Make a group chat. Add 3 bots. Name one of them Senior Product Engineer and leave the other 2 as normal junior engineers. Then give them something to build.

The senior bot actually starts ordering the juniors around. “No, that doesn’t look right. Correct that.” “There might be a bug over there, have a look.” The same back-and-forth you’d see on a real team, except nobody in the chat is a person.

That’s Grok Bot, and it’s why I think it’s going to win. There’s no config file and no terminal. You just message your agents like you’d message a friend, and from the very get-go you understand how it works. The whole app functions like a chat app.

Ottawa, Saturday night, bring your laptop

On Saturday, October 17, SpaceXAI is bringing the Grok Bot Meetup to Ottawa, and Builders Collective Ottawa is co-hosting it. We’ll be at the Impact Hub Ottawa from 6 to 10 PM. You’ll get a Grok Bot 101, live demos, a showcase of what local builders have made with it, and real time to meet people. Everyone gets free Grok Bot credits, and there’s food and drinks.

I love that mix. Racing engineers, AI people, CS students and business-tech students all hit the same problem with agents: setting them up eats the time you wanted to spend building. Saturday is about skipping that part. You don’t need any Grok Bot experience. Just bring your laptop.

Ottawa isn’t the first to do this. In September, SpaceXAI ran Grok Bot build nights at UC Davis and Iowa State. Now it’s our turn. Space is limited and hosts approve every registration, so request to join on Luma early.

The agent race got crowded fast

A few months ago, if you wanted an AI agent that actually did work for you, your options looked very different.

Grok Bot launched in beta on August 11. Each Bot is a teammate with a computer in the cloud. It signs into the tools you already use, works across your apps and inbox, and only comes back when something needs your approval. You can close your laptop and it keeps going.

Introducing Grok Bot, now in early beta. Bots are AI teammates that do real work for you. They sign in to your tools, use them just like you do, and come back with finished work. https://t.co/uyfA97yo98

— Grok Bot (@bot) August 11, 2026

Before that, the main option people around me used was Hermes Agent, the open-source agent from Nous Research. It’s powerful, and it’s free to run on your own server. But you’re configuring it yourself: installing from the terminal, picking your model provider with one command, setting up tools with another, then starting a separate messaging gateway before you can even text it on Telegram or Slack. If you love tinkering, great. For most people, it’s just not intuitive.

Then OpenAI came in with Dots, announced September 29. Dots are capable too: each one gets a cloud computer and can connect to over 4,000 apps. But right now you get 1 primary dot, and OpenAI says it envisions teams of dots “over time.”

So everyone has the cloud computer now. What actually separates these products is how fast a normal person goes from download to getting something done.

4 reasons I think Grok Bot wins

This is what I’ll be talking about on Saturday. Each one comes with a real team using it.

1. You can make way more bots.

With Dots, you get 1 agent today, and more are coming later. With Grok Bot, you build a roster of named Bots, each with its own job, and I haven’t seen a published cap on how many you can make. (The docs do say to start with the smallest team that gets the job done, which is fair.)

SpaceXAI’s own teams run a chief-of-staff Bot on top, with a specialist for each lane: inbox, expenses, recruiting, bug fixes. One of their engineering Bots reproduces a bug in the product, files the ticket and hands the fix to a separate debugging Bot.

2. It’s just a chat app, and this is the big one.

If I had to pick one reason Grok Bot wins, it’s how easy and intuitive it is. You message your Bot from your phone or laptop and say something like, “Hey, can you check this out?” Once your tools are connected, it handles it.

SpaceXAI’s launch post makes the same point: other tools make you build workflows first, while Grok Bot just takes the task. One person on their team said it was “just like bringing on a coworker.” Inside SpaceXAI, an ops Bot seats new hires and processes invoices that land in Gmail. That’s exactly the kind of job a founder ends up doing at midnight.

3. Your bots work off each other in group chats.

You can put 2 to 6 Bots in a group chat and they pass work between themselves. Tag a Bot with @ when it owns the task, or just write normally and let the group decide who answers.

That’s how the senior and junior engineer setup works: one Bot oversees and corrects, the others build. SpaceXAI uses the same idea at a much bigger scale. Its Engineering Team Bot steered hundreds of Cursor cloud agents and helped a 5-person team ship more than 100 pull requests a day.

4. Team Bots let your whole team share one.

On September 28, SpaceXAI launched Team Bots in public beta on Teams and Enterprise plans. Instead of everyone building their own, your team shares one Bot that already has the right files, apps, credentials and memory.

Introducing Team Bots, shared AI teammates that learn as your team works with them. Give your Team Bot the skills, plugins, and credentials it needs for its role, then work with it in Slack or Grok Bot. https://t.co/73RrG4xpaU

— Grok Bot (@bot) September 28, 2026

Everyone’s conversations with it stay private, and it gets its own Slack handle so you can drop it into a channel. Harper, an insurance company for small businesses, built a Team Bot in 24 hours to track down customers whose policies had lapsed and get them covered again, saving those customers over $120,000.

Connecting your tools (and the fine print)

The cleanest way to hook up your tools is through connectors, which you add as plugins from Connect apps. And if a tool doesn’t have one, or there’s no official way in like MCP, you can just tell the Bot to log in for you and it works in the browser. For startups running on random niche tools, that fallback is huge.

The login part is handled pretty well. When the Bot hits a password, a two-factor code or a CAPTCHA, it hands you control of its computer. You type it in yourself, and the session stays signed in so you’re not doing it every time. For supported connections there’s a secure field where your secret is masked and never shows up in the chat. So the Bot keeps working with your accounts, but your password doesn’t end up sitting in your chat history.

To be fair, OpenAI says dots can also use saved passwords without exposing them to the model. Keeping credentials safe is becoming the baseline, which is good for everyone.

Now the honest part. All the Bots on your account share one cloud computer, including its files and sign-ins, and xAI’s own FAQ says not to treat separate Bots as a security boundary. If one Bot shouldn’t have a login, don’t put it on that computer. Set “Ask first” rules for anything that sends, publishes, deletes or buys. It’s also still a beta, so you’ll hit rough edges. My advice: start with low-risk jobs and give your Bots more access as you start trusting them.

From internal prototype to your laptop on Saturday

Grok Bot started as an internal prototype at SpaceXAI. Teams across the company were using it for sales outreach, marketing campaigns, office operations and bug fixes before it ever launched. Nobody had to learn a new tool. It was a chat window, so people just started using it.

That’s the experience I want Ottawa to have on Saturday. If you’re in town, request your spot and come build with us. Bring your laptop and one task you hate doing every week. You’ll leave with free credits, a few Bots working on that task and a room full of people building the same way.

If you’re not in Ottawa, download Grok Bot and give one Bot one clear job this week. Then make a second one and put them in a group chat together. You’ll get where work is heading way faster than any article can explain it.

The builders who figure out how to run a team of bots this year are going to be the ones hiring their first humans next year. I want a lot of them to come from Ottawa.

About the Author

Qurb E Muhammad Syed is a fourth-year Software Engineering student at Carleton University, SpaceXAI Ambassador and co-founder of Builders Collective Ottawa. He builds and ships software, from AI agents to automation tools and products for Canadian university students. As co-founder and engineering lead of BCO, he runs the co-hacks and events that bring the city’s builders into the same room. He started BCO to give Ottawa a place where people who make things can find each other, work side by side, and ship together. Today that community is over 400 builders strong.

The post Why I Think Grok Bot Wins and Why We’re Bringing It to Ottawa appeared first on BYVI.

The fastest way to learn a new skill is to get in a room with people a few steps ahead and work through it together.

Ahrefs Evolve runs a full track of masterminds built for exactly that: small tables, capped at 9 people, one hour each of focused discussion. You bring a problem and get a straight answer from someone who’s already solved it. For a founder doing your own marketing, that’s the most productive time you’ll spend at the whole event.

I went through the agenda and picked the sessions you’ll act on the same week.

Copywriting Cardio: Learn to Write by Actually Writing with Harry Dry

Harry built Marketing Examples into one of the most widely read marketing newsletters by teaching copy in plain, concrete lessons instead of theory. This session is rounds of actual writing, not slides about writing.

At the early stage, you write all of it: the landing page, the homepage, the cold email. AI can draft, but it defaults to bland, and bland doesn’t convert. Learning to cut a paragraph to the one line that lands pays off everywhere: the same ad, email, and landing page convert better once the words are doing the work.

My favourite piece of writing advice. 2 minutes 54 seconds into the film “The French Dispatch” magazine editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr says to a staff writer: “Just try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose.” Most sentences are not written ‘on purpose’. They happen. They are what one ‘should’ write — which is, of course, what one should never ever write. “We’re excited to announce the future of photography” It sounds like writing, so let’s rewrite it. “The industry formerly known as ‘photography’ has ceased to exist.” If you ask Google how to write with purpose, you will be told platitudes like ‘define your goal’. My advice is a little less comforting. Be provocative. School taught me to not be provocative. Bill Bernbach taught me that in advertising, it is necessary. I start by writing down what everyone in said industry is doing or saying. Then I ask what piece can I break so it doesn’t sound like anything else. My reward is lots of bad ideas. But I’d rather bad ideas than boring ones. – ‘Refresh your thirst’ → ‘Murder your thirst’ (Liquid Death) – ‘Buy this jacket’ → ‘Don’t buy this jacket’ (Patagonia) – ‘Party game for friends’ → ‘… for horrible people’ (Cards Against Humanity) Any idiot can be provocative. We are looking for provocativeness that stems from the product. Like Bernbach said “You are NOT right if you stand a man on his head JUST to get attention. You ARE right if you have him on his head to show how your product keeps things from falling out of his pockets.” When he shrunk the Beetle to a thumbprint it’s because he wanted you to ‘think small’. When he wrote ‘ugly is only skin-deep’ it’s because he wanted to talk about the air-cooled engine. When he showed you only ¼ of the Beetle it’s because a ¼ of the money upfront is all you need. It ‘sounds like he wrote it that way on purpose.’ Because he did.

— Harry Dry (@harrydry) May 2, 2025

How to Break Through the Noise: Creating a Brand That Is Unforgettable with Alina Vandenberghe

Alina co-founded and bootstrapped Chili Piper into a category leader, growing it the lean way for years before raising. Her table is about building a brand that sticks without a big budget behind it.

AI is flooding every feed with competent, forgettable content. When everything sounds the same, a distinct brand becomes the moat. Founders who sound like themselves get remembered and repeated, and the rest dissolve into the model’s average. This is how you stay on the right side of that line.

How to Launch Your B2B Influencer Pilot with Brianna Doe

Brianna is founder and CEO of Verbatim and a top-50 LinkedIn creator worldwide, known for driving millions of impressions through B2B creator partnerships. Her session walks through launching a pilot you can actually measure.

