Shift by Alberta Innovates
Shift by Alberta Innovates
Prairie Fire: How Startup TNT Ignited Alberta's Investment Scene
Today I'm sitting down with Zack Storms and Adrian Mitchell from Startup TNT. Zack is co-founder and Adrian is the Calgary lead.
StartupTNT transformed their weekly happy hour meetups into becoming Canada's most active angel investment network, connecting founders with funders and reshaping prairie entrepreneurship one community at a time.
- Zack launched Startup TNT in Edmonton in 2019 with weekly happy hours to build better angel investor networks.
- Adrian joined in 2023.
- Now Canada's number one pre-seed investor by deal count, deploying millions across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and beyond.
- Startup TNT lowers barriers to angel investing with $5,000 minimum investments instead of traditional $25,000-$50,000 cheques.
- Network effect enables 20-40% of local investments to come from outside each community.
- Alberta's startup ecosystem has grown from $200M annual investment to $600-$800M since TNT's founding.
- Regular Thursday happy hours (6-9pm) in each city create consistent community gathering spaces.
- Expanding nationally with specialized summits like their agri-food investment focus.
- Team partnering with Inventures 2024 for pitch showcase featuring Alberta's most promising startups.
- Newly hired executive director, CK Dhaliwal will allow founding team to focus on scaling across North America.
Visit InventuresCanada.com to get your ticket for Inventures and StartupTNT.com to learn more about their upcoming happy hours, investment summits, and how to participate as an entrepreneur or investor.
Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.
What happens when a grassroots idea turns into a driving force to become one of Canada's most active angel investing networks. Well, in this episode, we're going to explore how a simple weekly happy hour sparked a national movement, one that's connecting founders, funders and communities across the prairies and beyond. This team will also be bringing their energy to adventures this year, with a live pitch showcase and a legendary after-hours event. So sit back, settle in and welcome to Shift. My guests today are Adrian Mitchell, the Calgary lead for Startup TNT, and Zach Storms, co-founder of Startup TNT.
Jon:Gents welcome. How are you doing today?
Zack:Doing really well Jon.
Adrian:Thanks for having us. Yeah, doing great. Thank you
Jon:Right on. No, it's great to have you guys, and you know, startup TNT has become a bit of a legend in the prairies for building thriving founder investor communities from the ground up. What was the original spark behind TNT and how's the mission evolved as Alberta's tech ecosystem has started to grow? Jack, let's aim that at you, yeah.
Zack:Yeah, I'll kick this one off, Jon. So back in early 2019, we're actually coming up on the six-year anniversary of when we first sparked it. We started in Edmonton, Alberta, and, on a very personal level, I was looking to get more involved in the local startup community and, on a very personal level, be the best angel investor in Edmonton, and we think about ways how do we get more angel investors involved in the Edmonton community. How do we work together as a group of angels to invest in and support local founders? At the time, I had gotten involved in some angel investing, but I personally wasn't really involved in supporting entrepreneurs from other jurisdictions. What I love about angel investing in the startup community is you invest in local founders as they build companies and as they build returns for their investors. You see the economic and the social impact locally. And so it was really just thinking through how do we as a community better support our founders as angel investors and take a front and center lead and nurturing a strong startup community?
Zack:And if you fast forward to today, we started with one happy hour and started off just running happy hours. Then we started running these investment summits kind of a unique platform to invest and bring people into the startup investing world Fast forward. Today we are now the number one pre-seed investor in all of Canada by number of deals, and now we've expanded as the tech community has grown. We've expanded from focusing on just being great angel investors to being professional, sophisticated early stage investors activating capital across all of Canada. And one thing that's actually pretty cool, john, is the growth of the Alberta startup community has mirrored our own growth. Back in 2018, 2019, there was maybe $200 million a year being invested in Alberta startups. Now it's like consistently $600, $700, $800 million a year invested into the Alberta startup ecosystem, and we're part of that.
