Lighthouse Labs - Airlines Of The Web · 2016-08-19 · LIGHTHOUSE LABS W. Maurice Young Centre for Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Research PAGE 2 The case study gives a glimpse

Last updated: August 19, 2016

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Lighthouse Labs W. Maurice Young Centre for Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Research at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia Case number: SC-1601 Date: July 2016

LIGHTHOUSE LABS W. Maurice Young Centre for Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Research PAGE 2

The case study gives a glimpse of the history and evolution of Lighthouse Labs, a coding

bootcamp that started in Vancouver and is now expanding across Canada. Through the

eyes and words of one of its founders, Khurram Virani, students will be able to learn how

the company started thriving by introducing itself into the vibrant milieu of tech

incubators, accelerators, VC firms and coworking spaces of the Vancouver, Canada

innovation ecosystem.1

“Our goal is to become Canada-wide, not only the largest but the most reputable bootcamp,”

– Khurram Virani, co-founder and Head of Education of Lighthouse Labs.

It’s 9 a.m. and the corner of Hastings and Cambie is a turmoil of honks, shouts, people on their

cellphones, hard rock leaking out of headphones, and “got-some-change?”-requests. The air is

a mix of coffee, smog, and pot. In other words, it is just a regular morning in Vancouver’s

Downtown Eastside.

But inside 128 West Hastings everything is different. There’s silence; there’s tidiness; there are

young people staring at their laptops.

As he enters the second floor and passes by the entrance to Launch Academy, Khurram Virani

remembers how his startup began on one of the many desks in this incubator “for entrepreneurs

by entrepreneurs.” He also remembers how, at some point, it was growing so fast that he, his

colleagues and his “clients” were occupying most of the tables and, eventually, had to move out.

But they didn’t go too far. They just rented the office space next door.

As he continues walking and enters Lighthouse Labs, a proud smile appears on his face. Then

again, everyone who visits this school for the first time chuckles when they see the reception

desk filled with toys such as a Chewbacca mask, a lighthouse (of course), and a rubber duck.

The Galaga stickers that decorate the wall behind the desk also elicit a giggle or two.

There’s a couch and a TV set, a standing white table, and a series of white doors with signs that

read ‘ideation’ or ‘MVP room.’ But don’t let the Google-like environment fool you. Behind those

doors, the rustic brick walls of this 117-year old building are exposed.

1 Valentina Ruiz Leotaud prepared this case as a basis for class discussion. The W. Maurice Young Centre for Entrepreneurship

and Venture Capital Research at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia provided funding for the development of the case. No funding was provided by the organization. The case is not intended to illustrate effective or ineffective leadership, nor serve as an endorsement or source of data.


A round table, two chairs, a couple of coffee mugs. Khurram sits against the reddish wall,

thinking about what he loves the most: tech ed and the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Lighthouse Labs has come a long way quickly and the future, while filled with many strategic

choices, seems bright.

Khurram Virani, Lighthouse Labs’ co-founder and Head of Education. Photo by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud (2016).

LIGHTHOUSE LABS IN A NUTSHELL

“This is a space for developers by developers.”


In short, LL is a coding bootcamp where people from different backgrounds spend between a

month and a half and two months learning about web or iOS development. However, not

everything is zeros and ones. Khurram’s goal is to teach people to become “real” developers by

introducing them to coding --of course--, but also to problem solving and critical thinking.


Although Lighthouse Labs offers six-week intro courses on both iOS and web development, its

core programs are two eight-week bootcamps that focus in depth on those same two areas of

study.2

The intensive, hands-on curricula includes training in Ruby on Rails, Javascript, HTML/CSS,

popular APIs, software architecture, responsive design, test driven development, AngularJS,

and Node.js.

But not everybody gets in. Particularly those who want to join just because becoming a

developer is ‘the next hot thing’ get rejected. Depending on the person, the answer might not be

a definitive no, though. If they see some potential, LL’s mentors invite that individual to join part

time classes for inspiration and understanding of what it means to be a developer, without the

intensity or commitment of a bootcamp.

“We look for grit, which is that perseverance, that wanting-that-goal mindset, not just ‘teach me,

I’m here to learn,’ it’s ‘I want to learn, you are just going to help me learn and give me some

structure, but I’m also going to put a lot of my own energy’,” Khurram always says.

