Techstars Edmonton Startup Week 2021
Monday, October 18, 2021
Got ethics? Applied ethics for AI with Ethically Aligned AI
As a technology start-up, you play a key role in designing our digital future.
But what happens when our design choices go sideways? When we thought we were making the world a better place, but we made it worse for some people? How do we make sure that our technologies don’t cause harm and ideally, promote well-being?
Investors, employees, customers, and society at large expect technology that works for everyone. Making good choices from the start is not only easier, but it sets your business up for long term success.
In this workshop, we’ll explore some of the core ethical issues encountered in developing AI/ML enabled systems. We’ll unpack the reasons why building ethics into your technology design choices is a smart business decision and touch on practical steps you can take in your business to apply ethical principles.
Thank you to the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) for sponsoring the AI/ML track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
Startup Week Kickoff 🎉 Sponsored by the Downtown Business Association and Communauto
Monday. Noon. It's kick off time. 🎉
Edmonton Startup Week kicks off Monday, October 18th from noon-2pm, and we’re planning something extra special. Trust us, you won't want to miss it!
Here's a handy list of your Startup Week kickoff essentials:
✅ Follow us on social media @startupedmonton on Instagram and Twitter #yegsw21 so you can be the first to discover where your Startup Week freebies are located, and what you're getting. 👀 In case you missed it, check out these clues we shared on Friday and keep your eyes peeled for more hints around noon on Monday!
✅ Be in downtown Edmonton just before noon so you’ll be nearby your favorite coffee, lunch, and bar spots, ready to grab your free sips and snacks, and swag bag worth over $75! Freebies and swag bag quantities are limited, so get yours before they’re gone!
✅ Use the special password 'STARTUP WEEK' once you get to each kickoff location. You’ll need to share the password with staff to get your freebie.
✅ Don't be a stranger! At each kickoff location, Innovate Edmonton and Startup Edmonton staff will be on-site with smiling (and masked!) faces to greet you and provide your swag bag, while quantities last. We can't wait to meet you!
✅ Wear a mask and bring your proof of vaccination. Please keep in mind that many of the kickoff locations have adopted the Government of Alberta’s Restrictions Exemption Program (REP), which means proof of vaccination may be required upon entry.
✅ Get social! There are plenty of social sharing options on our platform, so be sure to share your Edmonton Startup Week experience on Twitter and Instagram using #yegsw21, and let everyone know you're attending
We can't wait to see you tomorrow to ring in #yegsw21!
Startup Week's Kick Off is made possible thanks to the support of Edmonton's Downtown Business Association and Communauto.
Business Model 101 with Startup Edmonton
Popularity: 🔥
Come in with an idea for a business/product/project and leave with clear next steps to move your idea forward.
In our most popular workshop, we'll introduce you to the Lean Canvas—a tool used by entrepreneurs around the world. Spots will fill fast!
Startup Edmonton's fantastic facilitators will cover: How to use the Lean Canvas, who your customer is, different sales models and pricing, and how to define your unique value.
Thank you to DrugBank for sponsoring the Entrepreneurship track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
TikTok was a clock's sound. Unlocking social media for your startup/brand/or passion without followers with Startup Edmonton
The conversations around your brand/product/passion are happening right now, live, around the world. In this session, we’re diving into social media and how you (or your team/brand) can cut through the noise and create real value without a massive following.
📲No prior social media experience is required.
👉We’ll discuss strategies, tactics and tools you can use right now to harness the powerful conversations and insights on social.
💫 If you’re wondering "would anyone want to buy my idea/solution/product…" here’s how to find those conversations.
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Growing by Finding and Reaching Your Go-to Community with Lift Interactive
You've probably heard of a "go-to-market strategy", but more and more, marketing experts are talking about the importance of understanding your "go-to Community" to succeed. We're bombarded by unprecedented numbers of channels competing for our attention—finding and reaching communities that share values, interests, and ideals could be the key to your growth.