Zack:I might kick it off to Adrian, he can maybe talk a little bit about his own spark, because I think his story is kind of exemplary of what we're trying to accomplish here at StartupTNT.
Jon:First off, congratulations. That's fantastic everything you just said. And, Adrian, take it away!
Adrian:Um, yeah, I mean, how do you follow that really? I mean there was one more personal connection I think zach didn't mention, which is that he started it on his birthday, which is also personal to Zach. So TNT and Zach share a birthday, which is a fantastic personal connection.
Jon:Happy birthday to you.
Adrian:Not today, sadly.
Adrian:It's coming up. It is coming up. Yeah, no, for me I mean tnt. Um, uh, during the pandemic in 2021, uh, when I was I was co-founded, I had co-founded a digital health company and we were raising money and we were talking to venture capital firms all over the country. Uh, we were talking to angel investors, family offices, and then we heard about this thing startup tnt. So we said, okay, sure, we should, we should apply for that. And we applied and we ended up actually going through the summit and successfully raising some funds with Startup TNT. So my experience with TNT very much started on the entrepreneur side and through that experience, of course, I also personally I enjoyed my experience at TNT.
Adrian:I really I built some good relationships with some of the investors that I had met in the due diligence rooms through the process and fast forward. I guess a few months later I was at a happy hour, at a virtual happy hour, with Tim and Zach and they said, well, well, andrew, why are you investing with startup tnt? And frankly, at that point I said, well, I didn't have a good answer. I had one. I hadn't been doing a lot of angel investing or any really I'd been doing all my investing was in the public markets and I said, sure, I guess I should, I should do some, uh, some angel investing, and I started, uh, I started investing in startup tnt. So I was one of the investors in the following summit. So I was in, I was in summit three and then I was an investor in summit four. Uh, that's my how I started my journey with tnt. Uh, you know, fast forward. Uh, almost two years later, or a year and a bit later, um, and I joined the tnt team, uh, fulltime.
Jon:As the startup, as the lead in Calgary.
Adrian:Well, not at first. At first, I gave Zach a three-month contract. To be honest, I said, zach, I only want to do this for three months and I was helping with some sponsorship stuff. I think I extended that three-month contract one time, so I had two three-month contracts and then Zach just said are we going to have to do this every three months, adrian? Uh and so uh and so now, uh, now, yeah, I, I became the calgary lead um october of. Was it last year? Was it longer? I can't think it was last year, 23 october 23, I think.
Zack:He joined in 2022 and then took over as calgary lead in 23. Yeah.
Jon:Okay, well, you guys, you know you've always given off this energy and vibe of such a tight knit group, you know, with a fair, like a great sense of humor, but very serious about what you do, which I think is a really cool combination of things. Now we keep talking about investing. Now I know some of our listeners are going to be interested in going well, okay, startup T investing. What does that look like and how do people go about doing it? Adrian, let's throw that one at you.
Zack:Yeah, take it away, Adrian.
Adrian:Yeah, sure, yeah. So what does investing look like and how do we, how do they do with us? You know. So angel investing I think it's probably important to describe, you know, the difference between venture capital and angel investing. Right, there's a. There is a slight, there's an important difference there.
Adrian:Whereas in early stage, you're often going to venture capital funds and venture capital funds are often investing other people's money or most often, they're investing other people's money. You have the general partners, partners, usually a large investor, so some of the money is their own. But but most often you have large, large lps, family offices, other um people who are invested in that, in that fund, and then the fund managers. They are investing other people's money for a return for their, for their lps. In angel investing, you are investing your own money and your own money for a return for yourself, right? So I think that you know, as you think about angel investing, you know often you get or I used to get, you know, pitch decks. I never invested, but I would get pitch decks all the time from private companies looking for checks of minimum $50,000 or $100,000 or $25,000 checks. As an angel investor, I mean, if you're very wealthy, you can write a number of those checks per year. But for myself, who's an accredited investor able to invest privately, writing more than one $25,000 check or $50,000 check in a year would kind of overexpose myself into this asset class. So when I think about angel investing, it's investing an amount that is responsible, given the risk of the asset class and proportional to the savings that I already have. So that's what I think about. Angel investing is not overexposing myself to too much risk, but investing in the asset cluster.
