Scott Langille isn’t the only young person in Vancouver tech looking for something more. But at the BetaKit Town Hall: Vancouver, a passion for empowering his generation was on full display.
“I want to make Vancouver a place where young people can build a future,” he said during the Vantage Points panel.
The young entrepreneur has spent enough time away from home, from working at Tesla in Palo Alto to representing Canada as a Cansbridge fellow in Singapore. He returned from his travels with an acute sense of what Vancouver was missing: a strong community that supports young entrepreneurs.
During the panel, Langille was loud about the disconnect between tech’s established players and the next generation, a notion shared by Vancouver.dev’s Toki Hossain and echoed by Socratica’s Jocelyne Murphy at the BetaKit Town Hall in May. “I show up to a networking event as a young person, and if I have ‘student’ on my badge, no one wants to talk to me,” he said.
RELATED: Canadian tech’s lost generation
He described a three-pronged solution for supporting young people: capital, mentorship, and belief.
Langille used the example of BlackBerry—née Research in Motion, Canada’s prior largest tech company before handing the title to Shopify—attributing part of its success to building across from the University of Waterloo campus as a tool to draw young talent into the company. He said Vancouver is missing those types of opportunities.
Though he argued that a culture of reinvestment is needed to make Vancouver a place to build, Langille isn’t waiting for capital to fall from the sky. Instead, he’s setting the table to connect Vancouver builders and creatives himself.
Langille is the founder of Atelier, a weekly initiative for young people to co-work on passion projects—which can be just about anything. “I’ve seen everything from mind-controlling cockroaches by implanting electrodes in them to my friend making drones that detect landmines,” Langille said.
On Oct. 23, he launched V2: a new collective gathering Vancouverites launching tech, art, and science projects together to bridge the gap between “people who are ambitious and people who are accomplished.”
The new initiative will host a range of opportunities for exposure and collaboration in 2025, including a residency program, a showcase event that will coincide with Web Summit Vancouver, and “experimental salons” for collective members to brainstorm. All events aim to connect builders and creatives across disciplines—a dire need, according to Langille.
When the conversation came to fixing Canada’s go-for-bronze culture, Langille was adamant that community, not policy, was key to nurturing young ambition.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a tax policy thing that makes this city a place where we have a very ambitious culture in 10 years,” Langille said. “I think it’s going to be because of young people.”
Feature image courtesy Eric Ennis from Renovo Agency for BetaKit.
On October 22, BetaKit Town Hall: Vancouver continued the pulse check on Canadian innovation, policy, and optimism.
Please enjoy this selection of highlights and insights from the town hall:
- “Intensely patriotic” Jack Newton shares practical approach to scaling Clio at BetaKit Town Hall: Vancouver
- BC tech leaders look to reconnect at BetaKit Town Hall: Vancouver
- Clio’s Jack Newton can build another Shopify without building like Shopify
- Jane App co-founder reveals company’s centaur status at BetaKit Town Hall: Vancouver
- Vantage points: Josh Nilson thinks BC should focus on its sector strengths
- Vantage Points: Anne Stevens explains how Canada almost lost AbCellera to the US
- Vantage Points: Alison Taylor thinks tech is actually kind of weird
- Vantage Points: Scott Langille says the next generation of BC tech needs help