September is all about the Elevate Festival 2023 in Toronto. Al dives into the 3-day technology and innovation festival with Alex Rayment, Senior Director Partnerships & Key Accounts at Elevate and Vithu Vijayaratnam, Manager Innovation Programs at Elevate. They talk about all the reasons entrepreneurs should attend this festival from world-class speakers, to cutting-edge content tracks, to next-level networking. Al also speaks with Shawna Miller, VP of Marketing and Communications at Mastercard. They’re a founding sponsor of the Elevate Festival.
September is all about the Elevate Festival 2023 in Toronto. Al dives into the 3-day technology and innovation festival with Alex Rayment, Senior Director Partnerships & Key Accounts at Elevate and Vithu Vijayaratnam, Manager Innovation Programs at Elevate. They talk about all the reasons entrepreneurs should attend this festival from world-class speakers, to cutting-edge content tracks, to next-level networking.
Al also speaks with Shawna Miller, VP of Marketing and Communications at Mastercard. They’re a founding sponsor of the Elevate Festival.
Also in this episode:
Links of Interest:
Al Grego:
Coming up on Shop Talk.
Alex Rayment:
Elevate Festival is very proudly Canada's fastest growing tech festival, and we bring together over three days innovators, tech and business leaders, investors, and of course the startup community and small business community.
Al Grego:
Hello everyone. I'm Al Grego.
Sydney Lupton:
And I'm Sydney Lupton.
Al Grego:
And this is a September 2023 edition of Shop Talk with Moneris. Welcome to the Shop Talk Podcast, Sydney.
Sydney Lupton:
Thanks Al. Great to be here once again, but I'm a little confused about something.
Al Grego:
About what?
Sydney Lupton:
Well, in the last episode you said that you were going to be rebranding.
Al Grego:
You're right. And we still are, but we're just not quite ready yet and we wanted to make sure we got it right. So October seems more likely.
Sydney Lupton:
Oh, okay. I see.
Al Grego:
But enough about my overpromising. Let's talk about you for a second.
Sydney Lupton:
What are you wanting to know?
Al Grego:
Well, you've been at Moneris these past few months as a summer marketing intern.
Sydney Lupton:
That's right.
Al Grego:
And as of when this episode is published, your internship is over and you're going back to school.
Sydney Lupton:
Yeah, and I'm excited about that, but I'm definitely going to miss it here. I've learned so much these past few months.
Al Grego:
Did you learn anything new about producing podcasts?
Sydney Lupton:
I sure did.
Al Grego:
What'd you learn?
Sydney Lupton:
Well, I learned that it's super easy in that honestly, anyone can do it.
Al Grego:
Well, that's not exactly true, but...
Sydney Lupton:
I'm totally going to start a podcast while I'm at school.
Al Grego:
What are you going to talk about?
Sydney Lupton:
Well, this and that. I'll have themes supported by a featured interview. Then maybe an expert who can answer all the questions, maybe share some interesting statistics.
Al Grego:
That's just what we do here.
Sydney Lupton:
But I'll have different co-hosts in an events calendar.
Al Grego:
Okay. Now you're not even trying to hide the fact that-
Sydney Lupton:
Al.
Al Grego:
What?
Sydney Lupton:
I'm just kidding.
Al Grego:
You are?
Sydney Lupton:
Yes.
Al Grego:
So you're not stealing Shop talk.
Sydney Lupton:
Don't be silly. I've got my own ideas.
Al Grego:
You had me going for a minute there. Anyway, Sydney, we're certainly going to miss you and all of our summer interns in fact.
Sydney Lupton:
I appreciate it. So what are we talking about this month?
Al Grego:
Well, the big story this month is the upcoming Elevate Festival in Toronto.
Sydney Lupton:
What's that?
Al Grego:
Elevate is Canada's tech and innovation festival.
Sydney Lupton:
That sounds like a big deal.
Al Grego:
It is a big deal, and we're going to learn all about it from a couple of the organizers in our feature interview.
Sydney Lupton:
Oh, great. Looking forward to it.
