The BetaKit Podcast Channel

"My god. Every time I ask you people for questions, I instantly regret it." 

What is Canada's most overrated tech company? How do we keep young founders in the country? Is BlackBerry making a comeback? What are Canada's must-read business books?

In a special mailbag episode of The BetaKit Podcast, BetaKit editor-in-chief Douglas Soltys answers your burning tech questions. Let's dig in!

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Amid global uncertainty, the path forward is clear: Canada's moment to build is now.

Presented by Uber Canada, DMZ, and National Bank of Canada, BetaKit Most Am...

"When we talk about sovereignty, we're talking about strategic capacity. Can you govern yourself with the tools that you have?"

What would happen if, overnight, Canada suddenly lost all access to American tech? Canadian Shield Institute managing director Vass Bednar joins to answer that question before discussing how Canada can bootstrap digital self-reliance in the face of weaponized integration and the best ways to evaluate the federal government's 'elbows up' policy initiatives.

Related: A Day in the Life Without American Tech (Infographic)

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Amid global uncertainty, the path forward is clear...

"There has never been a more exciting time to found and build a company in Canada."

A *killler* lineup of Startupfest speakers joins for a live recording of The BetaKit Podcast at the Startupfest village in Montréal's Grand Quay. In a rapid-fire talk show format, these luminaries discuss the leading causes of startup death, hard-won lessons in company scaling, the virtues of AI, and why now is the most exciting time to build a company in Canada. Featuring:

Johnathan Nightingale - Co-founder of Raw Signal Group

Fatima Khamitova - Director, Startups at V...

"I am Tron-pilled: I fight for the user. I want people to be in charge of their technology, not the other way around."

Award-winning Canadian science-fiction author, journalist, and tech activist Cory Doctorow is back with a new book, "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI." He joins The BetaKit Podcast to discuss healthy ways people can be assisted by AI rather than conscripted in service to the tech, before pitching the need to jailbreak Canada to help the country reclaim its digital sovereignty. What exactly is a reverse centaur? Let's dig in.

"The Arctic is the hardest operational environment on Earth for anybody. For any country."

Dominion Dynamics CEO and BetaKit Most Ambitious honouree Eliot Pence joins to discuss his company's plans to become the general contractor for Canada's defence needs, why the Arctic is so important, and why he came back to Canada to build.

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Amid global uncertainty, the path forward is clear: Canada's moment to build is now.

Presented by Uber Canada, DMZ, and National Bank of Canada, BetaKit Most Ambitious is back, telling stories of nearly 100 Canadian innovators strengthening ou...

"Either we build the innovation here with our entrepreneurs, or we buy it from someone else. And either we make the rules here, or we follow someone else's. Those are the choices we've got as a country."

It's a special Canada Day edition of The BetaKit Podcast! Canada's Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon, joins for an extended conversation to discuss the country's refreshed AI strategy, digital sovereignty, and forthcoming social media and privacy regulations.

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Amid global uncertainty, the path forward is clear: Canada's moment to build is now.

"If your entire technology is coming from a single country, and that country decides that every now and again they're going to shut off access to you, that's not a foundation you can build on."

The US government just ordered Anthropic to ban access to its most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Seems like now is a good time to talk about sovereign AI.

Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst joins to discuss how Canada's AI champion is built different than the other frontier LLM providers, how Star Trek informs the type of AI future the...

"You guys have done what you've done with the wind in your face. Imagine if you had the wind at your back. Wow."

Couldn't attend BetaKit Most Ambitious: Town Hall? Don't worry. Enjoy Waabi CEO Raquel Urtasun explaining how the future of transportation will be driven by physical AI before sitting down to discuss Canada's AI ecosystem with University of Toronto president Melanie Woodin. Then we have former RIM co-CEO and CCI chair Jim Balsillie talking about the need for economic statecraft to drive Canadian prosperity before sitting down with BetaKit editor-in-chief Douglas Soltys to discuss the...