Market Research and Competitive Analysis with the Mawji Centre at NAIT
Register in advance at https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/market-research-and-competitive-analysis-tickets-159034411205
Market Research is the way to gather information about customer needs and market drivers. If you want to gather information from actual customers or potential customers to make a decision, then you need to understand and use market research. Competitive analysis is a subset of market research. When you investigate your competition or potential competition, you use market research techniques and concepts to understand what your competition is doing today and gain insights into their plans for tomorrow.
Garrett Fleck is one of the Mawji Centre’s valued Entrepreneurs-in-Residence. He is the founder of Reputed Digital Marketing Inc. At Reputed, their vision is to help businesses realize the full potential of the internet, to drive a new evolution of development, growth, and productivity.
Thank you to DrugBank for sponsoring the Entrepreneurship track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
Weekly Chat for Dev Edmontonians
A casual virtual weekly chat that is open to everyone and anyone. A place to ask questions, hear different viewpoints, and, most importantly, get to know your fellow Dev Edmontonians and developers from around the world.
Every week there is a new initial software development topic to get the conversation started. For startup week the initial topic communities, both online and in-person. What do you think makes a good community? A bad community? If you have built a community what lessons did you learn?
Speaking of communities you can find the Weekly Chat community online at the #meetup-weekly-chat channel on the Dev Edmonton Slack:
And also on Meetup:
https://www.meetup.com/startupedmonton/events/281405872
Weekly Chat is every Tuesday at 12pm MDT. Hope to see you for the Startup Week chat and also future chats.
Motion Capture DIY with NAIT's Centre for Innovative Media & Edmonton Screen Industries Office
This is an open panel for local game developers and filmmakers interested in discussing motion capture for digital media.
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Avenge Your Startup - Strategies to Build a "Thought-full" Community with Unbounded Thinking
Learn from Tony Stark.
You don’t get as far in your quest for success without having the right team and network of Avengers to save the world from destruction. Learn how to build a team and network of people for your startup to help you think through ideas, solve problems, and make decisions in a holistic manner.
We will explain the psychology of how we think and acknowledge biases, and how to make them work for you so you can build a community of cognitively diverse people to support you on your quest.
How to Grow a Startup Using Partnerships with Senkow Ventures Inc
This session will touch on how you can, as an early-stage company, leverage someone else's audience or customers to promote and grow your business. Partnerships aren't just for the well-funded startups or billion-dollar unicorns, they are for all businesses. You will leave this session with a game plan and hit-list of possible partners you can collaborate with to grow your business faster and stronger, together.
Thank you to DrugBank for sponsoring the Entrepreneurship track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
Job Mixer + Company Meet and Greet Sponsored by Jobber
Log on and check out the local startup scene! Edmonton startups are growing and need great teams to help build innovative products that solve problems worldwide. Learn more about job opportunities available now and get to know what kind of skills they will be looking for in the future.
This job mixer is open to anyone curious about opportunities at growing tech-enabled companies - students from all programs of study and schools, recent grads, people on the job search and more.
Join at any time during the two-hour event, and stay as long or short as you'd like.
Companies include:
- Neo Financial
- Jobber
- Edmonton Screen Industries Office (ESIO)
- Harvest Builders
- Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii)
- Bitcoin Well Inc.
- Drugbank
- AltaML
- PainWorth
- samdesk
- Betable
- QuoteToMe
- DevFacto Technologies
- Parlee McLaws LLP
- Jobs Alberta
- Drivewyze
- Intuit
- Fly & Fetch
The Job Mixer is made possible thanks to the generous support of Jobber.
Why Inclusion Matters and How You Can be an Active Participant in Change - a practical guide to owning your own equity, diversity, and inclusion journey in a time of heightened social consciousness with Erin Davis Co.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) have become part of our mainstream dialogue, whether you are hearing the topic come up at the boardroom table, or over coffee with a fellow entrepreneur -- we’ve moved into a time when understanding how you can help build a more inclusive world matters.