Al Grego:
I've also got somebody from MasterCard who's one of the founding sponsors of the festival joining us and wait until you hear what they have planned for their booth.
Sydney Lupton:
I'm intrigued.
Al Grego:
And of course this episode wouldn't be complete without a visit from our data expert, Sean McCormick. He's going to share some findings from our recent joint research report with Angus Reid.
Sydney Lupton:
That is a solid lineup.
Al Grego:
Indeed. So let's begin with my chat with Alex and Vithu from Elevate.
Speaker 4:
Featured interview.
Al Grego:
I'm joined today by Alex Rayment. She's the senior director of partnerships at Elevate and Vithu Vijayarathnam, he is the manager of innovation at Elevate. Thank you both for joining me today.
Alex Rayment:
Awesome. Thanks for having us Al.
Al Grego:
So let's start with the obvious question. What is Elevate?
Alex Rayment:
So Elevate is a Canadian nonprofit and everything that we do is really with the mission of uniting innovators for change. And so we do that through an annual festival that we have just around the corner, but also through a series of year-round programs, design and targeting startup founders. Putting all of that together really where we're looking to spotlight Canadian innovation and bring about meaningful change both here at home in Canada and on the global scale through innovation.
Al Grego:
Now Moneris and Elevate, we've had a pretty long-standing partnership. So let's talk about a few of the programs you guys run. The first one I'd like to learn more about is the Moneris partnership program. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Alex Rayment:
You're right. We have been proud partners of Moneris for a long time going back to 2019, and I've been lucky to work on the partnership that whole period. And in 2020 we launched what is really our cornerstone partnership program with Moneris, E-commerce North. So this year actually at our festival we'll be celebrating our three-year anniversary of that program and super excited to be launching into the next three years with Moneris.
Al Grego:
So Vithu, could you provide a bit of a description of the program?
Vithu Vijayarathnam:
Yes. E-commerce North is a program specifically targeting e-commerce companies. And this is during the pandemic e-commerce companies were really struggling. And then we wanted to provide some sort of support system with Moneris. So the program is Canada's first ever exclusive accelerator for e-commerce companies. And over the course of three years, we have around 175+ companies coming out of this program. And under the E-commerce North umbrella, we have what we call a challenge and an accelerated program to support early stage companies as well as the late stage companies which are making at least a couple of hundred thousand in the annual revenue.
Al Grego:
Listeners to this podcast should be very familiar with e-commerce. We talk about the cohorts all the time. What aspects of their businesses does the accelerator help them with?
Vithu Vijayarathnam:
This cohort, we are specifically looking for companies which are looking to integrate with Moneris Product Suite and further enable access to e-commerce. So we are looking companies which are playing in payments and other future e-comm and retail tech spaces where if their intent is to really integrate and work with Moneris, this will be an ideal program for them to join. And of course, as always, our programs are completely free. We don't expect anything from our founders and we are very intent in the company that we bring on to the program. So we focus on BIPOC and demand led companies and all our programs are always very inclusive in terms of Canadian innovation. On top of that, we offer supplemental services for that company to grow. So be it in a clinically for fundraising or maybe to really kind of get some understanding and dive deeper into their tech and product development or maybe focus on B2B sales. These are some of the additional mentorship programs that we've integrated into this accelerator to accelerate the company.
Al Grego:
For a company who might be interested in joining this fifth cohort, where would they go to register?
Vithu Vijayarathnam:
So they would go to our website elevate.ca, and we have aspecific link elevate.ca/ecommercenote where we have program details and application form attached.
Al Grego:
Let's talk about the festival coming up on the 26th. Alex, what is this festival all about?
Alex Rayment:
So we're very excited. It's certainly our busy season as we're about four weeks out right now. Elevate Festival is very proudly Canada's fastest growing tech festival. We were founded and created by and for the wonderful innovation ecosystem that we've grown here in Canada and we bring together over three days innovators, tech and business leaders, investors, and of course the startup community and small business community here in the heart of downtown Toronto really for three full days of networking of world-class thought leadership and content, some great parties and lots more. It's a busy few days for us.
Al Grego:
Yeah, I was at the festival last year and it was definitely lots to do and lots to see. I mean for anyone in attendance, what can they expect to see at the festival?
