Silicon Valley Playbook

At Toronto Tech Week in spring 2026, the Ollon team went to many great events. One of the best was The Silicon Valley Playbook for Canadian Founders, hosted by TechTO.

Chris Neumann gave the keynote, and his case stuck with me. Most Canadian founders go to Silicon Valley to raise money, and that's the wrong reason. The reason to go is to learn how they operate, how they make decisions fast, how they build a network and get customers. This learning can be taken home and applied in Canada.

Also, you cannot try to build what they are building and try to compete head to head. They will outspend you and win. The valley mostly sells to itself and has a blind spot to other industries. To succeed you need to focus on where the valley isn't watching, using the industry knowledge you already have.

The founders panel backed it up. Matthew McConnell at Spicenet, Nima Jalalvandi at Ready Plan Go, and Pascal Dessureault at Tablevoice talked about what they brought back from Game On's San Francisco run.

Thanks to TechTO, with Megha Kandoi and Alex Norman, for putting on one of the events the Ollon team got the most out of that week.