Crowdfunding has become a very popular topic here in Canada, and for good reason, it’s really the key to unlocking their future, in a pretty seismic way.
By this I mean the nation has a notorious ‘Innovation Gap’ and lament a lack of Venture Capital as the reason, but really what is missing is a general culture of innovation and better processes for early stage commercialization. Most important it needs a tech sector policy because there isn’t one.
In absence of these things Crowdfunding offers a “system of the people” approach, like Napster or EBay, and so it’s not dependent on government policy or even funding, it could be entirely self-generated, and most likely will be.
It’s important for Canada because Crowdinvesting isn’t about replacing the traditional VC or high-street bank, but rather it’s about leveraging the Internet for new markets especially those at the grass roots level; lots of little projects of all shapes and sizes.
This is actually what Canada needs more so than the VC part, which is going to be really difficult to pull off to be honest. In contrast a Crowdfunding platform is easily implementable for affordable venture rates and could support a lot of active Canadian ventures.