"Everywhere I go, BetaKit is there. They grill me. Every time I say something, I say 'I wish I didn't say that' because BetaKit recorded it."

Couldn't attend BetaKit Most Ambitious: Town Hall? Don't worry. Enjoy our Vantage Points panel on Canadian defence and dual-use tech, featuring leaders from Dominion Dynamics, Sentinel R&D, and Xanadu, followed by a fireside chat with AI Minister Evan Solomon.

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Amid global uncertainty, the path forward is clear: Canada's moment to build is now.

Presented by Uber Canada, DMZ, and National Bank of Canada...

"You could start your day paddleboarding on Lake Ontario, then you could go to a workout class, then you could go to a session on what VCs want to hear."

Last year, a decentralized community experiment led to 15,000 people attending over 300 events in the middle of June.

With nearly 600 events welcoming people from around the world set to begin Monday, this year's Toronto Tech Week promises to be much bigger and bolder.

Co-directors Julia Konefal and Mell Truong join The BetaKit Podcast to ensure you are eventmaxxing all week long in Toronto.

"I know people with amazing ideas, but they don't have the right investment to take their idea to the prototype stage. At the prototype stage, they don't have the ability to take it to the manufacturing stage. So guess what happens? Another company from outside the country comes and snatches 'em up. It was heartbreaking to see that our amazing talent is being sucked away."

After decades in public service roles, former Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan is reporting for duty once again as a defence-tech entrepreneur with Vancouver-based Juno Industries. Sajjan joins this week to offer...

"There's a lot in this document… Do we feel the urgency and the threats are covered here?"

After months of waiting, the Defence Industrial Strategy offers clarity for $7 billion worth of spending commitments in Budget 2025. Is that enough? What's missing? What comes next?

Vass Bednar (Canadian Shield Institute) and Matt Lombardi (The Icebreaker) join to evaluate the strategy, the spending, and some sticky questions about canola oil and Canadian sovereignty.

The BetaKit Podcast is presented by BetaKit Most Ambitious: Town Hall, the marquee opening event of Toronto Tech Week 2026.

Tak...

"With AI, it should bring down the barriers to how you quickly adopt new software without having to become masters of the software."

When StackAdapt started with its adtech solution, competition was fierce and investors didn't see the opportunity. A decade later, StackAdapt is one of Canada's largest and most profitable private companies. CEO and co-founder Vitaly Pecherskiy joins to discuss how that happened, and why AI has changed B2B software development.

The BetaKit Podcast is presented by BetaKit Most Ambitious: Town Hall, the marquee opening event of Toronto Tech Week 2026.

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"We have a collective action problem. Somebody has to take the first step and say, 'Hey, we're going to deploy a lot of capital here in Canada. We're gonna bet that Canada is going to grow more over the next 20 years than it did over the last 20 years."

Recent data shows that the bottom has fallen out of Canadian venture capital, erasing any post-pandemic highs and taking the country back about a decade in terms of both dollars raised and dollars deployed by our nation's VCs.

What's the reason for Canadian venture's slow decline? What...

"Speed is of the essence. This is a super dynamic marketplace. Canada is losing entrepreneurs, we're losing the next generation of founders, and we need to do things, quick."

More than a decade ago, Canada launched the Start-up Visa program to attract entrepreneurial talent from around the world. After years of complaints of delays, fraud, and abuse, the program was suspended while featuring a whopping 10-35 year wait time. Boris Wertz (Version One Ventures) and Lucy Hargreaves (Build Canada) join to discuss what went wrong and what a functional entrepreneurial immigration program might look like.

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 "BDC is powerful in the sense that it can make or break a fund… And a lot of people are trying to close funds right now."

In 2022, the federal government commissioned a report asking Canada's VCs what they thought about Crown corporation BDC. The report was effectively forgotten, and the feedback was never actioned. Why? What did the report have to say about Canada's largest venture investor? And with Canadian VC in a multi-year lull, is BDC's "steady hand" approach preferred or simply necessary?

BetaKit reporter Madison McLauchlan joins to discuss.

