What The Tech?

In our latest episode of What the Tech, we sat down with Anuj Rastogi, Managing Director at Backstretch, to discuss how AI is fundamentally reshaping product development, intellectual property creation, and staffing strategies across Canada's innovation ecosystem. 

After two decades in the digital agency world, Anuj made a complete pivot into talent acquisition and executive search. He's become a familiar face across Canada's startup community (attending 38 events in 2025 alone), giving him a front-row seat to how AI is changing everything about how companies build products, create defensible IP, and staff their R&D teams; insights that matter deeply to businesses maximizing access to government funding like SR&ED tax credits. 

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

In the latest episode of What the Tech from Boast, we sat down with Mike Weider, Co-Founder and CEO of Frugal AI, the world's first AI-native application cost engineering platform. Frugal empowers developers to reduce application costs by automatically fixing inefficient code patterns that run up cloud spend—bridging the friction between finance and engineering teams while helping deliver more agile products. 

We first connected with Mike at SaaS North in Ottawa (where Boast had just celebrated the launch of Budget 2025 and enhanced SR&ED funding). Mike pitched Frugal at the TechTO Rocket Stage, and his perspective immediately stood out: this wasn't just another dev tool—it was a solution to a problem that's gone from painful to unsustainable. 

Mike brings serious credentials to this mission. He's served as Founder and CEO at three previous venture-backed startups that all went on to major acquisitions. He's an independent board member at numerous businesses and nonprofits (including Invest Ottawa), and an active seed investor. His pattern-recognition across multiple successful exits gives him a unique lens on what problems are worth solving. 

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

In the latest episode of What the Tech from Boast, we sat down with Chris Ellefson, President and CTO of Ollon, a boutique agency specializing in custom software application development. Ollon works with teams to meet tight deadlines, strengthen their capacity, and rescue abandoned code, seamlessly integrating within organizations to fill skill gaps and extend in-house capabilities. 

We've been fans of Chris and his team since we first connected in 2024, co-hosting and participating in pitch competitions for innovative businesses across Eastern Canada. Chris has served as a tech lead and mentor at organizations on both sides of the border, and his perspective on building sustainably in Canada's tech ecosystem offers valuable lessons for founders at every stage. 

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

In the latest episode of What the Tech from Boast, we sat down with Sophie Jiang, CEO and Co-Founder of MoVA Realities, a company on a mission to solve what Sophie calls "the hardest problem in business": turning audiences into champions who carry your story forward. We first connected with Sophie at SaaS North in Ottawa, where she took part in a pitch competition sponsored by Boast and TechTO, and absolutely wowed the crowd. 

MoVA helps businesses turn their brands into 3D experiences where human connection meets scalable innovation. Built on the science of memory and crafted with the elegance of technology and art, MoVA ensures brand experiences stand out in a world flooded with content, text, and noise. 

Sophie's journey to founding MoVA is rooted in her architecture background at Princeton, where a cross-disciplinary accelerator program introduced her to the power of AR and VR and changed everything. 

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

In the latest episode of What the Tech from Boast we sat down with Mikayla Stewart, Co-Founder and CTO of Athena Collective, a platform and community designed to ensure that every female entrepreneur has the resources and tools they need to succeed—regardless of background or bank balance. 

Mikayla brings a unique background to this mission: she's served as a fractional COO for 12+ stealth-stage startups, turning chaotic early-stage businesses into well-oiled machines. More recently, she's been building custom AI-powered applications that solve operational problems without unnecessary bloat. At Athena Collective, she's channeling all that operational expertise and technical skill into solving a problem that has frustrated her for years: the systematic disadvantage female founders face when building businesses. 

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

In the latest episode of What the Tech, we sat down with Jonathan Kvarfordt, VP of GTM Strategy at Momentum.io and founder of the GTM AI Academy. With over 15 years in revenue excellence and GTM acceleration, Jonathan has developed an AI GTM data orchestration platform that's fundamentally changing how businesses capture, structure, and activate conversational data. 

For customers like Zscaler, DemandBase, Ramp, and 1Password, this has translated into productivity gains of 3-10 hours per rep per week. But the real breakthrough isn't just about time savings—it's about unlocking a competitive moat that most companies don't even realize they're sitting on. 

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

On the latest episode of What The Tech, we welcome Bloks co-founder and CEO Marc Gingras. We first connected with Marc as part of our activation with the TechTO team at SaaS North in Ottawa back in early November, where Marc took the stage to explain the game-changing innovation behind the Bloks platform.  

At Bloks, Marc’s team is helping Venture Capital and Private Equity partners rethink their work by eliminating the tedious busywork that’s strife in traditional CRMs and investment workflows, freeing teams up to focus on discovering and nurture the future’s most exciting companies.  

This is just part of Marc’s journey through the innovation ecosystem, as he’s been a leading entrepreneur in Ottawa and beyond for more than a decade. I’m excited to learn about his path through Canada’s tech ecosystem, the incredible work his team is doing at Bloks, and what’s on deck for 2026. 

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

On the latest episode of What The Tech, we welcome a few members of the Boast team onto the show for a discussion focused specifically on driving (and funding) innovation in Quebec. 

If you’re a Quebecois business leader or techie, you may have heard that the province’s banner e-business tax credit—known colloquially as CDAE—is being revamped starting next year as the province expands the vision and support for fostering innovative business within Quebec.  

One of the biggest enhancements to the program is a greater focus on—you guessed it—AI, and rewarding businesses who are using the latest and greatest tools and techniques to push the boundaries on what’s possible when it comes to R&D.  

Joining the show to unpack it all are Joshua Martin, who leads Boast's Quebec Sales Division, and Blake Nelson, who leads Boast’s product development team and is one of the brains behind our new solution dedicated to claiming R&D tax credits in Quebec as CDAE transforms into CDAE-IA in 2026. 

This is quite the brain trust we have on hand; we dive right in and pick their brains on what the new program means for innovators in Quebec and how Boast is ‘meeting the moment’ with our new dedicated CDAE-IA solutions.  

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

In the latest episode of What the Tech, we sat down with Amit Bhargava, co-founder and CEO of EnviroApps Inc., a Calgary-based company making the transportation of dangerous goods safer by developing the first proven electronic hazmat shipping paper solution in Canada. Over the past five years, Amit and his team have been on a mission to replace what they call "CRAPI" paper processes—Cumbersome, Ridiculous, Archaic, Painful, and Inefficient. 

By offering digital solutions instead of physical paperwork, EnviroApps delivers the visibility and control that teams need when documentation access is literally a matter of life and death. Because when emergency responders arrive at a hazmat incident, they need to know what they're dealing with, and they shouldn't have to risk their lives going into a dangerous truck to find paper documents. 

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

In the latest episode of What the Tech from Boast we sat down with Bernie Florido, founder and CEO of Cocoflo Innovations, a Vancouver-based company creating technology that simplifies how governments and communities connect. CocoFlow integrates business licensing, parks and recreation, and payment processing modules into software solutions that empower municipalities to serve their citizens better because—as Bernie and his team believe—smarter cities create better lives. 

What makes Bernie's story particularly compelling is his background: He spent more than 13 years as a police officer before going all in on his tech-enabled mission. That experience shaped his resilience, leadership, and deep commitment to public service in ways that continue to inform how Cocoflo Innovations approaches civic technology today. 

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.