Inside Canada’s Thriving Tech Scene with Marie Chevrier

You are not your business. Like to the point of the story you said about like how I came out and just was very open about it. I think that was my biggest lesson is the last 3 months of the business were so difficult. I had a newborn baby. In fact, I was very late in my pregnancy when I learned about the business, like probably not surviving. And it was really, really difficult. But I can tell you that the day that I told myself, okay, I did everything I could, I made sure to do right by my investors, to be communicative, everything. The next day, I truly was relieved, and I truly was ready for a new chapter of, like, of who Marie could be. I want entrepreneurs to know that you are not your business, and you will have a second, you will have a third, you will have a fourth chapter. And in fact, it could be quite exciting.

Welcome to Startup CEO Show. I'm your host, Mark MacLeod. In this episode, I sit down with Marie Chevrier-Schwarz. Marie was founder and CEO of Sampler. Like the vast majority of startups, Sampler ultimately failed, although she got much further than most ever do. But unlike many founders, she was really open and shared, hey, my business went bankrupt, here's why, and was just completely open. And she did this, A, to heal herself, but to share actionable learnings and insights with other founders. She's now taken that service mentality on behalf of founders to a new level running Tech2, which is the largest community of startup founders in Canada. So we talk about the Sampler journey, particularly kind of the impact on her. We talk about Tech2, we talk about the Canadian ecosystem. So if you're an American or from another country, maybe this episode isn't super interesting to you, but if you're Canadian, you're definitely gonna wanna tune in. Marie, welcome to the Startup CEO Show. It's a true pleasure to have you here. How you doing today?

Doing good. Thanks for having me.

My pleasure. I've actually wanted to have you on for some time. I've known you for ages, but like, I feel like, I don't know, maybe once every 2 years I would just run into you at an event. So actually the chance to just sit down and chat for a while is, is cool. And, and I think you have some really important lessons to share, A, as an entrepreneur who's been through the full journey and then now in your role kind of supporting the ecosystem as well. For folks who don't know you, maybe let's just start off with just a little background on yourself and in particular, just context for that last company Sampler, 'cause we're gonna chat about that experience a little bit.

Of course. So Marie, originally from Montreal, grew up in a small city called Hudson and went to the University of Ottawa, kind of making my way towards Toronto, I think, 'cause when I went to the University of Ottawa, that's the furthest my mom would let me go. I wish I could have jumped right to Toronto, but she said, "You could go to Ottawa." And then once I told her that, like once I showed that I wasn't completely messing up there, she let me go further, so.

She gave you a little more rope.

Exactly. Ended up in Toronto working in advertising, but I guess like it's around that time that I realized I definitely wanted to own my own business. I remember like working in agency thinking, thinking like, oh my God, there's no way. Like just looking at the clock and feeling like time wasn't going by fast. Anyways, fast forward a few years, I got the chance to move to New York City to work for Rocket Internet and work on my first startups. So that's a part of my story that I don't talk a lot about, but—

I didn't know that.

Yeah, I was really super foundational. I got to work on business models like HelloFresh in the very days in New York, which was really cool. So learned a lot about building businesses. And then I decided, well, I guess I was forced to decide to move back to Canada because I lost my visa when one of the startups failed. And then ended up moving back to Toronto and just decided to jump into entrepreneurship. I'd been sitting on an idea with that was about digitizing the product sampling space. And that was 2013 when I got started with Sampler.

Okay, so did that idea come out of the agency work?

Yeah, it was kind of accumulation of things. When I was at the University of Ottawa, I was a brand ambassador giving out free product samples. So, I remember thinking that product sampling was highly inefficient. It was going out to kind of everybody that was walking by. The agency work like put me in front of a lot of consumer packaged good brands. Like Unilever was a client there. And then when I went to New York for Rocket, I worked on Glossybox, which was a subscription box for beauty. And then HelloFresh had a big sampling element to its recipes too. So I feel like it was just kind of, I was just kept getting hit by product sampling in every step.

I love it. I can't remember if I ever shared this with you, but when I first started my investment bank, before we decided to specialize in SMB software, my literal very first client was Extend, I think it was called.

Yeah.

Ray Chow's company. And yeah, helped him raise some money in the sampling space, but I think with a different take than yours.

