Startupville

We talked with Sam Dietrich of Prairie Robotics. Sam was inspired to create change in the world to make recycling simpler so that we can individually make a positive environmental impact. After entering a competition to find out how technology can be used to monitor the amount of solid waste generated and disposed of in Saskatchewan, Prairie Robotics used Artificial Intelligence to estimate the weight of the waste entering landfills to capture data in real time to automatically generate waste reports. This wasn’t enough, so they developed the ability to use AI at the source to resolve issues at the household level. We talked with Sam about the importance of recycling, how we can change the future now, and what’s in store for Prairie Robotics. This podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan & Martin Charlton Communications “9 out of 10 people in North America find recycling more confusing than investing in the stock market, filing their taxes or assembling Ikea furniture.” – Sam Dietrich, CEO of Prairie Robotics

Global Biotech Week started 18 years ago right here in Canada, and has since gone global, raising awareness for the significant role biotech plays in the world today. So, to celebrate Global Biotech Week, we’ve interviewed three leaders in the biotech sector, to learn more about what they do, and what makes biotech different from the typical startup experience. We talked with Jay Robinson of Ag-West Bio and the GAAP Accelerator, Conrad Nixon, Co-founder of Back to Your Roots, and Rob Henderson, President and CEO of Biotalent Canada. We talked with Jay about the GAAP Accelerator, a new organization created to support early stage and rapid growth stage companies in all areas of agriculture and food Back to Your Roots is a food startup specializing in raw fermented food products, hand crafted using minimal ingredients. BioTalent Canada is a national non-profit that supports the people behind life-changing Science. This podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan & Martin Charlton Communications “There’s an adage that I’ve followed through my career, is that you can have great technology and a terrible team, or a great team and terrible technology, and the great team will win every time.”  – Jay Robinson, Ag West Bio, GAAP

Uniting the Prairies, or UP Conference, is a virtual conference on June 23rd and 24th that brings together the top startups from across the Canadian prairies to connect with global investors and tech leaders, and collectively elevate the prairie community. Leading up to the conference, we are hosting a five episode mini-series to highlight the five major prairie tech cities in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Check out the three previous episodes on Saskatoon and Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Regina, and today we’re featuring Calgary, Alberta We talked with Nicolas Beique, founder and CEO of Helcim, Alitta Tait, Head of Partnerships at Harvest Builders, and Patrick Lor Managing Partner of Panache Ventures This podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan & Martin Charlton Communications Special thanks to Uniting the Prairies and Co.Labs

Uniting the Prairies, or UP Conference, is a virtual conference on June 23rd and 24th that brings together the top startups from across the Canadian prairies to connect with global investors and tech leaders, and collectively elevate the prairie community. Leading up to the conference, we are hosting a five episode mini-series to highlight the five major prairie tech cities in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Check out the three previous episodes on Saskatoon and Edmonton, and Winnipeg, and today we’re featuring Regina, Saskatchewan We talked with Matt Fahlman, Co-founder and CEO of Offstreet, Trevor Phenix, Managing Partner of Broad Street Bulls, and Tina Beaudry-Mellor, Chief Economic Growth Officer of Economic Development Regina Subscribe and don’t miss the final upcoming episodes highlighting Calgary! This podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan & Martin Charlton Communications Special thanks to Uniting the Prairies and Co.Labs

Uniting the Prairies, or UP Conference, is a virtual conference on June 23rd and 24th that brings together the top startups from across the Canadian prairies to connect with global investors and tech leaders, and collectively elevate the prairie community. Leading up to the conference, we are hosting a five episode mini-series to highlight the five major prairie tech cities in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Check out the two previous episodes on Saskatoon and Edmonton, and today we’re featuring Winnipeg, Manitoba We talked with Catherine Metrycki Founder and CEO of Callia Flowers, Michael Legary, Chairman of Radar Ventures, and Joelle Foster, CEO of NorthForge Subscribe and don’t miss upcoming episodes highlighting Winnipeg, Regina, and Calgary! This podcast is brought to you by Innovation Place & Martin Charlton Communications Special thanks to Uniting the Prairies and Co.Labs

Uniting the Prairies, or UP Conference, is a virtual conference on June 23rd and 24th that brings together the top startups from across the Canadian prairies to connect with global investors and tech leaders, and collectively elevate the prairie community. Leading up to the conference, we are hosting a five episode mini-series to highlight the five major prairie tech cities in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Last week our home city of Saskatoon, and today we’re traveling northwest to Edmonton Alberta, home to an amazing startup ecosystem and our three guests today. First, we talked with Zack Storms, founder of Startup TNT, and Kristina Milke, Managing Partner of Sprout Fund. Thanks to a few quick messages and the well-connected ecosystem that is the Edmonton startup scene, we also had an impromptu visit for the second half of the interview from Edmonton founder Sophie Gray of DiveThru. A true testament to how fast you can network in the Canadian prairies. Subscribe and don’t miss upcoming episodes highlighting Winnipeg, Regina, and Calgary! This podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan & Martin Charlton Communications Special thanks to Uniting the Prairies and Co.Labs

