Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast

AI has gained significant momentum in service professions, especially in the legal sector, has attracting substantial venture capital investment and transforming traditional workflows.

In 2023 survey, 73% of legal professionals said planned on integrating AI into their legal work. Lawyers commented that these tools are becoming increasingly significant in their daily work, as legal solutions are able to quickly handle large volumes of data and analyze complicated legal issues. 

Venture capitalists are heavily investing in AI-powered legal tech startups, with funding in the sector reaching new highs in 2024. We saw 58 deals in...

At Altitude we support the growth and commercialization of early stage startups.

We want to celebrate one company, MyCoFutures, and its founders, Stephanie Lipp and Leo Gillis. MyCo Futures is a materials innovation startup now based in Montreal, Canada. Founded in 2021, MycoFutures specializes in developing a sustainable, mycelium-based leather alternative for the fashion industry. Stephanie and Leo transitioned from running a gourmet mushroom farm to leading this biotechnology venture.

The company's product, Myco™, is a circular and organic material grown from the root system of fungi, offering a more en...

In early February 2025, the United States, under Donald Trump, imposed significant tariffs on Canadian imports. Effective February 4, these tariffs included a 25% duty on general goods and a 10% duty on energy resources from Canada. The stated rationale was to pressure Canada to enhance border security and curb illegal drug flows into the U.S. This, we now know, is a red herring.

The implementation of the proposed tariffs has been subject to multiple delays with threats of retaliations happening in the midst of negotiations between Canadian and US officials. On March 4, the U.S. tariffs...

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has decided to end its third-party fact-checking program. This move was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a video titled “More speech and fewer mistakes.” According to Zuckerberg, the decision to remove fact-checking is driven by the belief that fact-checking organizations have been politically biased and have undermined trust.

Instead of relying on third-party fact-checkers, Meta will implement a new system called “Community Notes.” This system, similar to the one used by X (formerly Twitter), will allow users to add context and corrections to posts that may contain misleading informat...

There are numerous articles, opinions, and perspectives about how to effectively pitch to investors. What elements should be included? Content is just one side of the equation. However, when you pitch to investors, you only have a short window to create an impression. How you pitch is just as important as what you pitch.

Delivering a compelling pitch is important for startups seeking investment, selling to prospective partners, and customers. A well-crafted pitch can make the difference in securing funding, winning an important contract, and not missing out on vital resources. However, many startups...

For startup founders, investment is often the key to accelerating growth. But decision to seek outside investment requires careful consideration and preparation.

Once a founder decides it's time to pursue external funding, they must be prepared for the demands of the process and know that fundraising requires significant time and resources, outside of day-to-day operations.

There are many things to think about once a founder decides to raise capital. Today we are talking about the building blocks of fundraising and structuring your organization.

Is...

We’re diving into transfer pricing strategies for startups who want to expand their businesses globally. Transfer pricing refers to the prices charged for goods, services, between related entities within a multinational enterprise (MNE). A Canadian startup with subsidiaries or parent companies in other countries may set transfer prices when trading internally across borders. These prices affect where profits are reported and, consequently, how much tax the enterprise pays in each jurisdiction.

For startups, understanding transfer pricing is essential for tax compliance, risk mitigation, and optimizing your global tax strategies.

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2024 has been a hard year for startup companies. Access to investment has been lower compared to prior years and many companies have buckled down to try to preserve their cashflow in anticipation of further dry spells.

The year began with massive layoffs in the larger tech organizations and in Canada we’ve been left with a glut of highly skilled tech workers with little employment opportunities.

We are tackling the human state of the startup company – and the state of founders and employees in 2024.

Here are some facts that summarize the events of this...

As Generative AI adoption soars, so do many opportunities to advance current systems. But we're also seeing is the soaring risks that are uniquely the result of these large language models.

According to McKinsey's 2024 Global Survey on AI, overall, AI adoption in enterprise has jumped to 72%, up from 50% in previous years.

Implementation Time: Most organizations report taking 1-4 months to put generative AI into production.

By 2025, it's estimated that 50% of digital work will be automated through apps using language models, suggesting there will be 750...

Clean energy isn't just a dream, but it is a thriving reality. We’re standing at a threshold as the global community races against time to meet ambitious climate goals, and with the convergence of new policies, investments and incentives away from fossil fuels, the Canadian government estimates that up to $140 billion in annual investment is needed to reach net zero emissions.

As we begin to see more clean tech innovations on the forefront of these investments, this creates an opportunity to promote clean tech solutions effectively. For cleantech founders this means, not only ra...

