Damian McCabe

This initiative by Chris Neumann and team hits the nail on the head. We have incredible founders in #Canada. I am privileged to work with and support many of them every day. But the velocity gap is real when it comes to global competitiveness. How can we expect our founders to win if they only observe what winning looks like from a distance? There is some great benefits to being a Canadian Startup, but competing on the highest level requires being emersed in and exposed to an environment that has been winning for a long time and where it is normal like breathing. I have seen this in the world of competitive sport and I have seen this in the Startup world on different continents and different ecosystems. It’s no different from a talented athlete who dominates locally on pure talent and the training and competition they have been exposed to, only to realize when they step into the bigger pond just how far behind they truly are. Even the best athletes in the world go emmerse themselves at the best training environments around the world to gain marginal improvements to level up. The environment you train in determines mindset, intensity, different level of tactics, etc By immersing founders in a high-performance ecosystem where winning is the norm, this program gives them a lived experience of what’s possible, surrounded by an ecosystem that cultivates an environment conducive for rapid and consistent progress. This is not for every founder or venture, but for those who are aiming to level up and compete globally this is a great opportunity. #CDNTech #Startups #HighPerformance #Mindset #Entrepreneurship #Founders #LevelUp

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Former Panache Ventures partner Chris Neumann says there's a "genuine velocity gap" between Canadian founders and their global peers. He wants to solve it by dropping early-stage Canadian tech founders into Silicon Valley to soak up the culture and connections. He is delivering Game On through team-ups with Fasken Emerging Tech, Google Cloud, the Trade Commissioner Service | Service des délégués commerciaux, the Consulate General of Canada in San Francisco, and Werqwise. #CDNTech #Startups

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2025 was the worst year for Canadian VC funding since 2016. At the same time, 80% of our founders burn through early-stage capital rebuilding broken MVPs. Scope creep still kills half of all software projects. Non-tech founders get quoted $50k to $400k for the same application with no way to validate what's real. And when they do build? Half of the IP generated here gets assigned to foreign companies. We don't have an innovation problem. We have a translation problem. Brilliant ideas die in the gap between vision and technical execution because founders can't speak developer, and developers can't read minds. The concept-to-PRD process still costs $50k to $400k in senior engineering time. Most early-stage companies can't afford that, so they hire junior talent, get locked into vendors, or burn runway on throwaway code. The Vision-to-Execution gap isn't capital. It's the $400k scoping barrier that keeps ideas trapped inside founders' heads. Until we fix the process, more funding won't solve anything.

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Execution is the new capital...and these 10 founder lessons from Waterloo Tech Week might prove it. From hiring fast (and firing faster) to guarding your calendar like equity, some of Waterloo Regions’s top tech leaders dropped the kind of startup truth bombs you can't Google. Thanks to MissionSync for sponsoring and Mike Kirkupfor hosting! And a big thanks to Mila Banerjee, Sheldon McCormick, Steve Currie and Martha van Berkel for sharing their knowledge and insights with the group. Check them out 👉 https://lnkd.in/gwSVZh97

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I haven’t posted on LinkedIn about Billdr in a long time. Today feels like the right moment. I’m thrilled to share that we’ve raised USD $3.2M to accelerate our mission of building the dominant operating system for small and mid-sized general contractors and home builders (SMB GCs). The round is led by White Star Capital, with participation from One Way Ventures, Desjardins Capital, asterX, and Formentera Capital. This milestone is more than a funding round. It’s the closing of one chapter, and the exciting beginning of another. The truth is, the last few years were hard. We spent 3.5 years trying to build a home renovation marketplace that ultimately didn’t scale. We made the difficult decision to shut it down, reset the company, and change direction. Over the last two years, we rebuilt Billdr from its ashes as a vertical SaaS for SMB GCs, one feature at a time. We earned trust one SMB GC at a time. We survived the valley of death, and we emerged much stronger. Today, our vertical SaaS Billdr PRO serves hundreds of SMB GCs across the US and Canada, representing thousands of construction professionals using our software daily. Over $1B of construction projects flow through our platform. Thousands of workers rely on our software and mobile app every month. That comes with a real responsibility: to build software that genuinely makes a GC’s life easier in the back office and significantly increases their productivity. Our core belief is simple: SMB GCs don’t need more tools. They need one modern, intuitive, AI-native operating system, bringing estimating, project management, team management, payments, communications, and procurement under one roof. There are 1.4M SMB GCs in North America, delivering $1T+ in construction projects annually (residential and commercial). Yet, 75% of them are still using a combination of Excel, spreadsheets, and accounting software. We have a huge opportunity ahead of us to unlock productivity gains across this industry. Grateful to our investors, our customers, and the Billdr team! It's time to build. You can read more on our blog post here: https://lnkd.in/gzQZnXGt