Buyers trust people more than logos, and creators reach them where your ads can’t. You don’t need a huge budget to start, you need a pilot built so you can tell whether it worked.

The State of Reddit in the SERP & LLMs with Ross Simmonds

Ross is the founder of Foundation and Distribution.ai and the author of Create Once, Distribute Forever. This table digs into why Reddit keeps surfacing in both Google and LLM answers, and how to show up there on purpose.

AI answers lean hard on community sources, and Reddit sits near the top of that list. Earning a real presence in those threads, without getting flagged as spam, is becoming core distribution work. If you get it right, you will be inside the answer. But if you get it wrong, you will be invisible to the exact buyers asking about your category.

International SEO in an AI Search Era: What Has Changed and What Hasn’t with Aleyda Solis

Aleyda is the founder of Orainti and one of the most respected independent SEO consultants working today, known for shipping checklists rather than theory. This table covers what AI search changed for cross-border growth and what still holds.

If your customers span countries, AI search multiplies the complexity: different languages, different engines, even different answers in each market. If you know what actually moved, and what didn’t, it will save you from rebuilding a strategy that was working. Bring your top 2 markets and you’ll leave knowing what to fix now and what to leave alone.

Built for What’s Next: Hands-On AI Marketing Org Design with Tara Robertson

Tara Robertson, CMO at Bitly, runs this hour as a hands-on working session. She walks you through exercises to find real ways to embed AI across your team, map the new roles reshaping marketing, and pin down where AI unlocks both efficiency and growth.

Most marketing leaders know AI is reshaping their org, but few have sat down and done the work of figuring out what it means for their team. Here you do that work, then compare notes with peers on how AI-first orgs are being built right now and what’s actually unlocking results. You leave with real artifacts you can use and a clearer picture of what your own team needs to look like.

Off-Page SEO for AI Answers with Farzad Rashidi

Farzad runs Respona, an outreach platform for earning backlinks, and was Visme’s first marketing hire. This hands-on session is about engineering the off-site mentions and links that LLMs pull from when they answer.

AI answers cite sources, and those sources are mostly the sites that already get mentioned elsewhere. If your brand barely appears off your own domain, the model has nothing to quote. Learning to earn those mentions deliberately is the new link building, and it decides whether you exist in an answer at all.

Why I love attending masterminds

The keynotes will tell you where search is going. These masterminds are where you learn to do something about it. Everyone at Evolve is figuring out AI marketing, and the only difference is that some of them are a few months ahead and willing to show their work.

So show up ready. Bring the specific question you’re actually stuck on, the real one, not a super generic one, and bring a number or a screenshot from your own work so the person across the table has something real to work with. A vague “how do I do SEO for AI” gets you a vague answer. “Here’s my homepage and my last 3 months of traffic, what would you change first” gets you a plan.

The founders who will shape the next era of search are already in rooms like these, trading hard questions and working it out together.

That’s the quiet advantage of a small room: you leave with a next step you can take back to your team, and a reminder that you’re not figuring it out alone.

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post The Ahrefs Evolve Masterminds You’ll Act On the Same Week appeared first on BYVI.

Anthropic paused two perks in its Claude Startups program on October 9, 2026, three days after adding them. One was a free year of Claude Team with up to five Premium seats. The other was a one-time $1,000 Claude API credit. Its FAQ said the program had received hundreds of thousands of applications and was over capacity for those two offers. Anyone who already claimed an offer can keep using it. Anthropic also said it would re-review applications, which could change some applicants’ status.

Sarah Wolf, who handles startup marketing at Anthropic, said the acceptance criteria weren’t well calibrated and that companies that weren’t startups had been admitted.

We didn’t anticipate the demand for the Claude Startups program. In the first 48 hours of the program, we received 21x the number of applications compared to the last 5 months it’s been live. We let way too many people in this time, so we’ll need to pause on giving out the Team plan and API credits benefits. The other benefits (Startup Stack, Applied AI office hours/events) will remain. If you’ve already claimed the Claude offers, they’ll still remain in your account. We didn’t properly tune the acceptance criteria at the start, and many non-startups were accepted this time around. We’re fixing this now. We’re sending an email now to everybody who hasn’t claimed their benefits yet, and will re-verify those applications so we can keep Claude Startups for startups

— Sarah Wolf (@sarahzorah) October 9, 2026

Whether these offers come back or not, be very cautious with free credits from any big AI company. Read the fine print before you take them, especially what it says about your data and your experiments. The big companies aren’t giving away credits for nothing. They want something in return, and you need to figure out what their game is.

Why did Anthropic pause the Team plan and API credits

Anthropic’s posted Startup Program Official Terms, last updated on May 22, 2025, list possible factors for judging applications: business traction, investment and funding, and how a company integrates and uses Claude. So the criteria existed. A pile of hundreds of thousands of applications is the kind of data an AI company should be able to aggregate and filter. I don’t understand why they paused the offers over the volume. Isn’t filtering data exactly what AI is good for?

In my opinion, the non-startups Wolf mentioned were a bigger problem for Anthropic than the volume. Startups have the power of experimentation, and I believe big companies hand out free AI credits mainly to see what we’re experimenting with. A company that isn’t a startup doesn’t add much to that plan.

If these offers come back, I have a feeling the criteria will be much stricter. I expect them to favor tech startups that are disrupting something and building something innovative. Disruption is also how I tell a startup apart from a small business, which works in an existing market. I’d expect other AI companies to tighten their startup programs the same way.

How does the Anthropic Claude Startups program handle proprietary data

As tech founders, we have this mentality of experiments. That’s how we get through trial and error, and that’s how we learn from our failures faster than anyone else. So I would always look at the clause on how your data is going to be shared. What exactly from your experiments goes to the company? Can they use it to train their model? Watch out for this, as they could drop a feature down the road that will directly compete with your startup.

The competing-startup question is less far-fetched than it sounds. DeckLinks came out of BriefBid, the media marketplace I co-founded. Sellers there were looking for a feature to track their PDFs and proposals, so we built a platform for sharing and tracking PDFs. Your experiments show a provider what you need and what you’re building, the way our sellers showed us what they needed. So you need to really evaluate whether you’re willing to share your proprietary data, and what you’re testing inside your startup, in exchange for some credits.

Even the perk comes with something in return. The posted program terms let Anthropic identify the startups that receive it as customers, by name and logo. They also ask those startups to consider executive quotes or public co-marketing in good faith.

On the data side, Anthropic’s commercial terms say customers keep the rights to their inputs and own their outputs. They also say Anthropic may not train models on customer content. Training stays off unless your organization opts into the Development Partner Program, which covers Claude Code inputs and outputs sent through Anthropic’s first-party API. That’s also the only API the startup credits work on.

The setting applies to your whole organization, and shared data can be stored for up to two years. Leaving the program doesn’t pull what you already shared out of that window. With that setting on, maybe you shouldn’t run proprietary experiments through Claude Code at all.

Why paid Claude licenses protect your startup experiments

Many founders already skip free credits by paying for Anthropic or OpenAI licenses, keeping their shared data locked inside their own environment. There is an option for everyone else, too: open Settings and switch off Improve the model for everyone in ChatGPT (under Data controls) or Help improve Claude in Claude (under Privacy), and your new chats stay out of model training.

For anything you don’t want Anthropic picking up on, I’d stick with the paid license to protect your data and your experiments, and I’d double-check that the training settings are off. On Claude Team, Enterprise, and the API, they’re off by default.

Again, if you already claimed the perks, I’d check the terms before running your next experiment on them. Startups offered credits need to read the fine print too. Anthropic’s FAQ said VC-backed startups in its partner network may be eligible for up to $100,000 in additional API credits through their VC firm. That’s 100 times the paused $1,000 credit.

Anthropic’s FAQ said it aimed to review applications within one week and gave no date for bringing the two offers back. You might be waiting on that re-review, already using a Team year or getting credits through your VC. Whichever spot you’re in, this pause gives you time to check the fine print.

About the Author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post Anthropic Pauses Claude Startup Credits: Free AI Has Strings appeared first on BYVI.

For a founder, if customers can’t find you, nothing else matters, and the rules for getting found are being rewritten right now. Not long ago, a useful page and a solid ranking meant traffic showed up on its own. That deal is breaking. AI Overviews are already driving a 34.5% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page, and it’s not going back.

An AI model now sits between you and your customer, deciding how to describe your company and whether to name you at all. How AI interprets your brand, the sources it leans on and the answers it keeps repeating, is fast becoming a founder’s real edge.

Ahrefs Evolve returns to San Diego on October 12, and the lineup tells you exactly where search is headed. I went through the agenda for both days and pulled the 9 speakers whose sessions will actually change how your startup gets found.

Alina Vandenberghe, Chili Piper

• X
• LinkedIn

Alina Vandenberghe co-founded and bootstrapped Chili Piper into a category leader, so she’s the rare speaker who’s actually built a company from zero.

The talk: “How We Built 1,000 Agents by Making Failure Promotable”

She’s sharing how Chili Piper built a culture that rewards AI experimentation instead of punishing the misses, plus the org structure behind it. Her mastermind, “How to break through the noise,” gets into building a brand people remember.

For bootstrapped founders, this one is a must. Alina grew a company the lean way, so her playbook actually fits a tight budget.

Rand Fishkin, SparkToro

• X
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Rand Fishkin publishes the zero-click research everyone else quotes on X and Linkedin. His latest: 68% of Google searches now end without a single click, according to SparkToro.

The talk: “The New Way the Web Works: Zero Clicks, Declining Traffic, No Attribution, Yet More Influence than Ever”

He’s bringing the charts and data to back a different kind of marketing, one built for how buying actually works now: influence over traffic, measurement over attribution, and giving your audience what they want instead of pouring your budget into Google and Meta ads.

For founders who still feel pressure to chase traffic numbers, that’s exactly the evidence you need.

Tim Soulo, Ahrefs

• X
• LinkedIn
• YouTube

Tim Soulo is Ahrefs‘ CMO, and the company’s whole business is helping people get found, so he’s speaking from the data behind one of the most-used toolsets in search.

The talk: “How to make your business DISCOVERABLE in the age of AI”

He’s walking through how discovery is changing as AI reshapes search, and he’s teasing new Ahrefs tools built for it. Expect a practical read on how LLMs decide what to surface and what that means for your site.

For founders, the product announcements alone are worth watching, since they tend to signal where the tooling market heads next.

Ethan Smith, Graphite

• X
• LinkedIn

Ethan Smith is the founder and CEO of Graphite, a premium vertical AI growth agency that runs SEO for a long list of venture-backed startups, so he’s seen what drives growth across tech companies.