I think I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

And you know, we were talking about Real Ventures before we started and the predecessor fund to Real Ventures was this thing called Montreal Startup, which is like a little test fund. And the biggest company we had there was Beyond the Rack, which actually in its final years leveraged sampling pretty extensively. And it was a nice way to just increase the basket size, almost pure margin, you know? Absolutely. Um, for the merchants, which, which was cool. You wouldn't know this talking to startup people, but most startups fail. I think, I think 90% of startups fail and, uh, venture funding actually only increases those odds. And I say you wouldn't know it because when you chat with people and you ask how you're doing, what they say is, I'm crushing it. Yeah. And you catch up with a VC and you're like, hey, how's your portfolio? And like, yeah, they're crushing it, which is like mathematically impossible. And so you had a venture-backed startup in Sampler and it didn't. Become a billion-dollar outcome. It ultimately failed, but you were open about it. And first of all, I applaud that deeply. And second, there's so many exits, I'm gonna say that in quotes, exits that are celebrated, that where the founders got nothing, the common shareholders got nothing. And again, it's just feeding the bullshit and the hype. And you were really open about it. In fact, not just open about it, but it was almost like a publicity tour. It felt like for a while sharing all of those thoughts. And so I don't want this to be a postmortem on Sampler itself, but I would love just your thoughts and reflections. A, just looking back, a CEO, I don't know, just, I'm going to turn the mic over. Like, you know, you've talked about this a bunch, you know, what are your, what's your, your postmortem and reflections looking back?

Yeah, the— so Sampler had an amazing run, like incredible, incredible growth spurts that, that, you know, were incredibly exciting. For example, in the pandemic, we saw such rapid growth because the model was really serving a big need in getting product samples into the hands of people in their homes. So the company had, a lot of potential and it was such an exciting business to build. I will tell you like there's not a day until probably the last 3 months of the business that I didn't love what I did. It was such an incredible journey and I'm so thankful for it. Sampler is a, I think like if I was to give it a title, I would say We lost product market fit 10 years in. Like, it's, I think like— Well, that happens. I think that's ultimately what happened. We had several different market trends kind of come at us in different, like at the same time and kind of out of nowhere. One of them being the return into store. So post-pandemic, after having invested a ton into, you know, continuing to build the product, continuing to build the team, we saw a full return back to store, not just for consumer, but also for advertisers. Advertisers who had really like took a bet on e-commerce during the pandemic immediately went back to grocery stores. And I think we did everything we could to navigate that and adjust the product. And I think we did an okay job with that. But with that came also at the same time, the supply chain crisis, which ultimately reduced the ability for production of product samples and eventually ended up in a massive increase of costs of shipping. And shipping was a core component of how we delivered the samples directly to people's homes. So we saw our cost basis increase 200% in our key market in one year, right? So there were just like a lot of different things happening all at once, including the last kind of straw was a funding market kind of drying up. Drying up and also interest rates increasing. So it was just generally like in that macroeconomic context and like the moment we were in as a business, it just, it was just really, really an uphill battle and one that we end eventually just like couldn't course correct. So I guess like some of my big learnings, like, 'cause I think that's what the question was, was, Um, like first off, like as a, I think that as a, as a, because I will build another business in my next business, I think I will force myself to be highly paranoid, like to, like to, like, I think we're all paranoid a little bit as, as, um, entrepreneurs, but I now understand that you can have product market fit., and you can lose product-market fit. And I think that that's like, um, that's really important to kind of know, like, you know, a good example for every founder was when the pandemic hit, like, you couldn't have predicted that there would be a global pandemic. Um, and we were all forced, I remember you were doing a ton of sessions with a lot of us founders during that time, like trying to understand like, okay, what does that mean for my business? And like, what, like, and trying to understand like, okay, what are the— what can happen next? I feel like I should be doing that, like, I— maybe we should be doing that quarterly better, right? Like, like, what, what are the big macroeconomic trends that are impacting our, our companies? And like, what does the worst-case scenario look like? Um, yeah, so I think I would become a little bit more paranoid to hopefully see some things. The second thing is what I think I would really ask myself, what type of company I'm really building. I think like, I think 10 years ago when I was building Sampler, you know, the market was really frothy as it related to funding. You know, it tech, like you could, it could be tech enabled and it, it was tech enough. Whereas these days, you know, funding is a little less available and people are like, and I think funding is really, especially in Canada, focused on companies that have like a certain growth profile and a certain like size of market that is a lot larger than perhaps it was 10 years ago. And the reality is that in hindsight, I don't think that Samplr was a venture-backable business in hindsight. You couldn't have known that. You couldn't have known that 10 years ago. But it just, the market kind of tapped at $10 million and some of my competitors got, or at $20, $30, but it, they, these are not $100 million companies. So it's good to know what am I building? And that way you can maximize for what the outcome is for you and for your investors and, and be, you know, better aligned. And then third, then the most important I think, and probably where we'll focus a lot of the conversation is that you are not your business. Like to the, to the point of the story you said about like how I came out and just was very open about it. I think that was my biggest lesson is like, it's, it, the last 3 months of the business were so difficult. I was, I had a newborn baby. In fact, I was very late in my pregnancy when I learned about the business, like, probably not surviving. And it was really, really difficult. But I can tell you that the day that I told myself, okay, I did everything I could, I, like, I took care of everybody I could take care of, I took care of, like, I made sure to do right by my investors, to be communicative, everything. I did everything I could. The next day I truly was relieved and I truly was ready for a new chapter of like, of who Marie could be. And that, and like, I want entrepreneurs to know that you can, you are not your business and you will have a second, you will have a third, you will have a fourth chapter. And in fact, it could be quite exciting.

