This series is part of Avenue‘s innovation newsletter. Sign up to get more news about Calgary’s innovation scene delivered directly to your inbox every Monday.
Matt Toner’s story with game development began when so many other tech stories ended: the 2001 dot-com stock bubble crash. After finding work as a game writer, Toner worked his way up in the industry, eventually becoming a game producer and working on a smart playground in 2019 (which links digital playground games to parents’ phones) until investments plummeted in 2020 after playgrounds became off-limits due to COVID-19.
But Toner’s tech story didn’t end there, either. His work and talent had not gone unnoticed by major investors, who suggested Toner set up a fund for game makers in Western Canada. Toner himself had noticed a lack of funding for Alberta game makers, and in an effort to give the province a seat at the table, decided to create Scaffold Institute.
Scaffold Institute is a cohort-based accelerator program that aims to double the number of small and medium-sized businesses in Alberta’s gaming sector by fostering innovation and attracting investment for promising start-ups. Master classes hosted by some of the top names in tech will teach participants about investment attraction, marketing staffing and partnership development through year-long classes. From there, companies can plug into ongoing mentorship and support from the Scaffold team as they take their game to market. Though it takes time to see long-term results, Toner explains that previous participants are already beginning to gain market traction.
“There’s no shortage of hardworking, positive, entrepreneurial-minded people in Alberta,” says Toner, Scaffold’s executive director. “All those boxes are ticked, but there’s not a lot of early-stage capital to help them go from being a garage band to becoming investable.”
And it seems like the future of gaming in Alberta looks bright. Scaffold Institute has already received funding at the federal and provincial levels with $1 million from Prairies Economic Development Canada and $750,000 from Alberta Innovates, in addition to the $250,000 from Shred Capital, of which Toner is a managing partner.