Talented self-learners who have at least looked at online resources are more likely to get

accepted into full-time programs. Before going in, they have to take an SAT-like logic test, do

some homework on JavaScript, attend a multi-step technical interview, and then they get a

decision on their applications.

When they finally enroll in the bootcamps, students have to prepare four weeks in advance by

doing a remote prep course. Once they get to attend real-life sessions, they spend 12-hour --or

longer-- days receiving mentorship and working by themselves at understanding code logic, as

well as building applications and/or software from scratch.

A PRACTICAL APPROACH

Lighthouse Labs’ fundamental belief is that it shouldn’t take years and years to become a

developer because they understand software development as a craft, as opposed to a just

science. Therefore, they work with an apprenticeship-kind-of-approach where students’ paths to

be considered professionals start with becoming apprentices and getting mentored.

LL’s founders are also convinced that developers get 80 percent of their training on the job.

Thus, the idea is to give their students tools to think critically and understand problem solving,

so they can effectively contribute when they are assigned their first professional project. At the

2 Lighthouse Labs, Programs Retrieved from https://www.lighthouselabs.ca/. Accessed on June 4, 2016.

https://www.lighthouselabs.ca/


same time, they want them to be conscious that, regardless of what it is, the first position they

land is an extension of their training.

With a 7:1 student-mentor ratio, pupils receive guidance from any of the 104 mentors available

for them at any given time. These tutors are full-time developers that teach part-time.

The idea is that, on top of embracing the complexities of the world of coding, students start

building a network of colleagues. Khurram calls it “community-driven education.”

Lighthouse Labs relies on both its alumni and developers from all spectrums of the tech world to

teach. People from Food.ee, Bench, Gastown Labs and other companies3 are always willing to

share their knowledge either in one-on-one meetings or in any of the guest talks organized by

the school every two weeks.

Many times, these industry leaders also become LL’s hiring partners. When they visit the

school, they address subject matters that are not included in the curriculum. The topics they

discuss include leadership, product development, design, UI, UX, what it means to be a CTO or

a senior developer, what they look for in a junior developer, and so on. The idea is to give

students a space where they can get inspired and be educated on things beyond just code.

This “progressive approach to education,” as Khurram himself describes it, has yielded

impressive results from the get go. One-hundred percent of the students in Lighthouse Labs’

first cohort found employment within 90 days of graduation. Even though the maximum class

size is 24 people, they’ve already graduated 362 developers since 2013. Of this grand total, 344

found work just four months after getting their diplomas.

Moreover, 98 percent of Lighthouse Labs grads were working in their field of specialization. Of

those, 33 percent found full-time jobs, while 31 percent accepted apprenticeship-style

employment that became full-time positions with the same employer.

The breakdown continues as follows:

● 25 percent accepted just apprenticeship-style employment (without any further

compromise from their employers).

● 10 percent are currently completing their initial apprenticeship.

● 1 percent accepted a part-time position.

3 Lighthouse Labs, Community Retrieved from https://www.lighthouselabs.ca/community. Accessed on

June 25, 2016.

https://www.lighthouselabs.ca/community


In terms of earnings, the average starting salary for students who accept full-time positions is

$50,000, but the range goes up to $85,000 per year.

These charts from LL’s Student Outcome Report4 provide more detail:

Employment Status of Lighthouse Labs graduates:

Graduates’ career objectives:

Timeframe for accepting employment:

4 Lighthouse Labs, Lighthouse Labs Student Outcomes Report (Vancouver, B.C.: online, 2015).

Retrieved from https://lighthouselabs.ca/lighthouse_labs_student_outcomes_report.pdf Accessed on June 6, 2016.

https://lighthouselabs.ca/lighthouse_labs_student_outcomes_report.pdf

https://lighthouselabs.ca/lighthouse_labs_student_outcomes_report.pdf


These results are in sync with the industry’s appetite for skilled workers.

According to the report Digital Talent: Road to 2020 and Beyond5, prepared by the Information

and Communications Technology Council, one of the reasons why Canada lags behind other

developed countries when it comes to the adoption of new technologies in different segments of

the market, is because there is a lack of professionals who can assess and implement

technological innovations as soon as they are hired. “This is particularly vital for small and

medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that acutely need skilled digital talent, but have limited means

to train or find a job-ready workforce to respond to the fast changing reality of the global

economic landscape,” the study reads.

THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND LL

So, Lighthouse Labs’ method is working.

Khurram says that, after reviewing his own educational experience, he was convinced of the

effectiveness of this new practical and intense teaching style.

He has said, “I found that 80 percent of what I learnt in the classroom was very much academic.

Instead of learning how to work with databases and build apps that work with databases, we

were learning relational algebra which never ever did I use in my career.”

Around 2013, Khurram had the opportunity to teach at Bitmaker6, one of Canada’s first coding

bootcamps, now rebranded as a ‘tech skills accelerator.’ After helping them build their

curriculum, he saw the same positive results he’s now witnessing at Lighthouse Labs.

As he got involved with the newer generation of developers in the Toronto tech scene, Khurram

knew he wanted to continue helping people reach their full potential when it comes to both

coding and entering the labour market through the right door.

He started to rediscover his love for teaching, that same fervor he used to feel many moons ago

when he was just a kid back in Pakistan. Yes, you read it right, just a kid.

Being one of the few children in his neighbourhood who owned a computer, Khurram was

always interested in knowing what circuits and commands made his video games work. Thus,

5 Information and Communications Technology Council, Digital Talent: Road to 2020 and Beyond

(Ottawa, O.N.: Government of Canada, 2016). Retrieved from http://www.ictc-ctic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ICTC_DigitalTalent2020_ENGLISH_FINAL_March2016.pdf Accessed on July 12, 2016. 6 Bitmaker, About, Retrieved from https://bitmaker.co/. Accessed on June 25, 2016.

http://www.ictc-ctic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ICTC_DigitalTalent2020_ENGLISH_FINAL_March2016.pdf

https://bitmaker.co/


he began to educate himself in the basics of programming. He even ended up volunteering at

the local community centre, teaching people DOS and how to use computers and word

processing software. He was only eight years old and the youngest among the teachers and

volunteers.

Five years later, he moved with his family to Canada. Once he overcame the typical early

adaptation barriers, he was able to resume his mentoring path. His Mississauga high school had

-what he calls- “a decent computer science program,” but it wasn’t enough. So, Khurram

decided to take matters into his own hands.

Since his teacher was overworked and didn’t have time to learn the most current programming

languages, the five feet three inches tall teenager read a whole book on Java and created the

curriculum for the class.

Once he completed his secondary education, he went into computer science. By that time, he

already knew how important it was to match theoretical learning with practice, so he took a four-

year program with a co-op component at University of Guelph. The academic setting allowed

him to build a good network of like-minded people, while the co-op gave him real-world

experience.

During his internships at both Sybase and Environment Canada, Khurram was able to

familiarize himself with all the aspects of business, from technical tasks to dealing with clients.

He was getting paid while, at the same time, receiving mentorship and being allowed to make

mistakes and learn from them.

The now entrepreneur realized this was the best way of getting trained for the real world and he

knew that, eventually, he wanted other people to have the same experience as his.

SO, HOW DID LIGHTHOUSE LABS COME TO BE?

As any recent graduate, Khurram needed to work for others to both learn more about the

business, and pay off his student debt.

As a junior developer, he worked for NutraCore and MDialog. Then he moved to Soft Gravity,

where he landed a spot as a senior developer. This role allowed him to unleash his full potential,

as he helped the company go from one to 10 employees and from revenue of zero to $1 million

in the first year.

Once he had discovered the secrets of business, Khurram decided it was time to launch his own

venture. He partnered with his long-time friend, Josh Borts, and together they created


Functional Imperative in 2012. The company does consulting and software development with a

focus on the legal, healthcare and education realms.

Khurram was doing well. He was having success. But, he was struggling with a couple of

issues.

First, he was having trouble finding good developers who were well trained at the junior level out

of university. The people he was hiring had good problem solving and theory skills, but they

were not able to hit the ground running. They had to be trained from the ground up in modern

technology, web technology, and best practices.

Second, even though he enjoyed teaching and consulting part-time at Bitmaker Labs, he felt he

wasn’t doing enough to help form the next generation of developers. He didn’t want people to go

through what he went through in the early days of his career.

Convinced in the effectiveness of immersive-progressive education and having learnt from BL’s

successes and mistakes, Khurram decided Vancouver was the right place to open one of

Western Canada’s first coding bootcamps. At that time, CodeCore Bootcamp7 was also

emerging in the city.

