Flagship Podcast

Sharing today a new podcast series highlighting the 5 cool startups participating in Quebec Tech's first cohort. The startups are: Flovver, Lime Santé, Biointelligence, Maket and Ferreol.    The first episode is with Jimmy Beauregard, CEO & Co-Founder @ Flovver (in french). Jimmy started the company in 2020 and their mission is to make sharing money accessible to all by offering secure, automated...

Anna Chif is a world class founder that is one to her second company. She co-founded Coral. a women's digital health platform designed to help women in perimenopause, menopause and beyond achieve their optimal health. Coral matches users with a wellness coach, who is available to chat asynchronously with users to talk through symptom management. They recently raised $4M in seed financing led by Br...

In this episode, we interview Marc Bellemarre, who discusses his work on developing AI software for the pharmaceutical industry. They focus on 'commercial pharma,' which involves everything beyond molecule search and testing, such as marketing and clinical landscape analysis. Marc's software uses AI to expedite the literature review process, reducing a traditionally 400-hour task to half an hour....

In this North Star panel discussion, Eleonore Jarry from Brightspark Ventures sat down with student founders. The conversation highlights the experiences of various student founders, their innovative projects, and the challenges they face in the startup ecosystem. Key topics include raising initial funds, the importance of team and mission, navigating the academia-industry transition, pivots and f...

Harley Finkelstein on Entrepreneurship, Grit, and the Montreal Entrepreneurial Spirit Harley Finkelstein of Shopify shares his journey and insights at the North Star event, highlighting the importance of Montreal in his entrepreneurial career. He expresses gratitude for the city's role in his growth and the legacy of his family's market stall. Finkelstein delves into the motivation behind entrepre...

In this panel discussion, Gabriel Sundaram, a co-founder of Attain, hosts successful CEOs and founders to share their entrepreneurial journeys and key strategies for building and scaling startups. Panelists include Andrew from Stay 22, Anna from Dialogue and Coral, Malik from Nesto, and Joanne from PemPem. They discuss the importance of speed, intensity, and obsession in growing a business, the ba...

In this episode, we dive deep into the Venture Studio model with Amelie, discussing the varied and often misunderstood landscape of venture studios. Emily explains how their unique approach involves de-risking ideas internally before partnering with an entrepreneurial community to launch startups. The conversation expands into the nuances of their recently closed $80 million Climate Fund, which fo...

J'ai eu le plaisir d'échanger avec François Gingras, Vice-président Innovation @ Investissement Québec.   Nous avons parlé de:  La récente initiative d'Investissement Québec « Grand V », dont l'objectif est de soutenir les entreprises québécoises par des améliorations technologiques et durables de leur productivité. L'initiative offre un soutien financier pouvant atteindre 45 milliards de dollars...

Guillaume Jacquet is one of the strongest founders I know. He co-founded Chronogolf which was acquired by Lightspeed. He rose to run product & technology eventually leaving to start Vasco.  After being in stealth mode, they announced a massive US$8M seed round, led by Inovia Capital, with support from BY Venture Partners, Framework Venture Partners.    Vasco empowers RevOps teams to unify their da...

Andrew Lockhead is a rockstar founder building the next Canadian flagship. The start-up launched in 2016 made its mark in the affiliate field of accommodations. They have built a global platform for travel content creators with $500M GMV and a $36M ARR run-rate on the path to $100M.   We spoke about The genesis story of Stay22 Surviving the pandemic and now thriving on a remarkable trajectory How...

Philippe Beaudoin is a gritty founder and one of the world's foremost experts on AI. He's relentlessly focused on his startup Waverly and shared some very candid and inspiring insights.  We spoke about: Waverly 3.0 - pivoting and hard lessons Building personalized experiences for enterprises   Provocative idea that Data is Dead  Why the GPT wrapper challenge is flawed Getting to default alive as a...

(00:00:00) Intro (00:01:39) Research spotlight by Réseau Capital (00:23:08) Investor panel (00:54:26) Founder panel (01:22:28) Fireside chat with Tom Birch      

Dr. Nicholas Nadeau is the Chief Technology Officer at SmartOne, a leader in ethical AI and data solutions. Nicholas has become a pivotal figure in tech innovation with a Ph. D. in AI and engineering and a career dedicated to emerging technologies. Before joining SmartOne, he founded Nadeau Innovations, propelling startups to success as a fractional CTO.    We spoke about The evolving role of the...