The talk: “The 5% Of AEO & SEO: Research Backed High Impact Strategies”

He’s cutting SEO and answer-engine optimization down to the few moves that actually drive results, backed by his own research, and showing which common tactics you can safely ignore.

If you’re doing marketing between standups and sales calls, this is the prioritization you’ve been missing.

Ross Hudgens, Siege Media

• X
• LinkedIn

Ross Hudgens built Siege Media into a content agency known for earning links and citations at scale, which is exactly the skill set that now decides whether AI answers mention you.

The talk: “PR for Machines: Earning Coverage That LLMs Repeat”

He’s breaking down how to earn the kind of coverage and citations that LLMs pick up and repeat, with placement frameworks and a data strategy you can copy. And his hands-on mastermind, “Content That Gets Cited,” goes deeper into the on-page side.

If AI answers are going to quote someone, this is how you become the one they cite, without an ad budget.

Aleyda Solis, Orainti

• X
• LinkedIn

Aleyda Solis is the founder of Orainti and one of the most respected independent SEO consultants working today, known for shipping checklists and frameworks rather than theory.

The talk: “Ecommerce in the Age of AI Search: Shifts, Risks, and Strategic Moves”

She’s mapping how AI search changes ecommerce, from agentic shopping to new visibility risks, and what to actually do about it. Her mastermind, “International SEO in an AI Search Era,” covers what’s changed for cross-border growth and what hasn’t.

If you sell products or sell across borders, you’ll walk away with specific steps that you can apply right away.

Ross Simmonds, Foundation AI and Distribution

• X
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

Ross Simmonds is the founder of Distribution.ai and Foundation, a B2B content marketing agency, and the Amazon bestselling author of Create Once, Distribute Forever. He’s known for turning content distribution into a growth engine, and has worked with organizations around the world, from fast-growing startups to global brands.

The talk: “How To Win In The New Search Era: Reddit, YouTube & Backlinks”

He’s showing how Reddit, YouTube, and backlinks drive visibility in both Google and LLM results, with a distribution playbook built for small teams. His mastermind, “The State Of Reddit In The SERP & LLMs,” zooms in on why Reddit keeps showing up in answers.

For founders without a big content budget, this is channel strategy you can run yourself.

Austin Lau, Anthropic

• X
• LinkedIn

Austin Lau does growth marketing at Anthropic, the company behind Claude, so he’s running these plays inside a team operating at the AI frontier.

The talk: “AI as a Force Multiplier for Your Marketing Team”

He’s sharing a framework for where AI actually multiplies a marketing team’s output, from automation to custom tooling, and where humans still matter. His workshop, “An Honest Conversation on Why AI Adoption in Marketing Is Hard,” digs into why most teams stall.

If you run marketing with 2 people and a stack of AI agents, you’ll leave knowing how to automate the right work and where a human still does it better.

Harry Dry, Marketing Examples

• X
• LinkedIn

Harry Dry built Marketing Examples into a widely read marketing newsletter by being relentlessly simple and he teaches copywriting better than almost anyone.

Mastermind: “Copywriting Cardio: Learn to Write by Actually Writing”

It’s a hands-on writing workshop, nine rounds of actually writing, not slides about writing. He’s also giving a day two talk on making your work land: “The Half Hour You Learn How to Write a Story: The Opposite of Storytelling”.

If you write your own landing pages and homepage copy (and at the early stage, you do), make time for both the workshop and the talk.

Why Ahrefs Evolve matters for founders

Search is shifting faster than most playbooks can keep up, and Evolve has gathered the people rewriting them. Across 2 days in San Diego, these speakers will map where AI search is heading and what founders should do about it.

What founders publish now becomes the source AI answers quote and the data future models learn from. That’s a rare opening: the founders who move now get cited before the category gets crowded and become the default answer in their space.

About the Author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post Speakers Tech Founders Can’t Miss at Ahrefs Evolve 2026 appeared first on BYVI.

LinkedIn tells you who’s connected. a16z’s new Cosign wants to tell you who would actually vouch for you, and in startups, that kind of trust is the most valuable currency there is. I don’t think it replaces LinkedIn, but it could fill a gap LinkedIn was never built for, and founders who show up early will feel the benefits first.

The sample profile on Cosign’s homepage belongs to Sam Altman, with 42 cosigns for AI leadership. Cosign couldn’t have picked a better poster child. Back in 2009, years before OpenAI, Paul Graham put a 23-year-old Altman in his Five Founders essay, on the same list as Steve Jobs and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. That single public vouch did more for Altman’s reputation than any résumé line could, and the team behind Cosign points to it directly in their launch essay.

Most vouches never get that stage. They happen in backchannels, over dinner, in a DM that says “you have to meet her.” a16z partner Olivia Moore summed up why that matters:

“The most valuable data in all of Silicon Valley is who has conviction in whom.”

Olivia Moore, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

On September 25, a16z launched Cosign to put that data on a profile page. The obvious question is whether it becomes the next LinkedIn for tech.

My take: it won’t dethrone a 1.3 billion member giant, but it has a real shot at becoming the place startup people check before they hire, invest or join.

What is Cosign? a16z’s new professional network

What Cosign actually does

Cosign calls itself a curated professional network for the people and companies that drive the startup ecosystem. The mechanics are simple. You build a profile, and people who worked with you attach cosigns to specific strengths (“company building,” “product vision”), each with context about how they know you.

The announcement draws the line against LinkedIn: a LinkedIn connection tells you two people clicked “accept,” while Cosign tries to show who worked side by side or who shaped someone’s career as a mentor or advisor.

It goes further than people. You can cosign companies and build public lists, like investor and writer Packy McCormick’s companies he’d tell a new grad to join. Cosign then surfaces open roles at those companies automatically.

The team compares it to investing without the money. When you cosign a company, you’re publicly betting your reputation on it, and if it takes off, everyone can see you spotted it first.

Add community questions (“Who’s a great fintech angel?”), an Industry Watch feed of talent moves, fundraises and product launches, and a jobs board, and you get something that looks a lot like the private tools VCs have kept for themselves for years. That’s exactly how a16z describes it.

The job LinkedIn never nailed

LinkedIn tried to solve the “is this person actually good?” problem once. In September 2012 it launched skill endorsements as a way to give kudos with one click. It worked a little too well. By 2016, LinkedIn had racked up 10 billion endorsements, including for talents like “chewing gum” and “punching.” And recruiters noticed this pattern early. One told Forbes in 2012 that endorsements carry “no skin in the game.”

That’s the gap. A one-click endorsement costs nothing, so it tells you nothing. A cosign attached to your name, with context about how you worked together, puts your own reputation on the line.

Erik Torenberg, the a16z general partner who recruited the Cosign team, named the second gap in his launch post: strong endorsements happen on X every day and then vanish into the feed. Cosign wants to make them permanent.

Excited to introduce @Cosign: the curated professional network for the startup community: https://t.co/yAnRgqRifu

Our goal is to create the following:

– A comprehensive startup directory of investors, companies, and operators, including what they worked on and who they worked…

— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) September 25, 2026

Why LinkedIn is so hard to beat, and why its rivals didn’t make it

Cosign isn’t the first startup to take on LinkedIn, and the last 2 serious attempts both shut down in early 2025.

Polywork let people show off their skills and side projects, not just their job titles. It raised more than $40 million from backers including Stripe’s Collison brothers and went viral in 2021 and 2022. Then growth stalled, and it shut down on January 31, 2025. Founder Peter Johnston still believed in the idea. He said he was “hopeful that one day, another team takes a crack at this problem again.”

Read.cv, a clean, design-friendly LinkedIn alternative, went the same way. Perplexity acquired it in January 2025 and wound the product down.

Today I’m excited to share that @read_cv is joining the team at @perplexity_ai in their mission to make the world's knowledge more accessible to everyone. This is incredibly bittersweet for us, as the start of this new chapter will mark the end of our time with @read_cv.

It has… pic.twitter.com/6CUinOEGsi

— andy chung (@_andychung) January 17, 2025

Both were good products, and both hit the same wall: people keep their profile where recruiters look, and recruiters look on LinkedIn. That habit is hard to break. LinkedIn has 1.3 billion members, and its revenue grew 12% in the first 3 months of 2026, an extra $521 million.

Why Cosign has a better shot than Polywork and Read.cv

Cosign starts with 3 advantages Polywork and Read.cv didn’t have.

There’s also a nice bit of history here. LinkedIn itself started as an insider network. It launched on May 5, 2003, and ended its first month with 4,500 members, mostly the co-founders’ own contacts. Starting narrow with a tight crowd is how LinkedIn began too.

Cosign’s biggest bet: private, mutual matching

The part of the launch I’d watch closest isn’t live yet. Torenberg describes an intent network where you privately signal “I’d invest in them,” “I’d hire them” or “I’d work with them,” and eventually even “I’d acquire this company.” When interest exists on both sides, Cosign makes the match.

It works a bit like a dating app for deals. Say you’re a founder and you’d love a certain angel investor in your next round. Today, you send a cold email and hope for a reply. On Cosign, you’d privately mark “I’d want them to invest.” If that angel has also marked “I’d invest in them,” Cosign introduces you. If they haven’t, nothing happens, and nobody ever sees that you asked. The same works for hiring: an engineer quietly open to a new job and a founder who’d love to hire them can find each other without either one making the awkward first move.

LinkedIn’s closest version is the #OpenToWork badge, which 40 million people used in a single month in 2024. It’s one-sided, though, and career coaches warned Fortune it can make candidates look “desperate.” Cosign’s version would work in both directions and stay hidden until there’s a match.

If a16z gets this right, Cosign stops being a place you visit to look people up. It becomes the place where deals, hires and first checks start, and that’s a much harder habit for any rival to copy.

My verdict for founders

Cosign won’t be where your mom updates her job title, and it doesn’t need to be. The real opportunity is more focused: becoming the reference check for startups.

When an investor wonders if your co-founder is the real deal, or a senior engineer wonders if your startup is worth the pay cut, Cosign wants to be the first tab they open. That job is worth a lot, and LinkedIn has never owned it.

Cosign still has to earn it, and 2 things could get in the way.

First, the vouches have to mean something. If cosigns mostly go to people who are already famous, or people start trading them (“I’ll cosign you if you cosign me”), they’ll become as meaningless as LinkedIn’s one-click endorsements.

Then there’s the question of neutrality: a16z has to stay fair to everyone. Cosign is built by one of the biggest VC firms in the world, so founders backed by rival firms need to trust it won’t favor a16z’s own companies.

