In 1996 Hamnett found himself in the heart of Montreal’s thriving tech scene. The Alberta native provides a first-hand look at how the tech boom impacted the city of Montreal and his role in it. Rises and falls, mergers and acquisitions, wins and losses highlight Hamnett’s fascinating and influential career in tech.  *Hamnett was a finalist for entrepreneur of the year and did not win as we mistakenly mentioned.

Having travelled the world as a professional dancer, Ashley always knew she would have benefited from having a qualified mentor that had walked in her shoes before. Proper mentorship would have provided valuable insight and direction on her career and would have significantly reduced costly mistakes. No stranger to risk and hard work, Ashley and her co-founder Katherine set out to build a world-class mentorship platform that can help the next generation of rising artists and creatives.

It’s fair to say Chris Defour isn’t afraid to juggle multiple projects at once. At one point, he was operating 4 different companies at once all while winding down a competitive squash career. Fast forward a couple of years and Chris is laser-focused on tackling the issue of workforce management through an innovative and multi-functional SaaS platform. The best part is they’ve come so far without bringing on a single employee on their team.

In 2014, Phil Cutler set out on a mission to democratize education. He was tired of seeing less fortunate students fall behind because of a lack of access to resources. Less than five years later, Phil is running a fully-funded startup tackling that very problem. Phil goes into detail about his early experiences in education, launching his first company, running for city council of Westmount and getting GradeSlam off the ground.