Intro to Tech Thursday Live!
Tech Thursday Live! is our new show format we’re trialing here in Calgary with myself and Mark Le Dain as co-hosts. Instead of panels, TTL is more like a live show with segments that reflect what’s happening in Tech. In our first episode, we covered:
The Alberta Data Centre Build Out - Graeme Harrison, CEO at Simply Silicon, joined us via phone to discuss the survival rate of most projects in Canada and across the globe.
Tech News - Mark and I gave our analysis of the new Dyson Toothbrush, the SaaSapocalypse, Revenue concentration risk for OpenAI and Anthropic, and of course, Robot Olympics.
Founder Interview - We had Nic Beique, CEO at Helcim, join us to discuss their recent $53M Series C, and the sale of Moneris to US private Equity.
House Call - An onsite tour of Geologic AI, presented by Ramp.
Sandi Gilbert Interview - Sandi spoke about the Canadian Founder exodus to the US, and how we stop it.
Jobs - We ended the show with jobs across the Prairies.
This is our recap of our first event. You can watch the full episode here, or tune in on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Note: the audio got corrupted. We tried our best to fix it, but it still sounds a little funny so you’ll have to bare with the audio on this first one.
Tech Thursday’s is presented by Ramp, with support from Boast, Skip, BLG, Crestview, and Alberta Innovates.
Tech Thursday Live! is thrilled to be presented by Ramp. Ramp is now in Canada, and have recently opened an office in Toronto.
In a recent Forrester’s 3-year analysis of business that use Ramp, they found that Ramp delivers a 408% ROI to enterprises. Ramp helps replace fragmented card, expense, payment, procurement, and accounting workflows with one AI-powered platform for greater visibility, control, and efficiency.
The Alberta Data Centre Build Out
Meta is building a roughly 1GW AI-optimized data centre in Alberta, and Danielle Smith was in the room for the announcement. We called Graeme Harrison, dialing in from Santa Clara, to pour cold water on the regional gold rush. Four months after his LinkedIn post titled “The Alberta Data Centre Bubble Update,” his position hasn’t moved.
“I’ve seen hundreds of pitches from people, all walks of life, big developers, small developers, landowners, big companies. 99% of these projects are gonna fail, and the reason is that they can’t get a customer. Alberta right now, there’s a lot of tailwinds. It’s a great place to build. But if you can’t get a customer, you’re toast.”
The problem is monetization. Margins on inference are enormous, but a gigawatt-scale project has five or six possible buyers on the planet, and regional players can realistically fill twenty to forty megawatts. Going smaller doesn’t save you either: treat it like a commercial real estate deal and it takes two to four years to bring online, while customers want capacity today. Harrison expects Anthropic lands here, OpenAI possibly in time, Google and Microsoft harder to see, Amazon already operating in the province. The one genuine Alberta advantage is political. American developers have noticed the province standing behind data centres while Texas politicians float the word moratorium, and that’s worth more than any tax credit.
The Next Tech Thursday Live! is September 24th
Join us at the next ‘Tech Thursday Live!’. We have an incredible lineup:
Andrew Curtis, CEO at ClearCo to speak to their recent $100M financing facility. Andrew has lead the turn around at ClearCo after a few difficult years.
Doug Schweitzer, Co-Founder and CEO at Ultimarii to speak to their $13M Series A and the progress of Large Projects in Canada.
George Bugg, Staff Product Designer at Ramp to speak to the roll of taste in an age of AI.
Founder Interview: Nic Beique, CEO of Helcim
Helcim just closed a $53 million Series C.
“It’s also like, it’s not really celebration. You’re kind of like, oh, investors think we can do this work that we promised them. So you’re kind of just like, ‘Oh, I guess we have to work harder now.’”
Helcim bootstrapped from 2010 to 2020 reselling another processor, relaunched as its own company, started raising in 2022, about $100 million in venture since. On going from no board, to now having a board, Nic had this advice for other founders: Never surprise your board, and the board is not your boss, they’re partners at a table who already bought their share.
On Moneris selling to US Private Equity, Nic says the timing was luck. BMO and RBC sold to Francisco Partners for $2 billion right as Helcim was lining up its raise.
