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. The recurring theme is clear: Canada has talent, capital, technical depth, and ambition, but the ecosystem needs to move faster, take bigger risks, and stop hiding its best builders under a very polite rain jacket.

Whether you’re a Canadian founder, venture capitalist, AI operator, fintech builder, defense tech investor, or someone trying to understand why Toronto Tech Week has become such a high-energy gathering for the startup community, this episode is packed with sharp insights from leaders building at the edge of what comes next.

Boris Wertz on Early-Stage Investing in a No-Playbook AI Market (02:16)

Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures compares Toronto Tech Week to other tech gatherings and explains why today’s early-stage investing environment is unlike anything he has seen before. He discusses the faster pace of innovation, why founders need to be nearly perfect from the start, and how AI-native companies require a different mindset than traditional SaaS startups.

Lawrence Mandel on Shopify’s AI-Native Engineering Culture (07:13)

Lawrence Mandel shares how Shopify’s engineering organization is building for merchants, APIs, analytics, and the third-party ecosystem while operating with a mostly remote team. He explains how Shopify’s intern program, engineering culture, and AI-first mindset are shaping the next generation of Canadian technical talent.

Farhan Thawar on Remote Work, Bursts, and Shopify’s Meeting Armageddon (16:46)

Farhan Thawar shares a blunt view on Shopify’s remote-first culture, saying most companies should not simply copy it unless they are deeply intentional. He explains Shopify’s “bursts,” company-wide summits, hackathons, and Meeting Armageddon, where recurring meetings are deleted so teams can rebuild their calendars from first principles.

Ben Vinegar on Modem and AI Product Management (31:52)

Ben Vinegar introduces Modem as an AI product management platform focused on the non-coding work behind software development. He explains why user conversations, product feedback, and customer experience are harder to understand deterministically, and why LLMs create a new way to analyze human signals at scale.

Andrew Chau on SkipTheDishes, Neo Financial, and Taking on Canadian Banking (45:23)

Andrew Chau shares the origin story of SkipTheDishes and how that experience led him to build Neo Financial. He explains why Neo chose one of the hardest and most regulated industries in Canada, and why the big five banking oligopoly creates a massive opportunity for a better consumer banking experience.

Fahd Ananta on Opendoor, Turnarounds, and Speed (59:20)

Fahd Ananta shares how he joined Opendoor during its turnaround after reconnecting with Kaz from Shopify. He explains how a simple congratulatory message turned into a strategic document, a fast offer, and a move into one of the most closely watched public-company turnaround stories in tech.

Eliot Pence on Returning to Canada to Build Dominion Dynamics (01:04:34)

Eliot Pence shares why he is moving back to Canada after years abroad and why he believes this is a unique moment for Canadian ambition. He explains that Dominion Dynamics is being built in Canada because the customer is here and because Canada is reinvesting in defense.

About Boris Wertz

Boris Wertz is the founder of Version One Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm known for backing ambitious technology companies across emerging markets and frontier categories. A longtime investor in the Canadian and global startup ecosystem, Boris brings a clear-eyed perspective on how venture has changed in the AI era, why founders now need to move with more speed and precision than ever, and what separates truly defensible companies from short-lived AI wrappers.

Connect with Boris Wertz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwertz/

Visit the Version One website: https://versionone.vc/

About Lawrence Mandel

Lawrence Mandel is a VP of Engineering at Shopify, where he helps lead major parts of Shopify’s core technical infrastructure, including merchant-facing systems, analytics, API layers, and the third-party developer ecosystem. With more than eight years at Shopify and a team of hundreds of engineers, Lawrence has been closely involved in how one of Canada’s most important technology companies builds, hires, trains, and adapts in an AI-native world.

Connect with Lawrence Mandel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lmandel/

Visit the Shopify website: https://www.shopify.com/

About Farhan Thawar

Farhan Thawar is a senior engineering leader at Shopify and one of the most distinctive voices in Canadian tech on AI, software development, and engineering culture. Known for his practical, high-conviction thinking, Farhan has helped shape how Shopify approaches remote work, engineering velocity, AI tooling, internal systems, and company-wide habits like Meeting Armageddon and Delete Code Club. His perspective blends deep technical experience with a founder-style obsession for speed, leverage, and better systems.

Connect with Farhan Thawar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fnthawar/

Visit the Shopify website: https://www.shopify.com/

About Ben Vinegar

Ben Vinegar is the founder and CEO of Modem, an AI product management platform built to help teams understand users, product feedback, and the non-coding work behind building great software. Before starting Modem, Ben was VP of Engineering at Sentry, where he spent years working on developer tools, engineering productivity, and software observability. His work now sits at the intersection of AI, product development, user insight, and the future of agentic software workflows.

Connect with Ben Vinegar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benvinegar/

Visit the Modem website: https://modem.dev/

About Andrew Chau

Andrew Chau is the co-founder and CEO of Neo Financial, one of Canada’s most prominent fintech companies, and a co-founder of SkipTheDishes. After helping build and exit one of Canada’s breakout consumer technology companies, Andrew turned his attention to one of the hardest markets in the country: banking. Through Neo, he is focused on giving Canadians a modern alternative to legacy financial institutions, with digital-first products spanning credit cards, savings, checking, mortgages, rewards, and major brand partnerships.

Connect with Andrew Chau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-chau-1046749/

Visit the Neo Financial website: https://www.neofinancial.com/

About Fahd Ananta

Fahd Ananta is an operator and investor with experience across Shopify, Opendoor, and Roach Capital. He recently joined Opendoor during a major turnaround period, bringing with him the systems-driven operating mindset shaped by his time around Shopify’s culture of speed, abstraction, and company-building discipline. Fahd represents a new kind of Canadian tech operator: globally experienced, deeply technical, quietly intense, and focused on helping large, complex companies move faster.

Connect with Fahd Ananta on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fananta/

Visit the Opendoor website: https://www.opendoor.com/

About Eliot Pence

Eliot Pence is the founder of Dominion Dynamics, a Canadian defense technology company focused on sovereign capability, Arctic security, and dual-use technology. A former leader at Anduril, Eliot returned to Canada to build a defense company designed for speed, risk-taking, and real-world deployment. His work is centered on helping Canada rebuild ambition in national security, defense procurement, Arctic infrastructure, and the ki...