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Proud to share that North Exit Ventures participated in Slate’s $1.3M pre-seed. Slate is building embedded lending infrastructure for Canadian platforms. So marketplaces, vertical SaaS, and AP/AR tools can offer SMB financing inside the product their customers already use, without having to build (or manage) a lending stack. Why this model is so compelling: - Distribution is built-in (no “go find borrowers” problem) - Underwriting gets smarter (platform data, not just bank statements) - Repayment improves (you can sit in the flow of funds) If you’ve seen Shopify Capital, you get the idea - but built for far more platforms in Canada. Huge congrats to founders Scott Elliot (CEO) and Devin Picciolini (CTO) - excited to be in your corner as you bring this infrastructure to market. BetaKit's full article below 👇 https://lnkd.in/eDbpZxZg

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Clunky UI kills sales. Clean UX creates and accelerates sales. Because clients don’t buy features. They buy experiences they can trust with their clients. That’s why NDEX Systems Inc. -- the backbone of wealth management technology for 14,000+ advisors and 350+ firms across North America -- partnered with us at INSART. The mission: take the most complete, normalized, and secure portfolio data platform in Canada... and redesign the interface to unlock new adoption and sales opportunities. 🚀 NDEX already sets the industry standard with: → 300+ direct custodial feeds → 8,500+ supported data extraction sites → Real-time reconciliation & exception alerts → Export-ready data via REST API 👉 But the real transformation came from rethinking how advisors and firms experience that power: 1/ Navigation that accelerates workflows 2/ Performance built for massive data sets 3/ Responsive design across every device 4/ Interfaces designed to support end-client conversations and trust Swipe through the screenshots to see how a legacy interface evolved into a modern platform → built not just for data, but for growth. Great UX is when advisors stop thinking about the software and start focusing fully on their clients. Laurent Bensemana and Benjamin Amar, CPA let's keep building together! 👉 Here is the real question: What core UX principles do you believe every fintech platform should follow to accelerate sales? #Fintech #UXDesign #WealthManagement #PortfolioManagement #NDEX #INSART #WealthTech #SalesEnablement

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In conversation with Sébastien Vaval, Claude G. Théoret - Senior AI Advisor at Innovobot talks about what it truly means to leave a legacy in the tech world 🚀 Claude takes us back to 2008. Back then, the Montreal startup community was maybe 40 people. There was only one venture capital fund (Real Ventures) with just $3.5M. It was in that quiet environment that he founded the very first AI company in Canada. Fast forward 20 years, and the transformation is incredible. From a handful of pioneers to a room filled with hundreds of innovators and thriving startups. For Claude, this recent award isn’t just a trophy it’s a touching recognition of two decades of mentorship, grit, and helping build an ecosystem from the ground up. What kind of legacy do you hope to leave behind in your industry?

