Tech Events Roundup

Spring 2026 was a whirlwind of tech events. I went to five of them with the Ollon team. Web Summit in Vancouver, Toronto Tech Week, the AWS Summit in Toronto, Ottawa Innovation Week, and the Peerscale retreat.

A few things stood out across all of them. There is a lot of talk that SaaS is dead. I don't buy it, but the model is clearly changing. The three tier, per seat, monthly playbook shows up less and less. I'm seeing fewer new traditional SaaS companies. More of the newer ones are hybrid. They build a core product but provide professional services for each client. Others use tech to disrupt an old industry while selling on outcomes rather than seats. PulseFX and NectAir are two good examples.

These companies are leaner on headcount. It takes fewer developers to launch a product. Less customer service to support it. Fewer salespeople to grow it. None of this is news, but it was interesting to hear first hand.

Where to find innovation is changing

Web Summit stood out for who wasn't there. At Collision in past years, the biggest booths were AWS and Google. This year both were gone. The AI leaders, Anthropic and OpenAI, were not there either. The largest booth was IBM, demoing Watson.

The AWS Summit was smaller and tighter than in 2024. Back then it was full of small vendors new to the scene. This year it was mostly large, established names and a much bigger AWS footprint. The messaging was still about moving from on premise to cloud, plus AI basics, not what's new. The floor was packed anyway. Their target is clearly enterprise, and the gap between enterprise and smaller firms on AI was striking.

The place to look for innovation has shifted. At Ollon we're paying attention to the lean companies and the small events.