The next generation of artificial intelligence is taking the world by storm. We’re seeing rampant innovation from the startup communities innovating from the emergence of large language models. Businesses in Canada, however are slower to hop on this band wagon.

The adoption of generative AI in Canada varies significantly by industry. Sectors such as finance, healthcare, and technology have seen higher adoption rates, whereas manufacturing and retail sectors have been slower to adopt these technologies.

Here are some recent insights:

Brian Coleman is the visionary and Founder of Heart2Help. I met Brian at Collision 2024 in Toronto. Recently launched A Heart2 Help, Brian Coleman is the visionary and Founder of Heart2Help. I met Brian at Collision 2024 in Toronto. Recently launched A Heart 2 Help is a revolutionary app that facilitates real-time connections between individuals seeking assistance and those ready to offer support. In a world where the need for human connection and compassionate aid is ever-present, our platform serves as a bridge, fostering a community of empathy, kindness, and mutual assistance.

The app addresses...

Paulo Rosado is the Founder and CEO of low-code leader OutSystems. I met Paulo Rosado at Collision 2024 in Toronto. In our fireside chat we discuss how GenAI and low-code are converging to redefine software development, increase agility, and open new possibilities for innovation and efficiency.

He'll share how organizations can use low-code to safely leverage the power of GenAI and drive the future goals of businesses and developers alike – without compromising governance, security, or control. We also tackle the question: Will AI replace the software developer's job?

Check out the Forbes article wi...

As startups evolve from small, agile teams to growth-oriented organizations, the need for strategic human resources management becomes critical. While startups often focus on product development, market penetration, and financial viability, at the early stages, once they’ve established market viability, people strategy becomes equally important.

While network connections and HR hacks may work as band-aid solutions to get the startup to where they need, the growth stage offers a greater mandate: to acquire and retain great talent and to effectively manage this expansion, to develop a culture where employees feel connected to the co...

Enterprise companies face a myriad of critical challenges. Maintaining comprehensive visibility across distributed systems spanning multiple environments has become extremely difficult. The sheer volume of data generated by modern IT systems is overwhelming, with companies struggling to process and make sense of millions of data points and alerts daily. In a world where downtime can cost millions, quickly identifying and resolving issues before they impact business operations is crucial.

Efficiently managing resources across hybrid environments to control costs while maintaining performance is a constant challenge. Ensuring data security and maintaining compliance across diverse, interconnected...

We’ve all have seen the emergence of AI in the last 8 years, where in this sector, the male voice still dominates:

A 2018 World Economic Forum report suggested that only 22% of AI professionals globally were female.

A 2019 AI Index Report found that 18% of authors at leading AI conferences were women.

LinkedIn data from 2018 indicated that 16% of AI professionals on the platform were women.

Only 12% of AI researchers are women globally, and only 2.6% of tenure-track engineering faculty identify as African Am...

Giselle Melo is a Managing Partner at Matr (matter) Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in deep tech software companies specializing in applied artificial intelligence, automation, machine learning, and computer vision. She is a seasoned tech founder with proven track record in software systems design and engineering across various sectors, who also developed a career in capital markets. She is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Altitude Accelerator, where she mentors and supports emerging startups.

As a tech founder, Giselle co-founded NicheeLabs, an engineering and systems design corporation, where her team developed an...

We're shining a spotlight on a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of business: bookkeeping. While it may not be the most glamorous topic, its importance to your company's success can't be overstated.

This often-overlooked practice is a secret weapon for thriving startups.

Think of bookkeeping as the GPS for your business journey. Without it, you're essentially driving blindfolded, hoping you're on the right road and not about to careen off a cliff. And in the startup world, those cliffs are everywhere.

Here's a sobering...

We met Kabir Barday, CEO of OneTrust, at Collision, Toronto where we discussed the evolving landscape of data privacy, responsible AI use, and regulatory compliance. OneTrust helps companies responsibly and securely use data and AI with its suite of security, privacy, governance, risk, ethics and compliance solutions. The company recently reported they expect to surpass $500M in ARR, as their solution is currently used by 14,000 customers, 75% of which are Fortune 100 companies.

Companies are now shifting their approach to data privacy, moving from regulatory compliance to leveraging privacy as a competitive advantage. At the same...

This is one of the video interviews we conducted at Collision, Toronto June 17-20, 2024.

