possibly different to those of previous generations. I believe that this new culture is marked by three principles: action, cooperation and mutual assistance. In this article, I’ll discuss more in-depth the third principle, which is key to creating prosperity for Quebec in the future.
If there is one career path that is hard or impossible to learn in school, it is entrepreneurship. In fact, one only becomes an entrepreneur after taking the decision to take a risk and launch a project.
Entrepreneurs First
I believe entrepreneurs are in the best position to help other entrepreneurs.
Universities can prepare entrepreneurs with academic programs. The government provides beneficial programs that can help entrepreneurs to get started through public and regional bodies. There are more and more courses and content available on the Internet to help a person learn the basics of entrepreneurship. But the real lessons and best secrets to accelerate the start-up process are to be gained from experienced entrepreneurs.
Legendary venture capital investor Brad Feld, author of Startup Communities, mentions in his book that “any ecosystem must be led by its entrepreneurs. Of course the government, big business and universities must also then support these efforts to create a virtuous circle of growth in a startup ecosystem.”
The Growth of Mentoring
More and more initiatives have adopted this principle of peer-to-peer entrepreneurship in Quebec.
Just look at the 100+ mentor-entrepreneurs who give their time on a pro-bono basis to support the young entrepreneurs of the start-up accelerator FounderFuel led by Real Ventures, or 50+ mentors who now support the accelerator Founder Institute Montreal co-led by Sergio Escobar. We can also observe this in the willingness of experienced entrepreneurs to give their time as part of mentoring activities or programs through organizations such as the Réseau M, the École d’Entrepreneurship de Beauce, Next 36, Startup Next, the JCCM and Défi Montréal, amongst others.
Additionally, funds such as Real Ventures and iNovia Capital are trying more and more to connect and network directly all the entrepreneurs within their portfolio through events and virtual platforms. There are also peer-to-peer groups such as YPO and EO that have chapters in Montreal which can be useful for entrepreneurs with more established or fast-growing organizations.
Extending the Peer Network
All this activity is a great achievement for the ecosystem, but I think we can go even further. I think that entrepreneurs at all stages and the entire business community can be part of this movement to support young entrepreneurs.
In 2011, I helped co-found the group Entrepreneurs Anonymous which today counts amongst its members more than 450 Montreal entrepreneurs at various stages of growth. The mission: ending the isolation of young start-up entrepreneurs. For 3 years, groups of 25 to 50 entrepreneurs have gathered each month to exchange and share information in a casual atmosphere. It is, for me, a very direct example of peer-to-peer entrepreneurship which doesn’t really involve a mentoring-type relationship, but rather a culture of exchange and mutual assistance.
In the summer of 2014, I launched La Tournée des Entrepreneurs with Christian Bélair, then at RJCCQ, and Noah Redler of the Notman House. Together we have created sharing circles of peer-to-peer exchanges between entrepreneurs around Quebec, more specifically in Baie St-Paul, Gaspé, Rouyn-Noranda and Lac-Mégantic. The idea: every entrepreneur throughout Quebec, whether the city or region, has a story to tell that can benefit other entrepreneurs. The web-centric entrepreneur, for example, can learn marketing lessons from an established brick-and-mortar retailer and vice-versa.
These forums can even help young entrepreneurs overcome obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable. With that said, such organized forums are not necessary for the functioning of peer-to-peer entrepreneurship. The only element that really needs to exist is the willingness for a founder to occasionally “return the call” from one of his peers.
Peer Angels
Peer-to-peer entrepreneurship can also come through direct investment, especially at the angel level.
Anges Québec is probably the most obvious example in Quebec, with its network of 100+ successful entrepreneurs acting as angels to financially support Quebec’s start-up projects. A young entrepreneur who accepts an investment from Anges Québec can benefit from the advice of a group of experienced entrepreneurs (usually between 5 and 15) ready to share the lessons they have learned over time.
Other entrepreneurs prefer to make angels investments in their own name. Entrepreneurs such as Martin-Luc Archambault, Dan Robichaud, Magaly Charbonneau, Mike Cegelski, David Chamandy, Alexandre Taillefer and Austin Hill have been some of the most active and visible in recent years in Montreal, although there are hundreds of others who invest behind the scenes. These entrepreneurs, through their advice and capital, have invested in and helped develop fast-growth companies in Quebec, such as Frank & Oak, which now employs hundreds of talented workers at its headquarter in the Mile End. A recent article by Techvibes spoke about this “mafia” of active entrepreneurs who also invest and thereby give a helping hand to other entrepreneurs.
It is also in this spirit that was launched Interaction Ventures, an angel investment micro-fund which has the role of an intermediate solution between a more established group such as Anges Québec and an individual angel. With the participation of four fellow entrepreneurs and the support of venture capital firm iNovia Capital, a fund has been setup that will selectively invest in other start-up entrepreneurs within the years to come. The idea of peer-to-peer help or, in other words, “for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs”, is omnipresent in the group’s philosophy.
Virtues of the Peer-to-Peer Architecture
In the coming years, the key to success for a young start-up entrepreneur will continue to include a healthy dose of hard work, but increasingly will also include building up and fostering a good support network. Young entrepreneurs will need to surround themselves with peer entrepreneurs who can help propel their business project, either through angel capital, formal help (advisory) or informal help (mentoring exchanges or peer feedback).
It is by expanding networks and multiplying collisions in our ecosystem that we’ll create the right cross-pollenization that will allow our young start-ups to accelerate.
More than any other form of assistance, peer-to-peer entrepreneurship creates a truly entrepreneurial tissue in our community of relatively indestructible nature, a quality recognized in systems with a distributed or peer-to-peer architecture, including the Internet.
Accelerating Prosperity
Prosperity is generated when young entrepreneurs have the support to be successful. I think this begins with solidarity between entrepreneurs and peer-to-peer entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurs are truly in the best position within our ecosystem to accelerate other entrepreneurs in the entrepreneurial journey.
[Note: This article was originally published in French as a special blog contribution on the website of the Conseil du Patronat du Quebec (CDPQ) as part of their Prosperity.Quebec campaign.]
Photo Credit: Jason Ortego