Adrian:Despite that, and in order to do that, I do it with TNT, because what TNT has done is created a process by which we could do that with a much lower barrier to entry. So we ask the investors to pre-commit $5,000 into the Startup TNT Summit. So investors will do that. They'll pre-commit $5,000 into the Startup TNT Summit. So investors will do that. They'll pre-commit $5,000 investment, sometimes six to eight weeks before we even know who's going to get that investment, and so then there's a fun part to it. Then we look at a lot of companies and we invest in those companies and along the way, in the winter of the summit and along the way, we meet a lot of other companies that we also like and we can invest in those companies.
Adrian:But again, so I've now got an investment portfolio of, I guess, 50 plus companies, um, and I mean, but he's getting up there because, you know, fund one, we, we invested in 30 and then I got my own. So it's getting up to like, yeah, almost 50, 50 plus companies, and but at amounts that are very reasonable for a person. For myself, let's say so that's, I think, angel investing, and so the angel invest responsibly. You want a portfolio, you don't just want a few companies, because the risk is outsized in that, in that regard or in that scenario, Right, Okay, so so then someone steps in.
Jon:they've got their five grand minimum. They speak to you guys about getting involved. I think another important factor is this happy hour that Zach alluded to earlier, where people can, and that's in each of the cities, right? Yes, Every every Thursday, six to nine. I think it is that's correct. Yeah, six to nine. Every city that you guys are involved in. People can go down, they can meet with your team and they can meet with some of these companies you're talking about. I'm ashamed to say I've only been to one, but I loved it. It was fantastic and very energetic and really cool. But you get that chance to meet some of these companies and I sound like I'm telling you guys this.
Zack:Well, no, I mean, one of the things about the happy hours is always a constant reminder that you know we're approachable. We're doing this together as a community. If you're a new entrepreneur, or even a seasoned entrepreneur, if you're a new angel investor or seasoned angel investor, come in. We're all working together as a community to invest in, vet and support local founders.
Jon:Yeah, that's so cool. So you guys, you've helped launch startups, connect investors and create a culture that's fun but focused, as we alluded to earlier. What makes this province a fertile ground for those grassroots initiatives like TNT, and what's the vibe you're seeing right now across the province?
Zack:You know I might give Calgary a little shout out here because I think you know, when I reflect on this question, I think back to when Alberta went through a recession because oil prices crashed in like 2014, 2015, and Calgary's economy took it really hard. But people in Calgary from the not-for-profit, the business sector, the investment sector, the government leaders they banded together and they said we're not going to take this sitting down, we're going to get together and we're going to diversify our economy because we're entrepreneurial capitalists and we're going to get this done. And they made some significant changes to how that they are catalyzing innovation in their community. Just look at the most recent announcement of another 60 million dollars going to the um osif fund, which is a city, a city-backed fund best in new things happening in calgary. And so they're thinking ambitiously and they're also thinking with open arms. And I know this personally because we started in Edmonton Initially. We're thinking just so everybody knows I was thinking we're going to be in Edmonton for like five years because it takes a while to get kind of established and get things set up.
Zack:But within that first year people from Calgary said we like what you're doing, come on down to Calgary, let's see if we can do this here, and it actually kind of sparked my interest to be like, oh yeah, we should maybe be thinking a little bit bigger than just doing this in Edmonton. And so from our very early days I felt this kind of welcoming toxic culture coming out of Calgary and maybe more broadly especially during the pandemic coming out of Alberta in general, so like let's work together to get things done. We're stronger together. And you know, here's an interesting stat that I like to share with people PitchBook, which is probably the world's you know number one authority on what's happening in venture capital, ranks Calgary consistently as one of the fastest growing venture capital ecosystems in the world. It's like top 15, I think. And that's a testament to you know what you can do as a community when you come together and embrace this kind of culture of welcome people in. Let's get things done. Let's not just sit around and take it, let's do things and be proactive.