I'm lucky that I get to work alongside Julie Lacasse and learn from her every day.  If you don't know her, Julie is a serial entrepreneur and current venture capital partner at Amiral Ventures. She's the cofounder of Tracktik, an innovative company specialized in optimizing the management of security agencies, she led the company to international success and exit.  Julie now brings her expertise t...

Startup Montréal, the non-profit organization that has supported early-stage Montréal startups is now known as Québec Tech. The rebranded organization has also adopted a new mandate to grow the international footprint of Québec tech companies with high export potential. To talk about the important mission of Québec Tech, I had the pleasure of speaking with Richard Chenier on the podcast to learn m...

I had a great conversation with Aydin Mirzaee, CEO & Co-Founder @ Fellow. Aydin is a tech loving entrepreneur with a passion for building great products, leadership and people.  Fellow solves a huge problem for companies, help people spend less time in meetings and make them more productive. Previously , he was the co-founder and co-CEO of Fluidware which was acquired by SurveyMonkey.    On the ep...

Sur cet épisode du Flagship podcast, j'ai eu le plaisir d'échanger avec Marc Bédard, cofondateur et PDG @ Lion Électrique.  Marc Bédard a toujours été passionné par la technologie, l'innovation et la finance. En 2008, il a fondé Lion Electric et a peu après mis l'entreprise sur la voie du zéro émission en s'engageant dans un portefeuille de produits de véhicules lourds et moyens entièrement électr...

There is a cool new fund called DevCap based in Montreal founded by Max McCrea and Jordan Steiner. Developer Capital is a pre-seed and seed-stage investment corporation. They  strive to provide what other investors promise: real support for our investments in the form of actionable technical and operational support via its partnership with Monadical. Jordan and Max are not building your typical VC...

J'ai eu le plaisir de discuter avec Simon Leblond, co-fondateur et PDG @ SmartD Technologies.  Simon est un entrepreneur avec 20 ans d'expérience entrepreneuriale dans la mise sur le marché de technologies disruptives dans tous les secteurs. SmartD Technologies développe des variateurs de fréquence (VFD) pour le contrôle de moteurs. Leur variateur de fréquence Clean Power VFD peut augmenter l'effi...

I had the pleasure of hosting the Flagship podcast at last week's CDL / NextAI Community Dinner.  The first guest was Sarah Jenna, Managing Director @ QV Studio We spoke about quantum computing and how Sherbrooke is rapidly becoming a global leader in the quantum. Note - this convo was in French   The second guest was Raphael Steinman, Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ Maxa Raphael shared some great insights...

J'ai eu la chance de parler avec Simon Pelletier et Gilles Duruflé de Réseau Capital. Ils ont publié un rapport très pertinent en novembre à propos de l'écosystème de capital de risque du Québec.  L'objectif de cette étude était de comparer le dynamisme de l'écosystème d'investissement en capital de risque du Québec à ceux de l'Ontario et de la Colombie-Britannique afin d'identifier certaines forc...

I had the pleasure of speaking with Andria Santos, Co-founder & CEO @ Fülhaus  Fülhaus is an AI-powered interior design and furnishing company dedicated to improving performance of furnished real estate properties and hospitality business through good design.    We spoke about:  Building a solid interior design company over 10 years The AI new product they launched with Ludwig and how it can empow...

Simon De Baene is the dreamer and visionary at the top of Workleap, which designs software used by over 15,000 organizations in 110 countries. Recognized as one of Quebec's largest SMEs, Workleap now has over 200 employees and is currently one of the fastest-growing companies in North America. Early in his entrepreneurial journey, Simon realized that employee fulfillment was the key to success, an...

Scott is a partner at Panache Ventures. Prior to joining Panache, Scott was the co-founder and CEO of Covera.ai (acquired in 2019), an InsurTech startup that leverages data and technology to take insurance renewals off of your to do list forever. Scott was also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Ferst Capital Partners, one of Canada's pioneering FinTech venture capital funds. Scott writes and speaks...

Originally from Montreal, business woman, creator and philanthropist, Vickie Joseph has been immersed in the world of fashion from a very young age. Today, as a happy mother of three children, the designer and businesswoman has been recognized for her projects on several occasions, including the multi million dollars she and her husband Frantz Saintellemy invested in the neighborhood of Saint Mich...