I’m getting in early myself. I plan to cosign the people who shaped my career, with real specifics about how they helped, and build a list of the founders I’d back without a second thought. If you’re a founder, operator or investor in the startup world, it’s worth doing the same while the network is still forming.

The best people you’ve worked with are probably people most of the internet has never heard of. Cosign is a bet that saying so out loud, with your name attached, can change careers. Believe in someone early, and put it in writing. Your reputation grows every time you’re right.

About the Author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post Will Cosign Replace LinkedIn for Tech? Why a16z’s Vouch Network Has a Real Shot appeared first on BYVI.

Ryan Cohen pitched Chewy more than 100 times before anyone said yes. “Nobody wanted to give me money,” he later told the Wall Street Journal. The pitch was an online pet store that would out-service Amazon, and Silicon Valley kept passing (nobody wanted to fund the next Pets.com).

Then, in late 2013, a Boston firm called Volition Capital wrote a $15 million check. What convinced them was how often Chewy’s customers came back. Less than 4 years later, PetSmart bought Chewy for $3.35 billion, the largest e-commerce acquisition on record at the time.

That same firm just closed a $950 million fund to do more of exactly that.

Volition Fund VI at a glance

How Volition Capital’s $950 million fund works

On September 14, Volition announced the final close of Fund VI at its hard cap of $950 million. The fund was oversubscribed, it’s the firm’s largest ever, and it pushes Volition past $2.6 billion in assets under management. Since 2010, the firm has backed more than 60 companies, with exits including Chewy, Assent Compliance, Connatix and Rounds.

We're excited to announce the closing of Volition Fund VI with $950 million in limited partner capital commitments, bringing our total assets under management to over $2.6 billion.

With Fund VI, we'll continue to focus on investing in high-growth, founder-owned technology… pic.twitter.com/rshxpu7Pjp

— Volition Capital (@volitioncapital) September 14, 2026

For scale, the previous fund closed at $675 million in early 2023, so Fund VI is roughly 40% bigger.

Co-founder Larry Cheng gave The Information the inside view. Per Dealroom’s summary of that interview, typical checks run $25 to $50 million, Volition takes a board seat, and the sweet spot is companies doing $5 to $50 million in annual revenue that raised little or no institutional money. Cheng said Chewy returned the whole of Fund II, and the sale of Rounds returned about half of Fund IV.

Why Volition is doubling down on bootstrapped founders

The timing is the interesting bit. The Information framed it against a VC rush to back the hottest startups before they’ve made any revenue at all. Meanwhile, limited partners (the pension funds and endowments that invest in VC funds) spent this spring and summer nervous about AI disrupting software. Volition raised a record fund into that anxiety anyway.

Cheng’s read on AI is the part founders should underline. He told The Information that AI is making products cheaper to launch, and that he’s seeing more companies hit roughly $10 million in annual recurring revenue in their first year with fewer than 10 employees, a pace he said he’d never seen before. His take in the Fund VI announcement:

“We have backed founders with aspirations for greatness, and we believe truly remarkable businesses are being built today in the new era of AI.”

Larry Cheng, Founding Partner at Volition Capital

So let’s connect those dots. If a tiny team can reach real revenue without a seed round, the pool of “bootstrapped companies with traction” gets much bigger.

That’s Volition’s hunting ground, and it explains why its partners are leaning into AI rather than running from it.

The promise: big outcomes, less founder risk

For all the AI talk, Volition’s promise to founders hasn’t changed since the firm was founded in 2010. Managing partner Roger Hurwitz said it best in the Fund VI announcement:

“Our mission to help founders achieve their dreams without risking them hasn’t changed. That north star has guided us through every market and technology cycle, and we believe it will continue setting us apart.”

Roger Hurwitz, Founding Partner at Volition Capital

“Without risking them” is the part worth underlining. It’s a promise the firm has been testing since it raised its first fund in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and the release spells out what it means in practice:

For a bootstrapped founder, that’s the whole trade: you’ve already taken the early risk with your own time and money, and the right growth partner should help you scale it without giving up the company you built.

How to get on Volition Capital’s radar

Volition publishes its investment criteria openly, which is rarer than it should be. Read them as a checklist for becoming fundable without fundraising first.

A recent example of the model in action: Volition led a $40 million minority investment in Keynes, a connected TV ad company, earlier this year. Minority means Volition doesn’t take the company over.

When Volition isn’t the right fit

Growth equity is a great deal for the right company and a poor fit for others. A $25 to $50 million check comes with a board seat and a partner who expects a large return, often through a sale (Chewy and Rounds were both exits). If you’d rather run a profitable company forever and pay yourself dividends, you may never need this money, and that’s a perfectly good outcome.

It’s also a small club. Volition calls itself “extremely selective,” and a fund this size still backs a limited number of companies.

The good news: the work that makes you fundable is the same work that keeps you independent. Paying customers, strong retention and healthy margins give you options, whether you take a $25 million check or never raise a dollar.

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post Volition Raises $950 Million for Bootstrapped Founders Who Skipped VC appeared first on BYVI.

This week, CHFA NOW Toronto opens at Exhibition Place, and for 3 days Canada’s natural and wellness industry will crowd into one building. Last year’s show drew more than 1,200 exhibitors and 3,400 attendees. Somewhere in there, a founder is reprinting her sell sheet for the second time this week, practising a 30-second pitch on her co-founder, and hoping the right buyer stops at her table.

Alongside all the booth conversations, there’s another $1 million opportunity on the table this week. Just ahead of the show, Healthy Planet announced the Homegrown Grant, worth $1 million in promotion across its stores and website. Nobody can pitch for it. The retailer will choose by looking at its own numbers.

The grant with no application form

The Homegrown Grant offers $1 million in Healthy Planet media value, split among a group of selected health and wellness brands.

Then the twist: rather than running an open application process, Healthy Planet will shortlist eligible brands using its own sales data and selection criteria, and contact them directly. Healthy Planet announced it ahead of CHFA NOW Toronto, though the grant itself is separate from the show.

“Today we meet founders with wonderful products who are up against global brands whose marketing budgets they will never match.”

– Muhammad Mohamedy, General Manager at Healthy Planet

A little context on who’s writing the cheque. Healthy Planet has been a Canadian family business since 1995 and started as a small kiosk.

It now calls itself Canada’s largest online health store, and it’s about to open its 46th Ontario location, an 11,200 square-foot store in Scarborough, on October 1.

A fair reading needs 2 honest notes.

1. “Media value” means promotional placement priced at what it would normally cost a brand to buy: featured spots in stores, promotions online, that kind of exposure. It won’t pay your co-packer or cover payroll. For an early brand, though, it covers the exact line item that usually gets cut first.
2. A few details aren’t public yet: how many brands will be picked, how the $1 million will be divided, and when the programs run. There’s also an interesting tension in the criteria. Brands must be new to Healthy Planet’s shelves, yet they’re shortlisted from sales data. My read is that the sweet spot is brands recently listed whose early numbers already show traction.

Why visibility is the expensive part

Healthy Planet’s general manager, Muhammad Mohamedy, framed the grant around a problem every CPG founder knows. Small founders, he said, are up against global brands with marketing budgets they’ll never match, and visibility is “the one thing we can give them that they would otherwise have to buy.”

He’s right about the price tag. Getting onto a shelf costs money before a single unit sells. Farm Credit Canada estimates listing fees (what a brand pays a retailer to place a new product) at about $100 per store for each product, while smaller retailers often ask for a free case per product per store instead. It also advises brands to plan on at least 3 to 4 price promotions a year at 15% to 25% off.

And that’s only the cost of being there. Being seen is a separate budget: promos, flyers, end caps, sponsored listings online. That second budget is where small brands lose, because a product nobody notices doesn’t sell, and a product that doesn’t sell gets delisted.

Healthy Planet also has a very practical reason to find these brands early. Its own numbers show that Canadian brands carry the store. In June, Mohamedy said Canadian-owned brands make up only about a quarter of the roughly 2,200 brands it carries but drive about 2/3 of its sales. In some aisles it’s close to total: roughly 98% of its magnesium sales and 97% of its vitamin sales come from Canadian-owned brands. The retailer carries close to 600 Canadian-owned brands, many of them small.

So this grant is generous and good business at the same time. Healthy Planet gets first access to the next brand its shoppers will love, right as the “buy Canadian” habit keeps growing. I don’t count that against it. The partnerships that last are the ones where both sides win, and founders should read the grant as a clear signal of what this retailer wants more of.

How to get picked for Healthy Planet’s Homegrown Grant

Since nobody can apply, the only way in is to already look like a winner. These 6 moves make that happen, whether or not you ever get the call.

1. Treat your sales data as your application.

Healthy Planet picks from its own numbers, and it runs the rest of the business the same way: store openings are chosen using local demographics, existing e-commerce penetration and customer density. If you’re already listed somewhere, know your sales per store per week cold, and send buyers a one-page update when those numbers climb.

2. Aim for the gaps on the shelf.

The same Healthy Planet data shows where Canadian brands are missing: they’re only about 4% of its cosmetics sales and 9% of baby, because credible local options are thin. Mohamedy called that exactly where retailers and Canadian makers can partner. A strong Canadian brand in a thin category stands out.

3. Make your Canadian story findable in 2 seconds.

Healthy Planet already uses maple leaf shelf tags, a Canadian products section online and dedicated shopping filters to help shoppers spot local brands. Meet it halfway. Put “Canadian-owned” or “Made in Canada” on the front of the pack, in your online product titles and in your retailer product data, so every tag and filter actually catches you.

4. Build for the second purchase before the spotlight hits.

Mohamedy’s definition of success is specific: a shopper discovers the brand and comes back for it, and the brand gets to hire someone and add a product. Visibility only compounds if people rebuy.

Before any big promo, make sure you have inventory to cover a spike, a reason to repurchase (a bigger size, a bundle, a subscription online) and a plan for when the promo ends. Loblaw’s Small Supplier Program offers new small suppliers a 6-month on-shelf commitment for the same reason: repeat buying takes time to build.

5. Start with retailers that can actually see you.

A 45-store regional chain notices a small brand. A national grocer with thousands of SKUs per aisle might not, at least not yet. Win the specialist first, then use those numbers to open bigger doors. And stack your options. Loblaw’s program, for example, promises subsidized retail fees and 7-day payment terms for small suppliers. Different doors reward the same thing: proof that shoppers want you.

6. Show up where buyers go looking for new brands.

Healthy Planet announced the grant the same week as CHFA NOW, where retailers get VIP perks designed to help them discover emerging brands and the Launch Pad competition puts new products in front of the industry live. Buyers can only shortlist brands they’ve heard of.

