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

Canadian tech makes federal election asks

1 week ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

After a seemingly endless run-up to the writ, Canada’s snap federal election is almost over, with election day just two weeks away. As expected, special interest groups are attempting to steer the election agenda with public asks, and Canadian tech is no different in making its requests known. Reporter Josh Scott has two such stories for you.
Chamath Palihapitiya, Sanja Fidler among Homecoming headliners as Toronto Tech Week unveils event calendar

1 week ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

Toronto Tech Week has unveiled the speakers for its headline event alongside the official program calendar as the inaugural citywide initiative anticipates more than 10,000 attendees this June. Social Capital’s Chamath Palihapitiya and NVIDIA’s VP of AI research Sanja Fidler will join Shopify leaders Tobi Lütke and Harley Finkelstein at Homecoming, hosted at Toronto’s Evergreen Brickworks on June 24.
Inside Eric Migicovsky’s crazy journey to relaunch Pebble

1 week ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

This week, we have a doozy of an interview, speaking with Eric Migicovsky, creator of the Pebble smartwatch. Migicovsky recently announced Pebble’s dramatic return in 2025, almost 10 years after its demise in 2016, when the company was sold to Fitbit (which was later sold to Google).
Katherine Homuth revisited

2 weeks ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

In January of this year, I sat down with Katherine Homuth, founder and CEO of the material innovation and textile manufacturing startup SRTX. The company not only uses futuristic materials to make incredibly strong clothing but is modernizing Western manufacturing to do this from its home base in Montréal. As I said in January, Katherine Homuth wants to solve for everything. “This is worth the pain of attempting to figure out how to do it.
Are you going to Web Summit Vancouver?

3 weeks ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

That ticking clock you hear in the back of your mind is 2025 preparing to strike Q2. Prepare accordingly. For Team BetaKit, Q2 means the true start of conference season. We’ll be hard at work crisscrossing the nation to attend tech events of all shapes and sizes in the name of innovation and socialization. The preparation is intense. Travel-sized liquid containers have been purchased. Air Miles discounts have been applied. Comfy shoes: secured.
Canadian foodtech has a scale-up problem

3 weeks ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

Do you know how Canadian food gets from the farm to your table? I don’t. I also don’t really know how Canada’s food industry is responding to the ongoing tariff threats, and how much the ‘buy Canadian’ movement is softening the blow. “ By the time these companies are ready for B and C [rounds], their cap tables are super clean, too. So it doesn’t really make sense that we’re not putting money into them.”Dana McCauleyCFIN CEOBut our guest does.
The future of Canadian tech runs through Waterloo

1 month ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

It turns out I was wrong. In 2024, I was responsible for a lot of parasocial helicopter parenting about Canadian tech’s young generation of entrepreneurs. People like Jocelyne Murphy and Scott Langille, who both spoke at BetaKit Town Halls. Without the support and mentorship they were asking for, I said, we might soon lament Canadian tech’s lost generation. The kids weren’t lost. They were just in the lab, building.
AI roundup: Cohere commands attention, Apple Intelligence delays, a vibe coding PSA

1 month ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

There has been a lot of (necessary) election and trade war talk on The BetaKit Podcast recently. But this week we just want to nerd out on some tech news. So consider this week’s episode a tech palate cleanse, focused on AI (the pickled ginger of tech conversations). “Apple won’t use user data to develop and train AI.
Did Cohere give Canada its DeepSeek moment?

1 month ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

Canada has a new prime minister, with immediate impacts on Canadian tech. Mark Carney wasted no time, putting a bullet in his party’s controversial capital gains tax inclusion rate changes last Sunday during his acceptance speech as Liberal leader. In his first day in office, Prime Minister Carney appointed two new ministers at key cabinet positions for Canadian tech. You can read Madison McLauchlan’s stories on both decisions below. How long will he have the job?
An election primer on what Canadian innovators need

1 month ago | betakit.com | Douglas Soltys

Canada has a new prime minister! Mark Carney had a busy first day in office, shuffling the Liberal cabinet (with new innovation and finance ministers), and axing the carbon tax. “One of the things that I think we’ve got to critically think about in our country for the future is that we’ve got to begin using those dollars effectively, like the $4 billion in SR&ED.”But how long will Carney remain prime minister?