I love that so much. That losing product market fit thing actually feels particularly relevant in these times.

Yes.

Because SaaS is being disrupted, perhaps not as a business model, but SaaS as, um, this notion of I've got this user interface and I have to do a bunch of work to get value out of it. And now, like, I have a client in the marketing tech space that built a growth stage Series B funded SaaS business, and now they're busy disrupting themselves with a series of agents. And so the business is two things. I've got this, you know, pretty large business, but it's like legacy business, but it's not growing. We're not really investing in it., and I have a pre-product market fit, like 3 guys in a garage, a Gentec business. And like, I have to like bifurcate everything, including my mindset. So particularly challenging. I'm just curious on, I want to really dig in more into the mindset, but I'm curious, did you see an opportunity for a new sampler? And was there an opportunity to maybe kind of go back to the garage again and restart?

I think the reality is that, and I think it's important to, to recognize like at this, in the capital structure that Sampler had, it wasn't possible.

Mm.

Yeah. Yeah. We don't need to go into the details, but like at a high level, once you've taken, once you've taken venture capital, once you've taken debt, um, you know, there's a bunch of people that are looking for a certain multiple or nothing. Um, and that is ultimately the business model that I had sold to them. So, you know, we had, we were not in a capital like structure to do that. But having said that, you know, could I, like, we did talk about that, like with some of like, with some of my leadership team thinking like, hey, do we propose like a side project where we do this, we do that? I'll say like we were just, It was last, it was last like summer, or no, last summer was, yeah, it was last summer. So, we weren't yet at the agents, like I feel like people weren't necessarily thinking about that. Just, I don't know that we were thinking about it exactly like that, but we were thinking of more nimble, more nimble ways. And And I think the, the reality is that even if it was possible, um, I think I was done. I think I realized like you can be really obsessed and love a problem, um, for a very long time and then you can like never wanna talk about that problem.

Yeah, I totally get that. Totally get that.

Because like I got,, you know, I got offers soon after to join companies in this space or to think about the problem in a different way, or, and I was just like, no, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna solve another thing now.

I love it. It sounds like you gained a healthy perspective really quickly. What do you attribute that to?

I think I was really lucky in the process to have an opportunity to really open every door possible. Like, you know, there's, you know, it wasn't like an overnight thing. It was months upon months of like opening a door and the door getting shut, opening a door and the door getting shut. And I'm a highly like productive person and I just remember, you know, just trying, just always trying to find something else. And, you know, 10 years of startups, that's a lot of that. The doors were getting shut in a closer perimeter in the last little bit, but, you know, we get used to like finding another way, right? And there was just no more way. And so it was, it was, it was, yeah, I think it was, that was cathartic in that sense. And I think I was lucky also because I was pregnant with a little baby and it gives you a ton of perspective to just be like, you know what, like above, above having done everything I possibly can, I probably should just go be a mom for a little bit. And like, like there are bigger things in life than, you know, our companies and like, I need to just go focus on my little, my little girl and my little boy. So yeah.