Erin can help you on your journey to understand why EDI matters in your business, how you can be an active participant in forming more inclusive solutions and showcase why inclusive workplaces matter.
Lessons Learned as First-Time Founders with FLIK
Michelle & Ravina, Co-Founders of FLIK, sit down to reminisce over their journey together as co-founders and first-time founders. We'll talk about all the lessons we've learned in building this community of 10,000+ women from 70+ countries worldwide, the ups and downs, and how we got through it all together.
Thank you to DrugBank for sponsoring the Entrepreneurship track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
Business Model 101 with Startup Edmonton
Popularity: 🔥
Come in with an idea for a business/product/project and leave with clear next steps to move your idea forward.
In our most popular workshop, we'll introduce you to the Lean Canvas—a tool used by entrepreneurs around the world. Spots will fill fast!
Startup Edmonton's fantastic facilitators will cover: How to use the Lean Canvas, who your customer is, different sales models and pricing, and how to define your unique value.
Thank you to DrugBank for sponsoring the Entrepreneurship track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
Thursday, October 21, 2021
An Equitable Economic Recovery - A Small Business Perspective with MacEwan University
Register in advance at https://enlightenedeconomy.net/register
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an immense and disproportionate impact on historically underrepresented groups like communities of colour, women and people with disabilities. It has also amplified the systemic challenges these communities face, such as racism, poverty and gender inequality.
In this session, a panel of entrepreneurs and business advocates will share the impact the pandemic has had on their community as well as their perspective on what an inclusive economic recovery looks like. Their stories will shed light on how we can each respond as an ally to the businesses, organizations and people around us.
Thank you to DrugBank for sponsoring the Entrepreneurship track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
Fireside Chats: Startup F**k-ups and How to Avoid Them with Goodlawyer
It's Small Business Week throughout Canada, and we can't think of a better way of celebrating than getting cozy with Brett & Josh as they share some fun anecdotes about their times as lawyers and entrepreneurs.
Join the conversation as they share the startup lessons we've learned along the way that can help you prevent legal decisions from coming back to haunt you.
Thank you to DrugBank for sponsoring the Entrepreneurship track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
A Deep Dive into Local Neurotechnology Development with NeurAlbertaTech
We will start with a quick introduction to the NPO, NeurAlbertaTech, with a recap of projects we have supported since our founding in February of 2019.
Then we will dive deep into the specifics of one of our current projects, "Koalacademy" (submission to the Russian Neurotech Cup 2021), and how we are scientifically validating a Brain Computer Interface-accelerated language learning platform through traditional academic research avenues at the University of Alberta.
Thank you to the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) for sponsoring the AI/ML track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
Making Connections Across Alberta with the Mawji Centre at NAIT
Register in advance at https://www.eventbrite.ca/x/we-three-collaborative-student-networking-event-tickets-159035969867 & use code Startupweek.
A gathering of individuals in the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation. This mixer serves as a catalyst for cross-institutional connectivity between student makers, builders, and the broader community.
Network and share your ideas and challenges with other students and entrepreneurs. This event is hosted as part of Women in Entrepreneurship Week and a Collaboration between Bow Valley College, NAIT, and the University of Lethbridge.
We are fortunate to have Joanne Fedeyko, CEO of Connections Silicon Valley and Canadian Women's Network, as our keynote speaker. Joanne will share her secrets to building a strong network.
We will then move into breakout rooms with facilitated discussion and networking. No need to be intimidated by this networking event. We've got your back and we want to make networking fun!
Launch Party 12 🚀🚀🚀 Sponsored by Parlee McLaws
Join us online for the twelfth annual edition of Launch Party! 🚀🚀🚀
Launch Party is Startup Week’s flagship event that celebrates and showcases the hottest startups in town on Thursday, October 21, 2021.
Launch Party showcases our city's brightest entrepreneurs, their tech-enabled products and celebrates everything that our startup community has to offer. Since 2010, more than 100 technology, Edmonton-based, companies have launched products at the event, including rapidly growing teams like Jobber, Drivewyze, Vertical City, Medo.ai, and Showbie.