Uniting the Prairies, or UP Conference, is a virtual conference on June 23rd and 24th that brings together the top startups from across the Canadian prairies to connect with global investors and tech leaders, and collectively elevate the prairie community.    The Canadian prairies are on a tear, with five cities rapidly growing their tech sectors, and this conference is a chance for each of them to put their collective energy together to drive things forward even more.    Leading up to the conference, we are hosting a five episode mini-series to highlight the five major prairie tech cities in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.  We’re kicking off this series with the city where the UP Conference started just two years ago, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.    We talked with Matt Stefan, The Executive Director of Co.Labs, Saskatoon’s tech incubator and organizers of the UP Conference, along with Wanda Hunchak, Executive Vice President of venture firm Westcap Management, and Serese Selanders founder and CEO of the fast growing startup, SolusGuard about where the Saskatoon tech ecosystem is today, and where it’s headed. Subscribe and don’t miss upcoming episodes highlighting Edmonton, Winnipeg, Regina, and Calgary!   “I think what’s really unique about Saskatoon [and] Saskatchewan as a whole is just the collaboration aspect. And the fact that, I never feel like, and I think my fellow entrepreneurs don’t feel like we’re competing against each other. I think we feel like we’re doing this together, we’re in it together“ – Serese Selanders This podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan & Martin Charlton Communications Special thanks to Uniting the Prairies and Co.Labs

The Startup TnT Fall Investment Summit launched in September of 2021 in Saskatchewan for the first time ever. We talk with Jesse Wiebe, the new local ambassador for Startup TnT about bringing the Thursday Night Tradition to his home province of Saskatchewan after being inspired by co-founders Zach Storms and Tim Lynn. We talk about the summit process, working with founders and investors to build an ecosystem of support, as well as all of the excitement that went down at Boffins Event Center at Innovation Place on Finale Night. This episode features an exclusive interview with the top winner from the Finale, Store To Door CEO and Founder, Scott Love. We talk with Scott about his first steps in entrepreneurship at the young age of 18, how Store To Door came to be (hint, it was a New Year’s Eve special!) as well as his experience with the program and startup community. This podcast is brought to you by Innovation Saskatchewan & Martin Charlton Communications  “We worked our way to understand that we need to get this off the ground while COVID was happening because it was so relevant. People needed help, businesses needed help, and we were super concerned that we were going to see this mass closure of brick and mortar retail if we didn’t come along and help them.” – Scott Love, CEO & Founder of Store To Door

We talked with with Dirk Propp of Immigrate Software. Dirk spent 15 years helping people immigrate to Canada as an immigration consultant. And, with a business growing rapidly through positive referrals, he identified ways to automate parts of his business, while still delivering the same level of referral-worthy service. Now, Dirk isn’t just helping his business, but the whole Canadian immigration industry, with his startup Immigrate helping people pursue their dream of living in Canada faster, at a lower cost. We talked with Dirk about how he started the company, a recent rebrand that changed everything, and his plans for massive growth in the near future.

We talked with Jessica McNaughton of MemoryKPR. After years as a successful executive leader, Jessica ventured off on her own to try and solve a problem near and dear to her heart. Keeping peoples’ stories alive. Jessica started MemoryKPR to fill in the gaps that social media and digitization has left in our lives. Thanks to digitization, we all create our stories in entirely different ways, and Jessica identified a need for creative solutions for how we keep and pass on these stories. We talked with Jessica about the mission of MemoryKPR, and how they’re marching forward to change the way we create and keep our memories.

We talked with Neil Anderson of SkillShark.   The best ideas often come from lived experience. As a softball coach, Neil experienced firsthand the long, tedious process of athlete evaluations which still involved pen and paper, and mountains of unreliable data that weren’t being used to their full potential.    So, he took matters into his own hands, and what started as a complex excel spreadsheet is now a user-friendly digital platform that’s revolutionizing how athletes are being evaluated around the world. From youth sports’ young rising stars, to professional, and even Olympic athletes, With most coaches around the world still using pen and paper, there’s blood in the water for SkillShark.

In 2015, PLATO Testing identified software testing, a service primarily outsourced to other countries, as an opportunity to help bring more Indigenous people into the ICT industry. Since then, they have trained more than 150 Indigenous people, many of whom still work for the company today.” “In 2019, they partnered with FHQ Developments, the economic development corporation for the File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council in Saskatchewan. Through this partnership, they created PLATO Sask, a Saskatchewan-based, Indigenous-owned software testing business that offers training and employment for Indigenous people in Saskatchewan. The partnership has been a great success, both in continuing to grow the booming Saskatchewan tech industry, and in providing a path into the sector for people who previously had limited access to the opportunities and resources needed to do so. So we wanted to chat with Thomas and Denis to learn more about their story, and what they’ve learned that can help others in the tech sector increase access to opportunity and build more inclusive companies.

