Startup Fest "gets bigger and better every year" according to founder Philippe Telio. (Eva Blue/CBC)

Start-Up Fest Montreal: bigger and better

Start-Up Fest closed its eighth annual event on Friday evening.

Philippe Telio, the founder and producer, told me it was the best so far.

“We had the most beautiful venue we’ve ever had, we had the most beautiful weather, we’ve had the largest attendance ever.” he said.

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“it all got started with a very small event and then a very big ambition to bring the international scene to Montreal to connect Montrealers to innovators from around the world”.

“The idea was really just to support people”

Startupfest the 2017 version. (Radio-Canada /Maxime Coutié)

“Eight years ago AI wasn’t even part of the vernacular, I would say even two years ago, nobody was talking about AI”, Telio says.

“Certainly we’ve been talking about big data, which is one of the foundations of Artificial Intelligence for a little bit longer… it’s a growing reality… every year there’s just more and more opportunities.” he says.

This is the biggest and most ambitious event yet. But the success stories that are being generated here have some major clout.

Marc Antoine Ross, a volunteer in the first edition, met his partner Dan Robichaud, built a company and sold it to Intel for 80 million dollars

This year Ross was back as a Start-Up judge, offering a prize to the best Start-Up of the event.

“Every year we do this it gets bigger and better.”

Niche offerings made their debut this year with events for particular attendees, Telio explains:

“We ran one called ‘Crypto-Fest’, for those interested in the crypto-economy, we ran another event called ‘Cannabis-Fest’ of course for those that are interested in the cannabis industry, anybody looking to figure out what are the opportunities in the future, or investors looking to figure out where to invest in this new industry that’s about to come about”.

Emerging artists and scientific researchers had their own events as well.

Investors come from across Canada and the United States, like the start-ups themselves, but about 25 per cent of the participants, including the much-valued investors, are international, some from as far away as Hong Kong.

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