Two other startups. Yeah, much longer cycle.

But yeah, it was amazing. It was fast. And I, and I, you know, I've had a lot of conversations with amazing founders, um, who, who are like, you know, closed all levels of communications, just shut down for a year or two years, and, um, like just really had a lot of difficulty coming out. And, um, perhaps Perhaps, um, it, that is like, there's, there's no comparison. Like there, everybody deals with it differently. Um, the other thing that perhaps helped me that I, that I wanna offer up to someone who might like me be a pretty public person to begin with is like, I just ripped the bandaid off. Like I went on social media and I just said like, my company went bankrupt. And, um, and it wasn't necessarily a, super popular choice. Like, I think that wasn't like, we don't see a lot of people doing that. But for me, the wave of love and support that I got was also like a huge gift. Like, to see people focused on, you know, the impact I had made on their journey, or the, like, whether it was a past employee saying how they loved working, or, you know, I got to really focus, the community helped me focus on like the really good positives and impact that the company had had on our community ver— and, and on our industry versus, you know, the negative.

Amazing. Did you know that would be healing when you did it, or did you do it for other reasons?

I thought it would be healing to do something, um, with authenticity. I think like that's a big value of mine. So, um, Yeah, I— what I didn't want was to— I knew that I would kind of want to get back out there and find a new role or something like that, or maybe find a new business idea. And I, I didn't want to like be shaking hands with someone, um, and then them to be like, oh, what happened? Like, and then I have to tell the story a thousand times. And then like you know, perhaps not feel compelled to have that authentic discussion 1,000 times. So it just felt right to do it that way. I was also forced because media was publishing it. So like the timeline wasn't exactly on my timeline, but it was fine. And I think in the end it was a gift that way, that it happened that way.

Yeah, you know, you talk about founders kind of just going dark and, you know, not sharing anything. And so many founders just kind of bottle up their emotions and think they've just shoved them down, but it doesn't work that way. It just, it manifests in the body in the form of physical stress and ailments, right? It just, the issues are in the tissues is what my yoga teacher tells me, right? So I love that you released it. And you said there's a lot that's, that's really important here that, that people need to listen to, but I just wanna reinforce one thing you said, right? Which is like, you are not your company.

Yeah.

Right. And like, I have many CEOs, particularly my enterprise sales CEOs, whose like sense of confidence, self-worth, energy rises and falls with their quota attainment. Like literally plot, like it's a graph that just plots along the axis of the sales of the company, which is of course super unhealthy.

Yeah.

So yeah, I love that you had that distance.

Yeah. I think I didn't have it throughout. I think I was forced to work on that muscle, but it's really important and it resonates. I think I was definitely that person who was plotted to the performance of the company.

Switching gears, when I was at Real Ventures, I would go to these different cities. I didn't get this question in Toronto so much, but in Ottawa I did, in Montreal, Quebec City, these kind of maybe smaller cities where entrepreneurs would come to me and be like, hey, how can I help develop my community and my ecosystem? And my answer was always just build a fricking amazing company, right? Because we need more big giant companies. And if you do that, the ecosystem will take care of itself. Now, I still believe in that advice, but it was self-interested advice because as a VC, I just wanted to back people maniacally focused on creating giant outcomes. Um, but you've actually been doing both. Like, you know, while you were running Sampler, you were involved with, is it TechTO or Tech2?

We changed the name to Tech2. Yeah.

Tech2. Okay. Right. But you've been involved for some time and now you run it. So I would love to know, I guess, first of all, what drew you to be involved originally?

