Jenny Lemieux

By popular demand, I'm sharing the list of all tech events in Toronto for May here 👇 https://lnkd.in/eQc5yhjY Whether you're looking to learn from the best founders in the city, getting introduced to your next lead investor, hoping to land that next tech role, or just hang out with some of the coolest people changing the world, with over 130+ tech events on the list, there's bound to be something for you! My recommendations for events coming up? 1. Start with Toronto Tech Fest's exclusive Opening Gala experience (formal wear, food, drink, speakers, and secret passwords 🤫) 90% of all tickets sold, grab the last ones before they're gone! https://lu.ma/TTFGALA 2. Come see what people in the city are building at Demos Only! with Google. If you think you have the chops, sign up to demo what you're building yourself! https://lu.ma/qkmyfpyp 3. 6 of the top female founders will be battling it out at the Woman Founder Pitch Battle at the 6six. Signups are still live and pitching slots are open for women founders currently building their businesses. https://lu.ma/he8edd0d 4. Close out the week with a 1000+ person Founder Rooftop Mixer Party at Lavelle. This is shaping up to be the biggest startup gathering of the season, with an opportunity to meet, mingle, and learn with top founders, investors, operators, and business executives from across the tech space. https://lu.ma/b7jlqx2w If the list was helpful, please consider dropping me a like 👍 and helping to repost 🪃! Mell Truong Frank Chen Eric Lay Parry Chan Arda Erturk Victor Ou Oliver Xin ✨ Interested in more events in May? Check out lu.ma/torontotechfest for a whole month of amazing May tech events in Toronto! 👉 Got questions on the hottest tech events? Chat with us and stay in the know: lnkd.in/gNiWyJXv 📣 Want a list of all the tech events happening this month in Toronto? Click below 👇

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Interesting watch for anyone in the Shopify & Klaviyo ecosystem. 🎥 At the recent Editions.dev conference in Toronto, Shopify CEO and founder Tobi Lütke & Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki (AB) had a fireside chat discussing learnings, strategies, and challenges scaling up both businesses. 🚀 It was a great experience being at the live event, and the session was recorded for those interested in watching these two eCommerce heavyweights in conversation. Watch the insightful discussion here: https://lnkd.in/duazpj6Z #Shopify #Klaviyo #eCommerce #BusinessInsights #EditionsDev

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Explore your options with Paire: the free global restaurant guide for people who love food + travel. "THE BEST" is subjective, so amuse your bouche and indulge your taste buds with this guide to bespoke dining experiences. Make, share and follow restaurant lists. See your own personal compatibility with every restaurant and bar on the map. Paire is like a "dating app for your taste buds". Learn more at www.Paire.io #diningwithai #personalization #guestcentric #hospitalitytech #paire

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Does the idea of falling in love with an AI sound crazy? The reality shown through this article is that AI can be an incredibly powerful tool for many people who struggle quietly with social anxiety, loneliness, depression, neurodivergence and more. These challenges are becoming more common and people who suffer often have no where to turn and nobody to turn to. Enter AI companions and a whole new world of machine and human interaction. I encourage you to read this fascinating and courageous article about the power and complexity of AI as a personal companion before you judge the idea of AI for companionship and love. The reality is that companionship may end up becoming one of AI's primary uses, and there is data out there showing this may already be the reality, with Character AI being the second most visited AI website and the AI tool that people spend the most time interacting with. Rather than judging the idea of falling in love with an AI and/or AI for companionship, I think we ought to ask ouselves about the world we live in that is causing so many people to stuggle with challenges such as social anxiety, depression and everything else that so many humans stuggle with. When it comes to AI companionship and love, I think its important not to hate the players .. or characters, but instead to hate the game or society we live in that makes people feel alone and depressed. While I don't use AI for companionship, I do use it as a personal thinking assistant, second set of eyes, devils advocate and work colleage and it's incredibly useful to me in these ways. Huge props to Carl Clarke for writing this informative article and bringing this powerful story to the forefront. What do you think? Does the idea of falling in love with an AI sound crazy? Can AI be an effective companion? Do you use AI as a trusted colleague at work? It's a brave new world out there and I think we should all have an open mind!

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What can you do in under an hour with AI? A music video? 🎃 I had so much fun putting this together. AI Teck Stack: - LaunchLemonade (custom assistant image generator with Flux, concept, names) - Udio (music) - Runway (animation) (Oh and I also used Canva and Capcut for cover and stitching it all together) #launchlemonade #ai

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Looking forward to sharing GenAI insights in a conversation between investors and operators. See you at Invest!

