A Victoria Times Colonist March 29, 2014 article by Andrew Duffy analyzes why Victoria boasts a $3-billion high-tech industry and features comments from Scott Phillips, President of StarFish Medical. The article includes a dramatic image of ViVitro Labs senior research biomedical engineer. ViVitro Labs is a cardiovascular test equipment and services company, and part of StarFish Holdings Inc.
The article notes: Scott Phillips, chief executive officer of Starfish Medical, says high-tech’s growth was also fuelled from within as early successful companies like AXYS spun out small firms and re-invested in other start-ups. “People had seen enough entrepreneurs be successful here and they got the idea to start their own companies and others that had been successful were willing to invest,” he says. It helped that the city remained quite small and the tech community remained tight knit.
That internal investment continues with the executives behind success stories such as ParetoLogic and Aspreva continually investing in and mentoring new firms. “There is a magical size. If you’re too small, there’s not enough going on, and if you’re too big, people fragment. At this stage everyone wants the whole industry to be successful,” Phillips says. That means senior entrepreneurs are happy to help bankroll and guide new ventures.”