At the end of February, BetaKit Incorporated celebrated its 10th anniversary.
It’s a significant accomplishment for any company, let alone a media company in the 21st century. We are bigger, badder, and healthier than at any other time in our 10-year history. I am incredibly proud of the people I am fortunate enough to work with every day.
I often go for burgers with Satish Kanwar, BetaKit’s board chair, my business partner, and one of the people directly responsible for our current golden era. On a recent outing, he noted there are more people now who care about the future of BetaKit than ever before. I hold onto that realization like a precious gem.
Because I am a sentimental sap, I have jotted down some reflections and hard-won lessons from the last decade in the hopes they might aid other entrepreneurs on their journey:
The problem you’re ignoring is often the most important one to solve. But sometimes problems solve themselves if left alone! Knowing which is which takes time.
Decision paralysis often comes from a lack of visibility into an aspect of your business. Having that clarity always made the decision-making easier (if not the work).
Resilience is a skill. Most people give up too soon.
Resilience is not enough. Building something meaningful requires hard work, but if your only move is to ‘just work harder,’ you will grind yourself to dust.
The people you choose to model yourself after matter more than you’ll realize in the moment of your choosing.
Just send the email.
To the chagrin of my mentors, there are few lessons I truly learned as an entrepreneur without first feeling the pain of a direct hit or the relief of a near miss. I acknowledge that might make my advice useless unless you have experienced similar, but so it goes.
The above photo is of me and Ian Hardy, another Canadian media entrepreneur, taken 1,000 years ago. Without his support, and the support of so many like him, the BetaKit you know today would not be possible. Thank you.
Douglas Soltys
Editor-in-chief
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Evan Solomon will meet Sam Altman as OpenAI faces pressure over Tumbler Ridge response
Canada’s AI Minister Evan Solomon will meet with OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman this week to discuss the company’s new safety commitments, after OpenAI chose not to tell police it had banned a user who allegedly went on to commit a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, BC.
Following a meeting with government officials last week, OpenAI said that it tightened its protocols and that it would have reported the user’s account to the police if it had been flagged today. In terms of next steps, Solomon has said “all options remain on the table.”
Experts BetaKit spoke with, following the tragedy, said Canada should proceed cautiously when considering whether to introduce new laws that force technology companies to report disturbing but not illegal content to law enforcement.
How Stay22 went from pandemic freefall to one of Montréal tech’s biggest growth stories
In 2020, travel content monetization startup Stay22 lost 90 percent of its revenue. Now, the Montréal-based company works with more than 5,500 creators and processes more than $1 billion USD in transactions.
This past Thursday, it completed its turnaround, raising $122 million USD ($167 million CAD) in an all-equity, minority growth investment from private equity firm Summit Partners.
Business leaders urge Ottawa to extend employee ownership tax incentive
Advocacy group Employee Ownership Canada has penned an open letter urging the government to extend an expiring tax incentive that gives business owners $10-million in capital gains tax relief to pass down majority control of their company to their employees through an ownership trust.
Can Canada find digital sovereignty in the Fediverse?
The programmers and creatives behind the decentralized digital world known as the Fediverse gathered in Montréal this week for the first annual FediMTL conference.
The event focused on how digital spaces free from US billionaires are more important than ever for sovereignty, privacy, and user dignity. But the challenges—from funding the platforms to widespread user adoption—loomed large.
💸 Canada’s talent and funding gap
- A new report from NACO and Startup Genome shows that a funding slowdown at the earliest stages has contributed to sluggish growth and lost value for Canada’s tech sector.
- Founders, recruiters, and tech leaders gathered for a panel at Northeastern University’s Vancouver campus last week to discuss how Canada’s talent crunch hasn’t gone away; it’s just become more complicated.
U of T taps BioLabs to take over incubator after Johnson & Johnson pulls support
After pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson backed out last year, the University of Toronto has partnered with BioLabs to take over operational responsibility of 40,000 square feet of lab space inside the MaRS Discovery District.
🧮 Restructuring companies
- While tariffs helped bring the apparel innovator down, court filings reveal that Montréal-based Sheertex maker SRTX was already struggling to scale ahead of its recent insolvency.
- Vancouver-based fractional real estate investment platform Addy told users this week that it is restructuring its business one year after it was fined by regulators.
Op-ed: What I learned from trying to buy only Canadian tech
In 2017, Stefan Palios tried to build a company using only Canadian tech. In an op-ed for BetaKit, he explains what’s changed nearly a decade later.
🪖 Defence alliances
- As Canada rearms itself, a group of emerging Canadian defence technology leaders have joined forces to start ACDC—a new trade association to represent the interests of domestic firms.
- A group of Edmonton organizations has banded together to form the Edmonton Region Defence Alliance with the goal of making the city a hub for security and defence.
FEATURED STORIES FROM OUR PARTNERS
YSpace and York University open the door between Canada and Korea’s tech ecosystems
How new agreements with the Korea Business Angels Association and Seoul AI Hub are creating structured pathways for founders to access research, capital, and global markets across two complementary innovation economies.
Parabellyx is preparing businesses for digital warfare
How the Richmond Hill–based startup is replacing point-in-time penetration testing with continuous, AI-augmented security validation and tapping the Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst’s Cyber Challenge to sharpen its go-to-market strategy and scale its Luma platform against global cybersecurity incumbents.
🇨🇦 Weekly Canadian Deals, Dollars & More
CGY – Neo partners with United Airlines to launch credit card
EDM – Wyvern secures Nordspace Ventures’ inaugural investment
ON – Bubble wins contract to detect space radiation for astronauts
KW – CoeusAI establishes Dutch HQ for major offshore energy gig
TOR – General Magic secures $7.2M USD for AI insurance agents
TOR – Feds grant nearly $7M to CDL’s defence accelerator
TOR – Padder closes $2.5M to launch “guarantor-as-a-service” platform
OTT – L-Spark completes its first cohort as a corporate accelerator
MTL – PE firm Novacap closes $3.8B USD for seventh tech fund
MTL – Québec government injects $36M of fresh funding into Mila
MTL – JetScaleAI secures $5.4M to keep cloud and climate costs down
The BetaKit Podcast — How to fix Canada’s Start-up Visa
“Speed is of the essence. This is a super dynamic marketplace. Canada is losing entrepreneurs, we’re losing the next generation of founders, and we need to do things, quick.”
More than a decade ago, Canada launched the Start-up Visa program to attract entrepreneurial talent from around the world. After years of complaints of delays, fraud, and abuse, the program was suspended while featuring a whopping 10-35 year wait time. Boris Wertz (Version One Ventures) and Lucy Hargreaves (Build Canada) join to discuss what went wrong and what a functional entrepreneurial immigration program might look like.