Tripian was initially launched in 2016 as a consumer-facing travel app, equipped with trip planning tools available in only five cities. In mid-2018, the company pivoted to a B2B SaaS model, offering its services to the travel industry. Today, Tripian provides true personalization for travel brands, with content spanning over 300 cities worldwide. We met up with Jeff Kischuk, Founder of Tripian at Collision to learn more about how he’s disrupting travel.

This is one of the video interviews we conducted at Collision, Toronto June 17-20, 2024.

Resilience is not your traditional insurance provider. Dr. Ann Irvine is the company's Chief Data & Analytics Officer, and has spent her career sitting at the intersection of data science and cybersecurity. We spoke to Dr. Irvine about managing cyber risk in the changing cybersecurity landscape and the evolution of AI.

A critical milestone in scaling a startup for growth involves building a high-performing and well-rounded team that can make or break a venture's success. The guiding hypothesis is that we tend to gravitate towards people with similar interests, and values. That is a foundation at the very early stages for moving the company the right direction.

There is complexity in finding the right fit that involves considering not only individual strengths, complementary skill sets but also cultural fit and team dynamics.

These days, human judgement can be augmented and...

Hessie Jones met Ryan Pannell over a decade ago when she first ventured into entrepreneurship. At that time, he was an executive producer and it was the film industry where he began his career, working his way up to be a writer, producer and director. He directed his first feature film, Dragon City, when he was 26 years old.

In 2001 he moved into startup and pioneered cryptographic web-based messaging technology that made a significant impact in enterprise banking, and Big Tech including VISA, Microsoft and Bank of Scotland.

He also developed traumatic brain injury software circa 2021...

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as one of the most powerful and versatile artificial intelligence technologies of our time. By training massive neural networks on vast datasets of human-generated text, LLMs have developed an unprecedented ability to understand and generate human-like language with robust fluency and comprehension. This breakthrough has unlocked a wide range of innovative applications across industries, from content creation and language translation to conversational AI assistants and code generation.

More recently Open AI released ChatGPT 4o that they say can reason across different modalities in real time. They trained a single new model...

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as one of the most powerful and versatile artificial intelligence technologies of our time. By training massive neural networks on vast datasets of human-generated text, LLMs have developed an unprecedented ability to understand and generate human-like language with robust fluency and comprehension. This breakthrough has unlocked a wide range of innovative applications across industries, from content creation and language translation to conversational AI assistants and code generation.

More recently Open AI released ChatGPT 4o that they say can reason across different modalities in real time. They trained a single new model...

With the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the speed of adoption, how we communicate, how we research, how we improve our productivity has greatly transformed society. While these powerful tools offer remarkable capabilities in natural language understanding and generation of more accurate human-like language, they have also introduced new challenges and risks to the practice of cybersecurity and its adjacency into data privacy.  

Data breaches and attacks have been prevalent in narrow AI but with increased vulnerabilities introduced by LLMs, we’re now seeing more sophisticated phishing attacks, manipulation of online content, and exploitation of pri...

By 2050, 70% of the world’s population is projected to live in cities. 

We will evolve into an increasingly urban economy. Urban centers will adapt and evolve to meet the needs of their growing populations. 

Urbanization can lead to 1) economic growth, 2) improved living standards, and 3) cultural diversity. Some key stats about the rise of the urban populations: 

The world’s urban population has been rising almost six-fold since 1950, from 751 million to 4.4 billion today. This trend is expected to continue, with the urban population more than doubling its current size by 20502. 

Now, More than 56...

David Peterson, known as the Optimization Coach, assists growth-stage companies in 2X their revenue growth to achieve their 10X goal. He helps them become more appealing to investors or (if they choose) achieve their status as a successful founder-owned businesses.  

At this juncture, early-stage founders are already generating revenue and may aim to raise a successful Series A round, therefore they will need to focus on revenue quality. They sell a vision of their future business emphasizing the key qualities that investors want to believe in. They must construct a compelling narrative that justifies whether their idea i...

Product Market Fit is a make-or-break factor for startups. Even the best products can fail without market demand, while an average product can succeed if the demand exists. 

What does success look like once companies reach this critical milestone? The product resonates with the market means that: 

Investors often demand evidence of product-market fit before investing – demonstrating that your product has real demand and a viable market, especially at the earliest growth stages. 

Here are som...

Demand Generation is a broad marketing practice aimed at creating awareness and interest in a company’s products or services. It involves using various tactics across numerous channels, such as content marketing, social media ads, and more 

While the practice has been around for as long as brands have existed, it has undergone some significant changes and formalization over the past few decades. 