Related Links:

"If we don't get our AI ducks in a row at some point and we miss that boat to shore up our industries right now, it's not really going to matter what regulations we have on the table. Because we won't have control."

The federal government has released the results of its public consultation on AI, including over 30 submissions from Minister Solomon's AI task force. Former ISED senior policy advisor Jaxson Khan joins to discuss how the consultations might inform Canada's AI future, and why the task force was "remarkably consistent" in its diagnosis, but not its...

"It's important for the success of Y Combinator to see people investing at a very, very early stage. And if it means, to keep them happy so that they're investing in YC companies, they will do what it takes."

Globally recognized tech accelerator Y Combinator will no longer directly invest in Canadian-domiciled startups. Is the change a huge blow to Canada, a big nothingburger, politically motivated, or perhaps simply "formalizing what's inevitable?"

Maverix Private Equity founder and managing partner John Ruffolo joins to discuss fuzzy data, "bullshit" narratives, and the real problems hampering Canadian tech.<...

"You have just seen control of one of the most popular social media platforms in one of the most influential countries in the world switch from one foreign power relative to you to another."

Canada and the US have both claimed national security concerns over TikTok. Our country's (unclear) response might not matter in the face of US-mandated corporate restructuring. As Grok's unchecked deepfake image generation on X raises thorny legal questions, Canada might not have the leverage to regulate.

What is a middle power like Canada to do in the face of algorithmic media...

"How do I create the 'wow' moment for my end user? And slowness never creates the wow moment."

PolarGrid founder and CEO Rade Kovacevic believes GenAI video and voice will be killer apps once they can function in real-time. Enabling real-time GenAI requires uncorking the inference bottleneck that the hyperscalers have helped build.

The BetaKit podcast is presented by Fasken Emerging Tech, supporting trailblazing startups, venture capital funds and acquirers of high-growth tech companies for over 30 years.

If you're curious about the health of Canada's tech M&A scene, you've got to check...

"The workweek will continue until morale improves."

Jared Lindzon and Joe O'Connor's new book, Do More in Four: Why It's Time for a Shorter Workweek, argues that the future of work will feature more productive employees working fewer days. How is that supposed to happen when boomers still run the world, Gen Z is still Gen Z, and AI is coming for all of our jobs anyway? Let's dig in.

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Solve for X is back! The latest season of the MaRS podcast is exploring more world-changing ideas. Join journalist Manjula Selvarajah as...

"Maybe we will see the robots that we want in our lives in 2026. But be prepared: they will definitely be controlled by people in India with Xbox controllers."

Robots, and IPOs, and AI, Oh My! Managing editor Sarah Rieger joins to ask the biggest tech questions of 2026, after evaluating which 2025 tech questions were definitively answered.

Solve for X is back! The latest season of the MaRS podcast is exploring more world-changing ideas. Join journalist Manjula Selvarajah as she talks to the people behind the latest innovations in tech and science.

Get a jump...

"2025 is the year that we committed to the bit, and all pretences went away."

Special guest star Rob Kenedi (Decelerator) joins for The BetaKit Podcast's annual tradition: stuffing your holiday stocking with the biggest tech stories of 2025. Have a different take on tech this year? Let us know: podcast@betakit.com.

Solve for X is back! The latest season of the MaRS podcast is exploring more world-changing ideas. Join journalist Manjula Selvarajah as she talks to the people behind the latest innovations in tech and science.

Get a jump on the future. Listen t...

"Can you imagine a quarter—25 percent—of Canada isn't sure if they'll be employed next year? That is a wild statistic."

Kevin Kliman, president of Canadian business at Employment Hero, joins to explain why Canada's workforce is underemployed and anxious about 2026. He also shares data indicating things are particularly bad for Gen Z, before offering tips on how they can make their mark in the modern workforce—with AI.

Solve for X is back! The latest season of the MaRS podcast is exploring more world-changing ideas. Join journalist Manjula Selvarajah as she talks to the people...