Jon:Now, do you guys see activity from Calgary or activity from Edmonton or anywhere in the province, going into other cities and like are Calgary investors looking at Edmonton and vice versa? Do you see a lot of that, or do people tend to stay in their jurisdictions?
Zack:Yeah, actually, adrian is kind of our local authority on this exact data Do you want to share, like what are some of the findings, adrian? Yeah.
Adrian:Well, I should pull the data up.
Jon:You don't have it memorized.
Adrian:I know the Calgary one's memorized because I have the Calgary but I'd have to pull up the Edmonton one. But I do know that for example so not including the summit we just ran, but prior to the summit we'd run 42 summits In Calgary. I think the number was like 13 or 14 summits, including some of the sector summits. We had 157 Calgary investors invest in Calgary companies. But we had another. We had 289 investors across our network invest in those companies. So 29 minus 157, so that's 132 investors from outside Calgary investing in Calgary companies. So yeah, pretty awesome, and I think we see the same in each city. Proportionally, we see the same numbers. I just I apologize.
Zack:I think the range is I just heard the Calgary numbers.
Zack:Yeah, I've been looking at the numbers too, john. I think it ranges between like 20 and as much as 40% of the capital invested in the community over time comes from outside the community. So Saskatchewan, a relatively small community, this is an interesting example. I think something close to like close to 40% of their capital, 30 or 40% of the capital invested into the Saskatchewan deal flow is from outside of Saskatchewan. So that's like one of the advantages of this network effect, where we do share the deal flow, we do cross-invest in each other's deals, we do do all this backend work to syndicate it and make it easy to invest, and it has a massive benefit for especially those smaller companies.
Jon:Oh, for sure. So where are you guys located? Now? You mentioned Saskatchewan, so I know you're out in Manitoba as well, but how many startup TNT offices are there across the provinces?
Zack:So we have actual operations in Saskatchewan, uh, in Saskatoon, um, in Calgary, where Adrian is. In Edmonton, where we started and invent it's are expanding in scope. So we just ran an agri-food summit where we had a bunch of farmers and other investors interested in agri-food investing specifically into an ag tech or a food-based company and that was actually eligible for companies across most of Canada and we're looking at taking that national over the next 12 months so that it's basically a national scope summit. We still run kind of our bread and butter summits, which are focused on local investors investing in local startups in Saskatchewan, edmonton, calgary and BC.
Jon:Wow, Okay, no, that's cool. So now you guys are going to be joining us at InVentures this year. You guys have always been involved at Adventures, but I think you're joining us maybe more as a I don't know how would we describe it like a partner this year, in terms of a party partner.
Adrian:I think we'll be doing more than that.
Jon:A party partner, but with an asterisk on party Serious business being done.
Zack:Well, yeah, yeah, we're actually doing something really cool.
Jon:that's been adrian's put a lot of work into this, so can you share a little bit of this, or is it just come to adventures and be?
Adrian:blown away, it's top secret just look at the web page. No, look at the program. No, we're, uh, we are, we're doing a great pitch session. So, you know, in the past, at Inventors, I should say, actually, I've been going to Inventors since before I was involved in the startup world. I can't remember when Inventors started Was it 2018 or 2019? But I was still working in tech, selling into oil and gas companies. But we had a tech company and I was selling into some big oil and gas companies. Uh, but we had a tech company and I was selling into into some big, uh, oil and gas companies, and so I I went to inventors.
Adrian:Uh, then, uh, two for two years I think, when I was still working in that world and, uh, love it. It was the best conference I went to every year, all like for the year. Uh, so then, to be able to do it for work, uh, where it's more way more relevant now than it was before, because before it was just a really cool conference and I was hoping to meet some of the innovation people in these oil and gas companies. Now I'm going and I feel like you see everyone who's involved in the startup ecosystem, with venture capitals, startup angels and startup founders across it and all the ecosystem supporters across the ecosystem. So it's phenomenal to be part of that ecosystem and be at that conference.