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Pressure is a privilege. Today we're announcing Boreal Ventures II - a $60M seed fund built to close the one gap that kills too many great Canadian companies: commercialization. This moment started a few years ago. VC is a trade. Not a title. And like any trade, you learn it by doing it beside people who've done it longer. BDC gave me that. Mentors who let me sit in rooms I had no business being in. Who invested years of their time so that one day I could invest capital in others. But while they were teaching me the craft, I started noticing something most people walked past. Companies growing in places venture capital doesn't reach. Scaling on venture debt, organic revenue, and discipline. Founders in overlooked sectors that quietly sustain the backbone of our economy. Real businesses with real unit economics scaling at venture pace, but without venture capital. Invisible to the hype machine. Their bottleneck was always the same. Founder-led sales maxed out, and they do what everyone told them to do: raise $5M and hire a VP Sales. Two years later, the only thing that VP had sold successfully was their own resume (outch) I knew there was an opportunity. But who was I? A senior analyst with no track record and limited means to act on the conviction. Fast forward to 2021. Centech Mtl gave me a platform whose magnitude I hadn't fully grasped at the time. Richard Chenier and team had built trust and showcased the funding gap in early-stage Québec. I inherited that trust and made sure to honor it best I could. Then Samuel Larivière made a bet on me. I had no structure, no track record, and no safety net. His job was to turn an idea into an institution. The Boreal that LPs trust today is built on foundations Sam laid when nobody was watching. Years went on. Learnings piled up. Trust with founders and partners slowly grew. And then JD Saint-Martin joined. He sold his business and scaled Lightspeed to over $1B (!). He could have done anything next. Instead, he chose seed-stage VC. The messy, unsexy work of building revenue engines from scratch. I stopped trying to explain our thesis. JD joining BV spoke louder. Samuel Jobin-Morissette completed our team with operational discipline that only a true builder can bring. The Guild members signed on. Our institutional backers returned - Investissement Québec, BDC Capital, Teralys Capital, Desjardins. They gave us their trust early. And for that, we'll be forever grateful. They came back because they see what we see: Quebec & Canada don't need more capital chasing trends. It needs to turn its best-kept secrets into global contenders. That's the mission of Boreal Ventures II. And now we have to deliver. Pressure is on. We're in the same position as every founder the day after they close their round. The celebrating is done. The trust has been extended. And the only thing that matters is proving it was deserved. Merci de la confiance! Let's get to work. #venturecapital #startups #bootstrap

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Bootstrappers are not represented in our startup ecosystem. Not at a single conference, these massive tech meetup or publications. Mark Bania's story hits home deep to build something from scratch to scale to millions is truly remarkable right here in Canada. "Our dream was autonomy, with the goal of not raising a dim!". Well-captured scene by FengHao B. Tune into the full documentary story along with Ryan Burgio, Patrick W Belliveau, Khalil Khamis, Jared Ferrall 🍜, and Miki Ferrall. 🍿🎉🎬 Full length film can be watched here: foundersbeta.com/film

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When experienced founders and investors highlight NL’s tech momentum, it’s not noise — it’s a signal. In this CBC article, founders Adam Keating and Brent Pretty and VC investor Chris Moyer highlight the strength of the ecosystem — the ambition of local companies, the growth trajectory, and the confidence they see in what’s being built here. The NL tech sector is now a $1.87B+ contributor to the province’s economy. Companies are scaling, raising capital, and competing globally from Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s also the #1 startup ecosystem in Atlantic Canada. Momentum is real. The opportunity now is to build on it — and accelerate. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gJ33PHDE #NLTech #Innovation #technology #EconomicGrowth techNL

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During a small group session at CDL Vancouver, one of the mentors asked me: “What if a big tech company releases something like what you’re doing and destroys your business?” I’ve been asked that question more times than I can count. And honestly — it’s a fair one. But it also reminds me of what early Instagram founders must’ve heard when they were raising money: “If Facebook adds photo sharing, you’ll be dead tomorrow.” We know how that story turned out. The reality is, large companies can’t react to every new idea. They have massive machines to run, quarterly goals to hit, and existing roadmaps that can’t bend to every new signal in the market. If they try to be too reactive, they lose focus on what makes them work. By the time a startup’s idea becomes a credible threat — it’s often already too late for the big guys to respond. Startups like Cielara AI have one superpower: focus. We can pour all our attention into a single, painful customer problem and solve it beautifully. That kind of deep empathy and speed just doesn’t scale well inside a big company. Big tech has to build for the masses — we get to build for the few who care deeply. That’s why: - It took years for others to catch up to AWS, - Signal still thrives next to WhatsApp, - And Google Search is now being disrupted by ChatGPT. So when people ask, “What if Big Tech just builds it?” — my answer is simple: They could. But by the time they do, we’ll already be somewhere new.

