“When newcomer entrepreneurs cannot access the capital, mentorship and procurement pathways needed to scale, they don’t stay. They take their ambition, their networks and their growth potential to ecosystems that will meet them where they are.”

 

Risk aversion is costing Atlantic Canada dearly.

Every ecosystem chooses who it backs: which founders get meetings, which businesses get capital and which ideas get a chance. In Atlantic Canada, these choices have consistently favoured the familiar, established networks, classic business models and founders who already fit the template.

The problem is both patterned in its operation and structural in its nature. When an ecosystem is structurally risk-averse, it does not distribute that caution equally. It concentrates it. It supports businesses it has backed before, run by familiar founders, presenting plans that fit its evaluation templates. It is systemic and consequential.

The burden of that caution doesn’t fall equally on everyone. Instead, it lands hardest on people at the edges of that ecosystem: specifically, newcomer and racialized entrepreneurs.

 

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