Adrian:And then, yeah, this year was really humbled, you know, when we were called and asked if we would want to take over Pitch or help with Pitch for Inventure. So you know, we're not calling it Pitch anymore, but we're doing a session on Thursday. Zach's going to come down from edmonton and so zach and I are going to run a session on thursday from 2 to 3 30 where we showcase, uh, some past uh startup tnt summit winners, all alberta based summit winners. Uh, they're going to come up there and they are going to pitch. But it's not the classic old company. It's not pitched the way it was before, whereas companies you may never have seen before. These are companies that are Series A ready or they're on the cusp of Series A or they're raising Series as right now. These are companies that have won five Alberta summits, so either Calgary Summit or an Edmonton Summit, and so it should be really great. These are companies that could be, could be, the next big, uh, big, great uh company you read about in, uh, you know, every day.
Jon:Right, well, that's really cool. I think that'll be a lot of fun and probably I will not probably, but for sure really inspiring for uh, startups, uh, you know, younger entrepreneurs, newer entrepreneurs to come in and get a sense of what's going on and how these uh, how these men and women are doing it and how you guys are kind of helping manage that. So that's pretty exciting. And that's on the Thursday, you said.
Adrian:Yeah, thursday, two to three, 30 and the sessions called showcasing the next generation of Alberta startup success stories.
Jon:All right On, I can't wait, so I'll I'll be there too. I'm going to come, and, uh, I'm going to come and watch that and maybe heckle you guys from the back of the room just for fun.
Adrian:Awesome, please do. I mean maybe I should have put you on the panel, john, but I tried to bring a panel together as well for this event. That's not necessarily people that every startup founder may have met or heard from or seen on panels in the past, that every you know startup founder may have met or heard from or seen on panels in the past, so there'll be a few names that are maybe not intrinsically connected to the startup ecosystem, but are great, great speakers and great personalities. So hopefully, hopefully, it's a really fun session. I'm sure it will be a very fun session.
Jon:Yeah, it'll sound. It sounds like it'll be a blast. So again and we talked a little bit about this which are, you know, the happy hours and the summits and all that but for folks who've never been to adventures or to a TNT happy hour or to a summit, what's the value for people to be in the room at these events, whether you're a founder or funder or you're just innovation curious, why should they come to? You know, specifically the uh, the session that you're talking about, that you guys are hosting, and any one of the other startup tnt events?
Zack:well, I can go first. Uh, maybe both of us want to share some, some insights on this, but I was actually just listening uh on the radio over the weekend to like uh, a dating, uh dating show, a dating advice show. Where they were, people were asking in the modern age, how do I meet a new spouse, how? Where people were asking in the modern age, how do I meet a new spouse, how do I meet a new partner? And the advice was look, you just got to be present in the room where you go. You have to go to places where other people or that you like and then be observant and active and curious about the world around you in those places. And this is kind of the same thing. You need to come out to events.
Zack:If you're interested in building a company, investing in startups, getting involved in the startup community, you need to go to events and just be active and present and meet people with an open mind and a curious mind and don't have expectations. Just see who's there and what you might have in common. And it leads to new relationships, it leads to new opportunities. It leads to maybe you building something together. I met my co-founder at Startup TNT. Many of our companies have met other investors, partners, co-founders, senior members of their team, at events like we host at Startup TNT, like in ventures, and so really it's just about being open to meeting new people and that's where the relationships come from that actually build a company I love that, yeah, adrian, can you build on that?
Adrian:Yeah, or is that some does that sum it all it sums. I mean it'd be the, the happy hours, the, the tt. I mean this is the brainchild of zach storms uh, you know the, the, the, the happy hours especially, right, I mean he said he met tim there. Uh, I think on week, week six or week four or six or something, zach was doing it and I'm sure it was very packed right, zach, the first four weeks of happy yeah, it's packed with like two to three people each week.