Yeah. So back, I guess now it would be like 8 years or so that I've been, that I've been involved with Tech2. Back in the day, I was always really, I always loved the Tech2 events. And when, when I was building Sampler, I felt that we didn't have a community in the retail commerce space that where, you know, founders of other commerce companies could get together. And in Toronto has a lot of commerce startups. So it was kind of silly that that did not exist. So I had proposed to Alex and Jason to run the Commerce Tech, Tech 2 events, and they, they had welcomed it. And I think at this point it's like one of the longer standing verticals of the, of the network. I think selfishly I wanted that community for myself. And so, you know, the, the platform of Tech2 is, you know, well-established and we still do this today. In fact, if anyone wants to build a vertical community in any of their cities and is just passionate about building a space for themselves, we would welcome that. But the Tech2 infrastructure gives you you know, the, the space, the food, the, the ticketing, the, the network, right? So it was just very turnkey. And, and I guess when, when, when we, when I closed Sampler and came out on social, I had done a lot of reflecting. It was like, it was 3 months after we closed the business and I had, I had the main emotion that I had was a deep sense of empathy for builders, a deep sense of empathy for myself. Which I think was really helpful in my recovery, but also for the rest of everybody else that was going through this. And I had been connected with like tens of founders who were going through similar things during that time, and they were all saying like very similar things. And so, when I came out on social and said what happened, I had said like, if anyone is working on anything for the community, I would love to give back for the next kind of chapter. And Jason and Alex reached out in like 15 minutes. Amazing. I had not talked to them about this. So, so it was kind of, it was, it was really awesome. And yeah, I just really resonated with the fact that this community, like Tech2 has been around for 11 years. Like I think that that the guys have done, the guys and the team have done the work of like the first ingredient of community, which is like spend time in the community and like, and make sure that you, you give first for a long time, right? And so it was, it was a really interesting opportunity to come in and it's actually, I'm sure like, I'm sure you felt that too in your career. Like it's, it's pretty fun sometimes to just be in service of like someone else's idea for a little bit. And, and kind of coming in with a new eye and renovating something. So it's working a different muscle for me and it's just really fun.

I love that. But I'll say that last point is actually my entire career.

Yeah.

Honestly, like as a CFO, you're there supporting the CEO and their vision. Let's make sure you get the capital. Let's make sure we got controls and we don't blow up. I think VCs get far too much attention and suck up too much oxygen in the ecosystem. But at the end, VCs are not the stars and are not even in charge of their success. It's the entrepreneurs who determine whether a fund is successful or not. As a banker, um, it's the same thing. I'm behind the scenes. You built a company for 8 years. Now I'm gonna come in and try and find a home for it and see if we can create life-changing wealth for you. And of course, as a coach, like, I mean, I coach some of the most ambitious CEOs in the world, but you would never know. Nobody, you know, like I'm so behind the scenes. I'm just here in my home office in like the middle of nowhere. Like I am not, I don't go to the boardrooms. Like I don't travel for business anymore. I'm just totally behind the scenes and absolutely love it.

Yeah, it's really fun. It's a really nice hat to wear. It's fun.

Yeah, it sure is. Let's take one step back, you know, so Tech2, this is relevant to the Canadian listeners, which there's a lot of, but in case there's folks living under a rock, what is Tech2? Let's just make sure we cover that.

Yeah, Tech2, or previously known as Tecteo, is Canada's largest tech community. So, we have about 60,000 readers across Canada. We do events in all the major tech cities. So, tons of events in Toronto, at least one monthly, at least one quarterly in Vancouver and Montreal. And then this year we have a very big ambitious goal of spending more time in Atlantic Canada, in Calgary, in Edmonton. And yeah, we're really excited about just, unifying the tech community across like all those events. And, and we think the time is now, and I'm sure that's like, that's one of the things we'll, we'll talk about. But, um, there's, there's just like a really interesting energy in our ecosystem that, um, that we, I feel like back to our product market fit, I think we have very good product market fit.

I love that. I'm curious. You know, every city, every community has its stakeholders and enablers. Are they open in these other cities to you coming in, or is there a bit of resistance that you have to overcome?

Yeah, I think like one of the reasons we changed the way we say TechTO to TechTO is because when, you know, we go into other cities, we want people to feel that, you know, it, it's not TO, it's really, it's really a national organization.

It's not Toronto conquering Halifax.