“I find that bootcamps really educate students not just about coding, not just about becoming a developer, but also what that means and what that means for their future, what kind of jobs there are out there, what kind of skills they need to acquire afterwards, so a lot more real-world,”


When he decided to move out west, the entrepreneur was also at a point in his life where he

needed a change of air. Vancouver’s rainy days and offshore winds sounded exactly like what

he was looking for, so he convinced his partners at Functional Imperative that investing in this

bootcamp made sense. In October of 2013 they landed at Launch Academy.

With a small amount of money and no outside investors, they joined LA’s five-week Lean

Entrepreneur Accelerator Program8. They were offered desks, fibre optic internet, office hours

with resident mentors, perks such as $100,000 Google Cloud credits, in-class sessions, and

practical know-how to build a startup reducing the risk of failure and the risk of running out of

cash.

7 CodeCore, About Retrieved from https://codecore.ca/about. Accessed on June 25, 2016.

8 Launch Academy, Lean Entrepreneur Accelerator Program Retrieved from

http://leap.launchacademy.ca/. Accessed on June 26, 2016.

https://codecore.ca/posts/codecore-a-developer-hub

https://angel.co/launch-academy-join-launch-academy-no-deadline-first-come-first-serve/apply

https://angel.co/launch-academy-join-launch-academy-no-deadline-first-come-first-serve/apply

https://codecore.ca/about

http://leap.launchacademy.ca/


They didn’t have a long runway, but the approach they took was that they were going to get

revenue from day one by collecting tuition and building the curriculum on demand. In other

words, the plan was to launch the business before investing in it.

Launch Academy also gave them the opportunity to connect with other people involved in the

tech world, from CTOs, to lead developers, to marketers. The result was a constant exchange of

resources, in the sense that many people within LA have become mentors at LL and many

startups also end up recruiting Lighthouse Labs’ recent graduates. Both companies recognize

that their routes to success are deeply connected.

VANCOUVER’S INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM

Khurram thought that starting Lighthouse Labs in Vancouver made sense because of a big

boom of technical ecosystem growth.

According to the Vancouver Economic Commission9, out of the 101,000 tech professionals that

work in British Columbia, 75,000 do so in Vancouver, with wages that are 60 percent higher10

than B.C.’s industrial average.

Official data also reveals that there are more than 9,000 tech companies in the province,

including giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce, Sony Pictures

Imageworks, Hootsuite and more. Combined, all of these companies generate approximately

6.5 percent of the provincial GDP11 and, back in 2013 (most recent data), contributed $12.5

billion12 to Canada’s GDP, behind Ontario ($45.8 billion), Quebec ($24.9 billion), and Alberta

($17.7 billion).

Khurram is aware of these figures and he is convinced that having a healthy tech sector benefits

his business, because the software development community is all about collaboration, sharing

and growing together.

9 Vancouver Economic Commision, Technology (Vancouver, B.C.: VEC, 2016) Retrieved from

http://www.vancouvereconomic.com/focus/technology/ Accessed on July 12, 2016. 10

B.C. Government, The #BCTech Strategy 2016 (Victoria, B.C.: Government of British Columbia, 2016) Retrieved from https://bctechstrategy.gov.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/BCTech_Strategy.pdf Accessed on July 12, 2016. 11

Dan Schrier, Lillian Hallin, Profile of the British Columbia High Technology Sector: 2014 Edition (Victoria, B.C.: Province of British Columbia, 2015) Retrieved from http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/BusinessIndustry/HighTechnology.aspx Accessed on July 12, 2016. 12

Ibid.

http://www.vancouvereconomic.com/focus/technology/

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http://www.vancouvereconomic.com/focus/technology/


Source: Province of British Columbia (2015). Profile of the British Columbia. High Technology Sector: 2014 Edition. Retrieved from

http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/BusinessIndustry/HighTechnology.aspx Accessed on July 12, 2016.

According to Lighthouse Labs’ co-founder, the city hosts at least three weekly meetups around

web, technology, industry trends, how to solve specific problems, and so on. In fact, on the

social networking website Meetup, as of the middle of the year, there were 103 tech-related

events scheduled for 2016.

This means that students are doing the bootcamps and, afterwards, they’re going to these

forums and conferences.

