About this episode

This episode explores the Canadian tech ecosystem during Toronto Tech Week through conversations with industry leaders.

In this special episode of Tank Talks, Matt Cohen brings listeners inside Toronto Tech Week with a live podcast studio recorded at the Toronto Homecoming event. This episode captures a fast-moving snapshot of the Canadian tech ecosystem through candid conversations with Boris Wertz of Version One, Lawrence Mandel and Farhan Thawar of Shopify, Ben Vinegar of Modem, Andrew Chau of Neo Financial, Fahd Ananta of Opendoor, and Eliot Pence of Dominion Dynamics. Across venture capital, AI-native engineering, product management, fintech, defense tech, and startup turnarounds, the episode explores why Toronto Tech Week feels like a real inflection point for Canadian founders, operators, investors, and returning global talent. Matt and the guests dig into the biggest questions shaping startups in 2026: how AI is changing the speed of company-building, why “AI wrappers” are becoming harder to defend, how Shopify is rethinking engineering culture around AI, what agentic coding still gets wrong, why Neo Financial is taking on Canada’s banking oligopoly, what Opendoor’s turnaround reveals about velocity, and how Dominion Dynamics is building sovereign Canadian defense technology for the…

People in this episode

Host: Matt Cohen

Guests: Boris Wertz, Lawrence Mandel, Farhan Thawar, Ben Vinegar, Andrew Chau, Fahd Ananta, Eliot Pence

Topics covered

• Canadian tech ecosystem
• startup ambition
• venture capital
• AI in startups
• fintech
• defense technology

Keywords

• Toronto Tech Week
• Canadian startups
• AI
• venture capital
• fintech
• defense tech
• entrepreneurship

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Version One, Shopify

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