Adrian:It's amazing yeah, but I think, but I think that's but, but that's where I'm going is uh, the other, the other cool thing about, uh, the happy hours, and I think, um, why we've been successful is consistency. So, even if there's only going to be two or three people at this happy hour, having that place, having that event where I could be traveling, I could be in vancouver, I, I know, oh, there's going to be a, I'm on there on a thursday, let's say I could say, oh, there's a happy hour I could go to and I can go connect with some people in those cities. And we do, we get people in calgary I'm sure you do in edmonton, who, who, who are from winnipeg or from saskatoon and say yeah, no, I was just in town, I'm from work, I don't really know anyone. I've got, you know, I've got a few hours before my flight or I've got I'm staying till tomorrow morning and I just thought I'd come and check out the TNT happy hour in this city and, and I think that's also like that, consistency has really driven success. You know, that has really been part of our success and it's enabled us to get really great deal flow.
Adrian:You know, we're continuously meeting people who are new to Calgary, or I'm meeting new people who are new to Calgary and building a startup, so we sometimes will see these startups before anyone else has seen them, and they say, well, I just want to know where should we go and who should we talk to? And then they all start sort of talking about the rest of the ecosystem. And well, you know, there's Platform Calgary. You should definitely go check it out.
Adrian:And or, if they're innovation, if they're a life science company, you know there's a life science innovation hub and all the different hubs that are part of innovate calgary, and so that, really, though, having that consistent spot has been great for me, um uh to, to meet all these, to meet all these people, but, I think, hopefully great for for other people to to, yeah to, to meet, to meet the, to get connected to the ecosystem or meet the next person they may work with, and I know several people. It used to be just a few, but now there's several people who have found their next jobs at TNT Happy Hours, here in Calgary at least, and it's awesome to see, it's rewarding to see, sometimes, my wife and kids, which I took a Thursday off here and there, and so, on that note. I will be coaching soccer on Thursdays for a few months here, but I'm at work honey, but happy hour will happen without me.
Adrian:That's the other great thing is happy hour will go on whether I'm there or not.
Jon:You know you both raise an interesting point about consistency and, zach, you'd said two or three people showing up to a packed house. This is something that speaks broadly to the work you guys are doing entrepreneurialism writ large. But how do you navigate through those times where it's like, oh, nobody's showing up or it's it's. It's almost. It's difficult to get out of bed and go oh, we've got two people lined up. I get the consistency, but how do you rise to that occasion to just be present?
Adrian:I've got a fun answer for this one.
Jon:Okay, let's start with you, Adrian.
Adrian:So, zach, we don't do registrations right. Some cities have started doing it, but in Calgary and Edmonton we don't do registrations. So sometimes I go just to be surprised by who may be there, right, like just for the surprise of it, just I'm curious who is going to show up on Boxing Day. I was there on Boxing Day but also I find when there's 15 to 20 people there I typically don't have as much time Just being the lead. The nature of the roles facility conversations. I don't actually get very meaningful and deep conversations, often with too many people. But when there are three to six people there, I can generally have really deep and meaningful conversations with every single person who's there. So that is what gets me going every single week when I can.
Jon:It's usually roll with it.
Zack:Yeah, yeah well, I wasn't sure if you wanted to get into like a deeper question here, john, like how do you get through something challenging in general, yes, the philosophical implications of depression I'll share.
Zack:I'll share this, this advice I just read about in a book that said you know when you have to do that thing that you really don't want to do. Just count down from five, five, four, three, two, one and then go do it. So just like reset your mind and just like power through it. Maybe that's, you know, brushing your teeth in the morning, maybe that's doing some administrative work, maybe that's just showing off the hour. You know there might only be three people there.
Jon:No, you don't like it. I think it's an important message that you know, you've just you set your mind to doing something and whether there's hills or valleys, you know you, just you just grind through it and it builds that consistency that we've identified as so important. Now, prior to the start of this, this discussion, I was picking Zach's brain about what's coming down the pike. He filled me in on some things, but I don't want to talk about anything unless it's sanctified by you guys. So what's next for Startup TNT?