As a result, LL’s graduates end up growing their network and getting hired by tech companies

such as Mobify, Unbounce, Hootsuite, or non-tech companies facing tech challenges such as

Telus, MEC, Lululemon, or Nike.

http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/BusinessIndustry/HighTechnology.aspx



“Without a community, there’s no bootcamp as far as I’m concerned,”

– Khurram Virani, cofounder and Head of Education of Lighthouse Labs.

THE ALLIES

At Lighthouse Labs they talk about two types of partners: Community Partners13 and Hiring

Partners14.

Community Partners are organizations such Microsoft, the BC Innovation Council, Futurpreneur

Canada, among others, that support demo days, meetups, learn-to-code initiatives, hackathons,

guest speakers and digital literacy events organized by Lighthouse Labs.

Hiring Partners are companies that are directly connected to LL’s career services and that seek

people to fill their vacancies. There are 160 of these and, of course, some of them also take part

in the bootcamp’s learning initiatives as Community Partners.

Without charging any fees to either the hiring partner or the student, Lighthouse Labs acts as a

matchmaker. Employers can get an idea of junior developers’ skills by joining Demo Day, which

is similar to a thesis symposium but presentations are pressure-less and a networking event

follows. They also have the option of asking for people with specific skills and backgrounds, and

receiving a curated list of candidates from the staff. Finally, if they want to have an advantage

ahead of graduation day, employers can ask for a ‘speed dating’ service and interview students

before they finish school.

On top of the companies already mentioned, Latergramme, Vancouver Canucks, BlueBat

Games, Wishpond, Electronic Arts, and many others have employed Lighthouse Labs’

graduates.

But it wasn’t always this easy. Khurram remembers that it took them a few months to rally

different companies in the Lower Mainland. ‘You don’t turn into a developer in eight weeks. It

takes four years,’ was the type of skeptical resistance he was getting.

Once those companies started noticing that LL’s graduates had the correct mindset, the

willingness to learn as well as the core skills to be able to add value from day one, then they

began mentoring and hiring them.

13

Lighthouse Labs, Community Retrieved from https://www.lighthouselabs.ca/community. Accessed on

June 25, 2016. 14

Ibid.

https://www.lighthouselabs.ca/community


There are other reasons why companies, even international big names, are hiring in Vancouver.

One of those reasons is that they get to pay lower salaries than they would have to pay in other

Canadian provinces or in California.



Even though developers’ wages are above the industrial average, they rise at a very slow pace.

In 2013, wages for tech workers15 in B.C. rose just 1.7 percent compared to 2.8 percent across

all industries.

Average earnings in the high tech sector in the province are about $66,720 CAD per year,

compared to $117,600 USD in California. Thirty-seven other U.S. states also report higher pay

than B.C.

Given that development is cheaper in Vancouver, even smaller companies are making their way

up north. According to Khurram, San Francisco-based investors are telling their newly invested

companies, ‘it’s too expensive and competitive to be in the Valley. Go launch your startup

elsewhere in the United States or in Canada.’ Thus, they raise money in the Valley and then

they bring that money into Canada and spend it on Canadian developers.

15

Dan Schrier, Lillian Hallin, Profile of the British Columbia High Technology Sector: 2014 Edition

(Victoria, B.C.: Province of British Columbia, 2015) Retrieved from http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/BusinessIndustry/HighTechnology.aspx Accessed on July 12, 2016.



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Low wages may be beneficial for employers but that’s not the case for employees, especially

taking into account that Vancouver is the third least-affordable city worldwide16 when it comes to

housing, after Sydney and Hong Kong.

Vancouver is experiencing a brain drain - particularly towards the United States.

However, some people like Khurram are sorting out these challenges because they want to stay

in the city and be part of its innovation ecosystem. Aside from those who start their own

ventures, many developers are now working remotely for U.S. companies and receiving larger

salaries. This scenario, of course, is not ideal because the latter are not helping Canadian

startups and tech firms grow. Yet, some would argue that it is still better than them moving

away.

This state of affairs creates another side effect. That is that many small, local IT companies

have trouble recruiting because they cannot afford to pay as much as the U.S. giants.

16

Wendell Cox, Hugh Pavletich, 12th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2016 Rating Middle-Income Housing Affordability (Belleville, Illinois: Demographia, 2015) Retrieved from http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf Accessed on July 12, 2016.




http://h


Partially due to the above reasons, Vancouver ranked 18th in the 2015 Compass Startup

Ecosystem Report17 – much lower than one might expect for such a desirable setting with two

major research universities, a stable legal environment, and large immigrant communities.