Thank You To Our Selection Committee 👏
- NATHAN IP – STARTUP EDMONTON
- ALLIE KNULL – RESUMEFREE
- TIM KWOK – PANACHE VENTURES
If Remo is full at any point in the night, you can head to our Youtube broadcast of the formal program. Once the program is done, try again to get into Remo (through the "Join Stream" button at the top of this event) as we expect there will be additional room following the event.
Launch Party 12 is made possible thanks to the generous support of Parlee McLaws.
Friday, October 22, 2021
Raising Series A with Innovate Edmonton Sponsored by Williams Engineering
Let’s talk about Money! For startups, raising capital is a beast of a task. It’s daunting. It’s endless hours of work. But you aren’t alone.
Hear about raising Series A funding from those who have successfully been through the process! Learn about the ins and outs of raising big money.
Joining the panel to share their stories are:
Colin Bramm, CEO of Showbie
James Neufeld, CEO of samdesk
Andrew Chau, Co-Founder of Skip the Dishes and Co-Founder of Neo Financial
This top-notch panel will be moderated by Catherine Warren, CEO of Innovate Edmonton. Don’t miss out!
Startup Week's Series A Panel is made possible thanks to the support of Williams Engineering.
Social Impact powered by AI/ML with the Edmonton Police Foundation
There’s over $7.5B spent on community / social programs in Edmonton alone and the outcomes aren’t quite what we would have expected for that level of investment. In addition, there’s a great opportunity to lead on social justice and create a model that’s replicable globally.
We believe that we can leverage entrepreneurship, technology, data, AI/ML, mentorship, funding, domain partners to finally help devise and deploy workable solutions that can not only deliver better outcomes but more importantly, make a real difference in the lives of our citizens and help our entrepreneurs scale the solutions globally. Technology can help deliver better outcomes!
This is our chance to do Good, Deliver Better Outcomes and Create Scalable Companies and for Alberta to lead the world in Community Safety and Wellness Solutions.
Thank you to the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) for sponsoring the AI/ML track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
Parade, Meet Rain: A Fun Chat With Lawyers About Everything That Can Go Wrong with Reynolds Mirth Richards & Farmer LLP
Yes, lawyers can be killjoys. But when consulted early, your lawyer can help you overcome obstacles. Or better yet, avoid the obstacles altogether. This session will introduce early to middle-stage startups to some important issues they should be thinking about, and why they should be thinking about them, including:
- Choosing to incorporate … or not
- Naming your organization (and understanding the difference between a corporate name, a tradename, and a trade-mark)
- Properly structuring relationships between founders (and what happens when things go sideways)
- Equity arrangements
- Non-disclosure agreements
- Intellectual property
- Service agreements
- Employment/contractor contracts
While these may not be the flashiest topics, they are essential to ensuring your business avoids pitfalls down the road. Thinking about and understanding these issues now can save you many headaches later.
Thank you to DrugBank for sponsoring the Entrepreneurship track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
How to start a VC fund/Angel Network to invest in startups with StartupFuel Inc.
Attendees who are aspiring VC fund managers will learn how to set up a fund/network to invest in startups. Startup founders will learn what investors look for when making early stage investments.
Start a career in Data Science/Machine Learning or Software Engineering with Alberta AI
Zoom Passcode: 123
After a hiatus of a few months, Alberta AI is kicking off with an amazing program for those who want to pursue a career in Data Science/Machine Learning or Software engineering. This time the mentor will be the President of Alberta AI, Dr. Lihang Ying. He will guide you on how to learn about these fields, will share some resources, and will discuss interview preparation. You will also get a chance to ask any question you have.
This session is geared towards those who have background in engineering but everyone is welcome. Don't miss this fascinating opportunity!
Thank you to the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) for sponsoring the AI/ML track as part of Edmonton Startup Week.
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