Written by Lidia Vijga, co-founder at DeckLinks
A single visit and one honest story can stretch a runway, attract partners, and turn a quiet team into a city-wide conversation. That’s the power startups unlock when they throw their doors open, and why this announcement matters.
Startup Open House – Produced by TechTO, Powered by Elevate, In Partnership With ElanTech – is back in Toronto on Thursday, October 9, from 3:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
It’s a city-wide backstage pass where Toronto startups are opening their doors to visitors. You can swing by to meet the teams behind Cohere, Clio, Wattpad, and many other disruptive companies. Or drop into accelerators like MaRS and NEXT Canada to meet founders. No velvet ropes or complicated RSVPs, only real conversations with the people actually building the future.
This event is for every hustler who believes one conversation can change their trajectory. Professionals looking for their next role. Investors chasing raw insight. Students trying to figure out where they fit in tech. And yes, all the bootstrapped, still-eating-ramen innovators who haven’t made it onto TechCrunch yet (my favorite kind of people).
Why Startup Open House Matters Right Now
Toronto’s startup engine is not hype – it’s numbers. The city hosts roughly 1,400 startups, more than a third of the country’s total. We’re ranked 1st in Canada and 23rd worldwide, but many of these founders still struggle for the spotlight.
Community events counter another worrying trend. A national BDC report shows Canada has about 100,000 fewer entrepreneurs than it did in 2000. Fewer new companies means fewer fresh ideas. Opening office doors and lowering the “warm-intro” barrier is one direct remedy.
Networking isn’t casual small talk. It’s how you survive. LinkedIn’s research reveals that 70% of hires happen where candidates already know someone. Customers, partners, and early employees follow the same rule.
Open House squeezes all that relationship-building into 4 high-energy hours. No gatekeepers. No inflated sponsorship packages. Just founders and the people who can help them level up.
How to Sign Up for Startup Open House
- Create an account here to use the map. Browse the participating startups, and plan your day ahead. Use the online itinerary tool to map your route and tap the heart to save startups you want to visit. The point is movement.
- RSVP here to get all the updates.
- Download the Goosechase app here to complete missions, earn points, and win prizes. Join Code: SOHTO
Make the Most of Startup Open House
Circle the date – Thursday, October 9. Block off 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM. The territory spans the core of downtown with anchor hubs at MaRS, the U of T, Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus, NEXT Canada, and 100+ startup offices stretching from College St. to the Waterfront.
Bring hustle, curiosity, and a portable charger – you’re good.
Set one micro-goal before each stop so every visit has purpose.
- Job seekers: aim to learn one role’s day-to-day and secure one follow-up contact.
- Founders: collect one actionable piece of feedback and one concrete next step.
- Investors/advisors: identify one thesis signal and one founder worth a quick coffee.
Face Time with Founders
This is not a trade-show floor stacked with junior reps. You’ll talk to the people who coded the first line, closed the first sale, and begged the first customer for feedback. Ask them why they pivoted twice before landing product-market fit. Extract the lesson for your own roadmap.
Experience the Office Culture with No Filter
Company culture pages rave about transparency. Walking into a stand-up tells you if that claim is real. Feel the room. Check the whiteboards. See whether team members speak up or sit silent. Culture clues hide in plain sight, all you have to do is look.
Join the Elevate Festival & Startup Open House Afterparty
After the Startup Open House, head to FUTURE for the afterparty. Celebrate, connect, and unwind among founders, creators, and startup supporters. There will be light snacks, fun surprises, and talks that turn quick intros into genuine connections. Come to relax and soak up the vibe.
Startups You Should Visit
These are the startups you absolutely need to visit, especially if you’re bootstrapped. Drop in, ask for a demo and listen to what’s keeping the team up at night.
Arima – Market Intelligence for Data-Driven Decisions
Founded in 2020, Arima offers an unlimited-use platform that overcomes the usual slow, costly, and hard-to-access limits of marketing mix modeling (MMM). It lets marketers measure how their omni-channel efforts drive business objectives.