Exactly. And I think you, like, with that, you have to do it with tact. Like, we are not looking to own the community, like, we're just looking to support wherever we can. So, for example, we'll be very involved with like a grassroots initiative that's happening in Montreal for Montreal Tech Week, or just 2 weeks ago, we were there supporting the Startup Fest event, or SasNorth in Ottawa. Like, we're not, we're coming in to bring even more excitement around things that are happening locally. And I think like the best way to build community is radical collaborations. So, that's been at least like our ethos ever since I've come in for sure. And I think for the guys as well for a long time, but that's like, that's really It's really what we're looking to do in these expansion plans.

Yeah. So I have to say, I saw you on stage, I think a couple of times during Toronto Tech Week, and my impression was you were in your element. Like, this is Marie in her natural habitat. She's totally comfortable. So I gather you're enjoying what you do.

Yeah, it's funny, right? Like, this goes back to kind of like, like reinventing yourself or like finding new strengths. And like when you think about it, when I started Samplr, it was 11 years ago. Like I was literally a baby. I was like fresh out of like corporate jobs and like, you know, it was like startup school, I guess. And it was my first business and like obviously 10 years would change you, right? Like 10 years would have an incredible impact. During that time I got married, during that time I had two kids, right? So it was really interesting to kind of like go from the like busy, busy, busy every day for 10 years to like radio silence. And like, I know we're both mindful people, like to have that time to just kind of like just be with yourself and realize like, okay, what do I actually like? And, and also to have like the luxury of kind of a white canvas. So I remember it feeling like once I was actually able to get away and get silence, like I remember it feeling like when you go on a Euro trip in like high school and like you open, you open like the door to the airplane opens and you're like, I can be whoever I want in Italy. I can do whatever I want. Like it really felt like that once I was able to kind of change my mindset away. So I recognized that I really like people. I really like that. I really like helping people and listening deeply. And like, they're not necessarily like the typical things that you would identify with. These are just— and I have a great sense of intuition. Like, I was looking for things that I was looking for things that were at that level of skill, not like, I'm good at sales or like, I was looking at like traits, personality traits. And I think, and I really like, and they like, I really like details. So event planning is really fun for that. Like at the, at the, I love being on stage and like listening deeply in the panels and creating a space. Like, I love that, but I also really loved picking the flowers that were like on the table.

That's cool.

Very, very interesting.

Um, perhaps not tech founder, not, uh, stereotypically, no, but good to exercise your inner OCD to the extent that you have one of those. So you now have a front door kind of view on all of the Canadian ecosystem, obviously deeply Toronto, 'cause you're really involved there, but like you said, you were just in Montreal for Startup Fest, you're in Vancouver, so you're, you're coast to coast. Like, yeah, what are your, what are your thoughts on the Canadian ecosystem?

