Pitches, networking, deal-making: Web Summit thrives in Vancouver

The Vancouver Convention Centre has been full of the tech industry’s biggest movers and shakers this week.

On the penultimate day of Web Summit, the mammoth tech conference saw thousands of attendees flowing between expert panels and a bustling exhibition hall at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Organizers have now confirmed 50 countries sent government-backed delegations to the summit, a record for the event marking its first of three years in Vancouver. The first Web Summit was in Dublin in 2009 with just 150 attendees, and now four events are held around the globe each year.

The Polish and Qatari delegations have massive footprints, while Hong Kong and Greece, for example, have smaller dedicated booths.

“We wanted you to see the response of the Canadian market as we have a quite good sample from the European market,” said Georgios Karakatsanis, a Greek entrepreneur with Evotropia. “We wanted to see the response of markets that are really environmentally friendly and have similar policies to the European Union.”

For Yarn Guru, a Pakistani company using artificial intelligence to match textiles with potential buyers, the event was an opportunity to connect with North American clients.

“Our customers are people who need help finding products globally,” said Akhlaq Rana. “We use artificial intelligence to find the thickness they want, length, various details which can be very hard to find.”

Canadian entrepreneurs make their case

Startups and established companies from across Canada represented a significant portion of the booths in the exhibition hall, some of them having attended the conference in Toronto, when it was named Collision.

“It is a great platform for startups and entrepreneurs like myself to come and help get the amplification we need to move and scale our product,” said Toronto’s Maman Khalid, with cleantech AI marketplace RevoHubInc.

For Vancouver-based ImmerRock, a mixed-reality app for learning guitar, the company gained as much from networking within the field as pitching to potential investors.

“It’s helpful to know what everybody else is doing in the ecosystem, kind of get to know each other and share some of the problems and solutions that we all kind of have to encounter,” said Evanna Roman.

The representatives weren’t all software-oriented, however. Seawise Packaging was there with a cold-packaging alternative to styrofoam developed in Prince George for a company in Campbell River.

“(Being here) opens our eyes so we also get some insightful ideas from (other companies) to improve our product and also we get to connect with some customers,” said Banchi Kassuan, the company’s product researcher.

American companies were the second-most common after Canadians in the exhibition hall, but many of the delegates from Europe and Asia have said that making connections in Canada are important as they try to mitigate — or outright avoid — issues with the United States’ erratic trade war, while still doing business in North America.

“I think Canada has a lot to gain by getting a lot of people come work in Canada rather than the United States,” said economist William Lazonick, at a Web Summit news conference. “I think the government policy needs to kind of be ready for that, and corporations have to be doing their part and towards investment.”