After a couple of months attending big tech events across Canada and beyond, and listening to similar messaging on the ravenous appetite of AI to eat companies and markets, I wasn’t totally sold on heading to Montreal last week for Startupfest to hear more of the same. But, to be honest, I’m thrilled I went. While Web Summit Vancouver and Inventures in Calgary might have attracted big names, and Toronto Tech Week focused on great local stories, Startupfest lived up to its name and was all about startups and the tactics of building, scaling and surviving on the startup path.

Let’s explore a few elements from Startup Fest that really stood out:

1. A tactical focus on IP: first up on the agenda (literally) was the event’s IPFest sponsored by Main Quebec (and hosted on stage by Communitech’s Alexis Conrad). Importantly, the series of panels and presentations on this topic went far beyond the usual “intellectual property is really important” discourse by bringing lived experiences from founders and investors on the nuances of when, what, and how to protect IP and to what end.
2. Founder to founder learning: while the main stages at Startupfest featured some great storytelling (my favourite was from Planetary CEO Mike Kelland explaining how his company won the XPRIZE for demonstrating the highest-scale form of carbon removal in the world) the real action happened in the small breakout rooms along the halls of the Grand Quay of the Port of Montreal. Gathered in a dozen or so of these rooms, we heard founders, investors and others share their expertise on topics such as managing boards, mergers and acquisitions and bootstrapping, and in a one to many setting. While that might sound rather simple, the engagement I witnessed in these rooms was through the roof and based on the questions and discussions I heard, clearly of huge value to the founders attending.
3. Tech horizons instead of tech verticals: We often limit our thinking about technology along a vertical scale – think medtech, agtech, edtech, and so on—yet as Canada’s Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon noted during his opening remarks on the Oceanfest stage sponsored by Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, Canada’s effectiveness at evolving startups into scaleups will come from our ability to bridge those verticals and take innovations from one sector or vertical and apply them to others. From oceans to agriculture, from digital to mining, and importantly, with Canadian AI as the platform technology that enables them.
4. Quebec Tech: Toronto might be home to Canada’s largest ecosystem for technology and startups, but Montreal might just be its most productive. NorthGuide client QuebecTech was on stage at Startupfest unveiling a new report that outlines the Province of Quebec’s outsized contribution of late-stage startups to Canada’s total, as well as its top rank amongst Canadian jurisdictions in terms of the development of unicorn tech companies. And perhaps more importantly, the report highlights how Quebec’s late stage success is getting recycled into a next generation of startups. The success of this next generation, however, is at risk due to an exceptionally tight funding environment for early-stage ventures (a problem seen right across Canada.) This was also highlighted recently in another report produced by Quebec Tech in collaboration with NorthGuide, based on consultations with more than 30 Quebec tech entrepreneurs.

As I’ve written before, there’s clearly value for ecosystems in hosting global events that attract big brands and global investors, companies and visitors. But given those outsiders all go home at some point, and given they shop across jurisdictions to find what’s next, the more important task for ecosystem builders is ensuring that your local ecosystem is always learning, channeling lessons to a next generation, and building the connective tissue between founders, investors and other institutions that will give startups the strength they need to meet, convince and sell to global investors and global markets.