What to do if your Canadian brand isn’t picked

Unsolicited grants have a downside worth naming: you can’t control whether you’re picked. If your brand isn’t listed with Healthy Planet yet, this round probably isn’t yours, and chasing it would be a distraction. If you were listed recently, the best thing you can do is keep doing what got you there: fill the shelf, fix out-of-stocks fast, and give store staff a reason to recommend you.

Healthy Planet’s in-store health experts give shoppers advice tailored to their goals, and a staff member who understands your product is a sales channel you don’t pay for.

The smarter move is to treat the grant as a public description of what one growing Canadian retailer values: founder-led brands, clear Canadian ownership, early traction, and products shoppers come back for.

That list pays off even if you never sell a single unit through Healthy Planet. Every good buyer runs through the same checklist in their head. This time, a retailer wrote it down.

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post The $1 Million Grant You Can’t Apply For: How Healthy Planet Picks Its Next Canadian Brands appeared first on BYVI.

Somewhere in Ottawa tonight, a student is walking into a room with a half-finished idea and absolutely nothing to prove it. No co-founder. No funding. No clue what the first step is. They sit down next to a total stranger who is elbow-deep in their own project, flip open a laptop, and start building. Three hours later the thing is real in a way it wasn’t when they walked in. That is the entire event. We call it a co-hack, and it’s the engine room of Builders Collective, our community for “student founders, engineers, and designers who actually build.”

That phrase, “actually build,” is doing a lot of work. Half the tech world right now is tokenmaxxing, competing to burn the most AI tokens and climb internal usage leaderboards as if activity were the same thing as output. “Actually build” is the opposite instinct: put a real thing in front of real people. It’s also a reaction against a mindset that keeps talented people stuck for years, the belief that you need everything lined up before you begin. The right network. The right technical skills. The right co-founder. And, most stubbornly, the right city.

The advice you’re exhausted by

You know the line. If you’re serious about startups, you’ll eventually have to leave. Go to Toronto. Go to New York. Go to San Francisco. It gets handed to you like settled fact, usually by people who mean well and have never questioned it.

The annoying part is that it isn’t nonsense. Geography matters, and the numbers are brutal about it. Bay Area startups pulled in $90 billion in 2024, which was 57% of every venture dollar spent in the U.S. that year. And the money is clustering earlier and tighter: the Bay Area grabbed 45% of U.S. seed dollars in 2025, up from 33% the year before. We’re not denying any of that.

The trap is when an advantage becomes a requirement. “San Francisco might be the best place to scale this” is a strategic call you make later, with real information. “You can’t start a company until you’re in San Francisco” is just a story you tell yourself, one that keeps you stuck in planning for years, waiting on a plane ticket you can’t afford to give you permission you never needed in the first place.

We built the room instead of leaving it

The origin story is almost too simple. Qurb E Muhammad Syed and I started Builders Collective, with Hamza El Sousi, Srivathsan Murali, and Imane Amine as our founding engineers.

We were betting on a hunch, that Ottawa was never short on talent. It was short on a place for that talent to keep bumping into itself. The most surprising thing the experiment turned up was how fast the hunch paid off. The second there was somewhere to show up, the introductions started making themselves.

Someone needs a designer, someone knows one. Someone’s stuck on a bug another person squashed last month. Someone has an idea but no idea where to start, and across the table sits the person who’s already done it.

The people were already here. They just needed a way to find each other.

That’s why the format runs with almost no formality. You don’t arrive knowing what you’re doing. You arrive with something you want to work on, you pull up a chair next to other people doing the same, and you build. Starting is the only requirement, because starting is the part most people never get past.

What we’ve actually shipped

Builders Collective is new, and most of us are mid-build. That’s exactly what a group this age should look like, not a knock on anyone. But things are already going out the door, and that’s the part that matters.

Hamza El Sousi, one of our founding engineers, built and launched ResumeKickstarter, an AI resume builder that spits out ATS-optimized resumes, free to start, no credit card. You upload whatever resume you’ve got, paste in a job description, and it rewrites the wording to match without inventing experience you don’t have. It’s a real, working product with real users.

Qurb E Muhammad Syed built the 613 Webring, presented by Builders Collective. If you haven’t seen a webring since the dial-up days, the idea is equal parts nostalgic and genuinely smart: a loop of personal sites from engineers, designers, and coders across the 613 (Ottawa’s area code), each one linking to the next.

You add your site, paste in a tiny snippet, and “previous, 613, next” controls appear in your footer, turning every builder in the city into someone the rest of the city can actually find. It’s infrastructure for the scene. The tagline says it best:

“Ottawa’s builders, linked in a ring.”

Who’s in the room

The range is the best part. Some members are shipping their first small tool. Others are swinging enormous.

Joel Diab is an Ottawa game developer building Lemon Tree Studio, an AI-native game engine for creator-led games, and he’ll tell you flat out that he’s aiming for a $100 billion studio. The games are just the start. He describes them as a way to fund the technologies and communities he wants to build after them. That kind of goal can sound ridiculous out loud, which is the entire reason it needs a room where it doesn’t.

Hamza, who built ResumeKickstarter, is already quietly turning a profit, just not from the product with his name on it. ResumeKickstarter is the part you can click on. The bills get paid by Social Automate, a small Ottawa studio doing tech consulting for the least glamorous, most underserved clients in the city: mechanics, contractors, accountants, construction crews. Before he builds a thing, he embeds in the business for a day or two and just watches. Then he finds the task quietly eating 3 or 4 hours a week and rebuilds it into something that takes 10 minutes, a proper CRM, branded proposals, invoicing, whatever that specific shop actually runs on.

His read on AI is refreshingly free of hype. Not everyone needs an AI agent, he’ll tell you, and most of the time they don’t. What a contractor usually needs is a system that keeps them consistent, because they lose deals to lower-quality competitors who simply present better. Give them professional, branded proposals and they stop leaving money on the table. Social Automate is the quieter, more profitable half of what Hamza does, and it grew out of a leftover: the name is a holdover from a social media tool he built for his college capstone, proved out, then shut down. He kept the aged domain, pivoted the business, and kept building.

Then there’s Tandem Robotics, which settles any argument that real hardware with real revenue can’t come out of Ottawa. Ming Chen, Mumtahin Farabi, and Alvin Htet built Taro, a farm robot that lays the farmer flat and slides them down the crop rows, transplanting 2.5 times faster and weeding 4 times faster than doing it by hand.

Before they wrote a line of code, they spent 2 full growing seasons volunteering on farms so they’d actually feel the problem they were solving. It shows. They’re sitting on $225,000 in letters of intent, ran 2 robots this season, and plan 20 across more than 15 farms next year. Farmers ask for the machines back when they go in for maintenance. That’s the clearest signal there is that you’ve built something people need.

What Ottawa hands you that a hub can’t

The claim isn’t that Ottawa is secretly cooler than every tech hub. It’s that different cities let you build in different ways, and the trade Ottawa offers is a steal when you’re early.

Start with room to fail. You barely need money to exist here, and that quietly changes what you’re willing to try. Living in San Francisco runs about 78% more than Ottawa once you add rent, with rent alone roughly 148% higher. A one-bedroom in the core is around $2,068 CAD in Ottawa versus $5,261 CAD in San Francisco. When your burn is that low, a project that might flop is cheap enough to just try.

Then there’s space. In a smaller scene you’re not one of ten thousand people clawing to get into the same rooms. You have room to build your own. Some of our members who travel back and forth describe Ottawa as the place they come home to when they actually need to sit down and write code for hours. San Francisco and Toronto are unbeatable for meeting people and making connections. But when the job is to shut the door and finish the thing you care about, sometimes there’s no place like home.

The slower pace cuts both ways, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Fewer events and less hype can mean less momentum. It can also mean you’re not pressured into chasing every trend, which frees you to build what you actually want instead of copying whatever’s loud this week. And when something genuinely isn’t available locally, the internet erases the distance, while we keep widening the network until fewer gaps are left to close. Strong roots in Ottawa, connections everywhere. Not a bubble.

What Builders Collective proves if it works

Strip it back and we’re testing a single idea: talent is everywhere, but exposure, opportunity, and the ability to find each other are not. Give ambitious people an easy place to meet, learn, and work on real things, and real companies start getting built where nobody was looking for them.

True for Ottawa. Just as true for every city written off for never making the list of “real” startup hubs. Inside 3 years, we want co-hacks to be the thing you guard on your calendar, a network people actually use to find a co-founder, a designer, or the one person who’s felt the exact problem they’re chasing. We’re deliberate that “builder” covers non-technical people too, because tech companies run on designers, marketers, operators, and strategists just as much as coders. The long game reaches past a better-connected Ottawa: a model that helps builders find each other wherever they happen to land, then helps the next city stand up its own version.

The real ambition is smaller and bigger than it sounds: a place where having a huge idea doesn’t feel ridiculous.

Come build with us

If you’re in Ottawa, this part is simple. We’ve already made the room, so come use it. Show up to a co-hack with whatever you’re working on (half-finished is exactly right), join Builders Collective, and once you ship something, add your site to the 613 Webring so the rest of us can find you.

If you’re a student somewhere else, convinced you have to leave to be taken seriously, my advice is simple. Don’t confuse where you eventually need to be with where you’re allowed to begin. Maybe you’ll move someday. Maybe the company you build ends up in San Francisco. But nothing about that requires you to wait. The playbook is short, and not one line of it needs a plane ticket.

You don’t need an ecosystem’s permission to start. Sometimes you build the ecosystem around you.

And you don’t need to be in San Francisco to start building something worth going to San Francisco for, either. You just need to take the first step.

Feyza Gulbent is a business student, an artist, and co-founder of Builders Collective Ottawa. Her interests span entrepreneurship, software, design, and creative work, and she loves finding ways to bring those worlds together. As co-founder of Builders Collective Ottawa, she helps create the kind of environment she wanted to see more of in Ottawa; one where ambitious people can find each other, share ideas, experiment with technology, and build meaningful things together.

The post They Told Us to Leave for San Francisco. We Built It in Ottawa Instead appeared first on BYVI.

Last Sunday, I spent the afternoon at Shopify’s Ottawa office alongside a room full of founders and builders. By the end of the day, 8 of them had taken the stage to demo what they’d been working on. That’s the whole idea behind Builder Sundays, and it’s why I think every early-stage founder within driving distance should experience one at least once.

What Shopify Builder Sundays Actually Is

Builder Sundays is a free, drop-in deep-work session that Shopify runs every Sunday from 12pm to 5pm in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. The format is simple: you bring a laptop and something you want to make progress on, work alongside other builders, and let the energy of the room do the rest. Deep work runs until around 3:30pm, followed by open demos and an hour of networking. Spots for the following Sunday are released Wednesdays at noon ET, and you register individually, including for any guests you bring.