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🚀 Excited to officially announce our investment in Slide’s Series A round, alongside Base10 Partners and Outsiders Fund. Slide is reimagining Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery (BCDR) for MSP - led by Datto founder Austin McChord and a powerhouse team of industry veterans. We believe their security-first, modern approach is exactly what the MSP ecosystem needs. Welcome to the Top Down Ventures family, Slide! We’re thrilled to support you on this journey. #BCDR #MSP #VentureCapital #CyberResilience #EarlyStageInvesting #TopDownVentures

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Anthropic just stomped onto the funding stage with a $30B Series G led by GIC and Coatue, valuing Claude at a $380B post-money milestone. 🚀 The round stacks a who's-who of backers- D. E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, ICONIQ, MGX - plus continued bets from Microsoft and NVIDIA. This signals real enterprise demand, with Claude now the workhorse of choice and a run-rate around $14B, hundreds of millions in deals, and eight Fortune 10 customers on Claude. 📈 Claude Code is exploding: $2.5B in run-rate revenue, 4% of GitHub public commits coming from Claude Code, and a growing ecosystem of Cowork plugins that turn Claude into specialized pros. HIPAA-ready Claude for Enterprise and Opus 4.6 showing AI can actually ship safe, scalable, end-to-end work for finance, legal, and data-heavy teams - and it’s still on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. 🤖 All this, while the posters claim a new frontier in safety, performance, and scale that will 'drive long-term adoption'. 🔥 #Anthropic #Claude #EnterpriseAI #SeriesG https://lnkd.in/dD7fbdfV Created By LastPosty http://lastposty.com https://lnkd.in/dzW9mtNt

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🚀 Game-changer alert for Canadian SMBs! Loop Financial just revolutionized cross-border financial services by partnering with Lithic to launch their Global Visa Card program. The results? Mind-blowing. 💰 Save $40K+ annually on FX costs ⚡ Launch in under 100 days (vs years with legacy processors) 🌍 Seamless multi-currency processing 🔒 Enhanced security & fraud prevention Here’s what caught my attention: Canada’s concentrated banking market has created a massive opportunity for fintech disruption. This partnership showcases how modern API-first infrastructure can transform entire industries. While traditional banks burden SMBs with costly conversions and complex systems, Loop + Lithic are delivering transparency, speed, and massive cost savings. For Canadian businesses expanding globally, this isn’t just a new card program. It’s a competitive advantage. Thank you for your partnership, Cato Pastoll, Nikhil N., and the entire Loop Financial team, for this incredible execution!

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If you haven’t heard about OpenClaw (Clawdbot), then you must be living under a rock. I just attended my first OpenClaw meetup in Montreal at NEXT AI. It was great to hear about what people actually enjoy about OpenClaw. Here are my top 3 picks: 1. Robust memory management system 2. Remote control on mobile 3. Local first and enhanced privacy As someone who is using AI agents everyday, nothing really surprises me. However, OpenClaw definitely showed the potential of multi-agent systems. Thank to Antonio S. for organizing the event! #OpenClaw #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #TechMeetup #AIAgent #Innovation #Montreal #Clawdbot

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#SECUREBYDEFAULT See the following demo from the team at Codezero Technologies Inc. 👉 https://lnkd.in/gyCpcmR5 They have been grinding it out in glamorous startup land and they have really developed a critically needed solution for the #AI arena. 🚧 BLUF: AI integrations are fundamentally insecure because of how we pass tokens / credentials across systems. The CodeZero team (Matthew Kern Reed Clayton) have eliminated this by moving security from the application layer to the network layer, ensuring that agents (think contractors and HT to Jim Routh) never even see the keys they use. Codezero changes the game by injecting credentials at the network layer, not the runtime. 👉 Zero Keys in Runtime, meaning your app code and AI agents function perfectly, but they have zero access to the actual API keys. 👉 Network-Layer Injection: Authentication happens transparently via a proxy. If an attacker compromises the agent, there are no keys to steal. 👉 Identity-Aware Access: Give agents access to private services (like internal DBs or #MCP servers) without ever exposing them to the public internet. 👉 Zero-Knowledge Isolation: Authorized agents can reach specific private services but have zero knowledge of other services on the same private network, enforcing the principle of least privilege. The Result: You get the power of LLMs and autonomous agents with the security of a hardened enterprise network. 🛡️ Check out how Codezero is securing the future of MCP and AI agents. #AI #CyberSecurity #CloudNative #SoftwareEngineering #Codezero #MCP #LLMSecurity #ResponsibleAI Ori Roger Brett Robert David 🌞 Philip Philippe Florent Sudhir Gary Deborah Marty Fred Bob Jen Sean Brandon Kevin Michael Amit Nicole Thomas OWASP GenAI Security Project Daniel Patrick Jake Dave Gaurab Jon Kris Tiffany Gordon Rod