“Press reached out to us to talk about what does it mean for sovereignty, ‘cause we’re one of the last true Canadians left, which is amazing for us. It just looked like a one-two punch, but we just got lucky.”
He gave the exclusive to Sean Silcoff of the Globe, who wrote Losing the Signal, on the condition Silcoff wrote it his way. Three-plus hours of interviews, then calls to customers and investors. On investors: AI takes 80%-plus of venture dollars and fintech is merely doing okay, but you can’t vibe-code your way into an Amex or an RBC relationship. Four raises in, he’s found fundraising is as much trend cycle as fundamentals. You were cool two years ago and now you’re not, nothing about the business changed.
What’s next for Helcim: 150 to 200 people in four months, and a plan to take the mantle of Canada’s payments company. Expect billboards.
Founder Interview: Sandi Gilbert, CEO of Intergen
We brought Sandi on to react to the Dominion List: 517 US companies with a Canadian founder, 88% of them trained here, Waterloo the top feeder ahead of Toronto, McGill and Queen’s.
Her read on the exodus is that the panic is overhyped.
“You’ll never stop the draw to a market that has many customers, much capital, a lot of talent. For us to think that we’re gonna put up a wall and say, ‘How are we gonna stop these people from going to the US?’ I don’t think we’re gonna stop it.”
She pointed to the C100 as founders who left and now back Canadian companies with capital and expertise. The real job is supporting founders from early stage through their C and D rounds, because once a company is genuinely built here, like Helcim or Zayzoon, it stays. We still need the US for customers and for growth capital that doesn’t exist here yet. On tax, she supports reforming capital gains but doesn’t think it’s the fix, since a founder isn’t thinking about their exit tax when they decide where to build.
Her sharpest point was procurement, and she named the room.
“You go to the chamber of commerce and you’re gonna go to an event and they use Eventbrite. We got Showpass right here in town. These are the things that we need to start to realize, that we need to support these companies if we wanna build big companies here. It totally pisses me off.”
Mark added the cultural half: American buyers fear being out-competed, Canadian buyers fear being fired, and nobody gets fired for hiring IBM. Both landed on government as a first customer, and on Alberta’s attempt to fix procurement rules that used to screen out any company without five years of history. On funding models, Gilbert’s view is that spray and pray is fine as a start, but the missing piece is doubling down once you can see who’s winning, and being willing to cut the rest.
Tech Jobs Available
Here’s some of the companies in the ecosystem, hiring right now:
Payworks, Team Lead, Product
Questrade, Senior Software Engineer
GeologicAI, Intermediate Software Engineer
Helcim, Senior Product Marketing Manager
ZayZoon, Staff Engineer
Links from our Friends
Applications are Open for Venture Foundations for Hard Tech Founders. Building physical technology comes with unique challenges, from prototyping and manufacturing to IP, funding, and customer validation. Venture Foundations: Advanced Manufacturing is a five-part workshop program for early-stage hard tech founders. A cohort of 8 founders will work through practical sessions focused on customer discovery, validation, commercialization, and making better decisions as they build. Applications are open until September 23, with rolling admission. Learn more and apply.
Your Business is on the Line has just release a new episode with Brooke Hahn. Have a listen to it here.
a16z has just launched its applications for speedrun Alpha. The Alpha fellowship invests in early stage founders, often before a team or idea even exists. For top early-career engineers, Alpha provides a direct path into roles at breakout startups. Apply to alpha here.
Energy Disruptors UNITE 2026 is one of the best conferences in Calgary. This year, their speakers include Margaret Atwood, Lord David Cameron, and Arlene Dickinson. We’re thrilled to provide Tech Thursday discount codes to get 25% off GA passes. Use the code: PROOCIECJNP at checkout.
September 22nd: ‘How Scientists Become Biotech Founders’ hosted by Nucleate Canada and Amplitude. Register here.
Fortinet, the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, today unveiled its cutting-edge cybersecurity innovation hub in downtown Calgary, Alberta. Representing a $30 million investment, Fortinet’s eight-story, 122,000-square-foot Calgary cybersecurity hub, acquired in September 2024, will support the Fortinet cloud point of presence (PoPs) strategy.
Thank you to Ramp, our presenting sponsor, and to Boast, Skip, BLG, Crestview, and Alberta Innovates for making the first live show possible.