Source: Startup Compass Inc., The Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking 2015 (San Francisco, California: Startup Compass Inc.,

2015).

WHAT’S AHEAD

The Information and Communications Technology Council estimates that more than 14,000 tech

jobs will be created in B.C. by 2019. But, given the aforementioned context, there might not be

enough people to fill those positions.

“It is projected that the availability of homegrown ICT talent will not be sufficient to meet these

hiring requirements. Combined with replacement demand due to retirements and other exits,

17

Startup Compass Inc., The Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking 2015 (San Francisco, California: Startup Compass Inc., 2015).

https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/16/vancouvers-tech-ecosystem-where-do-we-go-from-here/

https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/16/vancouvers-tech-ecosystem-where-do-we-go-from-here/


British Columbia would have to fill 20,900 ICT positions over the next five years,” the ICTC

Labour Market 2015-2019 Outlook18 reads.

Overall, Canada has 877,470 ICT workers, but by 2019 the country will need 182,000 people to

fill in vacancies in the sector, says the Digital Talent: Road to 2020 and Beyond report by the

ICTC.

Source: Information and Communications Technology Council, Digital Talent: Road to 2020 and Beyond Retrieved from

http://www.ictc-ctic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ICTC_DigitalTalent2020_ENGLISH_FINAL_March2016.pdf Accessed on July

12, 2016.

18

The Information and Communications Technology Council, The Smart Economy Reshaping Canada’s Workforce: Labour Market Outlook 2015-2019 (Ottawa, ON: ICTC, 2015) Retrieved from http://www.digcompass.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Labour-Market-Outlook-2015-2019-FINAL.pdf Accessed on July 12, 2016.

http://www.digcompass.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Labour-Market-Outlook-2015-2019-FINAL.pdf








This forecast worries Khurram a little bit. He wonders how many of those positions can be filled

with junior developers, like the ones graduating from Lighthouse Labs. He’s sure that there’s a

certain appetite and a certain marketplace for junior openings, but he says that if the market

gets saturated with too many people and they do not find opportunities right away, that could

become an issue for the bootcamp’s paradigm of hands-on experience.

Khurram and his team are currently trying to find ways to support LL alumni, so they can reach

intermediate/senior level positions quickly. “It’s not going to be an immersive format, because

they need to be working while they are learning more. So, is it mentorship support on call? Is it

basically Skype calls and check-ins and giving them homework and then we check in on that?

What should the pricing look like for something like that?” he broods.

This situation has led Lighthouse Labs to avoid exponential growth in Vancouver. But that

doesn’t mean they are not growing at all; they’re just diversifying and looking at other

communities both in urban and rural areas.

It all started with the HTML500 annual event that Lighthouse Labs launched in February of

2014. According to their website, it is “Canada’s largest learn to code event,” where 500

newbies are taught for free by experts from 50 of Vancouver’s top companies.

Given its high profile, the press usually provides substantial coverage of the HTML500 and that

exposure has helped Lighthouse Labs create its first spin-off. In May of 2015, the Yukon

government approached them saying that they wanted to increase and ignite the territory’s

innovation ecosystem.

Initially, Premier Darrell Pasloski’s office thought about another HTML500, but the idea didn’t

sink in. Since students from Whitehorse had been coming to Vancouver to take the full program,

Khurram and his partners decided that doing a satellite bootcamp there made sense. The five-

student pilot turned out to be a success.

That first experience inspired LL to open pop-up satellite locations where they offer the Intro to

Web Development course and the Web Development Bootcamp, usually in coworking spaces

where students can interact with tech startups, designers, and businesses.

In Kelowna, they partnered with co+Lab coworking space, the tech accelerator Accelerate

Okanagan, and FreshGrade, a company that provides a suite of apps to enable communication

and increase engagement between teachers, students, and parents.

In Victoria, space is provided by the Victoria Innovation, Advanced Technology and

Entrepreneurship Council, while lessons are supported by Metalab, a firm that builds all kinds of

digital products; Ladies Learning Code, a nonprofit that teaches women and youth to become


tech builders; and Emplomacy, a company that focuses on recruiting talent for growth-stage

technology businesses.