Zack:Let's start with Zach. What I like to tell people is that we really just want to do more of what we're doing now. We want to do it in that. We really just want to do more of what we're doing now. We want to do it in more places. We want to do it better and we're really excited to announce that we've just hired a new executive director. In fact, we're putting an announcement out today to the world to let them know.
Zack:Ck Dahlwall is joining our team. He'll be running startup T&T headquarters, taking over day to day operations. He'll be running startup T&T headquarters, taking over day-to-day operations. So our leads, tim and I we can focus on the things that we really enjoy doing, which is activating more capital, supporting our founders and trying out some new innovative ways to get more Canadians involved in the venture capital and the angel community. So we want to take T&T across Canada. We want to take it across North America. We want to scale this thing and we want to have, long-term, a family of institutional VC funds that can really 5X 10X the amount of capital we're deploying into Canadian innovation.
Jon:Wow. Well, congratulations, ck, congratulations you guys that having someone in that position will take a little bit of weight off your shoulders. To uh, focus on those things, adrian, and from your perspective, what, uh, what do you see coming down the pike? That's exciting. What is?
Adrian:quite literally. Next for TNT Calgary is in ventures, quite literally two weeks from now, two weeks from now two weeks from tomorrow. Past day we have our session, our pitch session, and then we have yeah, I didn't mention it, but we were asked as well to partner with Good Lawyer and host the Inventors After Dark Party, the Future of Alberta party at Inventors. So TNT Happy Hour goes to Inventors officially as part of Inventors this year.
Jon:So those are the two things.
Adrian:I'm kind of dominating my headspace right now. That is what's quite literally next for start of TNT Calgary. But broader, longer term, you know we you know continuing to deliver. Really, calgary we have now with the largest number of companies that we've invested in, is in Calgary. Calgary is our most active community, approaching 200 angel investors, 42 companies. I think when we sum up the number, it'll be almost $8 million deployed in Calgary.
Adrian:There is a lot going on here just for Startup TNT. So I would like to see us finding ways to increase the team. That could include volunteers, it could include just more engaged community members. But yeah, I think for TNT Calgary, we're just at a place where it can't just be just Adrian as the TNT lead. We have lots of great ambassadors and other people in the community, but really getting a lot of people to sort of come to the table and say, okay, how do we make this even better so that we can deliver great programming for our great support for the entrepreneurs and great programming for the investors and great investment opportunities for the investors that we have.
Jon:Adrian, I hear that as a challenge to Edmonton Angels. If Calgary is whooping Edmonton, well, maybe not whooping I don't know what the specific numbers are they are beating.
Zack:They are beating.
Jon:So Edmonton is being beaten by the Calgary Angels. So come on, Edmonton Angels, pick it up. Go to Startup TNT. Let's have that friendly competition. I didn't want to say anything about the Edmonton Oilers being in the playoffs and the Calgary Flames not making it, but I just did.
Adrian:I'm wearing blue for you. I was at. I watched the Oilers game with some friends last night and it was. I was very happy that the Oilers won. It's good for Alberta.
Jon:It was, uh I was very happy that the Oilers won. It's good for Alberta. It was, it was, yeah, it's, it's a good one for sure, you know, and and a little competition is is a nice thing. I think it keeps us all on our toes. And, guys, I love the work you're doing. Um, I think you know, I, I think it's second to none. It's uh, it's encouraging, it builds, it helps build our communities. You know, in the end, companies become successful. Companies create jobs, Jobs, employ people, people make money and they're happier. And I think it's great work and I look forward to seeing you both at InVentures, looking forward to it. Thanks, john, this has been great. Take it easy, guys. Yeah, thanks for joining us today on Shift, and for those of you who don't have tickets to InVentures yet, please join us. Just visit InVenturesCanadacom. You can pick your tickets up there. Until next time, I'm John with Shift and I hope to see you in a couple of weeks.
Zack:Thank you.
