Harvest Builders, the Calgary-based enterprise studio created by Skip the Dishes co-founder Chris Simair, is including two new fintech corporations to its portfolio and has plans to increase into the downtown core.
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Harvest Builders, the Calgary-based enterprise studio created by Skip the Dishes co-founder Chris Simair, is including two new fintech corporations to its portfolio and has plans to increase into the downtown core.
Harvest, which was launched in late 2019 and goals to foster corporations with “disruption potential”, is already a backer of Neo Monetary. That fintech firm makes a speciality of user-friendly banking expertise and merchandise and lately introduced $50 million in Sequence A financing. From its workplace house within the East Village, Neo Monetary has grown from 70 workers six months in the past to 250 workers at present and is actively hiring roughly 20 folks per week.
Now, Harvest will launch two new corporations working within the space of economic expertise. OneWealth goals to offer Canadians with entry to low-cost and various funding options by a customized and user-friendly platform. The second firm can be referred to as Propra and can provide an end-to-end property administration answer centered on enhancing the rental administration course of for each landlords and tenants.
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OneWealth is co-founded by Nathan Di Lucca, a former software program growth supervisor at Calgary-based tech firm Kudos, and Jakob Pizzera, a former Shopify senior govt who can be relocating to Calgary from Toronto for this new enterprise. Propra is being based by Calgary native Al-Karim Khimji and Craig Adam, former director of expertise at SkipTheDishes who can be relocating to Calgary from Winnipeg.
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Simair — who himself relocated to Calgary from Winnipeg after promoting Skip the Dishes for $200 million in 2016 — mentioned in an interview that the newest developments are proof that Calgary has the power to draw high tech expertise, particularly because it continues to develop what is thought within the business as an “ecosystem” (a community of traders, mentors, entrepreneurs, and corporations at completely different phases).
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“Harvest’s function is to essentially increase and increase the native ecosystem of the Prairies, with a giant give attention to Calgary. We’ve got a bigger portfolio of corporations we help, with an excellent dozen in Calgary,” Simair mentioned. “However with this announcement we’ve a subset with a give attention to fintech. They’re corporations we’re constructing in-house, in studio, and we’re methods to have every firm profit the opposite in a means that strengthens the general portfolio.”
Simair mentioned he expects Propra and OneWealth to comply with the same progress trajectory to Neo Monetary, with the 2 anticipated to rent as much as 300 folks between them over the following three years. To help these corporations’ growth, Simair mentioned Harvest Builders is actively seeking to purchase a further 70,000 sq. ft of workplace house that may function the enterprise studio’s “downtown campus.”
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In a information launch, Jobs Minister Doug Schweitzer praised Harvest Builders for creating lots of of jobs in Alberta by the founding of Neo Monetary and now OneWealth and Propra.
“This work is vital to the diversification of our economic system and accelerating the expansion of our rising tech sector,” Schweitzer mentioned.
Final yr, Harvest Builders obtained a $4-million grant from the Alternative Calgary Funding Fund, a $100-million fund created by metropolis council in 2018 and administered by Calgary Financial Improvement. The aim of the fund is to help ventures that may create jobs, assist diversify the economic system and increase the property tax evaluation base.
astephenson@postmedia.com
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