WeAreYVR

Data-Driven Innovation

WeAreYVR is an information hub for the Metro Vancouver startup community. It is a collaborative project: startup accelerators, the city of Vancouver, and members of the community are all helping to put each other on the map. Concentrated data relevant to innovation are important to startups, investors, municipalities, and intrepid entrepreneurs.  It’s all about cultivating the most fertile environment for seeding and growing of great ideas.

 YVR

KEYWORDS:  innovation, startups, investors, economic development
AUDIENCE:   Startups, entrepreneurs, investors, accelerators
PARTNER/LEADER:  WeAreYVR
PARTICIPANTS:  Municipalities, governments, universities, chambers of commerce
PROJECT LEAD:  Claire Atkin, WeAreYVR
PROJECT STATUS:  Actively underway in Metro Vancouver

Urban Opus Rationale

WeAreYVR is the Vancouver instance of the global Startup Genome data and analysis platform, and therefore could operate independently of Urban Opus.  However, by pooling and meshing with broader sets of urban and economic data within the Urban Opus Datahub, the objective of this strategic partnership is to accelerate WeAreYVR itself, making it stronger, smarter and more effective in stimulating the startup community.

Description

The Startup Genome vision is to build the most complete and accurate database of the world’s startup communities, present it in useful, beautiful ways and provide tools and reports that community builders can use to gain visibility into what’s happening in their community and make better decisions about how to grow it.

WeAreYVR is a made-in-Vancouver solution that is aiming to bridge the Startup Genome platform and Salesforce systems to support growth and investment in the startup ecosystem.  Metro Vancouver is blessed with many organizations and individuals who are passionate about growing their local startup ecosystems – currently they’re making it happen with gut instinct rather than comprehensive data.

WeAreYVR provides a “health check” for the startup ecosystem by aggregating open data from multiple sources to deliver actionable analytics, especially applicable to high-growth startups.  Data of interest include companies, funding, support, people, jobs, events and status indicator reports.

Urban Opus extends the vision, analytic depth and impact of WeAreYVR with further data sets, partners and research tools.

Activation Path

WeAreYVR already exists and is growing.  Over 2014Q1 the two organizations will define a strategic development plan involving integration, analysis and activation of broader data streams relevant to stimulation of the startup community and weaving Metro Vancouver’s dynamic innovation narrative into the bigger story of regional economic growth.

References

WeAreYVR

Startup Genome

About Urban Opus

Urban Opus is Canada’s first ‘smart city’ industry cluster. The new consortium serves as trusted broker for innovative projects and organizations seeking to employ data to enhance the urban experience.  In great cities of the world, the consummate wellbeing of people and communities is being inspired by data.  Join us to make that happen!

Contact:  David Vogt, Executive Director, Urban Opus – david.vogt@urbanopus.net