Yeah, I think, I think that Canada is obviously in the best place it's ever been as it relates to like the, the tech community. We, we're starting to see some great, unicorn companies come about. Like, I loved seeing the story of JNAP not so long ago. Like, here's an amazing company that was silently building just an incredible company. Seeing the founders having the opportunity to like take money on a secondary, like, like it's awesome to see. Like, these are the signs to me of an ecosystem that's going to start being able to create like mini Janes and, and creating like these, these companies that come out of these companies. So like, I think we're starting to see those awesome signs. I think unfortunately we are clouded by like so much negativity because the, the market is at the same time changing so fast. You know, it's, it's really difficult to be a founder in this, in this time, right? Like we talked, we talked a little bit about like AI disrupting companies that have been established, or, um, even like for me, I, I, I feel if I went to go build another business right now, and I have this conversation with a lot of founders that are kind of in between companies right now, it's like overwhelming to be like, do I even know how to build a business in the age of AI? Like, um, so, so there's a lot of, there's a lot of anxiety, um, about that. So So I think we, we think at Tech2 that that just means that we need to be telling more stories and like more than ever, we need to be sharing more and being open. On the, on the positive side, we need to be celebrating the companies that are taking massive risks, that are, that are very ambitious, that have global, you know, visions for their businesses. And that's why we have initiatives like our National Rocketships Tour, where We're going into all the big tech cities and we're, we're picking the 10 best companies according to the ecosystem at any stage. They're just like, they're just being rewarded for big traction in the last like 90 days basically. And we're telling their stories, we're telling people to join their companies. We're just like getting behind them. And then on the, on the flip side, like if, if there are anxieties, issues, things that are happening, like how do we tell the real stories of people that that maybe overcame a problem and share the lessons learned with the rest of the community. And that's always been part of our ethos is just like our events, our newsletter, it's all about like the real discussions, right? So yeah, I think that's, but I think that, I think, I don't know, what do you think? Do you think that we're starting to see the development of like that repeatable ecosystem, repeat founders, like we're seeing more and more second, third time founders.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's, there's goodness, uh, for sure. Uh, there's a Shopify mafia running around doing things. I mean, you brought up Jane, what an amazing company. Years ago when I was running SurePath and I was specialized in SMB SaaS, I figured out like that was a really special company. I need to get in there. Allison was pretty hard to get in front of, but I finally had a meeting with her. She was pretty frosty. I had her on the podcast last year, or was it this, this winter? Eh, it doesn't matter. I had her on the podcast recently and she admitted she was a bit frosty, but just built a truly amazing business. And then you've got Jack from Clio buying a company for $1 billion. Like, that's awesome. Like, we need more of that. So there's lots of goodness. There's no doubt about that. My observation on the Canadian tech ecosystem has been for a long time that the best and simultaneously the worst thing about our ecosystem is our proximity to the US because we inevitably compare ourselves to this thing that is 10 times larger. You know, you brought up Rocket Internet for folks who don't know, an amazing company, like German company taking business models that were popular in the US and building something for the German market. And Germany is like, does, even though it's right in the middle of Europe, is a large kind of self-contained market. And there's lots of companies built in Germany that just serve Germany. Whereas here in Canada, that's not the case, right? Historically, Canadian customers didn't buy software unless the Americans bought it first, and there wasn't strong domestic funding. You could argue maybe there still isn't, and so we inevitably had to go to the US for funding. That's my only concern really is just like our proximity to the US. And now particularly in the context of horizontal AI, um, which is like a, a CapEx game and like, you know, you got Meta paying like stupid amounts of money for AI talent. Like how do we, that, like that lab, that that playing field isn't level. So like, how do we win in that playing field? But all of that to say, there's such amazing goodness here, you know, and clearly, you know, really big companies being built. You know what I wonder, and I'd love your thoughts on, like, why don't we have more Shopifys? Like, why is Shopify so exceptional? Why does it stand out so much?

I think that it's a bit of the, what I just said, but I think there might be another point there, which is that I think we have to increase our appetite for risk. Like, that's just, you know, you hear often the difference in how a Canadian founder versus a US founder might speak. And so, I would love folks to, I think I, and I think that leads well into like accepting failure, right? Like it, I think if we can just, if we could feel like, okay, I can take a massive swing. I can have, I can build a business that has global impact. I can, I can build a business that changes commerce, right? Not me, Shopify.

Yes. Look out, Toby, Marie's coming for you.

So yeah, so I think we need a little bit more of that. Yeah, I think that would be, and I think we can do that by, like, I think it might not be an overnight thing, but by celebrating the successes, celebrating the big swings, that'll help.

I love, by the way, going back to this award thing that you're doing in all these different cities, that your criteria is traction. Because if I stereotype, this is a complete generalization and all the Canadian entrepreneurs listening will hate me, but I would say Canadians earnestly build great product and do a bad job of selling product.

Yeah.

Whereas Americans may or may not build great product, but man, they'll sell the shit out of what they've got. Out, like just super aggressive. And distribution is, is really where all the value is created at the end of the day.

I couldn't agree more. And I will tell you my biggest pet peeve, 'cause I, I get the chance to speak with a lot of early-stage founders nowadays, like through this and through some accelerators I, I support. And, um, we ask in these, in these meetings sometimes to, to like, how many customers have you talked to? Um, and in fact, in one accelerator we have a customer discovery challenge. And in a period of 8 weeks, we just ask the companies to fill 40 interviews, 40, talk to 40 customers. And many don't, many find excuses for like, oh, I can't, I'm busy, like we're releasing this or we're doing that. And like my feedback is like, there's literally nothing else you should do. Don't release the feature. Feature, speak to the customer. You might not even release this feature after, right? So, um, I just— it— I think, I think that's bang on. Like, we, we need to focus on commercialization and like, um, and, and stop building. Like, not that everybody is, but like, if, if you're in the early days, just, just like find your first 20 customers. Like, my first, my first demo to a customer was that like a Photoshop file. I didn't even have a developer, like, and the, I sold, I sold the customer on this Photoshop file and then I went to find a developer and I told him I could rela— I could launch in 90 days and I wasn't ready in 90 days. We launched in 180 days and they still paid the bill, you know? So, um, talk to customers.