Why Builders Should Give It a Shot

Apart from connecting with other builders in the room, Builder Sundays offer 3 things founders absolutely need to grow.

1. Practice Your Pitch

You don’t sign up to pitch ahead of time. If you want to demo, you put your name on the board that day on a first-come, first-served basis, then take the stage and show what you managed to build.

There’s no polish requirement, no committee, and no gatekeeping. You simply get up and pitch. And that’s what makes it so useful: you’re practicing in a low-stakes environment where you can experiment, get comfortable on stage, and learn what resonates.

2. Build the Habit of Shipping

A tight deadline forces you to cut scope, make decisions quickly, and actually finish something. That’s a muscle many founders lose while endlessly refining roadmaps, tweaking ideas, and planning for the “right” time to launch.

3. Get Real Feedback

You also get something that’s genuinely hard to replicate: a room full of people willing to give you immediate, honest feedback. They’ll ask questions, poke holes in your idea, test your assumptions, and point out what’s missing, all before you’ve spent weeks or months building in isolation.

8 Pitches From Builder Sundays

So you get the vibe, here’s a quick tour of the eight pitches that took the stage that afternoon.

Worth It: The Anti-Diet App Built in 2 Hours

Brandon and Brian, two students heading into their first year of university, set themselves a simple challenge: build something end-to-end in two hours. The idea, presentation, and product all started around 1pm that afternoon.

Their creation, Worth It, takes the opposite approach to typical health-food apps. Instead of finding the lowest-calorie option nearby, it pulls the menus of surrounding restaurants, runs them through AI, and surfaces the highest-calorie, most worth-it foods for your cheat day.

They pointed at an $800 billion diet and wellness industry and 88 million people tracking their macros (protein, carbohydrates, and fat), then argued the disciplined crowd is exactly who wants a proper break when they take one.

The demo found their location on O’Connor Street and served up a double bacon burger with cheddar and fries within 5km.

Built with React and TypeScript and powered by Anthropic, the app cost them just 32 cents to test. They were clear that the goal wasn’t to build a serious business, but to challenge themselves to go from idea to working product, get comfortable presenting, and see how far they could push 2 hours of focused work.

The room’s reaction summed it up: the amount of fidelity they reached in two hours was pretty crazy.

Tandem Robotics: Farm Robots Built to Work Alongside Farmers

Ming and his team at Tandem Robotics started with the farmer, not the robot. After talking to growers at the Lansdowne Farmers Market, he heard the same problem over and over: they need more labor, but it’s getting harder and more expensive to find.

According to the numbers he shared, 44% of farmers can’t find the workers they need, while labor accounts for 38% of farm operating revenue. The physical toll is significant too, with 58% of farm workers experiencing lower back pain within their first 12 months.

His answer is a collaborative robot designed to work alongside farmers, not replace them. The robot handles the heavy lifting and repetitive work, reducing the amount of walking, carrying, bending, and physical strain while allowing farmers to focus on what they know best. It can carry up to 300 pounds, and in early trials, the team found it could transplant 2.5 times faster and de-weed roughly four times faster than traditional methods.

The robot has already been tested on more than 5 farms, many within 10km of Ottawa. One detail that really stood out: farmers reported zero of their usual pain while working with the robot. And when the team takes a robot away for maintenance or to move it to another farm, their biggest concern is whether they can manage without it.

The pitch wasn’t about replacing farmers. It was about giving them the tools to keep doing what they love, for longer, with less physical strain.

Keating: AI That Teaches You Without Melting Your Brain

Keith opened with a simple question: who here worries about losing skills by relying too heavily on AI? A lot of hands went up.

That concern is exactly what led him to build Keating, an AI-powered teaching system designed to help people learn with AI without becoming dependent on it.

Keith has been building Keating for 3 months, and the project has already passed 2,000 npm downloads, with more than 500 weekly downloads.

Instead of giving you the usual wall of chatbot text, Keating turns AI into a more structured learning experience, with flashcards, visualizations, quizzes, and courses that users can build and share. The system also adapts to how you learn and can evolve its own code to improve the experience.

Keating is open source and runs in the browser, with your data staying under your control. You can bring your own API key, connect it to OpenAI, Anthropic, or Ollama, or even run certain models locally in the browser using WebGPU. Keith said his own AI usage for learning cost him only about $20 over three months.

The product has come a long way since Keith first demoed an early version at Builder Sundays 3 months ago. What started as an experiment has turned into a genuinely interesting take on one of AI’s biggest use cases: not just getting answers, but actually learning.

From $1,000 in 3D-Printed Signs to a Finance Student Hub

Frank came up to show 2 things he’s been building. The first is a 3D printing business he runs on Facebook Marketplace and Etsy, documented on TikTok, that cleared over $1,000 in revenue in its first month. His edge was leaning into what small shops do best: custom letters and signs where customers pick the exact thickness, color, and size, plus catching a couple of viral product trends and printing risers for trading-card displays. With just one printer and a handful of materials, he was typically shipping orders in under a week.

The second is The Finance Student, a platform he built after struggling to find a single place for finance students to discover corporate networking events, job opportunities, and other resources. And, in true Builder Sundays fashion, Frank had a little help from Claude, which he called “a GOAT.”

Ottawa is live first, with a hiring section that tracks live application deadlines across banking, wealth management, accounting, and internships.

Frank ended by asking the room for help with 2 challenges: automating the process of finding and posting relevant events, and figuring out how to market the platform.

This was a perfect example of what Builder Sundays are about: build something around a problem you’ve personally experienced, then bring it to a room full of people who can help you figure out what comes next.

Colive: A Better Way to Find a Roommate

Osman came up with a simple observation: finding a roommate can be a nightmare, especially for students and newcomers. Listings are scattered across websites, Facebook Marketplace, word of mouth, and community groups, and even then, you’re never quite sure who you’re dealing with.

His solution is Colive, a roommate-matching platform he described as “the Tinder of roommates.” The idea is to match people based on lifestyle and behavioral preferences, so you can find someone who is not only looking for a room, but actually compatible with you. Users go through a verification process, and the platform also includes a community feed where newcomers and students can share advice, experiences, and local information.

Trust is a major part of the product. Users are verified through their email and Canadian phone number, with additional identity checks being tested as the platform develops. Osman emphasized that Colive is currently in beta and that he’s actively using feedback from early users to shape the product.

Opero: One Workspace to Run Your Entire Business

As an accessibility consultant and software developer, this founder knows firsthand how fragmented running a small business can become. A growing business can easily end up juggling 11 different jobs, 11 different tools, 11 logins, and countless data exports just to keep everything moving. Marketing, sales, invoicing, collections, project management, and operations all live in separate systems that rarely communicate with each other.

His solution is Opero, a unified workplace platform designed to bring those core business functions into one workspace, with one login and one bill. Instead of simply putting different tools side by side, Opero focuses on connecting the underlying data, so things like clients, quotes, invoices, projects, and communications can work together in context.

The platform has been in development for 2 years and already has 79 active workspaces, serving solo operators, independent workers, and small teams. The founder built the platform himself using React, TypeScript, PHP, and Python, initially coding it before incorporating AI agents into the development process.

His pitch was less about showing off another piece of software and more about challenging other founders in the room: if you’re building a business, how many tools are you going to need to run it?

The end goal is simple: give Canadian businesses one place to run their entire operation.

An AI Gym Coach That Roasts You Into Shape

Sarbjeet came to Builder Sundays with a product he had actually built years ago. His original workout app had attracted more than 3,000 users, but he eventually stopped maintaining it because keeping the codebase going manually was too much work. This year, he decided to bring it back with a new twist: AI-powered coaching.

The app tracks workouts, progressive overload, strength, body weight, and training streaks, while remembering what you lifted in previous sessions so you don’t have to. It can also swap exercises when a machine is occupied, help design workouts, and give you feedback after each set. And if you need a little extra motivation, you can turn on “Roastmaster,” an AI coach that will call you out when you’re slacking.

The app uses a bring-your-own-key model, with support for models including OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek. It also keeps workout data and AI conversations on the user’s phone rather than storing them on a central server.

What started as a workout tracker is now becoming something closer to a personal AI training partner: one that remembers your progress, adapts to your workouts, and, if you choose Roastmaster, isn’t afraid to roast you when you start slacking.

18, Ambitious, and Just Getting Started

David’s pitch was a little different from the others. Instead of demoing a product, the 18-year-old got on stage to share his story and talk about where he’s headed next.

After moving from Seoul to Canada as a child, David struggled with the adjustment, and later found himself dealing with low confidence and isolation during high school. Working out, meeting new people, and pushing himself outside his comfort zone helped him turn things around. When document complications prevented him from attending his dream university just after high school, he decided to make the most of the unexpected gap year.

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He took on part-time jobs, worked as a tutor, trained in Muay Thai and powerlifting, and got involved with 4 different startups. He also helped generate more than 100,000 views from a campaign at Carleton University and co-founded Pitch Tank Ottawa, where he helped sell out 4 events.

Now, he’s heading to Western University to study Management and Organizational Studies, with an advanced entry opportunity to the Ivey Business School. Rather than trying to map out the next five years, David said he wants to stay open to new experiences and opportunities. But he does know one thing for sure: “I’m going to be a millionaire.”

The Point Isn’t to Have It All Figured Out

If there was one thing I took away from Shopify Builder Sundays, it’s that none of these founders waited for the perfect idea, the perfect product, or the perfect moment to start.

They came with different ideas, different levels of experience, and very different reasons for building. But they all had one thing in common: they were willing to put something into the world before they had all the answers.

And that’s what makes Builder Sundays worth experiencing.

Some of these ideas will become companies. Some will pivot. And some will change completely after a few more Sundays. But each founder now has momentum, feedback, and a room full of people who’ve seen what they’re building.

For anyone building from Ottawa, that’s a pretty powerful place to start. You don’t need a pitch deck, a team, a five-year plan, or a billion-dollar idea. You just need something you’re willing to build, and of course, the courage to show it to others.

About the author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post What Founders Ship at Shopify Builder Sundays in Ottawa appeared first on BYVI.

From June 15–18, the 2026 WBENC National Conference brings thousands of incredible women entrepreneurs together with the corporate leaders who want to work with them. Somewhere in those aisles is your next client, your next supplier or the collaborator who will spark your next big idea.

With so much talent in one place, the hard part is simply finding them before the conference ends. So for everyone heading to Salt Lake City this year, I did the homework. Make sure to meet these remarkable women and learn about their companies.

Paden Sickles, Founder & CEO at SickFit

Paden Sickles is the founder and CEO of SickFit. A former Army Engineer Officer, she was among the first women to train and lead enlisted female combat engineers before launching the brand. She’s also a founding partner of the Global Flag Football League and is completing her doctorate, redefining what’s possible for women- and veteran-owned businesses.