📍Address: 123 Edward Street
Arima’s platform is built on Synthetic Society™, a privacy-by-design database that statistically mirrors real consumers using over 10,000 attributes from trusted sources like census data, market research, mobility patterns, and purchase behavior. In a straightforward interactive UI, marketers can combine their data with ours to measure campaign performance, draw deep consumer insights, optimize cross-media plans, and visualize trends on interactive maps, all in one place.
Baseline – Loan Origination and Servicing Platform for Private Lenders
Baseline is a tech platform that helps teams who originate and service loans work faster, use data smarter, and foster better relationships with investors, borrowers, and partners.
📍Address: 507 King Street East
Baseline’s platform streamlines the day-to-day of private lenders – centralizing loan workflows, improving data quality, and tightening connections with investors and borrowers. The company’s north star is simple: reduce frictions in private lending so financing becomes faster, fairer, and more available to those who need it.
Cyder – Loyalty Platform for Credit Unions
Cyder helps credit unions and community banks compete on what makes them different: relationships. Built specifically for financial institutions that win on service over scale, they provide a loyalty and rewards platform that transforms everyday banking into opportunities for deeper member engagement and measurable growth.
📍Address: 64 Niagara Street
The Cyder platform gives credit unions 3 core capabilities:
- Co-design a loyalty program tailored to specific goals – whether that’s reducing churn, increasing product adoption, or deepening engagement.
- Automate reward campaigns with built-in targeting that eliminates manual tracking.
- Monitor real-time analytics on member behavior, engagement, and redemption to see what’s working and optimize the approach.
Ditto – Digital Twins That Live in the Real World
📍Address: 30 Adelaide East
Ditto builds detailed digital twins of real populations to run fast, reliable global market research. Their platform uses official data plus culture and behavior inputs to create simulated audiences tailored to specific markets and business needs.
This system provides real-time, always-on insights that update with current news and trends, letting companies test products and messages quickly with accurate, context-rich feedback across regions and segments. It replaces slow traditional research by offering direct dialogue with digital twins anytime.
Floqer – The CRM Data Engine
Floqer helps sales and marketing teams automate outbound growth by enriching CRM data and powering AI-driven outreach. Its mission is to remove manual research and admin work so go-to-market teams can focus on meaningful customer conversations.
📍Address: 75 Berkeley Street
The platform connects to CRMs and over 75 trusted data sources to enrich leads, update company info, and trigger personalized outreach. AI agents then automate research, message creation, and sequencing – turning complex manual workflows into smart, data-driven automation.
Impro.AI – Enhance Business Performance with Daily Human Guidance and AI Insights
Impro.AI pioneers performance technology by combining human coaching expertise with AI to boost employee and organizational performance. Their mission is to bridge the gap between learning and actual behavior change, empowering individuals through daily micro-coaching and delivering actionable insights to management.
📍Address: 460 Richmond Street West
The platform uses AI to analyze behavioral patterns and provides personalized guidance to employees while summarizing coaching sessions to help managers track progress and growth opportunities. This continuous, human-AI hybrid approach drives measurable business outcomes like revenue increases and cost savings.
Morphace – Personalized and Wearable Beauty Tech
Morphace develops data-driven, wearable skincare technology aimed at making anti-aging treatments personalized, automated, and convenient for busy individuals. Their mission is to bring clinical-grade skin health monitoring and treatment home, providing personalized insights and reducing guesswork in skincare.
📍Address: 20 Dundas Street West
They accomplish this through a smart mask device that uses non-invasive electrodes to promote skin cell remodeling and tracks key skin health metrics such as deep hydration, barrier strength, and inflammation. The device pairs with an app that analyzes these metrics to deliver tailored skincare recommendations and treatment adjustments, backed by advanced data analytics and machine learning.
