The BetaKit Podcast Channel
The BetaKit Podcast Channel features weekly podcasts discussing both Canadian tech and innovation, as well as global tech from a Canadian perspective.
Episodes
“The current government is really plugged into what’s needed.”
One step closer to quantum data centres with the launch of his company’s advanced photonics packaging facility, Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook joins to discuss the renewed federal interest in quantum technology, how it relates to Canadian sovereignty, and where the money to fund it should come from.
The BetaKit Podcast is presente...
“ It's kind of that 'Valley or bust' mentality which breaks the ecosystem and really hurts Canada.”
Harley Finkelstein (Shopify), Mike Katchen (Wealthsimple), and Aidan Gomez (Cohere) hold a candid conversation about 'Ambition made in Canada' during Toronto Tech Week. Recorded live at Homecoming.
The BetaKit Podcast is presented by Invest Northern Ireland—the gateway to international growth.
International Tech companies are discove...
“ The company fascinates me… because they have such interesting concepts internally. One of them being ‘treat the company as a future adversary,’ which I have never seen anywhere in my career."
Bluesky's head of trust and safety is a Canadian working out of Dublin. In town to speak at the BetaKit Town Hall for Toronto Tech Week, Aaron Rodericks first joined The BetaKit Podcast to discuss his journey from government to social media,...
“I want to put ambition in people’s hands. You say it doesn’t exist—you’re going to hold it, you’re going to flip through it, you’re going to see it.”
BetaKit CEO Siri Agrell joins to discuss today’s launch of BetaKit’s Most Ambitious: our first-ever print issue, telling stories of bold ambition in Canadian tech.
Consider this your Most Ambitious director’s commentary companion, Read more
“ Subversiveness is a way of changing the system. And I think what we're seeing right now is that all systems are changing.”
Entrepreneur and Startupfest founding partner Alistair Croll has co-authored a new book, Just Evil Enough: The Subversive Marketing Handbook. If you’re wondering why your company is so bad with its go-to-market execution, or which rules need to be bent (or broken) to win in the att...
“ That's what we wanna change, right? For future companies, more Canadian investors on the cap table so that we can see those benefits come back through investment, through mentorship.”
Jill Earthy, CEO of InBC Investment Corp—a provincial Crown corporation with $500 million of direct and indirect capital to deploy—joins to discuss the state of Canadian venture, the role of organizations like hers in BC’s...
“Be a customer of Canadian startups. This is the thing that every company needs. Nobody died from having too many customers.”
The CEO of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, Cam Linke, joins to discuss the next phase of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy and how Amii stands apart from other national AI institutes, Vector and Mila. Recorded live from the Upper Bound AI conference.
The BetaKit Podcast is p...
“ Companies have spent a lot of time and money creating really great user experience for humans. And now there's kind of this race to create a really good experience for AI agents.”
Erik Reppel, head of engineering for the Coinbase Developer Platform, joins to explain why the x402 open payment standard he helped create might plug one of the oldest holes in the internet, and how the protocol could revolut...
“ I think every ecosystem is different, but we can learn a lot from Silicon Valley, and we can merge what we have here.”
Faire co-founder and Chief Architect Marcelo Cortes explains his journey from Brazil to Canada, how working in Kitchener-Waterloo connected him to Silicon Valley, and the process of applying the lessons learned there to his company. We also discuss how Faire's wholesale marketplace for...
“Bad actors are weaponizing AI faster than governments and enterprises are using AI to combat it.”
New data shows that more than half of all internet traffic comes from bots, and a third of those bots have malicious intent. Koat.ai co-founder Connor Ross joins to discuss the impact of the disinformation and defamation campaigns these bots run, how governments and enterprises are unprepared for this AI-driv...
“I feel like doing this is one of the greatest gifts of my life. Working with these people energizes me.”
Joe Canavan, principal at Canavan Capital, is Canada’s 2025 Angel of the Year. Recorded live at the NACO Summit in Ottawa, Canavan discusses his passion and enthusiasm for investing in tech after a career in finance, and what Canada should do to bolster its productivity and economic sovereignty.
The Be...
“I think for any entrepreneur that’s navigated the last five years, I don’t know if there was a worse time to be building a company.”
Clutch found a new gear for its business after a post-pandemic lull … just in time for tariffs to hit. Dan Park (CEO) and Stephen Seibel (COO) join to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated online car retail, how the end of cheap capital pumped their brakes, and how...
“ Toronto Tech Week belongs to everyone. Toronto Tech Week is by definition a platform, and it succeeds or fails by the virtue of all the hosts and all of the ecosystem in Toronto wanting to participate.”
Filling the summer event gap that Collision left in the city, Toronto Tech Week plans to host 10,000 people attending over 100 events this June. How did the ‘community-driven platform’ come to be? How wil...
“ At the end of the day, I really wanted a Pebble. It didn't exist. No one was building anything remotely like it. So I, without really knowing what I was doing, decided to go and make it.”
Almost 10 years after Pebble’s demise, Eric Migicovsky is back building smartwatches. The Canadian behind some of the largest Kickstarter projects of all time explains why he’s relaunching the device he originally made ...
“ It's worth it. Because this deserves to live. We've gotten it far enough that this deserves to actually come to fruition. I don't think there is another company in the world today that actually is closer to this sci-fi dream.”
Revisiting BetaKit’s January interview with SRTX founder Katherine Homuth about her company’s ambitious goal to modernize Western textile manufacturing in light of recent news that...
“ By the time these companies are ready for B and C [rounds], their cap tables are super clean, too. So it doesn't really make sense that we're not putting money into them.”
In a time of global uncertainty, a new report by the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN) shows that Canada lags other countries in foodtech funding, relying too much on public funding. CEO Dana McCauley joins to discuss the repor...
”Apple won't use user data to develop and train AI. And Apple lives in a world where AI is going to be table stakes in any software or hardware moving forward.”
Call it counter-programming. A tech palate cleanse for all the election and trade war talk. This week, Rob and Doug tackle the latest AI developments: vibe coding, Cohere’s (temporary?) LLM pole position, AI data centres from Telus (powered by Nvid...
”One of the things that I think we've got to critically think about in our country for the future is that we've got to begin using those dollars effectively, like the $4 billion in SR&ED.”
CCI’s Ben Bergen joins to discuss items innovators hope will be on the agenda in the forthcoming federal election before ranking what programs (VCCI, SR&ED, etc.) and policies (AI regulation, open banking, etc.) the nex...
“I don’t know what Canadian DOGE is. You know what I know? That everyone is projecting both their hopes and fears onto this thing.”
Ex-Shopify VP Daniel Debow joins to discuss his Build Canada initiative, what it’s attempting to achieve, what it isn’t, and his frustration regarding ongoing associations with ‘Canadian DOGE’.
The BetaKit Podcast is presented by The Cyber Challenge, powered by Ro...
“It feels like my inclusion was optional, and that is a scary message to be told. ‘We were doing you a favour by letting you in the room.’”
AccessNow founder and CEO Maayan Ziv has been working in the accessibility space for over a decade—long enough to know that progress is slow and takes a fight. With DEIA currently being blamed for “everything from bad business decisions to plane crashes,” Ziv joins to explain why she feels the...
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