Calvin Milbury Is Scaling Up New Brunswick
New Brunswick is making a painful transition from a resource economy to an economy that relies more heavily on knowledge. In doing so, we’re trying to catch up to the rest of the world, and there’s lots of work to be done.
Enter Calvin Milbury.
He’s the CEO of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation. And since 2003, when he joined NBIF, he’s been playing a key role in the evolving startup ecosystem on the East Coast. NBIF has grown from investing around $5 million annually to over $12 million last year.
But NBIF is not a traditional venture capital firm. Its business model is quite different.
Bridging the Gap
Milbury describes the work of NBIF as being the bridge between research and enterprise. They split their investments between funding startup companies and funding applied research being done in New Brunswick’s universities and colleges.
“We are focused on applied research that has commercial potential, and our goal is to see that research ultimately ends up in the hands of an entrepreneur or in a business where it can have an economic impact on our province and across our country,” says Milbury.
NBIF has put $8 million into its New Brunswick Research Chair effort to help drive increased collaboration between academic researchers and the private sector. That includes aquatic biosciences, advanced wood products, medical technologies and devices, cybersecurity and biosciences.
“Our goal is to see research find an outlet in the marketplace where it can have an economic impact,” says Milbury. “So we are actively working to accelerate innovation in the province. Our goal is to develop innovation capacity and foster a culture of innovation, but when we get right down to it what we want to be is that bridge between research and enterprise.”
Milbury says NBIF helps address the gap between the idea at the lab bench and the marketplace. Money is important on this he says, but “what we’ve learned through the school of hard knocks is that it takes much more than money.”
“What we try to do at NBIF is bring to bear support, specialties, skills, mentorship to help our innovators get across that gap. And we certainly can’t do it alone. We’ve benefitted from working with some great partners in our community.”
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Huddle Talks With Calvin Milbury
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Growing Startups
NBIF is completely removed from government. It’s not another “economic development” agency. Rather it invests in startups just like any other VC firm, with a goal to make money that can be invested in still more startups, in turn making more money.
NBIF made 24 venture investments last year, the most ever. It now holds shares in 40 companies with 15 of those emerging directly from research it has funded. “The research has been a source of deal flow for the venture capital side and it really makes us unique in our business model,” says Milbury.
“There’s a lot of up and coming stars in our portfolio,” he notes, pointing to strong performers like Moncton’s RtTech, Fredericton’s Inversa Systems and SmartSkin Technology, and Saint John’s Gemba Software.
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Cybersecurity is one area where the province of New Brunswick is putting considerable effort, building on the work done at UNB and the success of Fredericton’s Q1 Labs, which was acquired by IBM. For its part, NBIF has already backed the research of Dr. Natalia Stakhanova at UNB.
“Cybersecurity is a huge opportunity for the province,” says Milbury. “We’ve had some wins there.”
“The opportunity is very broad, it’s a huge market worldwide, it’s a growing problem but the flipside of that is the challenge of how to find your niche,” says Milbury. “One of the challenges our province has is to carve out our niche in cybersecurity. Look at it like Wayne Gretzky would look at playing hockey, anticipate where the puck is going.”
He points to the “Industrial Internet of Things” or IIoT as a place where New Brunswick researchers and companies can differentiate and find a market.
Milbury wants to see more “gazelles” emerge in New Brunswick’s startup community – companies, like Radian6, that grow quickly and create hundreds of jobs. That’s why NBIF is putting a big push on helping companies scale up while remaining based in New Brunswick. That means focusing on things that are often points of weakness, like leadership, governance, sales and access to capital.
“We have to roll up our sleeves and find new and clever ways to help them with some of these deficiencies.“