Tank Talks By Ripple Ventures · 2026-06-26 · 1h 18m
In this special episode of Tank Talks, Matt Cohen brings listeners inside Toronto Tech Week with a live podcast studio recorded at the Toronto Homecoming event. This episode captures a fast-moving snapshot of the Canadian tech ecosystem through candid conversations with Boris Wertz of Version One, Lawrence Mandel and Farhan Thawar of Shopify, Ben Vinegar of Modem, Andrew Chau of Neo Financial, Fahd Ananta of Opendoor, and Eliot Pence of Dominion Dynamics. Across venture capital, AI-native engineering, product management, fintech, defense tech, and startup turnarounds, the episode explores why Toronto Tech Week feels like a real inflection point for Canadian founders, operators, investors, and returning global talent. Matt and the guests dig into the biggest questions shaping startups in 2026: how AI is changing the speed of company-building, why “AI wrappers” are becoming harder to defend, how Shopify is rethinking engineering culture around AI, what agentic coding still gets wrong, why Neo Financial is taking on Canada’s banking oligopoly, what Opendoor’s turnaround reveals about velocity, and how Dominion Dynamics is building sovereign Canadian defense technology for the Arctic.
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