In Calgary, Assembly Coworking Space is their main partner.

In Montreal, they built alliances with the accelerator District 3, the coworking space Crew

Collective, and Notman House, which is a non-profit organization that supports the development

of startup ecosystems across Canada.

In London, Ont., TechAlliance MVP Lab offered them a space to work in.

In Halifax, the incubator VoltaLabs is their main ally.

In all of these locations, students go to a classroom --usually a coworking-type of space--,

practice from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., interact with local mentors and, at the same time, receive remote

support through one-on-one discussions on ScreenHero, ‘attending’ live-streamed seminars

held in Vancouver, raising questions on Slack and Perch, and reviewing recorded lectures and

slides on Compass, the Learning Management System they use.

Although it all sounds pretty straightforward, there are important challenges Lighthouse Labs

still has to overcome. First, there’s the issue of the transitory nature of the pop-up bootcamps,

which hampers the possibility of providing students with the same experience that they would

get in Vancouver.

This situation has clearly created some discomfort. Reviews from students in remote cities or

towns have not been as positive as expected. Thus, LL’s staff is working internally to build

software tools able to reduce friction.

The second challenge that subsidiaries face relates to the job market. Khurram says that there

is not a network of employers being built across Canada, so bootcamps have to deal with a

chicken and egg problem: they need developers to start building a community, but they also

need companies that are able to hire those developers. In other words, training developers in

nascent innovation ecosystems creates a placement challenge for graduates.


“The best thing you can do is bring a bootcamp that is very close to the community and that is all about starting that community,”


AN EXCEPTION

There’s only one place where the tech ed advocates have not run into any of the

aforementioned issues: Toronto.

A year and a half after landing in Vancouver, Lighthouse Labs’ team headed back to Toronto to

open a second campus.

HIGHLINE, a pre-seed venture capital firm whose Vancouver offices are across the hall from

Lighthouse Labs, offered them space in its downtown Toronto headquarters as well as ongoing

entrepreneurial advice and consultation. “After seeing how seriously the Lighthouse Labs team

takes computer programming education and their dedication to preparing students for jobs, our

partnership became an obvious strategic alignment to form to accelerate growth nationally,”

Marcus Daniels, the company’s founder and CEO said in a press release19 at the time.

Drawing from the collaborative philosophy they learnt at Launch Academy, and given the fact

that they couldn’t find anything similar in Toronto, they transformed the space into Devhub, a

coworking centre where a collective of developers from all spectrums of the tech world get

together to work and learn. Even Functional Imperative’s staff works from there.

In Toronto, Lighthouse Labs offers its four core programs.

Beyond student demand, Lighthouse Labs’ expansion reflects its founders’ forward-thinking

approach when it comes to addressing trends in the tech workforce. They believe that in the

next 10 to 20 years improvements in connectivity and virtual reality are going to foster a global

distributed mindset, different from the current ‘our headquarters are here, this is where all our

developers are.’

Their predictions are in line with what experts say is going to happen. According to International

Data Corporation, Canada’s mobile worker population20 must be around 13.4 million or 73

19

Bianca Bartz, Helping Canada’s Premier Dev Bootcamp Expand Across Canada (Vancouver, B.C.: HIGHLINE, 2015) Retrieved from http://www.highline.vc/articles/highline-lighthouse-labs/. Accessed on June 26, 2016.

http://www.highline.vc/articles/highline-lighthouse-labs/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/the-future-of-work/mobile-workers-are-the-new-norm/article8295535/

http://www.highline.vc/articles/highline-lighthouse-labs/


percent of the workforce. The research firm expects this number to rise21 to at least 14 million by

2018, while the U.S. is expected to reach 105.4 million22 mobile workers in 2020.

BUT THERE MUST BE A COMMITMENT

Regardless of how distributed the workforce gets, Khurram Virani believes that in-house

investments are needed so Canada’s IT development workforce continues to grow. For him,

there still isn’t enough private investment in growing tech companies or tech innovation both in

Vancouver and countrywide because most of the money is going towards real estate. He wishes

the government would get more involved in addressing this issue.

Although Canada’s ICT sector is a $7,419 billion per year industry, companies invest less than

half in digital technologies than their counterparts in the United States do. “Canada’s ICT

investment as a percentage of non-residential gross fixed capital formation was 17% compared

to more than 30% in the United States and more than 20% in countries like Sweden, Denmark

and the United Kingdom,” the Digital Talent: Road to 202023 report states.