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🚨 One-third of AI projects just for show #Relief! And Kudos! Calgary Public Library 📈 How To Make Decisions Like A Billionaire My weekly Tech news round-up of news you can use: 🚨 One-third of AI projects just for show 💡 The main purpose of AI initiatives is to show investors and stakeholders their organization is doing something with AI. However, “You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.” AI is happening, and businesses need to embrace it. Here’s how: 👇 https://lnkd.in/ghrkEUz9 #Relief! And Kudos! No personal data leaked in Calgary Public Library cybersecurity attack 🎉 👏 Kudos to Calgary Public Library's cybersecurity team and incident response protocols that blocked a recent cyber attack. Ransomware attacks are on the rise—stay vigilant, folks! 🔐 https://lnkd.in/gpHGap8C 📈 How To Make Decisions Like A Billionaire These well-known billionaires prove that a boring, principle-driven approach can lead to massive success. 💼 Ray Dalio has detailed playbooks guiding every decision, from investing to hiring. 📊 Bill Gates says measure everything: "If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” ⏰ Warren Buffett lives by a strict routine. Choose method over madness. https://lnkd.in/gczGwq_s

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Sidewalk Labs (Part of Google), another showcase of Canadian politicians bending over for a big US corp, with ZERO tangible results 💩 Roxana and I attended a "private investor demo" session in 2019. A block of wood was passed among the audience, supposedly the NEXT BIG BREAKTHROUGH in urban development! Demo concluded, by observing a piece of wood! Building blocks of future skyscrapers! The promise? With this, Google will build a "Smart City" for us, the peasants of Toronto, in Queens Quay 🏖️🏢 Sidewalk Labs' website now points to a newer Google scam, it reads: "Build Sustainably with Google Earth"! Bait and switch, but let enough time pass so no one remembers 🤢 https://lnkd.in/gd3B-a6m Guess now the investors and Ontario Government | Gouvernement de l’Ontario have shit loads of these wooden blocks, ready to shove up somewhere, to find a use for! All because the name "Bloomberg" sounds authoritative enough to our ears? Surely that's capital well spent, instead of investing in local talent! 🤔 Will Canada's tech ecosystem ever crawl out of Silicon Valley's shadow, and stand on its own? ⌚👀⛔

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Woo! Anthropic has finally made Claude/Claude Pro available to Canadians. Very happy to have direct access to it for testing. I also like the fact that they explicitly say they don't train on the data from interactions. For reference; "By default (and just like our beta version of Claude.ai), we will not use your prompts and conversations from Claude Pro to train our models. There are two instances in which we may use your prompts and conversations to train our models: (1) if you give us explicit permission by submitting feedback through the thumbs up/down feature or by reaching out to us with a request, and (2) where your prompts and conversations are flagged for trust and safety review, we may use or analyze those conversations to improve our ability to detect and enforce Usage Policy violations, including to train Trust and Safety classifiers in order to make our services safer. Only a limited number of staff members have access to conversation data and they will only access this data for explicit business purposes." #anthropic #ai #claude #claudepro #Canada #access

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"Entrepreneurship is painful and sometimes rewarding." This quote naturally came out during a check-in call with my good friend and fellow entrepreneur, Gilad, who is building a great product at Sequence (I just wish they were available in Canada) 😢 As soon as I said it, both Gilad and I reflected on how true that statement is in describing the journey of building something. Shoutout to all the business owners and entrepreneurs out there taking the pain with a pinch of reward. #startupjourney #pain #entrepreneurship #grit

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🚀 How Crowdlinker Helped Honeybee Benefits Get Acquired by Green Shield Canada 🚀 In just two years, Honeybee Benefits transformed from a startup with only a dozen customers to a thriving platform managing thousands of lives. With the help of Crowdlinker, they refined their messaging, revamped their web presence, and streamlined their go-to-market strategy, which led to rapid growth and, ultimately, an acquisition by Green Shield Canada. Jason Dea, Senior Director of Product and Marketing at Honeybee Benefits, shares the impact of working with Crowdlinker and how strategic partnerships can drive incredible results. Curious how your startup could achieve the same? Watch the full story and see how Crowdlinker helped pave the way for success. #businessgrowth #digitalstrategy #startuplife #acquisition #growthstrategy https://lnkd.in/d6t82ghF

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If you're a Canadian entrepreneur, investor, or founder then this past week has made it painfully clear that when it comes to innovation and economic recovery the calvary won't be coming and is in fact running in the opposite direction. The federal government and associated regional innovation support agencies (ie Invest Ottawa) are failing to look at solutions aimed at effectively addressing an overall decrease in entrepreneurship and economic activity across the nation and it is now on us, as resilient Canadian entrepreneurs, to empower those who can bring the most value to the table if we are to strive for the quickest path forward towards economic recovery and helping the average Canadian family better their quality of life. I am proud to announce that RHA Ventures Inc. has answered that call 👏 In the face of rising costs for domestic businesses in Canada and competition from abroad, RHA Ventures, an Ontario-based venture capital firm specializing in cutting-edge technologies, announced today its investment in Real Life Robotics, a Waterloo-based company designing real robots for real businesses. This investment marks a significant milestone in the development of Real Life Robotics and underscores RHA Ventures' commitment to supporting true, tried, and tested founders and Ontario’s growing startup ecosystem despite an overall decrease in entrepreneurship across the rest of Canada. “Real robots, real people, and real-world challenges are what differentiate RLR as a technology company. We could not be more thrilled to have RHA Ventures, a group of experienced founders and problem solvers, on board as strategic advisors and investors as we help elevate Ontario globally as a home for first-in-class robotics and automation technology - empowering businesses with transformative robotics solutions that unlock new levels of efficiency, reliability, and scalability,” - Cameron Waite, CEO of Real Life Robotics. The numbers clearly show that the cost of getting involved in a business or launching a new product is too high for the average inexperienced Canadian and our economy has slowed in growth accordingly. On a macro level, we are placing too high an importance on new founders in a down market when we should be rewarding and doubling down on our true, tried and tested investors, founders and legacy businesses who have shown they are willing to take the risk. Thank you, Brian Foster and the rest of the team at RHA Ventures Inc. for taking this first step of the journey with us 🙏 https://lnkd.in/gSr5TP48