"It seems irrational, and irrational behaviour is where drama lives, it's where comedy lives. It's where all the fun is."

A communications tycoon built an empire turning airwaves into cash. Now, his son, long dismissed by his father, is fighting for control of the family business. Meanwhile, one shrewd public servant is determined to derail the company's billion-dollar takeover.

Is this a plot point from season three of Succession? No! It's a Canadian story… and it's all true—mostly. Award-winning playwright Michael Healey joins to discuss Rogers v. Rogers, his new play based on the Alex...

"It used to be that Silicon Valley was the kind of Mecca of the entrepreneur. What's happening is everyone has got the tools that used to be crowded in there. Now what we need to do is get the capital."

Minister Evan Solomon sits down with C100 Executive Director Michael Buhr to discuss the country's future in AI and the feds' commitments to innovation. Recorded live on the BetaKit Keynote Stage at SAAS NORTH.

The BetaKit Podcast is presented by QuickBooks on the Intuit platform, built to help Canadian businesses work smarter, more efficiently, and...

"The technology is there, and everyone loves cool technology, but it doesn't need to be a party trick. It needs to be something that's driving a meaningful business outcome, so pick your challenging problems." 

OpenText's Shannon Bell (EVP, Chief Digital Officer & Chief Information Officer) explains how she rolled out AI systematically at one of Canada's largest tech companies. As OpenText embraces human and digital resource management, has it found a return on its investment? Let's dig in. Recorded live on the BetaKit Keynote Stage at SAAS NORTH.

The BetaKit Podcast is presented by Uber Canada. 

"In the beginning, we were like, 'this must be a scam' because with the way things move in Waterloo and Toronto, it seemed way too fast."

A chance pitch competition connection took Colare co-founder Nain Abdi from Waterloo to Silicon Valley. He explains what pulled his company south, why his peers are eager to make a similar leap, and what (if anything) could convince him to return to Canada.

The BetaKit Podcast is presented by QuickBooks on the Intuit platform, built to help Canadian businesses work smarter, more efficiently and make confident decisions.

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"Too many American subs dominate this market.  Eighty percent of what we buy is from American companies. We wanna reverse that. We wanna make 80 percent of what we buy from Canadian companies. So we frankly don't care what we do as long as we are a Canadian defence company."

Dominion Dynamics founder and CEO Eliot Pence wants to build Canada's first "defence prime." On this episode of The BetaKit Podcast, he explains why defence tech matters to Canadian innovation and the future of the country before digging into the recent federal budget commitments. Recorded live on the Be...

It's a power-packed post-Budget panel podcast featuring a plethora of Canadian policy wonks! Vass Bednar (Canadian SHIELD Institute), Benjamin Bergen (CCI), and Jaxson Khan (Aperture AI) join to explore the story Budget 2025 tells of Canada, and what juicy nuggets of tech policy and financial commitments need to be dunked in the dipping sauce of greater detail. Let's dig in!

The BetaKit Podcast is presented by Zoho, developers of a unique and powerful software suite that transforms the way you work. 

Zoho's flagship user conference, Zoholics Toronto 2025, is coming November 18-19 at the Toronto Congress Centre! J...

"We were sleepwalking our way into this new economy, and we've had a bit of a wake-up call."

Ian Rae, CEO of Aptum and a member of Minister Evan Solomon's AI Task Force, has been building internet infrastructure since 1994. Recorded the day after the AWS outage, Rae joins to explain why such outages happen and what they reveal about the economics of the internet and Canada's digital sovereignty goals.

This episode of The BetaKit Podcast is brought to you by The Cyber Challenge—your pathway to new sales, industry connections, and non-dilutive funding.

Th...

"If you're a founder in Canada, you have a playbook, which is: try to get outside of the country as soon as possible. Try to sell outside of the country."

Raymond Luk thinks the "cultural belief we're not good enough" creates a homecourt disadvantage for Canadian tech. He's trying to kickstart a solution to our nation's procurement woes with a new summit called Source Canada, so buyers and sellers can speed date. Is a cultural kick in the pants enough to get Canada to buy Canadian tech? Let's dig in.