One of the catalysts for the changing sales landscape since the advent of digital has been: 

Decentralization of information. In the past, companies were primarily the holders of information about produ...

Today we’re facing headwinds in this fast-paced tech economy.  There is this global race to win in the advancement of Artificial Intelligence between the East and the West, however there are clear impediments that persist to drive change in current technologies that are hampering the speed to win. 

There is this realization of the how brittle our systems are because of the harms, the bias and the deep fakes, pervasive scraping of data that have permeated platforms and communication systems creates an increased risk that resulted in more regulatory attention, public awareness in lockstep with the pace...

These days there has been this surge of people who are developing influence within their specific corner of the market. They are digital creators who specialize in a niche and begin to establish themselves as experts in their field. 

The rise of influence has been less about celebrity, but these days it’s a strategic advantage for many entrepreneurs who want to build relationships, and ultimately leverage their personal brand to build their businesses 

Here’s the scenario: You are building your business, building your product and getting some critical traction. You want to move faster...

Growth Hackers' determined that the greatest indicator of startup success is resilience: 

“You might feel that things are moving slow in your company – that is natural. You may make decisions, that, in retrospect may lead to undesired consequences, or perceived setbacks in your goal to reach critical milestones. If you are an entrepreneur building a brand new startup, you probably have trouble seeing any light at the end of the tunnel from time to time.” 

It’s how far startup success is defined by how far an entrepreneur is willing to go and wait to see its st...

Will 2024 will be another challenging year for startup founders?  

The world bank came out with the following prediction for 2024: 

“Global growth is projected to slow for the third year in a row—from 2.6% last year to 2.4% in 2024, almost three-quarters of a percentage point below the average of the 2010s. Developing economies are projected to grow just 3.9%, more than one percentage point below the average of the previous decade.” 

They are dubbing it the “Weakest Half-Decade Performance in 30 Years" 

This is a so-called recession that never really came (because of low unemployment, despite high...

AI has consumed the tech space and mainstream business. What implications does generative AI have on cybersecurity? Will it change the threat landscape for better or worse?  At Collision, Hessie Jones interviewed Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password to discuss the implications to personal information and how will passwordless technology help combat these threats. 

As of February 2023, 850 million people globally don’t have an ID: no birth certificate, national ID–a legal identification that enables access to basic services like setting up bank accounts, getting a job–a system we’ve taken for granted in the West. Solving the identity problem becomes more pronounced as societies become increasingly digital. This will further elevate the need for secure and convenient ways to verify a person’s identity as they transact and communicate online or remotely. This comes at a juncture as we face many problems with impersonations, deep fakes, AI generated media and content where safe...

Theodora Lau recently wrote a Linkedin post called "Where are the Women?"

This was a timely post that responded to the slap in the face to many women, who have made incredible strides to affect substantive change in AI, who saw the NYT article that snubbed the work of prominent women like Fei Fei Li, Timnit Gebru, Kate Crawford, Joy Buolamwini, Meg Mitchell and others too numerous to mention. 

This article came off the week of drama that saw Sam Altman re-installed as the  CEO of OpenAI, when 5 days be...

Will new emerging technologies assist engineers in enhancing their capabilities or will their jobs simply be done for them? At Collision, 2023, Hessie Jones met with Maxim Fateev, CEO of Temporal and Anand Kulkarni, CEO of Crowdbotics.

Both organizations are making it increasingly easier for engineers in light of the advances in Generative AI. One school of thought: it's much easier to replace certain aspects of desktop jobs than replace labor skills like carpenters or construction workers. Everything that works well in AI is happening behind the screen currently, but not so much in the...

The future of the internet is really all about building on the promise of Web3 is about a decentralized internet, that brings more powers to creators, where monetization dispels of current ad models, and where people become the owners/purveyors of their identity and the things they create.  

I met Julie Smithson at Decoding Tech in Toronto. Julie is CoFounder of MetaVRse & XR Women, host of the Polys Awards & Working and building in immersive technologies since 2010. Julie has been instrumental in educating about the metaverse and pioneering capabilities across different sectors. 

We will learn more ab...

From the sidelines, reading the media reports on the weekend of November 17 it was a series of irrepressible events that unfolded that weekend and the coming days. It was considered a tumultuous weekend, a series of uncontrolled outcomes, each with its own significance to the fallout of OpenAI and its employees. While the world watched this drama unfold online, no one would have guessed the outcome of events that transpired within the course of the coming days: the firing of Sam Altman… the quitting of OpenAI president, Greg Brockman and the threatened resignations from 700 employees of Open AI… to the...