Douglas Soltys

Toronto

Founder and Editor-in-Chief at BetaKit

Co-Host at The BetaKit Podcast Channel

word czar. two-guard. currently: @BetaKit previously: @MobileSyrup @BlackBerry and a bunch of dead sites you might remember fondly. "Wildly out of control."

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Articles

Teresa Resch knows tech can give the Toronto Tempo a competitive advantage

1 week ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys |Alex Riehl

Toronto is buzzing with anticipation of the inaugural tip-off sure to bring everyone in the city together. Are we talking about Toronto Tech Week, or the debut of Canadaâs first WNBA team in 2026? For Toronto Tempo president Teresa Resch, itâs both. Next week, Resch will be among the headliners at Homecoming, the sold-out official mainstage of Toronto Tech Week 2025.
Wealthsimple picks a fight it believes it can win

1 week ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

There was a brief period when I thought Wealthsimple might lose its way. The Toronto-based FinTech firm, founded in 2014 as a robo-advisor, had grown to around 500,000 clients and just under $10 million in assets under administration by 2020. Two major developments happened in the following years: the Reddit-fuelled retail trading frenzy and one of the larger crypto boom cycles. Wealthsimple rode both to exceptional growth, doubling its AUA and quadrupling its customer base by 2022.
InBC’s Jill Earthy knows Canadian VC “could be healthier”

2 weeks ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

I have finally made it home after a two-week road trip touring Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver. This week’s episode was actually recorded live at Web Summit Vancouver with InBC Investment Corp. CEO Jill Earthy, and we talk a bit up front about the value of the tech conference for the BC tech ecosystem, as well as what the province can do to keep momentum going as it plays host to tech from around the world for at least another two years. “ That’s what we wanna change, right?
Canada’s Bengio brothers offer new AI critiques, solutions

2 weeks ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

The Bengio brothers had a busy week. Samy Bengio co-published a paper with his Apple colleagues that throws cold water on the capabilities of large-reasoning models like OpenAI’s o3 and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5. The findings? Reasoning models were outperformed by traditional large-language models (LLMs) on simple tasks, start thinking less as problems get more difficult, and can’t be relied upon to execute algorithms or reason consistently. Oof.
Amii CEO Cam Linke says Canada’s AI strategy requires customers

3 weeks ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

I have been all over Canada for the last few weeks attending the nation’s tech events. One of those events was the Upper Bound AI conference, hosted in sunny Edmonton to a record-breaking 6,000 people. The Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) organized the event, and this week on the podcast, we have Amii CEO Cam Linke.
Web Summit Vancouver was worth “every penny”

3 weeks ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

After two weeks of living out of a suitcase, I’m back in Toronto. But I still have the West Coast on my mind.
“The energy is here”: local leaders call Web Summit Vancouver’s scaled-back debut a success

3 weeks ago | betakit.com | Josh Scott |Douglas Soltys

As Web Summit Vancouver wrapped up the first of three tech conferences planned for the city between now and 2027, three things were clear: the weather was perfect, traffic was nowhere close to as bad as Toronto’s, and the vibes were positive. A scaled-down version of its predecessor Collision, Web Summit Vancouver featured nearly 16,000 attendees in its inaugural year—less than half of the 38,000 attendee tally that descended on Toronto last year.
Canada’s next innovation capital

1 month ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

Last week, I wrote that Alberta tech has energy. Writing you now from the Edmonton airport (with one eye on the Oilers game) after a busy week at Inventures and Upper Bound, I can confirm that I don’t. Thankfully, reporter Madison McLauchlan was with me and supercharged BetaKit’s coverage. Hours after landing she broke news that Alberta Innovates had promoted interim leader Mike Mahon to permanent CEO.
The Canadian engineer trying to fix the internet’s original sin

1 month ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

This week on The BetaKit Podcast, we’re talking protocols. As our guest, Erik Reppel, notes, the internet we use every day is secretly just 15 protocols in a trench coat. Through his work as the head of engineering at Coinbase’s Developer Platform, he’s built a new one, x402 (you can read Coinbase’s white paper on the standard here). It’s designed to fix what Marc Andreessen calls the original sin of the internet: failing to figure out an easy way to send money.
Alberta tech has energy

1 month ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

Canada’s VCs were abuzz online this week following the release of the CVCA’s Q1 2025 venture report. You should read Madison McLauchlan’s story below, which notes that deal count has plummeted sharply back to pandemic lows, particularly in the early stage. Depending on which VC you ask, the data reflects either the death of domestic venture capital or a mirror image of recent US performance.