Flagship Podcast

On this week’s show, we spoke with Tatiana Estevez Carlucci, CEO & Founder @ Permalution. 

Tatiana is an entrepreneurial driven individual with great fondness for community building and engagement. She is the founder of Permalution, startup business focused on fog water harvesting technology and climate change solutions. She also founded the Tech Quiero community, an NGO that works to introduce women and girls in LATAM to technology and entrepreneurship & was the lead for Facebook Developer Circles Guadalajara. Her past experience includes working in the government sector on Sustainable Cities and in the private sector as Head of Innovation for international corporations. 

On the show, we spoke about: 

• How she got into climate tech 
• Democratizing a new water source using fog and hard to reach water sources
• The innovative hardware sensors and predictive software

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Hugo Larochelle, Research Scientist @ Google. 

Hugo is  the lead of the Google Brain team in Montreal, adjunct professor at Université de Montréal and a Canada CIFAR Chair. His research focuses on the study and development of deep learning algorithms.

On the show, we spoke about: 

• His love of teaching and starting a YouTube channel
• The rapid advances of the past 12 months
• The illusion of AGI
• Enabling new scientific discoveries
• Philanthropy and the generous $1M donation from Hugo and his wife to combat climate change

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Sam Ramadori, CEO @ Brainbox. 

Sam is a recognized private equity expert and senior executive with significant experience in identifying investment opportunities and supporting management teams in developing and executing growth-oriented business plans. Sam joined the BrainBox AI team in the spring of 2019 and oversees the execution of the company’s growth-oriented business plan as well as investor relations.

I also wrote a deep dive on the company on my blog that dives deeper into the company. 

On the show, we spoke about: 

• BrainBox’s big goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings
• The huge challenges facing adoption in their market
• How their advanced AI technology works 
• Their ambitious goal of connecting buildings
  The future of distributed energy

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Chloë Ryan, CEO and Founder @ Acrylic Robotics. 

Chloe is an artist, innovator and tech startup founder with a background in mechanical engineering who is fueled by her creative intuition, curiosity and desire to proactively build the world we want to live in. More than anything, she loves taking bold ideas from concept to reality, and leads with passion, vision, grit and determination.

Before Acrylic, she started my first business at age 9, sold hwe first painting at 14, was a provincial-level competitive athlete throughout her teens, founded & scaled a sustainability case competition (www.bridgecasecomp.com) nation-wide, held leadership roles on dozens of student committees in her undergrad, and managed multi-million dollar infrastructure projects at Canada's largest engineering consulting firm (WSP).

She is now the Founder & CEO of Acrylic Robotics, a tech startup on a mission to make fine art accessible to all. We leverage robotics and artificial intelligence to allow artists to create authenticated limited-edition collections of painted artwork conceived by them and painted by their robotic twin with real paint on canvas. With Acrylic, artists can make their work available to the general public while also generating orders of magnitude more income per piece.

On the show, we spoke about: 

• Chloe’s background as an artist 
• Acrylic Robotics and the bold mission to help artists
• Unlocking new demand by lowering the price of art
• A philosophical conversation on what is creativity 
• Potential business models using generative AI 

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Frantz Saintellemy, President and COO @ Leddartech.

Mr. Saintellemy is currently President and Chief Operating Officer at Leddartech.

LeddarTech is a leader in environmental sensing solutions for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles. LeddarTech delivers an end-to-end environmental sensing solution that solves critical fusion and perception challenges across the automotive value chain.

With LeddarVision™, its proprietary low-level fusion and perception platform that enables L2 to L5 ADAS/AD autonomy levels, and with LeddarEngine™, the most versatile and scalable auto and mobility LiDAR platform covered by over 120 patented technologies and innovations, enabling LeddarTech's automotive customers to develop full-stack sensing solutions that enhances performance while improving safety.

In addition to his current functions at LeddarTech, he has been appointed the 14th Chancellor and Chair of the Board of Université de Montréal.

Groupe 3737 is a not-for-profit accelerator and incubator focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, with an emphasis on gender agnostic, women, youth, and migrant entrepreneurs. We develop tomorrow's socially and environmentally conscious, diverse, inclusive entrepreneurs and leaders that give back to their communities.

On the show, we spoke about: 

• Growing up in humble beginnings and his mindset to level up
• Treating his career like a professional athlete 
• The three waves of technology adoption
• LeddarTech’s vision and the advent of self-driving cars 
• Inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs with Groupe 3737

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Jordan Arshinoff, Cofounder & Copresident @ Obibox.

