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What happens when hundreds of founders, investors, mentors and ecosystem builders converge for three days in Montréal? You get a lot of pitches, a lot of conversations. If you pay attention, you also get a useful snapshot of where the startup ecosystem is heading.
We joined Startupfest 2026 representing ventureLAB, both as investors and as active participants in the ecosystem. What stood out wasn't simply the scale of the event. It was the density of people who were there to find great companies, help founders navigate their next stage, and move conversations toward action. Here's what we took away.
The investor mix was broad: angels, institutions, family offices, foundations, experienced VCs and newer investors, many actively looking for great companies. Startupfest reports that 25% of its audience was investors, with dedicated 1:1 meetings, matchmaking, an Investor Lounge and FundFest built into the event. Startupfest awarded more than $825,000 in investment prizes and grants across its 2026 competitions.
"There were a lot of investors in the room, but what was most interesting was how many were genuinely curious about the companies and willing to have substantive conversations," says Hilary, who made the trip to Startupfest for the seventh year.
This was Danielle's ninth Startupfest, and leading The Firehood Angels through the $100K Women in Tech Investment Prize remains as demanding as ever. "It's easy to focus on the pitch itself, but the real work happens in the deliberation room," she says. "Is the business model solid? Is there real traction? Does the founder have domain expertise? Excitement can get you interested, but it isn't an automatic yes."
In this market, being fundable isn't just about having an exciting company. It's about being ready for the particular investor sitting across from you, with the traction, evidence and timing that investor needs to see. Founders were using Startupfest for more than fundraising. They were testing assumptions, asking questions, and getting feedback on their positioning well before any formal financing conversation.
"The best conversations weren't always 'will you invest,'" says Hilary. "They were often, 'How are you thinking about this market,' or 'Does this positioning make sense.' Those conversations can be incredibly valuable for a founder."
Kiwi Charge, a ventureLAB company, was a great example of this. They took the time to understand who they were speaking to and communicated their company in a way that made the opportunity easy to grasp. They were among the Winner’s Circle, taking home the Grandmother’s Choice Award.
"Clarity isn't just about explaining what you do," says Hilary. "It's about understanding who is listening and making the connection between what you're building and what matters to them." The best pitch isn't necessarily the most polished one. It's the one that makes the right person think, "I understand why this matters."
Kiwi Charge wasn't the only ventureLAB company making an impression this year. Begin Fertility, Eamico and Resiliocs were also in the mix, representing very different sectors and business models.
- AI Portfolio and Capital Services company, Eamico, founded by Kalen Johnson and Cameron Bergsma, brought a different kind of infrastructure story: a neutral decision layer that helps companies route their cloud workloads to whichever provider actually fits, rather than getting locked into one.
- AI Portfolio and Capital Services company, Resiliocs Intelligence, founded by Moustafa Naiem, was back as a finalist again this year with its climate risk intelligence platform, giving insurers, banks and asset owners engineering-grade, forward-looking insight into future losses so they can underwrite more accurately and get better returns on adaptation spending.
Different sectors, same instinct: each solving coordination problems that have been quietly costing people time, money or capital. That's exactly the kind of ambitious, practical innovation we see across the ventureLAB community.
The $100K Women in Tech Investment Prize went to LymeAlert, a company developing portable testing technology for Lyme disease, which also won the Audience Choice Award. Over 100 women founders pitched to The Firehood Angels across the event.
"That number alone tells you something about the pipeline," says Danielle. "The quality of what we saw made the deliberations genuinely hard, in a good way. Timing matters as much as anything. Sometimes a no isn't a rejection of potential, it's a strategic pause until the readiness lines up."
The 2026 Winner's Circle recognized startups across agriculture, health, fintech, impact, dual-use and sovereign technology, Black entrepreneurship and 2SLGBTQIA+ entrepreneurship. AgroGene Solutions won Best of the Fest, while LymeAlert, EN Solutions Hydro, TissueTinker, Finleaf Technologies and 3dBioFibR were among the other $100K prize winners.
"We saw founders tackling genuinely difficult problems across a wide range of sectors," says Danielle. "The opportunity isn't the question. The work is helping more of these companies move from innovation to scale."
AI was another clear thread across the event. But the investor question is increasingly less about whether a company is using AI and more about what is actually defensible: proprietary data, technical advantage, domain expertise, distribution or a difficult-to-replicate customer relationship.
"AI is becoming less interesting as a label and more interesting as an underlying capability," says Hilary. "The question is what it allows a company to do that competitors can't easily replicate."
Health was another noticeable theme, with companies working across diagnostics, digital health, fertility, biotech and healthcare technology. LymeAlert's win in the Women in Tech Investment Prize, alongside its Audience Choice Award, was one visible example of the attention these companies are attracting.
Startupfest’s "sweet sixteen" wasn't just bigger, it was more intentional. Curated investor meetings, mentor hours, the Demo Floor, and FundFest didn't just gather the right people; they engineered meaningful conversations.
This year’s event showed a resilient Canadian startup ecosystem: capital is searching for ambitious founders, and scaling takes more than money, it takes connections, insight, and expertise.
Key Takeaways:
- Founders: Go beyond the pitch. Target specific investors, understand their thesis, and prioritize conversation quality over volume.
- Investors: Presence drives deal flow. Early engagement builds relationships that compound well beyond three days.
- Ecosystem Builders: Our job is turning great technology into globally competitive companies.
The value of Startupfest is simple: putting the right people in the room and designing the space for them to find each other.
If it’s not on your 2027 calendar, add it. See you in Montréal next year.
About ventureLAB
ventureLAB is a leading global founder community for hardware technology and enterprise software companies in Canada. Located at the heart of Ontario’s innovation corridor in York Region, ventureLAB is part of one of the biggest and most diverse tech communities in Canada. Our initiatives focused on raising capital, talent retention, commercializing technology and IP, and customer acquisition have enabled thousands of companies to create over 7,000 jobs and raise more than $480 million in investment capital. ventureLAB is powering hardtech founders to build and scale globally competitive ventures that advance Canada’s knowledge-based economy.
