Vancouver awards eight innovative startups free tech space—is the next HootSuite or EA among them?

Discovery Parks and the City of Vancouver have announced the inaugural winners of the Generator Challenge—a competition created to recognize Vancouver’s most promising early-stage technology companies.

Eight winners have been awarded space in the 5,000 square foot Generator workspace at Discovery Parks, designed to give technology startups a boost into the market place.

The winners are:

• Clinical Media Ltd
• Metafor Software
• BlueION
• Superna Life Sciences
• Secodix
• Del Mar Pharmaceuticals
• V7 Entertainment Inc.
• ConQuer Mobile

“Generator was created by Discovery Parks to facilitate success for the next big, made-in-BC tech companies,” says Mark Betteridge, Executive Director and CEO of Discovery Parks. “We selected the winners from a pool of very strong applicants, and believe that these companies could be BC’s next Hootsuite, Cardiome or Electronic Arts, in terms of technological innovation and impact on our economy.”

“Discovery Parks is an integral piece of Vancouver’s mission to attract and grow cutting-edge technology companies,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “Our city has the highest number of entrepreneurs per capita in North America, and with the fastest growing economy of any Canadian city in 2010, we’re proving to be the Green Capital—a compelling destination for venture capital and start-ups in the Pacific Rim. The Generator Challenge is creating enormous interest and these eight winners represent a promising future for Vancouver’s tech sector.”

The winners will be eligible to relocate to the Discovery Parks campus in January 2011.