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
“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 The Canadian behind some of the largest Kickstarter projects of all time explains why he’s relaunching the device he originally made ...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...
“Once you’ve cornered that beaver, look out. We are a vicious beast.”
Rob and Douglas review the latest dispatches in Canada’s impending trade war with the United States, specifically how Canadian tech is responding. Did someone poke the beaver and unleash Canada’s quiet patriotism? A 3-2 overtime hockey win points to yes.
The BetaKit Podcast is presented by the University of Toronto Entrepreneurship Week, returning Ma...
“ You're going to see Coveo starting to invest quite aggressively actually to be a market taker. We're not a disrupted company. We're a market taker in AI.”
Coveo's current CEO and future executive chair, Louis Têtu, joins to discuss the applied AI company's earnings performance and where the market is heading in the face of customer fatigue and DeepSeek disruption.
The BetaKit Podcast is presented by Float, Canada's complete busin...
“Part of the magic of the games industry here is that it’s not one thing.”
Canada must diversify its economy. Why not start with gaming? Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) president and CEO, Paul Fogolin, joins to discuss video games’ $5.1 billion contribution to Canada’s economy and the results of his organization’s latest study on the Canadian gaming industry.
“ 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. Why are Canadian companies so bad with their go-to-market execution and is now really the time to be preaching subversion and disagreeablene...
“This is worth the pain of attempting to figure out how to do it. But attempting to figure out how to do it required us to basically rethink everything about that traditional outsourcing model.”
SRTX founder and CEO Katherine Homuth explains how attempting to solve one problem with tights led her company to attempt solving for all problems related to modern North American textile manufacturing.
”It does make me increasingly nervous that one of them really wants to move to Mars and the other one has a legit bunker. Like, what are they preparing for?”
Social media expert Amber Mac joins to discuss why two of the world’s richest men, collectively responsible for over 3 billion monthly users, are so quick to blame everyone else for the problems their platforms cause.
“ I'm sure if there's one takeaway here is that we can all trust Enron to solve the world's energy problems.”
“With a mere human-sized egg.”
A cleantech crisis? The end of VCCI? The rise of centaurs? FinTech IPOs? Quantum leaps? BetaKit reporters Madison McLauchlan and Josh Scott join to review 2024’s biggest tech questions before offering a fresh set for 2025.
“Part of my prediction for 2025 is embracing or acknowledging that chaos reigns.”
AI agents. Political shenanigans. A Canadian tech acquisition that will shock you. And a Big Tech breakup that you might expect. After choosing chalk last year, The BetaKit Podcast adds some spice to its 2025 tech predictions. Let’s dig in!
Have a different take on 2025? Let us know: podcast@betakit.com.
“We are about to see a bunch of people who are powerful, successful, and feel like they know the best way to do things bring this approach into government.”
The BetaKit Podcast reviews the biggest tech stories of 2024 before doling out annual letter grades for Shopify, Wealthsimple, Cohere, and many more. A podcast so good we had to record it twice. Have a different take on 2024? Let us know: podcast@betak...
“SaaS was around, ‘How do you automate business processes in order to empower humans?’ AI is about, ‘How can a machine do the process so that you need less [human] involvement?’”
David Appel (Sage Intacct), Bryan Watson (Venbridge), April Hicke (Toast), and Stephanie Lipp (MycoFutures) talk AI, the changing role of the CFO, leadership and hiring, cleantech tax credits, and how to make leather from mushrooms (seriously). Recorded li...
“Browsers aren't a business. Browsers don't make money. These are loss leaders for other connected experiences because no one wants to pay for the window to the web."
The DOJ wants to take Chrome away from Google. Arc wants to build a better browser for everyone. Rob Kenedi wants to decelerate tech with his new show, which is not (yet) a browser. Let’s dig in.
The BetaKit Podcast is brought to you by Cloudways, the man...
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