Net benefit to the community

Opinion

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This article was published 30/08/2023 (773 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg is likely never going to be a snowboard or skateboarding hotbed — and it will definitely never be surfing paradise — but that doesn’t mean it can’t be the home base for the a new content-streaming service that aims to be the Netflix for skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing.

That is exactly the thinking of two Winnipeg entrepreneurs who are developing that very concept, called The Den.

Dane Homenick and Adam Wrublowsky have long been skateboarding enthusiasts — Homenick toured north America as a semi-pro skater for many years and Wrublowsky did business with many of the big brand names in the space. They then settled into careers in the tech industry — Homenick as a self-employed developer in Winnipeg and Wrublowsky as a product and business development executive with Apple.

They made a pitch for investment in The Den to about 30 members of the North Forge Angel Network during an online event on Wednesday.

In addition to Homenick and Wrublowsky, another Winnipeg founder, Terry Wang, pitched his company called Cios (a Gaelic work, pronounced “keys”, which means “to rent”) an insurance-tech company that has a novel product offering of leasing-breaking insurance for renters.

Some time in the making, the North Forge Angel Network (NFAN) is finally becoming the kind of service it was hoped for — a source of early stage capital for North Forge’s growing stable of mostly tech-driven startups.

In the two years it’s been active, North Forge companies have raised more than $3 million.

The two companies gave about five-minute pitches on their sophisticated startups to a screen-full of potential investors from across North America.

Although North Forge is very Manitoba-centric, the approximately 200 members of the NFAN members are drawn from across Canada and the U.S.

And just as NFAN members are from all over, North Forge also represents a very small percentage of its total membership from outside the province.

An Alberta company called Skool Pesa, which has developed a mobile app for school remittance payments targeted at the African diaspora and African educational institutions, was also part of the event, NFAN’s fourth pitch event since its founding.

Joelle Foster, the CEO of North Forge, said the companies that are selected to pitch have to be prepared.

“They have to be able to do a really good pitch,” she said.

This group was just that. While the founders of The Den and Cios have thoughtful, potentially exciting new business propositions, they are novel concepts and will have to overcome all the challenges that come with trying to convince people to change and are far from a sure thing.

But they both approach the market in exactly the way startups are supposed to — they’re both designed to solve a problem for their target markets: The Den seeks to aggregate content for a passionate yet specialized market as well as organizing consumers in one place for brands that seek to market to them; and Cios seeks to provide some flexibility for renters who are both increasing in sheer numbers and who are increasingly mobile as well as providing a way for landlords to protect themselves from potential bad debts. It is proposing charging a percentage of the rent — as low as 3.5 per cent — to allow renters to break a lease and pay off the rent that remains.

As is common when seeking investments from angel investors, the ask is usually in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars to about $2 million.

These two companies are also interesting examples of the growth in the tech sector in the province. Both companies have tapped provincial and federal funding opportunities and both include founders new to the city or just returned.

The development of The Den likely lured Wrublowsky back to Winnipeg after a 12-year career that had him working and travelling all over the place working for Apple.

And Wang is a new Winnipeg transplant after having grown up in the Greater Toronto Area, going to school in Ottawa, and spending the first several years of his career there. He moved to Winnipeg with his life partner who is enrolled in a professional faculty in Winnipeg.

“When I first got to Winnipeg I wasn’t thinking it was a super strategic place for me, although it’s a great place to live, obviously,” said Wang. “I didn’t really know the tech scene and it was a little nerve-wracking. North Forge helped get me connected and understand the broader lay of the land.”

The Den partners discovered a few years ago through a mutual friend that they both independently had been thinking about the same idea.

Homenick said, “We’re trying to build the business properly, raising money, building a team, doing the things we have to do to create value” — and they have the added advantage that it is a passion project for both of them.

There is no guarantee they will raise a penny after their pitch to investors, but all three understand the benefit of such an experience — becoming practiced at talking about their companies and making connections with potential investors.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Foster said a couple of other North Forge founders who had previously pitched to NFAN told her they’d raised $1.3 million, several months after they first encountered the investors.

Regardless of the individual successes from such a process, it’s not hard to imagine it is going to be a net benefit to the community.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca