Blockchain Interviews with Ray Walia, CEO Launch Academy

I'm Ashton Addison from EventChain for Investment Pitch Media and FinTech News Network. And today on Blockchain Interviews, we have Ray Walia, the CEO of Launch Academy and the co founder of the Traction Conference. Ray, thank you so much for taking the time. It's a pleasure to have you on the show today.

No, thanks for having me, Ashton.

You're very welcome. Let's start by talking a little bit about Launch Academy. What is your focus as an innovation lab in Vancouver and what kind of companies are you working with right now?

Yes, Launch Company has been around since 2012 and since then we've incubated well over 700 companies. And as you can imagine, over the years the type of companies that we've helped have changed, but primarily they've always been tech companies. So mobile, web, SaaS and more recently we're focusing on kind of emerging tech sectors. Blockchain obviously being one of them, but VR, AR cybersecurity, machine learning, AI, quantum computing, a lot of the more transformational technology stacks. Because we do tend to work with more the entrepreneurs and the founders. We're not a real big proponent of how do we transform the world with tech. It's more about how do we transform the world through entrepreneurship and through companies and startups.

That's amazing, Ray. And it really is about the team behind this. It sounds like you guys have been doing this for a while and I know that later this year in August, Launch Academy and Boast are presenting the Traction Conference here in Vancouver, bc. How long has the Tracktion conference been running? And what is new and different about this year's conference?

Yeah, so this will be our seventh actual conference. We've been running them since 2014, originally in Banff, Alberta and then we did the ones in Vancouver. We have held them in San Francisco more or less. It's an anchor event here, based in Vancouver every summer. This year I honestly say it's been getting better and better every year. We are rated one of the top 10 in North America by Inc and Forbes and it's a destination event primarily for people in Silicon Valley as well, because the caliber of speakers that we have, the subject matter and just the overall vibe of being in Vancouver has been received really well by all of our audiences. And so what we have going on this year is again trying to make it bigger and better. Every year is two day conference and it's two full days now. Whereas the past we used to do half days on the first day and evening parties, this year we actually have dedicated summits. So we have a product summit, we have a growth summit and then we have our private invite only CXO summit followed up by the opening reception. And so it's a full day of events and activities and then the next day is the main stage. One room, thousand people up at the Park Convention center. And overall theme is always around traction. How do you acquire customers, how do you retain your customers and more importantly how you monetize them. And then the summits now allow us to do a deep dive on specific areas like product on growth. Whereas the main stage on the second day is the top C level executives coming in and really doing rapid fire talks. 15, 20 minutes max. Getting up there and just talking about how can they give you information and knowledge that you can turn around and apply to your business the very next day.

Wow, that sounds like quite the conference. And congratulations on making Forbes and Inc. Sounds like a major achievement. You touched on the caliber of the speakers a little bit there. What does the lineup of speakers look like this year? And on the main stage on the second day, what are the major speakers that we will see take to the main stage?

Yeah, so again it's kind of like the who's who of Silica Valley and actually goes beyond Silicon Valley now. But the caliber is typically you are either a unicorn company, billion dollar valuation or you are on your fast track towards that. I think we just did a little bit of a presser today. So Henrique Dubuque Grass, who's the CEO of Brex, fastest youngest company hit unicorn status, he's a 22 year old founder that started a fintech company that just raised $100 million at a $2.6 billion valuation that was just announced this week. So he'll be on our main stage talking about his five tips of how he grew his unicorn company. Very impressive progress and so fast growth trajectory there. You also have Amy Pressman, the co founder of Medallia, she was number seven on Forbes top 100 private companies. You've got CTO red hat. Red Hat apparently obviously just acquired by IBM for $34 billion. Let's see, we got read from my list here. So you got Catherine Petralia, co founder of Kabbage, Forbes, one of your most powerful women. Kabbage is red hot in the valley in Bay Area. Being in Vancouver, talking to a lot of people, they aren't familiar with the cabbage name, but that's kind of the whole point of traction is we're opening up people's eyes and ears to what's really moving the needle, especially in The Bay Area Silicon Valley as we know, is kind of the epicenter of tech and innovation. And people need to know what's moving the needle there because it's going to come down the pipeline to Vancouver in the next 12 to 24 months. The list goes on and on. The CEO of Smartsheets Again, $4.3 billion market cap GitLab CEO Zapier CTO of WordPress Engine CEO of Rubrik, head of product for Confluence at Atlassian Zendesk Box mailchimp Duolingo the list goes on and on. So it's just really people that really know their stuff when it comes to building and growing tech companies. And it's a lineup that will resonate well with people familiar with these big names, but also open up people's eyes and ears to, hey, I never heard of Kabbage, what are they and how did they get to where they are? Wow, that's an impressive story and I can see how that's going to be really relevant to other industries moving forward.

That sounds like an amazing lineup of speakers. And to have those on the main stage speaking to the audience, I could see many tech founders and startups that will be there looking for that valuable information. So I'm very much looking forward to that main stage there. Now, can you talk a little bit about the main sponsors of the event? Launch Academy and Boast have been presenting this for quite a while. But who are the main sponsors? Primarily?

Yeah. So this year we've got quite a number of sponsors. Again, Traction being based here in Vancouver and Canada, it's unique that most of our sponsors are actually coming from the US and they're typically SaaS companies. They're focused on, again, Traction growth. And the reason why they're coming up here to sponsor is one, they want exposure to the Canadian market, but B it's this caliber of speakers and the audience that's attracted because not only do we have this in person conference, but we do a lot of online activity. We do webinars leading up to the conference and post conference, we have our videos that are shared online afterwards. And so for them it's really being associated with the subject matter and the type of speakers. And so in terms of who's sponsoring. So we've got Pendo Again, big SaaS company, Gainsight Intercom, we got. I should know all these by now, but there's quite a few that are lined up this year. But scaled Inference as an AI company, Royal bank of Canada RBC has stepped up on the Canadian side to get involved. And then we've got. Smythe. CPA is a Canadian company, limespotlader.com, a great local success story. Giving back to the community and jumping in as a sponsor, active campaign, and some really cool other type of partners like TravelPerk is a group out of Bay Area. They help with obviously managing travel for tech companies. And they're stepping in to help us with all of our speakers and VCs and the press that are coming in and flying in town. One other thing to kind of highlight and point out is Traction Conference is actually a fundraiser for Launch Academy. So Launch Academy itself is a nonprofit, and Traction Conference is positioned as a fundraiser to raise money to help bring other activities and resources back into the tech community, starting in Vancouver. But we do CXO dinners and other events in Seattle, San Francisco, and we're expanding that to Los Angeles, New York and Boston and Toronto this coming year. And so Traction, as a fundraiser, we don't pay for our speakers, we don't pay any speaker fees. So all these CEOs, all these big names that are coming to our stage and coming to Vancouver are flying in on their own dime and putting themselves up in hotels and whatnot. And the travel perk has come aboard to help us facilitate that and with the logistics on that.

That's amazing. Ray. It's great to see a large amount of American companies coming up to Vancouver. Traction seems to be really putting Vancouver on the map here for the tech, and it's great to see the nonprofit initiatives as well that you guys are putting this towards and to show that it's going to a good cause. Now we're with all of these sponsors. Who are they really targeting for this conference? Is the event mainly for tech startups that are looking for Traction, as you say, or is it also for large organizations or maybe just people that are looking to learn more about the tech industry?

Traction itself is for anybody and everybody. Like, one of the things that we try to ensure is that all the speakers that are coming on stage, they're again only talking for 15, 20 minutes. So it's a short amount of time. So for them to come up on stage, they don't really have the luxury of talking about their company and boasting about all the big successes they have. We have some strict guidelines that, hey, you need to make sure that the content that you're putting out there is relevant to the audience and really take that rule of thumb, it doesn't matter the size of the company. They should be able to turn around and take that information, apply to their own business the very next day. So yes, these are billion dollar companies that are coming on stage, but they're not talking about processes that are unattainable for smaller companies. And again, when it comes to the sponsors, they're really looking at the subject matter and being associated with that subject matter. How to acquire customers, how to retain them, how do you monetize them, taking your company global, doing business on exponential scale. And again, a lot of the sponsors are SaaS companies or in terms of RBC, they want to help companies grow. These SaaS companies are providing tools to help these companies grow. So the audience is really about companies that want to move the needle. And so that could be a small company, two person shop to another billion dollar company. The funny thing is I've seen time and time again the CEOs and other speakers sitting in the audience watching the other talks because there's lots to learn. And again, we've got that reputation in the valley of Traction being one of the top destinations for these speakers. Again, because I love Vancouver, but it's the caliber of talks and subject matter that resonates with them as well.

That's very interesting. And you know that all of these billion dollar companies at one point may have just been a two person job in the garage. So really just getting to that point, everyone starts at the very beginning. So it's interesting to see how quickly some of them have grown and that the large CEOs are also always learning and it's always day one. For many founders, it's always day one. You can always learn something from somebody even if they have a small company or a large company. So it's really interesting to point that out. Now you touched a little bit on your non profit initiatives with Launch Academy, but do you have any quantitative or qualitative goals that you have for Launch Academy for the completion of Traction Conference?

In terms of Traction Conference itself, again, it's such a large scale and it does hit a wide variety of stages of companies and also geographic location. Again, it's becoming a destination. We have people flying in from Europe and from Asia to attend. So it's hard for us to quantify what the exact results are on a impact for attendees. But in terms of numbers, it's a thousand person conference. We've got speakers from all over the US and Canada coming in. It also becomes a catalyst like again, the summits that we have start to produce other types of results in terms of engagement between the speakers and the audience. Again at the main Stage, it's hard to have an interaction with the speaker that's on stage. But when you're at the summit, these are smaller rooms and they're more workshop style. So you have a chance to really dive in deep with the speaker that's on stage and understanding what tools you're using or what techniques they're trying to convey to you of how to scale your product or build your product. So it adds global scale. And then on top of that, we have our private CXO events where it really is more of a networking and collaborative opportunity with the VCs and CEOs locally and in town for the conference that are moving the needle. But also that's now sparked off our CXO Summit series that we do in Seattle, San Francisco, we just have one in Toronto and Calgary as well. And as I mentioned earlier, we're expanding that into la, to New York, to Boston. And so Traction has been a catalyst to help fuel that. And that's really about connecting Canadian CEOs and VCs with counterparts in these different markets and cross promoting.

That's amazing. Ray, thank you so much for your time today. Can you please remind the viewers when and where is the Traction Conference? How can they learn more about it? And also how can they learn more about Launch Academy?

Yeah, so traction conference is August 7th and 8th here in Vancouver. You can go online tractionconf.IO so tractionconf.IO and lots of information there, the speaker lineup, you can access tickets through that site as well. And information about the agenda should be coming out soon, hopefully by the end of this month. We're constantly adding some more speakers and finalizing the itinerary for the summits. And if you want to learn more about Launch Academy, it's LaunchAcademy CA a big push that we're doing now with Launch Academy is our Maple program. And as we all know, it's getting harder and harder to build international businesses headquartered out of the US and so what we're trying to do is help international entrepreneurs that are trying to break into the North American market get access through Canada. And so we're a designated startup visa provider for the Canadian government. We're a global skills referral partner. And so our Maple program is really designed to help international entrepreneurs from around the world to get situated in Canada and build a strong foundation that they can then build international business into North America.

Amazing. I'll leave those links in the description box down below. And thank you so much for your time, Ray. All the best at Traction Conference. And I'll see you there.

Yeah, no, definitely. It's tractionconf IO and launchacademy.ca love to connect with anybody that's interested in building great tech companies.

Thank you.

Thanks for time, Ashton.