About SickFit   Booth 731

SickFit makes performance compression socks for the people on their feet all day – nurses, warehouse crews, line cooks, tradespeople. Veteran- and woman-owned, WBE-certified, and built on three patents, SickFit engineers support that holds up shift after shift.

Pamela A. Kan, CEO & Owner at Bishop-Wisecarver

Pamela A. Kan is the CEO and Owner of Bishop-Wisecarver. A second-generation leader, she joined the family company in 1991, became president in 1999, and principal shareholder in 2009. She’s since led multiple acquisitions, transforming Bishop-Wisecarver into a complete mechatronics company, and champions STEM education along the way.

About Bishop-Wisecarver Booth 1414

Bishop-Wisecarver, founded in 1950, is a global leader in linear and rotary motion solutions engineered for the harshest environments. With 75 years of expertise, it now delivers turnkey automation, custom mechatronics, controls, and software as a complete motion-solutions partner.

Molly Huyck, Amie Konwinski & Janessa Nations – The Team at AeQuitas Invest

About AeQuitas Invest (AQi)  Booth 223

AeQuitas Invest (AQi) is an SEC-registered, FINRA-member funding portal, the only U.S. portal founded by women, owned by women, and built exclusively for women-owned companies. It lets women-led businesses raise capital directly from investors through Regulation Crowdfunding on founder-friendly terms, while keeping control of the company they built.

Read my deep dive on AeQuitas Invest here.

Shannon “Shãn” Sutherland, CEO at Simple Impact

Shannon Sutherland is the CEO & Founder of Simple Impact. A Certified Wealth Advisor and Retirement Counselor, she’s dedicated to helping organizations build better retirement plans. She brings clarity and accountability to one of the most important and most overlooked benefits a company can offer.

About Simple Impact   Booth 337

Simple Impact advises, establishes, converts, and services retirement plans for businesses of all sizes. The firm helps employers give their teams stronger retirement outcomes with expert, fiduciary-grade guidance.

Glenda Thomas – CEO of Electra Grid Solutions

Glenda Thomas is the CEO and President of Electra Grid Solutions. Glenda leads with a servant’s heart, describing her mission as keeping people connected and her team empowered to be their best every day. Active with groups from the American Association of Blacks in Energy to WBEC South, she’s known to her team simply as “The Light.”

About Electra Grid Solutions Booth 111

Electra Grid Solutions is a minority and women-owned infrastructure contractor powering the electric utility industry with safe, high-quality construction and maintenance. The team helps utilities strengthen grid reliability and modernize aging infrastructure, keeping communities connected when it matters most.

Letisha Randle – CEO at PRH Group

Letisha Randle is the CEO and co-owner of PRH Group. She drives the company’s growth through an unwavering focus on safety, quality, and customer satisfaction, steering PRH into the green-energy future while keeping reliability at its core.

About PRH Group Booth 308

PRH Group, founded in 2017 and headquartered in Saginaw, Michigan, is an electrical construction company specializing in overhead distribution, transmission lines, substations, and storm restoration. When the lights go out in the toughest conditions, PRH is built to bring them back.

Louise Lascik – CEO at Travel Leaders

Louise Lascik is the CEO of Travel Leaders. She’s spent nearly 40 years in business travel, routinely trimming clients’ travel spend by 20%. Off the clock she teaches yoga to people with spinal cord injuries, volunteers with seniors, and is determined to one day shred electric guitar around a campfire.

About Travel Leaders Booth 104

Travel Leaders is a WBENC-certified firm that takes the headache out of corporate travel – cutting costs, lifting traveler satisfaction, and integrating expense management. Their promise is simple: help clients travel smart and achieve more.

Gloria Bohan – CEO of Omega World Travel

Gloria Bohan is the founder and CEO of Omega World Travel. She built Omega from a single agency in 1972 into one of the nation’s largest woman-owned businesses — a true pioneer for women in travel. At the conference you’ll meet Proposals Manager Pam Welliver, ready to map out the right solution for your organization.

About Omega World Travel Booth 226

Omega World Travel is a woman-owned global travel management company with more than 54 years of experience in business travel, meetings, events, and group bookings. Blending advanced technology with personal service, Omega delivers cost savings, traveler support, and duty-of-care expertise worldwide.

Kelly Kolar-Eyman – President & Founder at Kolar Design

Kelly Kolar-Eyman is the President and Founder of Kolar Design. She’s spent 30+ years at the intersection of brand, space, and human experience, and now brings AI into the mix through her platform KXInnovations. An adjunct professor and First Vice-Chair of the WBENC National Forum, she believes design has the power to inspire, heal, and change lives.

About Kolar Design   Booth 601

Kolar Design transforms spaces with brand-led strategy that connects people, process, and place. Using data-driven insight, the award-winning firm helps Fortune 500s, civic institutions, and healthcare systems optimize real estate through human-centered experience.

Tracey Grace – President & CEO at IBEX IT Business Experts

Tracey Grace is the President and CEO of IBEX IT Business Experts. She left corporate America to build IBEX from the ground up, leading projects for NASA, the CDC, and Fortune 500s along the way. A connector and lifelong learner, she believes strong relationships and smart strategy are still the most powerful competitive advantages.

About IBEX IT Business Experts Booth 1111

IBEX IT Business Experts is the creator of Nectar IQ, an intelligent supplier-orchestration platform that helps enterprises centralize supplier data, streamline engagement, and make smarter decisions. From onboarding to spend analytics, IBEX turns supplier management into a competitive edge.

Maryann Pagano – CEO & Co-Founder at BlackHawk Data

Maryann Pagano is the CEO and co-founder of BlackHawk Data. She brings 20+ years of leadership to the company, which she’s grown to 55+ employees and multiple industry awards since founding it in 2018. A WPO Fast 50 and EY Winning Women honoree, she’s passionate about mentoring and advancing women in technology.

About BlackHawk Data   Booth 1110

BlackHawk Data is a fast-growing, woman-owned technology solutions provider that cuts through the complexity of modern IT to deliver real client outcomes. Since 2018 it has scaled into a nationally recognized firm earning honors like the CRN Top 500 and Fast Growth 150.

Valerie Mayén – Owner & Designer at Yellowcake Shop

Valerie Mayén is the owner and designer of Yellowcake Shop. A Project Runway alum and ethical-fashion advocate, she designs clothing meant to make women feel powerful and like their favorite selves. Her new Valerie Mayén Collection leans into bolder silhouettes and luxe fabrics – and she’d truly love to meet you.

About Yellowcake Shop   Find them on the show floor – Retail

Yellowcake Shop is a Latina-owned, women-led fashion brand from Cleveland making ethically produced, versatile staples for the everyday professional woman. Clean, classic, and built to last, the line is designed to simplify your wardrobe — and your mornings.

Ebony Smith – President at Ebenum Equation

Ebony Smith is the President of Ebenum Equation. She’s spent 15+ years helping leaders unlock clarity, connection, and courageous action — now at the intersection of human leadership and AI. An ICF Master Certified Coach and 2026 WBENC Host Committee member, she helps leaders make faster, more human-centered decisions in a fast-moving world.

About Ebenum Equation   Host Committee

Ebenum Equation helps organizations strengthen leadership pipelines and navigate AI-driven transformation through executive coaching, strategy, and program design. Leaders trust the firm to turn complex concepts into scalable programs across finance, technology, and retail.

Renée Conlee – COO & Managing Partner at EventBuilder

Renée Conlee is the COO and Managing Partner of EventBuilder. She was in the virtual-events world before most people had heard the word “webinar,” joining the company in 2006 and rising to COO in 2016. For clients, she’s the guarantee that the team behind their events is run by a hands-on, seasoned event professional.

About EventBuilder Booth 1027

EventBuilder plans, manages, and produces virtual, hybrid, and in-person events for enterprise teams using proprietary software built alongside Microsoft Teams. The company has delivered over 75,000 events for Microsoft alone — from training programs to global summits.

Tammy Cohen, Founder & Chief Visionary Officer at InfoMart

Tammy Cohen is the Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of InfoMart. Known as the “Queen of Screen,” she’s a three-decade screening pioneer named among Atlanta’s Top 20 Women-Owned Firms and a Stevie “Maverick of the Year.” She’s now building a digital Career Wallet to reinvent how people manage their professional credentials.

About InfoMart   Booth 922

InfoMart is one of the top 10 background screening and identity companies in the industry, giving businesses the insights they need to hire compliantly and confidently. With 35+ years of expertise and industry-leading turnaround times, it’s a trusted partner in risk mitigation.

Jessica Walther, CEO & Co-Founder at Itivate

Jessica Walther is the CEO and co-founder of Itivate. After leading procurement and transformation inside Fortune 50 environments, she saw how often growing companies scale into chaos. Today she helps founders grow profitably while helping corporations build higher-performing supplier ecosystems.

About Itivate Booth 437

Itivate is the only supplier accelerator led by former Fortune 50 buyers and operators, giving founders insider access to the systems they need to scale. Through its Align My Company scaling system, it helps businesses grow without founder overload – while strengthening corporate supply bases.

Joanne Jones, Business Development Manager at KERAMIDA

Joanne Jones is the Business Development Manager at KERAMIDA. A professional connector, she works at the intersection of strategy, relationships, and environmental impact. She’s energized by partnerships that deliver both revenue and real sustainability outcomes. Stop by if you’re building something with the planet in mind.

About KERAMIDA Booth 1424

KERAMIDA, founded in 1988, is a global sustainability, EHS, and engineering advisor trusted by industry, power, oil & gas, and financial institutions. For nearly four decades the WBENC-certified firm has guided corporate giants toward resilience and stewardship.

Kellé Thorpe, Founder & CEO at Kommas with Kellé

Kellé Thorpe is the Founder and CEO of Kommas with Kellé. She guides founders past the point where revenue grows but profit, cash flow, and wealth don’t keep pace. She gives CEOs the visibility and accountability to scale intentionally — turning growth into lasting freedom and wealth.

About Kommas with Kellé   Booth 831

Kommas with Kellé is a strategic CFO advisory firm that helps high-achieving women CEOs turn revenue into real, sustainable wealth. Through fractional CFO services and its forward-looking Financial Roadmap, the firm aligns business performance with personal financial goals.

Denise Merritt, CEO & Founder at Merritt Business Solutions

Denise Merritt is the CEO and Founder of Merritt Business Solutions. With 35+ years in HR and benefits, she takes a consultative, educational approach to solving clients’ toughest people challenges. Her mission is pointed: help minority-owned businesses achieve economic equality — and always do the right thing.

