Montréal tech conference Startupfest is doubling down on its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts and bringing back two sub-festivals as it gears up for its 14th showing this summer.
Startupfest’s 2025 edition will take place from July 9 to 11 at Montréal’s Grand Quay.
The festival is selling 200 Inclusion Initiative passes, twice the number it sold last year, which offer a 90-percent discount to founders from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds in tech, including women and racialized people. Founders must apply before March 27 to be eligible for the discounted passes.
Sponsors are also invited to contribute to the Inclusion Initiative through funding tickets, offering mentorship opportunities, or designing programming.
Startupfest’s 2025 edition will take place from July 9 to 11 at Montréal’s Grand Quay. Headlining speakers have yet to be officially unveiled, but BetaKit can exclusively report that they will include Elizabeth Yin, co-founder and general partner at San Francisco-based Hustle Fund; Shingai Manjengwa, senior director of education and development, talent and ecosystem at Mila Québec; and Ravi Belani, CEO of Alchemist Accelerator in Menlo Park, Calif.
Rebecca Croll, director of content at Startupfest, told BetaKit that more than half of its confirmed speakers are women and 33 percent are non straight and/or non-white.
Croll said that diverse programming and the Inclusion Initiative “makes sure the playing field is levelled.”
“It’s been important to us since well before it was the cool thing to do,” Croll said. “It’s always been part of our DNA.”
Startupfest introduced the Inclusion Initiative in 2011, well before a spate of companies debuted corporate DEI initiatives in 2020, Croll said.
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In 2018, Startupfest began a conscious initiative to increase diversity across its programming at FWD50, its Ottawa-based annual public-sector tech conference. Since programming at FWD50 is largely determined by sponsors, the organizing team introduced a requirement for half of speakers put forward by sponsors to be women. The proportion of women speakers improved from 19 percent to 48 percent the following year.
In a LinkedIn post announcing the expansion of its Inclusion Initiative, Startupfest CEO Philippe Telio called the abandonment of DEI initiatives “astounding.”
“I’ve come to expect American ‘oligarch’ tech bros quietly rolling back their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. But Canadian organizations? I thought we were better than that,” Telio wrote.
What In the Tech, a community resource organization for Canada’s tech industry, published an open letter this week calling for Canadian tech to uphold its values of diversity and inclusion. It has now been signed by nearly 1,000 members of the tech ecosystem at all levels.
The letter made reference to e-commerce giant Shopify winding down its DEI efforts. In recent weeks, Shopify has dismantled its Equitable Commerce team, which was responsible for social impact initiatives. Coinciding with the layoffs, Shopify quietly shuttered its Build Native program for Indigenous entrepreneurs in January and locked a Slack channel for Black business owners on Feb. 1, the start of Black History Month.
Two sub-festivals are returning this year. HardtechFest, organized by Montréal-based incubator Garage&co, is hosting its second edition on July 9. The event is geared towards hardware looking to showcase their products and connect with financing opportunities.
OceanFest, presented by Canada’s Ocean Startup Project and Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, is running for its third edition on July 10. Last year, the Ocean Startup Project announced $8 million in funding for the Canadian marine technology industry.
Startupfest will also run its Women in Tech Bootcamp, a half-day event for women founders and tech executives to build and connect with resources to scale their companies. Black, female, and 2SLGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs will also have the chance to pitch for $100,000 in investment prizes.
Feature image courtesy Startupfest.