Photo: Contributed
When Keith MacIntyre first started his business in 2003 he had no contracts, no product ideas and no savings. His son had also just been born.
“It was definitely pretty challenging for the first six months or so,” he recalled recently. “But I just decided it was time to go out on my own.”
He eventually landed a big contract, and has since built a military tactical simulator that’s been “deployed throughout the world,” a touch screen voting systems for American elections, a disaster simulation for the Centre for Disease Control, and more.
Today, MacIntyre and his company, Big Bear Software, are the beating heart at the centre of an increasingly vibrant tech sector in Penticton.
MacIntyre moved from Calgary to the Okanagan in 2011. He recalls being a little worried, and feeling a little isolated, when he first arrived because it didn’t feel like there was much of a tech industry in the area.
After a while MacIntyre started organizing tech meetups, bringing together local tech talent to network and swap stories.
Before he knew it he had joined a Penticton entrepreneurs group, was helping with a city council campaign, had been named a director of the Penticton Chamber of Commerce and was running for school trustee.
“Now I’m fully embedded in this community and I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” he says.
MacIntyre says running a tech business out of the Okanagan is certainly different than running one out of a major city, but that he doesn’t “see any drawbacks.”
“I think probably my company would be bigger if I lived in a major centre, but I don’t think it would be better,” he said.
His company is better in Penticton, he says, because he is better in Penticton.
“Penticton’s fantastic. I don’t think I ever would have become as healthy as I am in Calgary, and there’s more time in my day.”
One big change is that he spends way less time in his car (here, he can get from one end of town to the other in the time it takes some people to leave their neighbourhoods in Calgary). He said it took him about a year to realize he was way less stressed in Penticton because he had about two extra hours in his day.
Other talented tech people are now starting to key into those lifestyle opportunities, and MacIntyre says the city’s tech scene is growing stronger because of it.
He just hired two new employees who live in Penticton. They’re talented workers, he says, and they want to stay in the Okanagan. Others like them are becoming easier and easier to find.
He says many people think they need to look to bigger cities to find top-notch workers, but that there is actually a ton of talent right here in the valley, if companies are willing to look hard enough.
“There are extremely talented individuals and companies in the Okanagan,” he says. “It’s all here if you look for it.”
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