We talked with Jared Fedorchuk, CEO and Partner of Levis Tech about their journey as a company. How they started life as a digital agency, and followed their expertise, and the market to change their business They’ve even started to dive into the startup world, spinning off some of their proprietary tech into products of their own, moving some of their business from a service-based model, to a Software-as-a-service product-based model. We talked with Jared about the factors that led to their recent pivots, and where Levis is headed into the future.

We talked with Darcy McLane, Executive Director of SaskInteractive. Darcy was on the show last April to talk about the Labour Market and Economic Impact study that quantified the massive growth of the Saskatchewan tech sector in the years prior. The study was a good barometer of where the Saskatchewan tech sector sat heading into the pandemic, so we caught up with Darcy about where things are at today after nearly a year. But, SaskInteractive does a lot more than measure the Saskatchewan tech sector, and we wanted to talk about what they’re doing to help kickstart the Saskatchewan game development community. While there might not be many big game companies in the province, there are tons of people making games who are desperate for a community of support. We talked with Darcy about how he and SaskInteractive are helping to bring those people together and build a strong foundation to grow the video game sector in the province.

We talked with Matt Stefan, the new Executive Director of Co.Labs, Saskatoon’s tech incubator. In under four years, Co.Labs has already left a lasting legacy on the Saskatchewan tech community, thanks in no small part to its recently departed co-founders Jordan Dutchak and Alex Shimla. They’ve left two pairs of big shoes to fill, and if anybody is up to the task, it’s Matt Stefan. A Saskatchewan native, Matt is returning to the province from the Toronto tech scene to lead Co.Labs into its next chapter. We talked with Matt about making the move back to his home-province, and his vision for Co.Labs moving forward.

We talked with David Crossman, Co-Founder and CTO of Citrus, and Founder of HackRegina. Much has changed in David’s life over the last year. He went from a solo founder spinning his tires to a Co-founder speeding down the track, and the tech community he helped build was thrown headfirst into a global pandemic. So we talked with David about his journey of perseverance as an entrepreneur, and where Citrus and the Regina tech scene as a whole is heading into the future.

We’re excited to partner with Ag-West bio and present a special episode for Global Biotech Week 2020! To celebrate Global Biotech Week, we’ve interviewed three biotech entrepreneurs, based here in Saskatchewan, to learn more about what they do, and what makes biotech different from the typical startup experience. First in today’s episode, we talked with Shawn Ritchie, CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Med-Life Discoveries, a leader in developing novel treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, MS, and more. Next up is Masood Rizvi, Head of Genomics at NRGene Canada, a biotech startup that’s optimizing crop production through genomic AI solutions. Last but not least, we talked with Brent Zettl, a pioneer in the Canadian medical cannabis industry, having co-founded CanniMed Therapeutics that was acquired for 1.2 billion dollars, who has since started his new venture, ZYUS, harnessing the power of cannabinoids to develop treatments that improve quality of life and well-being for patients. For more information on Global Biotech Week and the amazing virtual events from Ag-West, visit http://www.globalbiotechweeksask.ca/

We talked with Kirk Morrison and Gillian Delgaty of Krugo. As you might remember, Kirk joined us on the show earlier this year just prior to the world as we knew it shutting down, including everything Krugo had been working on up to that point as a travel and entertainment app that helps people find unique, in-person experiences.    It would have been easy to throw in the towel, as an early-stage travel startup facing up to a year or even longer without recreational travel and large in-person experiences. Instead, Kirk, Gillian, and their team drilled down to the core of why Krugo exists in the first place, helping people find unique experiences wherever they go.   So, they made the ultimate COVID pivot to launch KrugoFest, a unique music festival using hotel balconies for the perfect socially distant staycation experience.    We talked with Kirk and Gillian about why a tech startup would organize a music festival, how they pulled it off in a matter of weeks, and what made it    We’re having conversations with tech leaders on how they’re facing the COVID-19 crisis head-on, how startups and tech companies can approach the challenges ahead, and how the world changing before our eyes will present unique opportunities for startups and innovators.

We talked with Justin Holmes, VP of Growth with 7shifts, one of Canada’s fastest-growing tech startups helping restaurants to be more efficient, and better engage their workforce. What do you do when your entire customer base is forced to shut down? In the face of a global pandemic, restaurants everywhere had to pivot their businesses like they never had before, so we talked with Justin about the many ways in which the industry has been impacted, and how 7shifts has stepped up to help their customers keep moving forward during unprecedented times. We’re having conversations with tech leaders on how they’re facing the COVID-19 crisis head-on, how startups and tech companies can approach the challenges ahead, and how the world changing before our eyes will present unique opportunities for startups and innovators.

The world is now in the process of going through one of its largest pivots many of us have seen in our lifetimes. So in true startup fashion, we've pivoted our podcast! We’re having conversations with tech leaders on how they’re facing the COVID-19 crisis head-on, how startups and tech companies can approach the challenges ahead, and how the world changing before our eyes will present unique opportunities for startups and innovators.