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More startups are betting on AI. Of the record 1,623 startups that exhibited at Collision, a Toronto-based startup conference earlier in June, 20 percent are building AI products. This excludes other Collision startups with AI components in their business, reported the Wall Street Journal. Venture firms are throwing money at generative AI startups. In 2023, investors put $21.8 billion into generative AI deals -- five times more than they did in 2022, according to CB Insights. The average round size for those deals was $51 million, over six times larger than the industry average, CB Insights found. 

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And now, for my first piece of zero-click content: a case study! Except this one covers a different story than the one I told last week. Imagine you're building a bank for ecommerce companies in North America, but you're overwhelmed by the sheer market potential and need to figure out where to focus. Oh yeah — and you're not based in North America, but in Ireland. 🇮🇪 That's the story of Hamilton Rock. By leveraging customer discovery and market research, we helped the founder understand the core differences between market opportunities and also understand the requirements in order for new customers to switch banks (which - spoilers - was a lot more than originally anticipated!). The outcome: a better aligned product roadmap and investors who all said "😮" when they saw the insights. Check the comments for the link to read more 👇

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I'm at #Collision Conf here in Toronto, and I'm seeing a ton of AI startups. Many of them are asking me how to scale and where to find the right people. It's interesting because the vast majority of these “Ai companies” have never even heard of agentic engineering approaches. The ability to use agents in place of traditional people-based processes is the next step for startups. The next major trend will be billion-dollar startups with just a handful of people. Most of the startups here don't need to worry about hiring a big team. What they need is a core group who understand the basics of agentic engineering. They need the ability to deploy agents within their startup structure, building a company around these autonomous systems that can scale operations, manage finances, drive sales, and handle internet / data infrastructure and cloud computing deployments. With a small, knowledgeable team, you can create and manage these systems, scaling your startup to thousands of agents at a fraction of the cost of hiring a large staff. Sometimes at cost reduction of 1000 to 1. The real question is, where do you find the people who can help you do this? Define their roles and responsibilities clearly. If you can do that, you can build any company. Honestly, half the companies here at the Collision Conference could massively benefit from this approach.

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🎙️ I had an amazing time on Chris Kalaboukis thinkfuture podcast! We talked about entrepreneurship, AI, innovation and I shared my journey from the UK to Canada and how my wife’s cancer inspired us to pursue our dreams. Is AI taking away our creativity? How do we attract and retain top talent? Check out the full episode below 👇

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I had a great conversation with Evan M. about my career and entrepreneurial journey, including getting into the venture capital industry and why I founded Staircase Ventures with a unique philosophy and approach. Some quotes: "We benefit in Canada from terrific technical talent. In addition, we are seeing more repeat entrepreneurs and more experienced start-up leaders than we did 5 to 10 years ago... The other thing is that US investors want to invest in Canada. Ten years ago, US investors were reluctant to invest in Canadian companies and if they did, it would be on the condition that they move to the Valley. That is no longer the case." "I started my own fund not for the sake of starting my own fund, but because I wanted to devote my time to working with entrepreneurs and to serving them, helping them to build impactful companies. I had some ideas about how venture could be done differently and I wanted to put those ideas into action. That is what led me to start Staircase Ventures... There's three unique aspects of Staircase Ventures. The first is our founder development platform which is designed to help accelerate founders' development and help them perform their best every day." "Life is long and how you treat people and how you perform really, really matters in the long run. Life is not a short-term game; it is what you do and how you show up, day-after-day, over a period of many years that will determine your future." Listen here: https://lnkd.in/gpHprCt8

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Does BC Tech have it right? Next week I'll be on stage with an amazing line up of leaders at the BetaKit Town Hall: Vancouver. From my conversations so far, some clear differences have emerged from the vibes of the Toronto tech sector. -Unequivocal in their belief that BC is where they want to live, and so no question about keeping their companies there. -Just as sick as everyone else with trying to sell in Canada, but seemingly much more at peace with straight to US sales approach. -Stymied in raising in Canada, much more likely to extoll the virtues of bootstrapping and to have avoided the pitfalls of irrational growth -Influenced by their natural surroundings and research communities, more focused on high impact verticals on life science and climate tech, and more likely to raise the potential of tech to address big challenges like forest fires -More likely to praise provincial government programs for getting things right (although quick to shred SR&ED) Not all rosy, to be sure, but some low key BC rizz I'm looking forward to hearing more about.

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