June update: Patio weather for founders and builders
Founders dinner is accepting applications, Quantum for breakfast, a new club for builders gets rolling.
June provided patio weather and founders took advantage of it to connect, share and learn. We had founder dinner series, quantum breakfast, demos and more below.
Quick notes on the community in June:
The final Collision conference in Toronto happened.
The Accelerator Centre hosted the Tech Connect Mixer.
Communitech announced Techtoberfest!
Chris Nuemann calls out the challenge in ecosystem (good points here)
Startupfest’s ticket prices go up at midnight, if you are thinking about going… it’s good.
Welcome to the 108 new subscribers to this newsletter!
Founders Dinner completes its first series, applications open for the next one
The first group completed the first series of the founder dinners in Waterloo. Big thanks to everyone who came out and a special thanks to Vidyard and Garage VC for providing a place to host the dinners.
We had a range of guests along with a strong core group of globally successful and locally based founder/builders. One of the participating early stage founders did raise some capital already!
From that experience we are applying a few lessons:
A series needs to be 4 weeks and then founders need time to make adjustments.
A group larger than 12 is too big.
The series can be scheduled around founder interest/need.
The next series is now accepting applications and will start shortly after we have 5 qualified companies. By removing the ‘deadline’ we are responding to the founders.
Quantum startups for breakfast
In June Communitech hosted a breakfast featuring Dr. Paul Terry of Photonic Inc. The discussion touched on the potential of quantum tech and the evolving nature of the talent required to lead in the industry. Like AI, Canada has a significant workforce in Quantum and the Waterloo Region has the Institute for Quantum Computing, Perimeter, and the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology.
This region has incredible talent in AI, quantum, etc.
Builders Club is a place for people building stuff in the Waterloo Region
Opening its doors this month is a new ‘club’ for ambitious individuals seeking a place to connect with other ambitious individuals. Membership grants you access to a clubhouse and some perks but the most valuable thing is having a place full of people who want to build things.
More info is here and there is another info session coming up in July.
Monday Club at Communitech talks about products
The regular Monday Club demo time at Communitech doubled in size in June! In one session we had 6 demos ranging from early products to technical demos. Over the summer we are going to focus more on helping founders practice their pitches (both sales and investment) of their products. For more info follow:
A few new podcasts will be coming out in July!
Devhouse!
With Stanley Cup game 7 happening, we still filled the Caf at Communitech for the technical demos and people sharing what they are working on. Having rebooted Devhouse for 6 months now, it is amazing to see so many new faces each time. The idea behind Devhouse is to create a friendly environment for people to share what they are working on.
This month’s included a person from a more traditional industry demonstrating the tools he was able to build as a non-coder using AI that helped him grow this business.
About The Barn
The Barn is a collective of builders in the community who look for ways to connect, grow, and support the community. This newsletter is designed to provide a regular update on tech-related things in the Waterloo Region and highlight the work founders/builders are doing.
Posts are currently once a month and might be bi-weekly when needed. If you would like to see more stuff featured — send me an email!