The MT Lab, a Montreal incubator for young tourism startups, recently launched Mont X, established in Mont-Tremblant. The new incubator specializing in sports, outdoors and well-being could support dozens of businesses in its first year of activity.
Charged by the City of Mont-Tremblant with creating Mont X, the MT Lab will have a three-year mandate for the management of this new incubator. This will offer three programs.
The first, called Base Camp, will consist of a weekend of discovery of entrepreneurship. The second program will be called Elevation. Lasting one year, it will help companies develop and solidify their offering.
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Finally, the third program, Horizon, will be aimed at growing businesses that need support in different forms, such as seeking financing.
For its first year of operation, Mount X could receive 10 to 15 companies in its Elevation program, a handful in Horizon, and 30 to 40 in Base Camp.
“As we are at the very beginning, it is difficult to assess the demand, but there is no one else in this incubation segment in Quebec and the phone is already ringing, because several incubators want to recommend young people to us shoots, says Frédérick Roussel. So, things are going well. »
Founded in 2017, the MT Lab was the first incubator dedicated to tourism in the province.
Having supported 106 companies to date, MT Lab is showing robust results. The incubator reports, for example, that half of the companies that used its services experienced growth in turnover or the number of employees greater than 20% for three years. In Quebec, in 2022, the average was more like 5.5%.
The MT Lab also grants nearly $500,000 to its young companies per year. It mainly focuses on the adequacy of the offer to the market, i.e. ensuring that the product or service developed by the young company meets a real need in the industry.
“We are in the last incubation phase and we are ensuring that the offer is relevant to the tourism market,” explains Martin Lessard, general director of MT Lab.
To achieve this, the incubator relies on an important and distinctive advantage that it has compared to other more general incubators: it counts on around fifteen partners, large companies in the industry, to advise its young people. shoots.
Mont X, moreover, will benefit from the links that the MT Lab has forged with its partners.
“A company that develops climbing claws, for example, could perhaps test them at the Olympic Park, or at SEPAQ,” illustrates Frédérick Roussel. This collaboration with major partners is really something that we want to keep, and which makes us unique. »