Alex Rayment:
So a lot going on and we do try to keep our programming very diverse. So our attendees have different things to do over the course of their three days at festival. Of course, I would say one of the things we're best known for is our world-class content and the quality of the thought leadership we put together. And so we have a lot of attendees come to hear from those speakers and industry leaders on our stages. This year we'll be focusing on really those innovative cutting edge ideas and leaders from a range of topics like AI, gaming and eSports, FinTech, future of work, cybersecurity and a handful of others. Another piece is a big focus on networking, especially coming out of COVID, bringing the community together, having those face-to-face connections has been more important than ever. So we curate a lot of broad networking events, but also those more targeted ones.
So we can have startups meeting each other or startups meeting with investors. We have a whole lounge focused on women in tech that just seems to get bigger and bigger each year. So networking is a big piece for us and especially this year we have a big focus on talent. As we know, the tech community has faced a bit of a reckoning in the past 12 months in terms of job security and we really see it as our responsibility to bring our network together and do what we can to extend some of Canada's top employers and their job openings with our amazing network of talent.
Al Grego:
Now you mentioned thought leadership. You've had some impressive keynotes in the last couple of years, including Serena Williams last year and Michelle Obama the year before. Who can we expect to see on stage this year?
Alex Rayment:
So our headline speaker list is rolling out and growing week by week, but the folks that have been announced so far, we have Knix's CEO and founder Joanna Griffiths, the acclaimed journalist and broadcaster, Lisa LaFlamme. One of our personal favorites is Chris Hadfield astronaut, but also Elevate's co-chair of our board and a number of others, especially in the tech space, Chief Diversity Officer of Meta, Maxine Williams will be joining as well. And the one sort of new addition to our main stage, which is where many of our headliners show up this year is we've added an additional day entirely dedicated to women in tech. So really excited. Some of those names I mentioned will show up on that stage, but really focusing that important conversation that continues to happen around diversity and women in tech specifically.
Al Grego:
I've had the pleasure of seeing Chris Hadfield speak on a couple of occasions and you don't get much more motivational than him.
Alex Rayment:
It's hard to beat it when he's been to space that many times.
Al Grego:
And look out if he brings his guitar. Amazing. So what part of Toronto is this all taking place?
Alex Rayment:
We're right downtown Toronto. We're a distributed festival, which means we take place across a couple different venues, but all in a pretty small scale footprint, very much walking distance. So Meridian Hall is really our home base. That's where our main stage takes place. The St. Lawrence Center next door will be home to our industry content tracks and then all of our after hours programming will happen at the Design Exchange.
Al Grego:
You mentioned the tracks. What sorts of tracks are you guys featuring this year?
Alex Rayment:
So this year we'll have a number of industry specific content tracks and then as well a new set of tracks that we've introduced this year as our social impact themes. And so our social impact themes will cover equality, sustainability, and wellbeing. And then those industry tracks will be our Future Societies Track, Creator Summit, a scale up and startup track, Work Shift, that will focus on the future of work, Game On is our eSports and gaming track, FinTech, cybersecurity, and of course AI. So
Al Grego:
Let's bring this interview full circle back to E-commerce North for a second. I interviewed a couple of companies that came through the program last year around this time. What kind of presence can we expect this year from E-commerce North at the festival?
Alex Rayment:
At festival, we have a significant focus on startups as one of our key audiences and really excited this year to work directly with Moneris in building out that startup path through festival to make sure it's as valuable as possible. We know that startup founders are some of the busiest people and getting their time is not easy. So when we have it, we want to make the best use of it. And so this year for our E-commerce North founders and alumni as well as our broader startup network, we're expecting 2000 startups at festival and they all have access to a startup pass. And as a part of that pass that Moneris has sponsored this year, there's a number of exclusive perks and benefits that we're extending specifically to that audience. So one will be a startup lounge that those startups and also our investor audience will have access to so that they can build their own community and network.