After spending 17 years of his professional life in the industrial packaging industry, Jordan Arshinoff Foss founded obibox (formerly Xpedigo) with his brother-in-law Paul-Henri Erhard in November 2016. Initially conceived as a technology platform applied to parcel delivery (last mile), the entrepreneurs quickly developed an operational side in order to test the technology developed by their technical team. The company enjoyed some success from 2016 to 2020, but it was in the midst of a pandemic that obibox took off. Today, they are 4 founders, have more than 70 employees, 6 pan-Quebec sorting centers with more than 350 delivery partners. They also have a fleet of 20 100% electric trucks with a goal of being carbon neutral by 2030. They presented their full climate action plan to the industry a few weeks ago. They offer a home and business parcel delivery service, 7 days a week, same day and next day service. They work with companies such as Altitude Sport and Cookit. Jordan Arshinoff Foss is co-president, responsible for strategic business development.

On the show, we spoke about: 

• Genesis of Obibox and how they shifted their business model 
• Merging with Tecor transport
• Developing a climate action plan
• Roadblocks and opportunities in electrifying their fleet
• Being a tech enabled operations company
• The potential future market with their software product

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Sarah Lambert, Co-founder & CEO @ Ora Medical. 

Sarah’s personal mission is to provide walking ability to disabled patients. Her experience in the physical therapy field illustrated the lack of access to daily rehabilitation care for people with mobility impairments. Following this realization, she surrounded herself with a talented team of engineers to reproduce her physical therapy treatments remotely, aided by AI. Ora Medical now continues to grow and help revolutionize physical rehabilitation practices in an ever-changing digital world.

On the show, we spoke about: 

• The state of remote medicine today
• Helping people with disabilities
• Building a product that has initial traction
• The immense size of the market
• Building a recurring revenue stream

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Gabriel Sundaram, COO & Co-Founder @ Mission. 

Currently, Gabriel is leading ops and growth at Mission. They’re building the best market network for software engineers to work as independents. Supporting them with a platform to help teams build more effectively, opportunities to work on meaningful long-term missions, and a community of like-minded peers.

Previously Gabriel was COO at Bus.com, overseeing growth and product. He helped navigate the company through a rebrand, major product pivot, and multiple rounds of growth capital.

Prior to Bus.com Gabriel was part of the founding investment team at Real Ventures where he invested in over 200 early stage startups through the fund and their accelerator program FounderFuel. He also led the development of the firm’s own internal software and initial platform to support portfolio companies.

Having left and come back to his hometown Montreal, Gabriel has become a key instigator in the growing local startup scene. Launching several community initiatives including tech blog MTLinTECH, Startup Drinks Montreal, Startup Open House, and Notman House.

On the show, we spoke about: 

• Importance of the software engineer
• Genesis of Mission and its model
• Building the best online environment for independent engineers and product builders to work.
• The concept of marketplace 3.0 
• The importance of culture and learning in attracting elite level engineers 
• Building the Canadian tech community 

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Shahir Guindi, Partner and Co-Chair @ Osler. Shahir is the firm's national Co-Chair and a member of the firm’s Partnership Board. He was Managing Partner of the Montréal office for 7 years prior to becoming national Co-Chair. He has over 30 years of experience and is a recognized advisor in M&A, private equity and corporate finance. His private equity and venture capital experience includes advising funds on their domestic and cross-border portfolio investments and divestitures and on their fund formations. Shahir acts for a number of the country’s most successful technology and biotechnology companies. 

On the show, we spoke about: 

• The key ingredient in being a successful lawyer: trust
• How the legal industry has changed 
• Advice for technology entrepreneurs
• Board best practices 
• The growing importance of impact for boards

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Patrick Gagné,  CEO @ Cycle Momentum.

With a focus on innovation and growth, Patrick brings 20 years of experience in technology and entrepreneurship. Patrick cofounded several companies that contributed to the growth of urban living and economic development in Montreal. He is currently CEO of Cycle Momentum, a startup accelerator and innovation engine in the cleantech space.

On the show, we spoke about: 

• State of climate tech in Canada
• Technology risk vs.  commercial risk
• Accelerating climate tech startups by being upstream 
• Funding climate technologies
• Being a coach vs. an entrepreneur
• His vision for scaling Cycle Momentum

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