CanCon Podcast Ep. 38: Where should you build your startup?

When it comes to Canada’s startup ecosystem, most entrepreneurs gravitate towards one of the country’s larger city centres to start their businesses – be it Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal. This past week on BNN’s The Disruptors, 360 Insights founder and CEO, Jason Atkins, explained why he believes that being within the city limits of one of Canada’s major tech hubs is not always the answer to growing a strong tech company. Is it possible to build outside of Canada’s flourishing ecosystems and still make it big? What if you choose not to build in Canada at all?

This past week in Kitchener-Waterloo, German tradition mingled with the startup world at Techtoberfest, a two-day networking and speaker event put on by Communitech in tandem with North America’s largest Oktoberfest. CanCon’s very own Erin Bury hosted the event and brought back (in addition to steamed cabbage) her quick takes for the podcast.

Last week’s CanCon focused on Facebook going head-to-head with a Canadian company, Sulon, for the VR market. This week, Facebook released Workplace, which is once again in direct competition with another Canadian-originating product, Slack. Should Slack be concerned, or is Facebook a little late to the party?

Tune in as CanCon’s podcast crew – Erin Bury, Managing Director of 88 Creative, Rose Behar and Jessica Vomiero, MobileSyrup staff writers and regulars on MobileSyrup’s very own podcast – SyrupCast, and Douglas Soltys, BetaKit Editor in Chief – the team evaluates Facebook’s latest tech ambitions and decides where in Canada to build a tech startup.

Have some hot takes on our hot takes? Maybe you want to suggest a topic for a future podcast! Perhaps you have a burning question about something you read in tech news that we didn’t cover. Email us, post a comment below with the answer or question, or better yet, rate CanCon 5-stars on iTunes and post your thoughts there.