By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

closing march 31

Three-year run for Red Deer’s Catapult to end this month

Mar 1, 2020 | 12:32 PM

A Red Deer-based business incubator program for budding entrepreneurs is shutting its doors, effective March 31.

Catapult launched in 2017 as a two-year provincially-funded pilot project under the NDP, and was given a one-year funding extension last year by the new UCP government. Six other incubators in the province were funded at the same time.

But with no continued dollars in this week’s provincial budget, and zero luck finding financial support elsewhere, the program hasn’t any other option.

“We have been trying over the last year to find other sources of funding, but it just hasn’t materialized,” says Catapult trainer and coach Danielle Klooster, who oversaw the program’s start three years ago. “As much as Catapult is probably needed now more than ever, the economy is pretty bad and funding sources have dried up.”

More than 40 entrepreneurs have successfully completed Catapult’s program, around 30 of which are currently running businesses in central Alberta. They work in a broad range of areas, Klooster says, from agriculture to water conservation, and app development to education.

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In 2018, Alder Flats residnet and Catapult client Joshua Banko placed second at the Inventures Conference in Calgary for his ‘Pneumatic Hot Water Priming System.’

Klooster says the most disappointing part about shutting down is that not funding programs like Catapult is counter to diversification.

“So many oil and gas workers were laid off, went through their EI, chewed up their savings, and chose entrepreneurship as a way to go forward on a new path,” says Klooster. “We’ve been talking for well over 20 years about the need to diversify our economy, and entrepreneurship is the path to that. It’s disappointing there isn’t a vision to support early-stage entrepreneurship because we’re a very enterprising province and we have a lot of people with really creative ideas.”

Furthermore, Klooster notes that Catapult gave entrepreneurs the training and support so that they weren’t as high risk for failure upon graduating the months-long program.

“While oil and gas has been great for our province and while we definitely need to cut debt, you also need to invest and steer the ship in the right direction,” Klooster says of the current government’s focus.

“I’m just not sure we’re going to go back to the glory days of oil and gas, so we need a vision to take us in a new direction.”

Last year, Catapult moved into the new Downtown Business Association building on Little Gaetz.