As a part of that lounge, we'll be featuring some of our E-commerce North companies, their products and services so that they also can get that traction and that exposure at festival. Another piece connected to that is every year we run an investor zone where we're doing essentially one-on-one matchmaking between our startups and our investors to really help grow that capital opportunity for our founders. And then the third piece would be that networking and after hours opportunity, we'll have lots of parties specifically focused on startups, happy hours, coffee hours, again, facilitating the most valuable connections and opportunities that we can for that audience at festival. And then continuing into our year round programs as well.
Al Grego:
Very good. If folks want to learn more about the festival and where they can register, where would they go?
Alex Rayment:
They would go to elevatefestival.ca and we have a few final promotions on our tickets coming up over the last couple of weeks, but ultimately the sooner they buy, the better deal they'll get.
Al Grego:
I certainly can't wait for this festival and to be in attendance and hopefully to meet you both in person. Thank you Alex and Vithu for your time today.
Alex Rayment:
Thanks Al.
Vithu Vijayarathnam:
Thank you Al.
Alex Rayment:
It was great.
Speaker 6:
Good news for business owners. Moneris has partnered with Wix to launch an all-in-one e-commerce solution built to help you grow and scale online. With the new Moneris Online, you can combine Wix's website builder with Moneris' payment processing expertise to effortlessly build an online store that is optimized for business and designed to dazzle. Launch your online store today and enjoy no monthly fees for three months and eight free hours of website creation support, a savings of up to $764. To learn more, visit go.moneris.com/monerisonline.
Speaker 4:
Ask an expert.
Al Grego:
I'm joined by Shawna Miller. She's a VP of marketing and communications at MasterCard. Shawna, thank you so much for joining me today.
Shawna Miller:
I am thrilled to be here.
Al Grego:
So we're talking about Elevate today, and let's just begin with maybe a brief description of MasterCard's history with Elevate.
Shawna Miller:
Sure. MasterCard is a founding partner this year for Elevate, and we've been a sponsor of the Elevate Festival in 2019, 2021, and 2022. So a longstanding partner. And in addition, Sasha Krstic, the president of MasterCard in Canada, sits on the Elevate Founding Board. So a heavily engaged partnership overall and a longtime partnership.
Al Grego:
Okay. And so why is it important for MasterCard to be involved in this festival?
Shawna Miller:
The core part or one of the core parts of our business strategy here at MasterCard is called doing well by doing good. And that means that we see a future where people can reach their full potential. Economic growth is inclusive and this is very timely, the planet can have an opportunity to thrive. So the Elevate Festival is a real chance to unite innovators and industry leaders who are quite simply working to build a better future. And I think given that we have that shared vision, we are very excited and very proud to be back at the festival this year as a founding partner as I just said. And we are also thrilled to be presenting this year the Equality Impact Track, which is focused on advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the tax sector. So that's all the way from examining biases in artificial intelligence to creating inclusive workspaces. And we're hosting conversations with DEI at the core.
Al Grego:
Sounds really interesting. So I'm assuming MasterCard will have a large presence at the festival. Beyond the track that you're participating in, the DEI track, what else is MasterCard's role at the festival?
Shawna Miller:
From a MasterCard perspective, we're engaging in a number of different programs at the festival. So on the main stage we have Sasha Krstic, I mentioned already she's the president of MasterCard in Canada and she'll be moderating an equality themed conversation with a few special guests and they'll be discussing the current status of economic reconciliation in Canada and they'll be talking about how indigenous businesses can better adapt to technologies and what lessons can we learn from the global ecosystem that will ultimately help create an environment in which indigenous businesses and entrepreneurs can thrive. The second piece for us is MasterCard's Masterclass. So we'll be discussing how we can make a difference for entrepreneurs who face more obstacles, in particular, as I mentioned, indigenous peoples and immigrants and newcomers, and how can we do that through community partnership and engagement to build a stronger and a more inclusive and a more equitable Canada.
And finally, and this one is a really fun addition for us to the festival this year. Don't forget to stop by the MasterCard booth where we will have an incredible eSports activation and that's leveraging our partnership with Riot Games and the articulation of that is an immersive lounge with activities that include a live stream of a popular Canadian gamer playing the game, League of Legends, Digital Spin, the wheel game, a photo wall, and a little bit of cosplay for fun. So it's going to be a great experience and we're just really excited overall to be supporting our partners and the community at large at the festival.
