While we may be familiar with the dozen or so hi-tech companies that flank the major highways, The Weather Network, EMC2, VMWare, L3 – Wescam, to name a few, there are hundreds in our midst. If I said there are 25 hi-tech companies in Halton, I suspect most would agree that that seems like a reasonable number for Halton. If I said there is around 750 hi-tech companies in Halton, I’m certain most would balk at the number. But 750 is about right.
Show me the….numbers. During a recent visit with Halton Region’s Business Development offices, John Davidson kindly provided me with some numbers that illustrate the quantities of hi tech companies in our region. 
At Meetup #4 I had mistakenly quoted the total number as ~200, but the real number is 750. About 450 of those are < 4 person sized companies and are not shown in the 1st chart so as to make the chart more readable. Our challenge is to grow each band of companies to the next band, and attract new hi tech companies to the area. This is personally one of the values I would like to see Silicon Halton’s members return to the community – each one of us is an ambassador to companies considering expansion, relocation or startup.
I’ll be digging up stats and metrics over time, and posting them here.