Momentum in Montréal: Tech Growth, Opportunities, and a Massive Festival
Have you experienced Montréal? It radiates energy, stays up well past midnight every night of the week, has a story that spans 8,000 years, and can steal your breath away at any hour. In other words, there are plenty of reasons why the Canadian gem cracks the list of best international cities.
Montréal has more restaurants per capita than any other city in North America outside of New York. The energy and architecture make a walk around town as pleasant as some of the most romantic cities in Europe — like Paris, the only metropolis in the world with a larger French speaking population. Its festivals fill the calendars of music and art lovers every year. Montréal stands out as a beacon of culture in North America.
The newest reason to praise Montréal, however, is the city’s interest in technological advancement.
Montréal set its sights on becoming the AI capital of the world complete with an elite all-around tech scene. Some of the greatest minds in AI, such as MILA’s Yoshua Bengio, call the city home and in recent years institutional money has flooded the scene. Microsoft, Facebook, and the Canadian government amongst others have all invested hundreds of millions of dollars in AI programs at local universities and in tech projects with global appeal.
The clearest Montréal-style sign of the city’s tech growth is the massive Startup Festival. The annual five-day event is a global gathering of entrepreneurs, founders, investors, and mentors. Founded by local tech staple Philippe Telio, the event combines traditional keynote speeches and talks with hundreds of activities like a hackathon, tech forums, parties, and networking events. Terminal’s own Nabil G. Fahel circles the event on his calendar and makes the trip from Waterloo to attend. “Montréal is the perfect place for an event like Startup Fest and it shows you that the startup community is bubbling up in Montréal.”
With its incredible energy and magnetism, Terminal is thrilled to dive into the Montréal tech community head first — and with so many incredible people in town for the Startup Fest earlier this month — we took the opportunity to host our own Cinq à Sept for founders, engineers, and entrepreneurs at our office in the heart of the city. It was a great escape from the festival streets below and gave a crowd of 80 the opportunity to participate in some lively, tech-forward conversations.
Tech opportunities in Montréal are real and you don’t have to go farther than our very own office to see the evidence. At Terminal, we’re all about bringing global opportunities to the world’s best talent — no matter their location — and Montréal has plenty of talent. Terminal members in Montréal have recently started work for companies like hims, one of the fastest growing consumer brands on record. Terminal members have played a vital role in building and scaling the company’s e-commerce platform, which has been the engine that has facilitated millions of products to homes all over the United States.
“There’s no way we could have managed the explosive growth without Terminal.” Andrew Dudum — Founder & CEO of Hims
We expect this trend in Montréal to continue, and we’d love for you to join in. If you or someone you know in the Montréal area wants to work with us, hims is searching for more talented engineers to join its team.
Don’t hesitate to reach out.
