MAIN. wants Québec’s startup support to stop being a scavenger hunt

In autumn 2015, people whose job was to help startups gathered at Maison Notman in Montreal. They pooled their expertise to make support more coherent. That is an unglamorous beginning for an innovation organization: the helpers needed help working together. The network they formed became MAIN., initially the Montréal Accelerator & Incubator Network. Its name also winked at nearby Saint-Laurent Boulevard, known as La Main. A local joke would acquire a provincial job.

A crowded room still needs introductions

There is a peculiar difficulty in entrepreneurial support. An organization can have precisely the expertise a founder needs, yet remain practically invisible to that founder. Geography, eligibility rules and unfamiliar names stand between the question and the answer. MAIN.’s work occupies this space between organizations. Its customers and users include entrepreneurs, incubators, accelerators and business advisers across Québec.

The most straightforward entry point is Aiguillage, its personalized referral service. Create a portal account, complete a profile and explain what you need. MAIN’s team reviews the request and sends three to five recommendations. The service is currently free. It asks for an innovative business, or an idea with strong growth potential, and a willingness to invest effort in receiving support.

A useful distinction follows. An accelerator operates its own support program; a consultant sells particular expertise. MAIN can point toward either and supply services that cross organizational boundaries. Its advantage is knowledge of the connections. That makes collaborators as important as competitors. The alternative is often a founder making the same search alone, one application and introduction at a time.

The membership list was not enough

MAIN’s own experiments make the argument more interesting. In its 2025–2026 report, the organization describes trying three membership plans for Cercle, two of them paid, alongside training, activity credits, discounts and collaborative workshops. The community trial recorded 469 registrations. Average participation was 14%, and filling training sessions proved difficult.

These numbers are useful precisely because they refuse to flatter. A contact list gives a community its outline; repeated participation gives it substance. The report does not establish why each member stayed away. It does show that assembling people and offering benefits did not automatically produce a busy professional community.

Cercle now lists annual individual membership at CAD 200 and organizational membership at CAD 1,000, covering ten employees. MAIN also works with GrowthWheel on a French-language Business Advisor Certificate. Three two-hour modules earn the credential; one module annually keeps it active. Published pricing starts at CAD 750. The proposition is practical: the people giving business advice have a profession worth developing.

A workshop cannot answer the doctor’s phone

Another lesson came from supporting founders’ mental health. MAIN offered stress and anxiety workshops with Marketpedia and helped distribute UQAM-linked OREKA workshops. Its annual report describes the limitation plainly: useful tools and training still left several entrepreneurs without an everyday safety net.

Parapluie grew from that gap. Launched in November 2025, the service pairs MAIN’s resource access with Dialogue’s digital healthcare: round-the-clock telemedicine, mental-health support and a personal and professional assistance program. Access includes the subscriber’s family. The current listed annual price is CAD 250, compared with the CAD 225 launch offer.

The crowdfunding campaign reached 124% of its preorder target, unlocking CAD 25,000 from La Ruche’s Fonds ImpACTE, supported by Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions. MAIN’s 2025–2026 report records more than a hundred entrepreneurs covered. Health information stays between the user and Dialogue. The subscription does not reimburse healthcare bought outside that platform.

“Donner aux entrepreneur.e.s le courage du risque.”MAIN’s mission: give entrepreneurs the courage to take risks.

Here, courage has an administrative component. Someone has to negotiate access, collect payments and make a service available. The cheerful language of entrepreneurship becomes more convincing when it comes with an appointment.

The invention needs a business plan, too

Intellectual property presents another boundary problem. A founder may understand the invention while knowing little about protecting or commercializing it. MAIN launched momentumPI in 2023 through the federal ÉleverlaPI initiative. Its current history page reports more than 400 IP projects financed between 2023 and 2026.

The offer includes free online education, a thirty-minute exploratory consultation and support for developing or implementing an IP strategy with a specialist firm. Financial support has a CAD 100,000 lifetime ceiling. Current terms require a CAD 250 MAIN membership; implementation requires the company to pay 30% of the services’ value. Eligibility includes Québec headquarters, a valid enterprise number and fewer than 500 employees.

These conditions shape what someone can copy. Combine education with access to specialists and money for defined work. Preserve the founder’s choice of expert. Make eligibility and contributions explicit. The arrangement depends on available funds, suitable firms and businesses able to contribute. Under the current schedule, supported activities must finish by March 15, 2027.

Who pays for the connections?

MAIN is a nonprofit with a mixture of public project funding, partners and earned income. Its 2022–2023 report said it received no dedicated operating funding. Paid memberships, healthcare subscriptions and training provide revenue, while commissioned research adds another service. An eight-module fundraising course, created by Front Row Ventures with MAIN and Espace CDPQ, currently lists a CAD 250 price for one year’s access.

In its 2025 commentary, director general Louis-Félix Binette argued for infrastructure able to finance much of itself and withstand political shifts. MAIN had also retired its expanded public name in November 2024 because it confused people and no longer captured the mission. The organization was broadening from an accelerator movement toward the needs of entrepreneurs themselves.

The transferable lesson is modest and demanding: start with the point where people lose their way, then build a service around that friction. Count who returns. Notice when information cannot replace access. MAIN’s usefulness depends on real local expertise, reliable partners and services people will use. A better-connected support system still leaves the founder with the business to build.