This episode of The BetaKit...

"It's one thing to say 'let's do this in a sovereign way.' It is a whole other to actually do it."

Gander Social is attempting to do something that seemed inconceivable six months ago: build a Canadian social network. What does sovereign social media look like? And what will prevent Gander from devolving into every other social network? CEO Ben Waldman joins to answer these questions and many more.

This episode of the BetaKit Podcast is brought to you by The Cyber Challenge—your pathway to new sales, industry connections, and non-dilutive funding.

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"Don't talk to your customers because your customers will keep you in the place that you used to be."

AI adoption is now an industry-wide mandate. It's putting a lot of pressure on Canadian entrepreneurs: to scale with customer demand (safely and responsibly); to reskill employees; even to kill their old company to let the new AI-first version live. What are the challenges and opportunities? Featuring Michael Buhr (C100), Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow AI), Avery Pennarun (Tailscale), and Amanda Arciero (Airudi). Recorded live at ALL IN 2025.

This episode of the BetaKit Podcast is brought to you...

"That's the literal term several CISOs have used with me unprompted: 'ticking time bomb.' There's no world in which this doesn't explode the way it's done right now."

Tailscale CEO Avery Pennarun thinks the AI revolution has put a gun to the head of CISOs: embrace unsafe data practices or get fired. They've told him the cybersecurity risks are a "ticking time bomb." Pennarun joins The BetaKit Podcast to explain how his company has evolved from a programmable mesh network to air traffic control for AI agents, and why he needs other startups to build new...

"It actually allows us an opportunity to build sovereign capability and leapfrog to get our armed forces where they need to be by taking advantage of leapfrog Canadian technologies."

US President Donald Trump opened his mouth and suddenly Canada needed a defence tech sector. The Icebreaker's Matthew Lombardi was conscripted by the federal government to help map that sector; he joins to explain why many of the technologies Canada currently develops have a dual use in defence.

The BetaKit Podcast is presented by CADSI: the national voice of Canada's defence, security, and emerging technology sectors...

"There's a really good chance that a young person's parents—or even their friends—don't even know that this individual is building a relationship with these chatbots. And that's where the danger exists."

Tech expert Amber Mac is on the advisory board of Rally, a new tech festival in Toronto dedicated to digital wellness for teens. She desperately wants parents to know the reasons why their kids are talking to AI, and the dangers of manipulative chatbots pretending to be their friends.

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The BetaKit Podcast is presented by K-GLOBE 2025: Be part of the...

"We're going to find in the next year or two that the amount of leakage actually goes up quite a bit because I think the focus on AI is just moving really, really fast. But I don't see the same energy going into the security aspects."

Forget vibe coding and Nvidia chips: if you want to understand how AI is changing tech, look at how it is being applied to a heavily regulated industry in need of digital transformation. PolicyMe sibling co-founders Laura McKay (COO) and Jeff McKay (CTO) join to share how the insurtech startup is...

" That's also quite daunting as an investor to be able to put money into something that is perfect for now, but will it last three to five years? Will it even last three to six months?"

Ripple Ventures managing partner and podcaster Matt Cohen joins to discuss the insane revenue numbers generated by the new cohort of AI startups, and how VCs are navigating the froth by updating their evaluation criteria (and hoping the growth continues). Grab your calculator and let's dig in.

The BetaKit Podcast is presented by The BetaKit Innovation Leaders program: designed fo...

"A win for AXL is that, ten years from now, instead of nine of the top ten biggest and most successful companies in the world being on the West Coast of the United States, half of them are in Toronto."

Dr. Daniel Wigdor has a lofty goal: help launch 50 AI companies in the next five years *and* keep them in Canada. Is it enough to stop our country's AI brain drain? The entrepreneur, computer science professor, and former Meta and Microsoft employee joins to discuss his new venture studio AXL, and why Canada is so bad at...