CanCon Podcast Ep. 95: Startup PR fails & Canada's STEM solution

The solution to Canada’s STEM hiring problem is already here, but it requires solving other problems first.

Saadia Muzaffar, tech entrepreneur and founder of Tech Girls Canada, published a piece for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives entitled, “Bait and Switch of a Canadian Dream”. In the piece, Muzaffar details how our nation’s innovation economy ignores the highly skilled talent of Canadian STEM immigrants. “The implications of Canada assigning them a different socioeconomic status are far-reaching and multi-pronged,” she writes.

We invited Muzaffar on the podcast to discuss her recommended policy changes to confront the hurdles that keep skilled and university educated migrant women unemployed or underemployed, and underpaid.

Startups are taught to fail fast, but when it comes to PR fails, the results can be harder to pivot away from. Oftentimes, poor PR decisions aren’t the result of inexperience but the toxic startup bro culture that infects so many aspects of tech. Thankfully, our crack team of tech journalism professionals have the balm for your startup BS.

Tune in as CanCon’s podcast crew – Erin Bury, Managing Director of Eighty-Eight; Jessica Galang, BetaKit News Editor; and Douglas Soltys, BetaKit Editor-in-Chief – reminisce about old startup PR fails.

Have some hot takes on the topics that we covered? Maybe you want to suggest something 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.