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🚧 Builder Notes #1: Matt Espinoza ✦ Clover Labs In my role at TechTO I get to talk to hundreds of Canadian 🇨🇦 builders every month. Their stories are packed with insights, and I’m going to start sharing more of them here. First up: Matthew Espinoza, founder of Clover Labs where he builds AI-powered B2B companies using a repeatable go-to-market engine. 🔥 Highlights from his story: • He’s raised a lean $500K to date • Reached $1M ARR in just 62 days with his first company. • Now launching a portfolio of agent-led startups, all designed to scale fast and efficiently. 💡 Lessons from my convo with Matt: • It takes less capital to build than ever before. • Builders are expected to show traction earlier-often before raising their first checks. • Matt’s engine is powered by relentless outbound: his team does thousands of outreaches per day, and he says: “There’s no way not to win at that volume.” He’s using this same approach to spin up multiple new ventures- proof that distribution is the new product. More builder notes coming soon-follow along.💛 #Builders #Entrepreneurs #TechTO #Entrepreneurship #Technology

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Is it time for a YC-like growth accelerator for Canada? It's 2026. Canada no longer has a problem producing world class innovation, technology, founders, and entrepreneurs. What we still struggle with is scale. Canada has a growth stage problem. Too many of our best AI and tech growth companies still feel compelled to leave Canada to access the operating experience, capital, mentorship, community, and networks required to successfully navigate scaling from $5M to $150M. The idea: Bridge Canada Not an incubator. Not a startup factory. A national YC-like accelerator but built for Canadian growth stage founders / entrepreneurs that’s anchored in both Canada and Silicon Valley. Build locally. Learn unrelentingly from those before us. Scale globally. What this could look like: - 12 week accelerator - with a highly selective application process - Choose ~30 of Canada’s most ambitious growth stage AI and tech companies per cohort - Intensive workshops across Canada and Silicon Valley in leadership, product, GTM, people, fundraising - Deep mentorship, speakers, advice from "been there done that" experts, executives, founders and operators - $500K USD SAFE investment for all participating companies from a newly created Bridge Canada Fund - Peer groups and alumni engagement designed to last well beyond the program - Silicon Valley and Canada demo days with both Canadian and US investors This is not about creating startups. That already exists. This is about accelerating the creation of our next 100 $150M USD+ Canadian companies. Why now? Because this is moving so quickly here in Silicon Valley. If we lose this generation of AI and tech scale-up companies (and their founders, talent…) to the US, we lose jobs, entrepreneurs, innovations, and their significant long term economic impact. Having spent my 30+ year career bridging Canada and Silicon Valley as a founder, CEO, operator, investor, and as a member and Executive Director of C100 - the program structures, expert networks, workshop playbooks, and required talent already exist to make this happen. The real question is whether there is the collective Canadian will to actually pull this together. So I’ll ask plainly. If something like Bridge Canada was to be pulled together: • Would you apply as a founder, entrepreneur ($5M/$20M wanting to get to $150M USD+)? • Would you want to be a mentor, advisor? • Would you be interested in investing in a Build Canada fund? • Would you want to be a partner? Please comment below or DM me with how you might engage. Founder. Mentor. Investor. Partner. Or pass. And if this resonates, please share this prolifically with anyone else who cares about the future of Canadian tech. We need to move now. I’m here. Comments always welcome.

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