N.B. Expat Who’s Worked For Google, Twitter, Wants To Expand Business In Province
SAINT JOHN – It’s been many years since Matthew Carpenter-Arevalo has lived in New Brunswick, but he still knows the province’s less-than-positive narrative all too well.
But it’s one he believes can be changed.
“The stories that we tell about New Brunswick will become self-fulfilling prophecies. If we say that New Brunswick is going to collapse and die, then that’s what’s going to happen,” he says.
“But we [should] actually say, ‘this is actually a really good place to do business. The cost of living is really low. The quality of life is very high and it’s a great place to live.’ If we believe those things and we create the conditions [then] we can actually create a different economic model for the future.”
Carpenter-Arevalo believes this new economic model won’t be hinged on big pipelines and industry projects. In fact, it’s the opposite.
“It’s going to come from individual entrepreneurs,” says Carpenter-Arevalo. “It’s not going to come from the large-scale government-driven initiative.”
That’s why the New Brunswick expat, who’s worked for the likes of Google and Twitter, is planning to expand his business to the province.
After graduating from St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Carpenter-Arevalo found himself studying at Oxford, which was followed by manager roles at Google and Twitter. Several years ago, he decided to start his own business Centrico Digital, which is based in Quito, Ecuador, near where his wife’s family lives.
The business specializes in digital marketing strategy and lead generation for businesses looking to export into international markets.
“We limit ourselves to working with about 12 clients at a time. Those clients are based in North America, Latin America, as well as Australia,” says Carpenter-Arevalo. “They’re across the spectrum from insurance to education and we do a lot of work with B-Corps and social businesses. That’s where we like to focus our recruiting efforts, while at the same time keeping a foot in the normal private sector so that we gather experience which we can then transfer to B-Corps.”
The goal is to hire at least one person in New Brunswick and open an office here this year. Carpenter-Arevalo admits that expansion doesn’t make the most business sense, but it stems from his desire to help play a small part in a better economic future for his home province, which he visits at least once a year.
“The last election made me realize if New Brunswick is going to survive, it’s not going to be able to survive based on the good actions of our political class,” he says.
“Nor can we wait for large industrial companies to set up solutions that are going to save us, because the large industrial players here are based on the old economic model which has been great for a certain period of time, but that’s not necessarily going to be the new model.”
With the Silicon Valley bubble now busted due to things such as the high cost of living, Carpenter-Arevalo says many investors and entrepreneurs are seeing the potential in smaller, less known areas of the world.
“Right now especially in the venture capital world, there’s more demand than there is supply. There is more money out there for people looking for projects to invest in than there are projects,” he says. “So my thought was, ‘okay, if we’ve been able to build this business in a pretty obscure place like Ecuador, then there’s no reason why we couldn’t do this in New Brunswick.'”
The New Brunswick office would focus on Canadian businesses looking to export outside their region whether that’s national or international.
“They have to be businesses that are looking beyond the Atlantic Canada borders and want to grow and expand,” says Carpenter-Arevalo. “Usually they have some sort of scalable business model and they’re often lacking that knowledge of those markets they would like to sell into.”
Opening a Centrico Digital office in New Brunswick would also be a way to link the province to the South/Central American markets.
One of the things we need to fix in our imagination is to stop thinking of everything outside of Canada and USA and Europe as mud huts,” says Carpenter-Arevalo. “If you watch Narcos on Netlfix you’re like, ‘Oh, Columbia is in trouble.’ But that was the 1980s. Now it’s a thriving place.”
These are very strong middle-income countries and often times they’re ignored, he says. Instead of saying, ‘Let’s go to the United States where there are 10 different people that do what we do.’ There’s a massive amount of opportunity in the rest of the world.”
Centrico Digital’s New Brunswick office is expected to be open later this year. Carpenter-Arevalo has spent the last couple weeks in the province to scout talent and possible clients. What city the office will be in has yet to be determined.
“Right now I’m between Saint John. Fredericton and Moncton seeing where the talent is, where the clients are and what makes sense,” he says.