When the guides of the future plan the itinerary for the walking tour dubbed “Vancouver: Tech City,” they’ll start in Railtown. After all, this is where the social media company Hootsuite emerged in 2008, amid the cheap, converted warehouses between the Downtown Eastside and the docks on Burrard Inlet. Back then, you called the neighbourhood “sketchy,” but that got you the stink eye from Bill Tam, president and CEO of the BC Technology Industry Association: “It’s edgy!”
The next stop on the tour will be Gastown, another old neighbourhood of small-footprint buildings full of walk-up offices, but one that was more gentrified in the early days—not “edgy” but “funky.” In 2015, this was the home of entrepreneurial hothouses like Launch Academy, where hopeful youngsters learned how to innovate—or how to fail quickly and start again before they dragged their friends and family members into an expensive mistake.
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