The same review recognizes that a 20 percent increase in direct investments in ICT

technologies would yield more than $16.5 billion to the national GDP.

Aware of these possibilities, the Federal Liberal government has committed to invest $200

million annually24, over the course of three years, in local incubator and accelerator programs,

with the idea of growing tech startups in various provinces. Another $100 million a year will go to

the Industrial Research Assistance Program, which encourages innovation and small- and

medium-sized businesses.

20

Wallace Immen, Mobile workers are the ‘new norm’ (Toronto, ON: The Globe and Mail, 2013) Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/the-future-of-work/mobile-workers-are-the-new-norm/article8295535/ Accessed on on July 12, 2016. 21

Krista Collins, Emily Taylor, Canadian Mobile Worker 2014–2018 Forecast (Toronto, ON: International

Data Corporation, 2014) Retrieved from http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=CA5MS14 Accessed

on on July 12, 2016. 22

International Data Corporation, IDC Forecasts U.S. Mobile Worker Population to Surpass 105 Million by 2020 (Toronto, ON: International Data Corporation, 2014) Retrieved from https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25705415 Accessed on on July 12, 2016. 23

The Information and Communications Technology Council, Digital Talent: Road to 2020 and Beyond (Ottawa, ON: ICTC, 2016) Retrieved from http://www.ictc-ctic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ICTC_DigitalTalent2020_ENGLISH_FINAL_March2016.pdf Accessed on on July 12, 2016. 24

David Friend, Where should Trudeau's promised $900M for tech sector go? (Toronto, ON: Toronto Star, 2015) Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/business/2015/10/21/where-should-trudeaus-promised-900m-for-tech-sector-go.html Accessed on June 26, 2016.

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=CA5MS14

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25705415




https://www.thestar.com/business/2015/10/21/where-should-trudeaus-promised-900m-for-tech-sector-go.html




http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=CA5MS14

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25705415






Some of this money has already been pledged25, with a sum lading the coffers of Lighthouse

Labs’ Halifax partner VoltaLabs.

For Khurram, “that’s part of it.” He recognizes -and according to different statements, so does

the government- that procurement policies and procedures to promote technology adoption and

talent acquisition in both public and private organizations also need to be in place to strengthen

Canada’s digital ecosystem.

QUESTIONS THAT LIE AHEAD

Given this outlook, what is Lighthouse Labs best path to continued growth? Or should it not

grow anymore at all?

Should Lighthouse Labs only launch satellites when there is a partnership in place to hire

graduates?

The company does explore the needs and demands of communities before going into them, and

they’ve found most benefit from the injection of developers who are able to work in non-tech

organizations. Still, does this approach help grow the innovation ecosystem in such

communities?

On top of this, does the education that students in these remote places are receiving equal that

of students in Vancouver and Toronto? LL has admitted that, regardless of all the Slacks,

LiveStreams, or Perches, creating personal connections between the main support team and

people in London or Halifax remains a challenge. So, are these graduates able to provide

similar added value to their employers from day one?

Could establishing fully-equipped schools in those towns be a feasible possibility? Their first

cohort in Whitehorse was of five students, and Lighthouse Labs collected +$40,000 in tuition

payments. So, beyond feasible, would it be profitable?

What should Lighthouse Labs do about employers who are looking for intermediate/senior level

developers? A good portion of the almost 21,000 ICT positions in British Columbia that will open

in the next five years are replacements due to retirements. Is Lighthouse Labs going to continue

ignoring this labour market reality by focusing on creating solely junior developers?

25

Terry Dawes, Canada’s tech sector already positioned to benefit from federal budget (North Vancouver, B.C.: Cantech Letter, 2016) Retrieved from http://www.cantechletter.com/2016/03/canadas-tech-sector-already-positioned-to-benefit-from-federal-budget/ Accessed on June 26, 2016.

http://www.cantechletter.com/2016/03/canadas-tech-sector-already-positioned-to-benefit-from-federal-budget/




They could stay focused on their niche of producing junior developers but, would that be such a

good idea? Should they start to train at intermediate/senior level? Should they work with

partners to establish better paths to intermediate status through practical experience?

As Khurram sat staring at his coffee cup in front of the red brick wall, he pondered the best path

forward for Lighthouse Labs.