This year’s revamped edition of the Montréal Startup Community Awards highlighted founders, mentors, and people working behind the scenes in a brand-new innovation hub built to reconnect the city’s dispersed startup scene.
The awards ceremony, organized by non-profit ElanTech with corporate and government sponsors, ran Thursday night at Ax.c, now the de facto home of Montréal tech following the closure of Notman House. The 10 nomination categories highlighted remarkable founders, mentors, and behind-the-scenes operators, in what organizers said was a deliberate attempt to listen to community feedback and make the event more founder-centric.
“As a community, we’re ambitious by nature, so we tend to always be looking ahead toward our next goal; 2025 really feels like a turnaround year for Montréal.”
Last year, some ecosystem players decried a perceived emphasis on provincial government-backed incubators and accelerators as stars of the show. In this edition, ElanTech executive director Simran Kanda said she sought to highlight the individuals who fly under the radar.
“One of the things we wanted to do differently was [ask]: how do we make sure that it becomes more about the people, and less about the organizations and programs?” Kanda said in an interview with BetaKit after the ceremony.
Kanda also said they renamed “winners” to “laureates” to turn the event into less of a competition and more of a celebration.
Several attendees told BetaKit they thought the event did a good job this year of showcasing individual, grassroots contributions. Claude Théoret, senior artificial intelligence (AI) advisor at Deep Tech fund Innovobot, expressed a similar sentiment to BetaKit after the ceremony.
“I think that tonight they did an amazing job,” Théoret said. “They really highlighted a lot of the founders and people that never get noticed.”
Théoret also got his flowers with the Impactful Legacy of the Year award for his contributions over nearly two decades. A former astrophysicist, Théoret founded and exited Nexology, one of Montréal’s first AI companies that collected insights from social media conversations and sold them to government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.
“I’ve been in this ecosystem since it started way back in 2008,” he said. “When I exited, I reinvested, and I’m honestly really touched.”
Théoret was also one of the leaders behind AI Salon, which was named Founder-Centric Initiative of the Year. The event series debuted in February and ran 10 editions to bring together founders, tech workers, and academics working in AI for evenings of pitching and networking. Innovobot marketing advisor Constance Jaluzot, whom Théoret said made the event happen behind the scenes, was honoured with Backbone Operator of the Year.
Three Montréal-based startups also received laurels: biomedical tech startup Nanofacile, wireless infrastructure startup Latys, and travel content scaleup Stay22 (which also helped sponsor the event). Christian Levan, analyst at Panache Ventures and co-founder of community initiative 555, won Emerging Community Leader of the Year.
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Gabriel Sundaram, a repeat founder and one of the advocates for Notman House to be saved before it was sold under court order, was honoured as one of the Mentors of the Year.
“As a community, we’re ambitious by nature, so we tend to always be looking ahead toward our next goal,” Sundaram told BetaKit via text, “2025 really feels like a turnaround year for Montréal.”
Full list of Startup Community Awards winners
Mentor of the Year: Gabriel Sundaram and Doryne Bourque
Bridge Builder of the Year: Danica Virginia Meredith
Founder Encore of the Year: Paul Kruszewski and Virgile Ollivier
Rising Community Startup of the Year: Latys and Nanofacile
Emerging Community Leader of the Year: Christian Levan
Backbone Operator of the Year: Constance Jaluzot and Patricio Gutierrez Mella
Woman Leader of the Year: Amina Sall
Impactful Legacy of the Year: Claude Théoret
Founder-centric Initiative of the Year: AI Salon
Community Champion Scale-Up of the Year: Stay22
Feature image courtesy Madison McLauchlan for BetaKit.