Next Unicorn – An all-in-one platform for startups and investors
Next Unicorn is a platform dedicated to connecting early-stage startups with reputable investors who are ready to fund promising ventures. Their mission is to help startups “raise smarter, not louder” by matching them with investors aligned to their vision and helping investors discover, evaluate, and co-invest in high-potential startups poised to disrupt industries and create global change.
📍Address: 450 Front Street West
They achieve this through an all-in-one digital marketplace offering curated deal flow, pitch battle competitions and access to mentorship and capital. This platform streamlines the fundraising process, giving startups strategic support and investors improved deal visibility and efficiency.
Penseum – Instantly Create AI Study Guides, Flashcards & Quizzes
Penseum is an AI-powered learning platform focused on making education personalized, accessible, and effective. Its mission is to support students and teachers by providing tools that simplify and enhance the learning process through innovative tech.
📍Address: 240 Richmond Street West
Penseum transforms study materials like notes, PDFs, videos, and slides into interactive flashcards, quizzes, bite-sized lessons, and step-by-step solutions. It offers real-time AI assistance, multi-language support, and community engagement through its Ambassador program and Discord, enabling students to study smarter and more efficiently from any device.
RenMobi – Pioneering Innovation in Electric Vehicles
RenMobi is a renewable energy and mobility company on a mission to make long-range electric vehicles affordable for everyone. They aim to reduce carbon footprints and promote sustainable transportation through innovative energy technologies.
📍Address: 44 Gerrard Street East, Ryerson Clean Energy Zone
They develop cutting-edge solutions including a Thermal Storage System that optimizes EV heating, AI-driven vision learning, and robotics to enhance manufacturing automation. RenMobi integrates renewable energy and advanced technology to improve efficiency and sustainability in the automotive and housing industries.
Ryzome – Better soil. Better Plants.
Ryzome is a Canadian company that transforms urban and construction waste into natural, nutrient-rich fertilizers and soils to support sustainable agriculture and gardening. Their products include chemical-free plant food, biochar, rock powder, and wood vinegar, all designed to improve soil health and plant growth by recycling nutrients found in organic waste.
📍Address: 90 Niagara Street
Their mission is to reconnect people with nature by closing the nutrient loop – recovering waste and returning it as living soil amendments that nourish plants, farms, and cities. Ryzome aims to build healthier ecosystems and communities through circular economy principles, offering solutions that are natural, clean, and impactful for farmers, industries, and plant enthusiasts alike.
SingleKey – Take the Risk Out of Renting
SingleKey offers an integrated platform for landlords and property managers in Canada to screen tenants, manage rental risks, and guarantee rental income. They combine full credit checks from Equifax, TransUnion, or Nova Credit with detailed employment and income verification to deliver comprehensive tenant reports.
📍Address: 276 Queen Street West
Their Rent Guarantee program protects landlords from missed rent payments, property damage, and eviction costs, providing financial and legal support. SingleKey also offers automated rent collection and a digital rental application process, simplifying leasing and reducing landlord risk while helping tenants build credit history and improve rental access.
eslTAGS – Smart Electronic Shelf Labels
eslTAGS offers smart electronic shelf labels that replace paper tags with digital displays for fast, remote price and product updates. Their battery-powered labels use e-ink and LCD screens with wireless connectivity like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, reducing labor costs and boosting accuracy.
📍Address: 101 College Street
The system integrates with retail POS and ERP systems for real-time updates and supports retail applications like dynamic pricing, inventory management, and foot traffic analysis using advanced radar tech. This helps retailers boost efficiency, improve pricing accuracy, and enhance customer trust.
The Final Say
A city is only as alive as the connections pulsing through it. On October 9, Toronto’s tech heartbeat will thunder. I’ll be around, phone in hand, capturing stories for BYVI and probably losing my voice from all the high-energy chats.
Will one of those chats be with you? I hope so. The next product pivot, career leap, or investor match can start with a single open door and a five-minute conversation.
See you out there!