Amazing. Such great advice. The basics, right? You know, so gotta hammer that in.

Yeah.

Last question, Marie. And you know, I only thought of this afterwards, so I didn't send this in advance, but last year I gave a keynote at the PeerScale annual general meeting. And at the time, I heard that there were rumblings that Tech2 and PeerScale were coming together and and now you've acquired them or merged or whatever it is. And, uh, if I were to generalize, right, like Tech 2, very focused on the early stage ecosystem, folks who might be thinking about just what many consider to be the default path. I'm going to raise venture. I'm going to go for it. PeerScale, more growth stage, either folks who are bootstrapped or maybe just kind of were bootstrapped and then did private equity deals. So I'm curious what you've seen just now that you're spending time in that ecosystem as well. Yeah. What are your observations about that? 'Cause it's a, it's a, it's a very different world.

Yeah. Well, so what's really amazing is PeerScale's been around for 20 years. It's a network of executives, CEOs, COOs, CTOs of tech companies. 50% of the companies, or like a bit of a majority, are bootstrapped and the rest would be venture-backed. The average company in that network is $30 million in revenue, and we have some, several that are in the $100 millions. So, this group is really special. These are like, these are serial founders, well-experienced founders who know how to build really big businesses. And And basically what the, the vision of bringing these two together is that this allows us to create a really full circle ecosystem. You can imagine how the PeerScale community are amazing mentors to the earlier stage companies.

Big time.

You could also imagine how the Tech2 community is great talent pipeline for PeerScale, is also a, a really great graduation class from PeerScale. So, And so, it's been really magical, completely different needs, right? So, we find that if in the very early stages, you know, our events and perhaps some of our programming is, is for Tech 2 makes a ton of sense. Like you might want to get access to like our templates and resources or come to our events, but like when you get to $3 million in, in revenue, you've taken some capital, you, or you haven't, but you have a board of directors and you have like a big team, at that point, you're probably not attending as many events. You want like focused, productive time with people who can help you. And what we've found is that peers are usually the people that can help you the most because they are going through very similar things. So, the format is roundtable dinners monthly with a peer group of 8 to 13 max, I would say. And you meet with the same group every month. So, Some people call it the YPO of tech, basically, or software. So, so very, very similar kind of cadence. And it's a very special place. And, and quarterly we, we get to meet as a full membership so that people from other tables get a chance to meet each other. And then annually we have the retreat, which you participated in. So yeah, really special space. And I think if you're a founder who who maybe doesn't have as many founder friends who are in the same stage, we, we would love to chat to you because it's, uh, it's hard. Like, you know, sometimes I, I was part of a peer group and like, and you know, at some point it's like you outgrow your, your peers or they outgrow you. And so it's good to kind of be able to find, um, a network that can, you can graduate into different tables and stuff.

For sure. Well, I really see the logic, that's for sure. And it, you know, the members, I'm surprised they didn't boot me out of the room for this because they were very actively discussing the merits of, hey, should we do this? And I'm there. I could have been like live tweeting the entire thing, but like, anyway, the strategy seemed very clear to me, but I'll say maybe I'll end on this note. So I only coach CEOs and I only coach CEOs that have raised capital and often a ton of capital, so they have huge expectations. Every single one of my CEOs has a peer group.

Yeah.

It could be something formal like a PeerScale. It could be something like they just cobble together with like people they know. But only other CEOs truly know what CEOs are going through.

Totally.

So I would say, and I know PeerScale, it's not just CEOs, but like peer groups are so powerful.

That's awesome.

Love it. Well, Marie, thank you so much for making the time. Uh, really, really enjoyed our discussion.

Same. Thank you.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Startup CEO Show. If you'd like to connect with me, be sure to visit my website at markmacleod.me or follow me on LinkedIn @TheMarkMacLeod or Twitter @MarkMacLeod_. And if you want to tune in again next week, week. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you next time.