Al Grego:
That's amazing. I'll definitely come by the booth because that sounds like a lot of fun. Are you going to be there by the way?
Shawna Miller:
I will absolutely be there and I will absolutely be at the booth learning how to game.
Al Grego:
Learning how to game. Are you going to be in-
Shawna Miller:
Learning how to game.
Al Grego:
Are you going to be in costume or something?
Shawna Miller:
Listen, Al, if you go in cosplay maybe. Maybe I'll go in cosplay.
Al Grego:
Oh boy. I'll have to break up my daughter's Pikachu costume or something.
Shawna Miller:
This is a challenge.
Al Grego:
All right, so I mean if people wanted to learn more about what MasterCard's doing at the booth or about the festival itself, where would they go?
Shawna Miller:
Elevatefestival.ca is the simplest and fastest place to go. If you're looking for information just in general about the festival's mission or how partners are engaging like MasterCard, please do visit.
Al Grego:
And you can definitely learn about all the different tracks including your DEI track.
Shawna Miller:
Exactly.
Al Grego:
Amazing. Thank you so much for your time today Shawna.
Shawna Miller:
It was my pleasure.
Speaker 4:
By the Numbers.
Al Grego:
I'm joined by Sean McCormick, he's the director of business development at Moneris. Sean, thank you once again for joining me today.
Sean McCormick:
Yeah, good to talk to you Al.
Al Grego:
So this month we're talking about an Angus Reid report that just came out. What are we talking about?
Sean McCormick:
Yeah, so a couple of years ago we established a partnership with Angus Reid first and foremost because Angus Reed is a highly respected research organization in Canada and Moneris is a highly respected consumer spending data provider here in Canada as well. So we decided to harness the horsepower of both organizations and released a report last year for the first time, which we're doing again this year that looks at the patterns of consumer spending and consumer behavior and looks at how that aligns with the sentiment around consumer behavior. And there's some really interesting correlations, not just last year, but this year in the upcoming report that we're going to be releasing in the next three to four weeks.
Al Grego:
Well, that report got a lot of eyeballs last year for sure. So what are some of the key findings that we're going to learn from this report coming up?
Sean McCormick:
Yeah, there's a couple. I'll cherry-pick a couple here just to kind of wipe your whistle little bit. So while inflation is down from its peak, remember it was up at eight, 10%.
Al Grego:
Oh yeah.
Sean McCormick:
It's down to roughly 3%. But concern about the impact on Canadians is still growing. So last year, 59% of Canadians felt stressed about their financial future. This year when we asked Canadians, do you feel stressed about your financial future, 62% said they now feel stressed. So that's about a 5% increase over last year. Almost 80% of Canadians are looking for ways to make their dollars go further. Again, an increase over sentiment last year we're just under 75%. We're still looking for deals. The interesting one there, Al is, I'm always looking for deals. I'm doing okay and I'm always looking for deals. I don't know who these 25 or 20% of people who don't need to look for deals are, but I'd love to meet them.
Al Grego:
I mean for sure. And if you're a business owner now, we said this last year too, any way you can find in sales and added value to your product, that's where you should probably go with your marketing dollars.
Sean McCormick:
Yeah, right. Another insight along those lines, Al, would be that compared to last year, more Canadians this time said they were purchasing fewer items at restaurants while the number of outings remained unchanged. So 38% of respondents said that they're buying fewer items at restaurants. That number is up from 34% last year. I mean, you think about it when you go to a restaurant, maybe you don't order that second beverage, maybe you don't order the appetizer. Maybe instead of ordering two appetizers for two people or three people, you order one. There are ways, it's like the substitution effect in a grocery store, right? You've got options as consumers. Human beings are... we're adaptable. It's what we do and people are adapting to the economic climate right now.
Al Grego:
Okay, Sean, so a lot of what you're sharing right now is painting a bit of a bleak picture for the near future. Are there any good news items we can share with our audience?