About Merritt Business Solutions   Booth 924

Merritt Business Solutions is a concierge HR outsourcing firm that connects businesses with exactly the benefits, PEO, payroll, and compliance solutions they need. From compensation analysis to complex audits — even global Employer of Record — MBS handles the sourcing so clients can focus on their mission.

Allison Maslan, CEO & Founder at Pinnacle Global Network

Allison Maslan is the CEO and Founder of Pinnacle Global Network. She built Pinnacle to help founders step out of the day-to-day and into a freer, more meaningful life. Her mentors have “been there and done it,” guiding leaders to shave years off the path to a self-sustaining company.

About Pinnacle Global Network   Booth 609

Pinnacle Global Network gives 7-to-9-figure founders direct access to seasoned CEO mentors, signature strategies from its SCALEit Method, and a worldwide peer network built for momentum. The main goal: build team-managed companies that can scale without the founder.

Cate Heaman, CEO at Prelude Solutions

Cate Heaman is the CEO of Prelude Solutions. She leads a firm that doesn’t sell technology – it helps organizations recover real, measurable dollars and reinvest them in growth. Through the Prelude Cares Network, a portion of revenue flows back to nonprofits driving workforce development and economic mobility.

About Prelude Solutions   Booth 930

Prelude Solutions helps organizations reclaim capital hidden in one of their most overlooked expenses: technology. Through its vendor-agnostic Prelude Process, the firm renegotiates telecom, cloud, mobility, and data services for an average 33% verified savings — on a success-based model where clients pay only for results.

Tatiana Dominguez, Founder & Chief Innovation Officer at Spark Hive

Tatiana Dominguez is the Founder and Fractional Chief Innovation Officer of Spark Hive. A creative strategist and systems thinker, she helps founders turn what they feel into something they can build. She founded Spark Hive on a simple belief: clarity is a founder’s most powerful tool, and no one should have to build alone.

About Spark Hive Booth 733

Spark Hive is a strategic innovation and AI studio for visionary founders, turning bold ideas into scalable systems and custom AI tools. From brainstorming labs to fractional innovation leadership, it bridges the gap between messy brilliance and repeatable action.

Janeen Zook, President & CEO at Trattativa

Janeen Zook is the President and CEO of Trattativa. She leads a team with more than 100 years of combined hospitality experience, serving as a seamless extension of her clients’ organizations. She and her team execute intentionally and serve passionately so clients can be fully present at their own events.

About Trattativa Booth 1011

Trattativa is a full-service event management company based in Las Vegas, bringing strategic vision (not just party planning) to meetings, conferences, and corporate events. Since 2007 it has built a reputation for precision, reliability, and unforgettable experiences.

Louise Leduc Kennedy – Founding Attorney at West Hill Technology Counsel

Louise Leduc Kennedy is the Founding Attorney of West Hill Technology Counsel. A tech-savvy legal strategist with two decades of experience, she guides everyone from startups to Fortune 100s through AI, data privacy, M&A, and software commercialization. She founded West Hill to redefine the modern law firm, integrating work, family, and community into its definition of success.

About West Hill Technology Counsel   Booth 910

West Hill Technology Counsel is a women-led law firm helping IP-focused technology businesses grow, manage risk, and prepare for successful exits. Practicing law differently from day one, the firm delivers proactive, practical advice – solving problems before they arise.

Michele Downie – Marketing Manager at American Crane & Equipment Corporation

Michele Downie is the Marketing Manager at American Crane & Equipment Corporation. She blends strategy, storytelling, and creativity to shape the brand, drawing on 25+ years in design, advertising, and marketing. She’s the one making sure this 50-year legacy of craftsmanship gets the spotlight it deserves.

About American Crane & Equipment Corporation Booth 1319

American Crane & Equipment Corporation has led in overhead crane systems, hoists, and material-handling innovation for over 50 years. Built on resilience and precision, the company lives by one principle: Always Lift. Never Quit.

Jill Gaynor, CEO at Premier Packaging

Jill Gaynor is the CEO of Premier Packaging. She became CEO and majority shareholder in 2024, leading one of the largest woman-owned and managed businesses in the country. She’s steering a three-decade legacy into its next chapter of growth across North America.

About Premier Packaging Booth 427

Premier Packaging has spent over 30 years as a manufacturer, distributor, designer, and problem-solver across all things packaging. Now female owned and operated, the company became a WBENC-Certified WBE in 2025.

Anita MacKenzie, Founder at C-West Custom Fixtures

Anita MacKenzie is the Founder and Owner of C-West Custom Fixtures. She’s spent decades turning concepts into well-built, functional spaces that support her clients’ brands. Her focus has never wavered: quality, reliability, and strong relationships built on clear communication and attention to detail.

About C-West Custom Fixtures Booth 1304

C-West Custom Fixtures, founded in 1997, is a female-owned designer and manufacturer of custom fixtures for retail and corporate environments. With concept-to-completion services, the team brings clients’ visions to life across North America.

Jennie Ripps, Founder & CEO at Owl’s Brew

Jennie Ripps is the co-founder and CEO of Owl’s Brew. She believes in “drinking wise”, crafting functional adult beverages from ingredients that do more than taste good. Over a decade in, she’s grown the brand into a fixture everywhere from theme parks to your neighborhood grocery.

About Owl’s Brew   Booth 536

Owl’s Brew, founded in 2013, crafts award-winning, small-batch beverages (sometimes boozy) from real tea, real juice, and real botanicals, never artificial shortcuts. You’ll find them at Disney World, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, SoFi Stadium, and beyond.

Meredith Moore – Founder & CEO at Artisan Financial Strategies

Meredith Moore is the Founder and CEO of Artisan Financial Strategies. A WBE-certified business owner herself, she has lived the challenge she now solves for clients from the inside. She brings business value, personal wealth, tax, legal, and protection together so women founders finally have one coordinated game plan.

About Artisan Financial Strategies Booth 223

Most women building serious businesses have a CPA, an attorney, and a financial advisor, but no one coordinating them. Artisan Financial Strategies is the financial “quarterback” that integrates business value, personal wealth, tax, legal, and protection into one plan.

Rhonda Sargent, President at Lamont, Hanley & Associates

Rhonda Sargent is the President of Lamont, Hanley & Associates. She leads a firm focused on elevating both revenue and reputation, with certified collectors and a professional approach across insurance, healthcare, and manufacturing. Under her leadership, strong recovery results never come at the expense of client relationships.

About Lamont, Hanley & Associates Booth 711

Lamont, Hanley & Associates is a national accounts-receivable management firm specializing in commercial and B2B collections. Many clients have trusted them for decades to recover past-due accounts while protecting cash flow and customer relationships.

Mary Kariotis, President & CEO at Merrimak Capital

Mary Kariotis is the President and CEO of Merrimak Capital. She leads the firm through a period of unprecedented growth, entering new global markets while deepening its core leasing and asset-recovery business. Under her leadership it has become a trusted partner to many of the world’s largest corporations.

About Merrimak Capital   Booth 1210

Merrimak Capital is a nationally certified woman-owned business and the leading independent leasing and asset-resale company, serving over 25% of the Fortune 500. From equipment leasing to fleet management and asset disposition, Merrimak operates across North America and beyond.

Bernita McCann Hightower – CEO at Next Generation Fuel

Bernita McCann Hightower is the President and CEO of Next Generation Fuel. As a woman in the petroleum industry, she’s a rare and powerful presence, and an intentional role model for the next generation of female leaders. She’s grown the company into one of the top women-owned energy companies in the country.

About Next Generation Fuel Booth 102

Next Generation Fuel is a certified Women-Owned Small Business and ISO-certified Tier 1 wholesale fuel distributor offering bulk fuel, fleet fueling, DEF, lubricants, and renewable fuels nationwide. More than a supplier, it’s a strategic energy partner focused on quality, cost-efficiency, and sustainability.

Maria Marino, Alex Bernstein & Katherine Anne Connolly – Co-Founders at Panic Panties

Maria Marino, Alex Bernstein, and Katherine Anne Connolly are the co-founders of Panic Panties. Three Syracuse University best friends, they launched the brand in 2019 — and went on to win WBENC’s national pitch competition for innovation. With 16M+ TikTok hashtag views and shelves in major retailers, the trio turned a relatable problem into a fast-growing brand.

About Panic Panties Booth 727 — Retail

Panic Panties is a certified women-owned brand bringing premium, individually wrapped, ready-to-wear underwear to travelers, gym-goers, and anyone facing a laundry emergency. Now in 5,000+ CVS stores, airports, and boutiques, it’s been called the “L’eggs of underwear.”

Sara Webb, Founder & CEO at InTandem Promotions

Sara Webb is the Founder and CEO of InTandem Promotions. She founded the company in 2013 and brings 20+ years in promotional products to building meaningful, measurable branding programs. She’s grown it into a national and international operation that connects companies with the people they care about.

About InTandem Promotions Booth 931

InTandem Promotions creates emotional connections through tangible, branded products, backed by in-house creative, technology, decorating, warehousing, and fulfillment. From online stores to global fulfillment, the team supports brands at home and around the world.

Julia Cross, Director of New Business Development at OmniSource Marketing Group

Julia Cross is the Director of New Business Development at OmniSource Marketing Group. She helps brands extend their reach through smart, strategic merchandising. She’s your connection point to a company that’s grown into a multimillion-dollar force in branded marketing.

About OmniSource Marketing Group Booth 1023

OmniSource Marketing Group is a privately held, Certified Women-Owned brand engagement agency, founded in 1989 by President and CEO Janie Goldberg — who saw potential in a single unused screen-printing press and turned it into a business. Today OmniSource is a $20-million-a-year firm representing brands like PepsiCo, Simon Malls, and Cummins across the globe.

Also on the Floor: Corporate Allies

Not every booth at the expo floor is woman-owned, some are corporate partners who show up at WBENC specifically to do business with women-owned suppliers. These two are worth knowing if you’re building a supplier-diversity program or looking to get into a major supply chain.

About B2Gnow Booth 1022

B2Gnow is the nation’s leading supplier-diversity, procurement, and grant-management software platform, powering business opportunities for women- and minority-owned suppliers for over 20 years. While not itself woman-owned, it’s led by a notably woman-heavy executive team and is a long-standing champion on the WBENC floor, worth a stop if your organization runs (or wants to run) a supplier-diversity program.

About Dexcom Booth 1222

Dexcom is a San Diego–based medical device leader known for its continuous glucose monitoring systems for people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. A publicly traded corporation rather than a woman-owned business, Dexcom comes to WBENC to connect with and grow its base of women-owned suppliers.

If you see someone you should know, go say hello. The best part of WBENC was never the booths, it’s the women behind them, and the doors they open for one another.

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

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