WE CAN RECREATE THAT MASS — SO WE HAVE TO FIND THE NEXT SHOPIFY IN ORDER TO DO IT.

he says. “A number of fibre optic companies got up to $500 million but not one succeeded. So the VC world went sour.”

Fast forward 10 years; Shopify has played a key role in reviving the software industry in Ottawa. Interest has returned for establishing innovation hubs and accelerators, as has program support from Carleton and Ottawa universities and government.

The fall of such juggernauts as Nortel left a lot of incredible tech expertise on the table, says Jenna Sudds, president and executive director of the Kanata North Business Association. “What really resulted from Nortel’s demise was an unbelievable pool of talent. Many started their own companies. When you look at the leadership about a private-sector-driven AI accelerator. Eli Sathi has been a great startup presence in the community and in ensuring jobs have stayed here. In fact, he managed to convince a leading industry analytics expert to help them build Ottawa into an AI centre.”

That expert is Robin Grosset, MindBridge Ai’s CTO. A U.K. entrepreneur, he left a senior leadership role with IBM’s analytics group to return to his entrepreneurial roots. “With MindBridge, I saw some really interesting things happening, including a big movement to open source AI,” he says. “When that happens, the value is not the platform or the algorithms. Rather it becomes what you do and what you can create.”

Leaving IBM to join a