Sean McCormick:
Oh, definitely, Al, you're the eternal optimist and I appreciate you teaming me up for this one. Yeah, so as in-person events bounce back, they're coming back online, the festivals are back, concerts are back, fewer Canadians say that this is an area that they're prepared to cut back on. 67% of Canadians said they were prepared to cut back on entertainment. This year, only 60% said that they're prepared to cut back on entertainment. So despite the inflationary pressures on the psyche of Canadians and how they're spending money, fewer of them are prepared to cut back on entertainment. They're saying, "I'll figure out where to save my dollars somewhere else. I'm still going to go get entertained".
Al Grego:
So maybe we can call this the Taylor Swift Effect.
Sean McCormick:
For all the Swifties out there that subscribe to the Shop Talk podcast.
Al Grego:
Excellent. Okay, well thank you so much for your time today, Sean.
Sean McCormick:
No problem, brother.
Speaker 4:
Save the Date.
Al Grego:
I'm joined by Matt Rovet. He's a senior events producer at Moneris. Matt, thank you so much for joining me today.
Matt Rovet:
Thanks for having me, Al.
Al Grego:
Now Matt, I just spoke to Sean McCormick and I love having him on every month to talk about data and getting his insights on data. So you're coming on to talk to me about an event where maybe we can get even more of that.
Matt Rovet:
Absolutely. Sean is going to be joined by yourself for the Canadian Consumer Behavior Webinar live September 21st, 2023 at 1:00 PM.
Al Grego:
And this is a pretty popular webinar. Every time we do it, we get lots of people joining.
Matt Rovet:
Tons of people. It's a really good turnout. Canadian Consumer Behavior Webinar is something that Sean has built up. He's building a community here. It's really, really engaging data.
Al Grego:
That's right.
Matt Rovet:
And I have a few notes here. I can run that by you if you want.
Al Grego:
Yeah, for sure.
Matt Rovet:
So Sean's going to be talking about the current inflationary period and how it's altering consumer spending behavior, how changes in consumer sentiment may be impacting trends with recent survey insights from Angus Reid and how transaction data can significantly inform customer loyalty and better understand demographics. Definitely something that you want to tune into.
Al Grego:
Absolutely. And in addition to all the great data he's going to share with us, unlike our podcasts here, listeners are actually going to get a chance to ask Sean questions.
Matt Rovet:
That's correct, yes. So the webinar, there's tons of engagement tools that an attendee can interact with and one of them is the ask a question tool. So feel free to ask your questions during the live event and we'll do our best to make sure that Sean can answer them live. We will also be having this webinar recording available for on demand after September 21st.
Al Grego:
That's right. And as you said, September 21st, that's a Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern. I've included a link in the show notes for anyone who wants to register for the event. Matt, thank you so much for joining me today and looking forward to the 21st.
Matt Rovet:
Thanks for having me Al. We'll see you soon.
Al Grego:
That's all we have for this month. I hope you found this episode informative. If you haven't already, check out Moneris' other award-winning podcast, Yes, We are Open. I've already begun work on season five, but there are four full seasons to binge on right now. Here's a little teaser. Success in business doesn't come without moments of struggle, moments when you had to face your challenges head on. When you overcome these moments, which you're left with is not just success, you're also left with a story, a story of how you did it, a story to inform, inspire, and be proud of. At Yes, We are Open, it's our business to tell these stories and we're kind of good at it. Subscribe now to season four of the award-winning Yes, We are Open, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Sydney Lupton:
If you haven't already, you can subscribe to this podcast. And yes, we are open wherever you get your podcasts.
Al Grego:
If you'd like to support this show, share this podcast with your network or review us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And finally, if you have any payment related questions you'd like to submit to one of our experts, you can email us at podcast@moneris.com.
Sydney Lupton:
Join us again next month for more expert insight and data to help you grow your business.
Al Grego:
Thank you so much for co-hosting Sydney and good luck with this school year.
Sydney Lupton:
Thanks, Al. I've had a great time.
Al Grego:
On behalf of Sydney, myself, and the rest of Moneris, thank you for listening to Shop Talk. Talk again in October.