Coffee Briefings are timely deliveries of the latest ITWC headlines, interviews, and podcasts. Today’s Coffee Briefing is delivered by IT World Canada’s editorial team!
Missed last week’s Coffee Briefing? We’ve got you covered.
What’s new this week
Google for Startups Accelerator opens applications for the Black Founders & Women Founders programs
Google Canada has announced that applications are open for the 2022 cohorts of both the Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders program and the Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders program.
Black and women entrepreneurs are still underrepresented in Canada’s tech startup ecosystem due to the lack of access to resources required to launch and progress their companies. Recent studies cited in Google Canada’s press release show that for Black founders, securing funding, financing, capital, or sales is the most significant barrier to scaling their business. In addition, women are less likely to receive venture capital or angel funding, and other forms of leverage such as trade credit or capital leasing, compared to their male counterparts.
These cohorts will help address these challenges and support Black and female entrepreneurs. Twelve technology startups from North America will be selected to participate for each accelerator, providing programming that addresses the specific needs of Black and women-led startups.
Each program is ten weeks, and will offer workshops focused on product design, customer acquisition and leadership development for founders.
Applications close for both cohorts on July 28 2022.
Avanade expands into Nova Scotia with the launch of a new engineering hub
Avanade, a Microsoft solutions provider, has expanded its presence into Atlantic Canada with the launch of the company’s fourth North American engineering hub, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This launch brings Avanade’s engineering hub count in Canada to three, with other hubs in Toronto and Vancouver. Additional locations are expected to be announced in the next few months.
Following an agreement with Nova Scotia Business Inc. (NSBI), Avanade aims to recruit over 300 professionals, from entry to senior level positions over the next two years.
The company chose Halifax after commissioning a comprehensive assessment from Everest Group in which the city ranked highly in several categories such as availability of experienced and skilled talent, an employable graduate pool in IT and engineering, and government support.
Snowflake to hire hundreds and open office in Toronto
Snowflake Inc., a cloud computing–based data warehousing company, announced it will hire a significant number of engineers across Canada to support the launch of Snowflake’s Native Application (Apps) Framework, which provides developers with a platform for building, monetizing and deploying data-intensive applications in the Data Cloud.
Snowflake has engineered the Data Cloud so organizations can have easy access to explore, share, and examine the value of their data.
Snowflake has officially committed to Canada with a real estate investment, opening its first Canadian headquarters in downtown Toronto. It built Native Apps in the Toronto engineering hub using leading Canadian engineers.
Twilio to expand into Canada’s tech scene
Twilio, a customer engagement platform that drives real-time, personalized experiences for today’s brands, has announced its official entrance into the Canadian market.
The expansion into Canada will be led by Dino Marasco, the vice president and general manager for Twilio Canada. Twilio’s Canadian team has grown exponentially over the past six months, with the company still looking to hire additional employees.
According to the company, some of Twilio’s earliest customers are from Canada, such as Shopify and Flair Airlines. Now the company is doubling down on the market with an emphasis on the public sector, healthcare and life sciences, retail, and financial services industries.
“The market opportunity in Canada is tremendous. Every major city in this country is brimming with entrepreneurship, innovation and engineering talent,” said Marasco. “We’re incredibly eager to take advantage of the massive opportunity to support Canadian businesses in building direct, long-term relationships with their customers.”
More information about roles Twilio is hiring for in Canada can be found here.
Toronto fintech startup helps Pride Toronto raise $46K during Pride Month
tiptap, a touchless payment technology company, partnered with Pride Toronto throughout the month of June and helped raise over C$46,000 that will help support Pride Toronto and its charity of choice: The Black Coalition for AIDS (Black CAP) Prevention. This is the first year that Pride Toronto and tiptap have collaborated.
tiptap was designed to address the significant losses of cash and coin donations and help charities transition to digital payments and transactions.
“We are proud to have contributed to this year’s Pride Toronto Festival, raising critical funds for it and its charity of choice, The Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention,” said Chris Greenfield, chief executive officer of tiptap. “Making it easy to give with our touchless payments solution throughout the Pride Parade and Festival was a thrill and an honour.”
Entrepreneur First receives US$158 million in additional funding, applications open for next Canadian cohort
U.K. technology talent investor Entrepreneur First (EF) has announced the company’s largest funding round to date, with US$158 million being invested by a group of founders turned investors.
With offices in London, Toronto, Paris, Berlin, Bangalore and Singapore, the organization currently employs more than 120 people around the world, with a mandate of finding and supporting the next generation of tech founders. Its 3-month long program brings together potential co-founders with a global network of founders, advisors and investors to rapidly test ideas.
“Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not,” said co-founder and CEO Matt Clifford. “The idea of taking strangers and helping them start robust and ambitious companies is no longer radical, but essential to power the next stage of innovation.”
EF said in a statement it will target a direct investment of US$100 million in hundreds of entrepreneurs and will continue building out its talent product suite. Since its launch in 2020, EF Toronto has created 25 venture backed companies; it is accepting applications for the next cohort until July 10.
Further details are available here.
Women in IT Channel award nominations open
Channel Daily News is now accepting nominations for Rising Star and Mentor of the Year awards, to be presented at the Women in the IT Channel recognition luncheon at the Art Gallery of Ontario on August 25, 2022. The deadline for submissions is July 8.
More to explore
Webex Hologram: Taking virtual meetings to a whole new level
Holograms have previously been mainly restricted to the sci-fi scene, but now that Cisco is introducing them into Webex, they are indeed on the cusp of moving into the real world.
Generation Z and Millennials are bringing change to the tech workforce
Generation Z and Millennials will make up more than half of the tech workforce by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum.
Backdoor is being installed in Microsoft’s IIS web server, warn Kaspersky researchers
Threat actors are installing a backdoor into installations of Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) Windows web server that isn’t being caught by some online file scanning services, say Kaspersky researchers.
SAP Labs Montreal – Reinventing the office
SAP recently unveiled its new SAP Labs Montréal, a research and development center offering the latest advances in terms of versatile workspace. Along with the other Canadian SAP Labs located in Vancouver, BC and Waterloo, ON, SAP Labs Canada has been designated by the company as one of its seven Global Research Hubs.
Why outsourcing must change to solve today’s IT challenges
Can outsourcing be the cure to the skills shortage plaguing many organizations? A new ITWC report, “Agility at Scale” suggests that it’s time to reinvent outsourcing models to become more agile at addressing the current problems faced by IT leaders.
During Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Global Partner Summit this week, the company announced a new partner addition that builds on the company’s existing Partner Ready program.
IBM to open Innovation Centre in Calgary, 250 new jobs to be created
Today IBM Canada announced it will open an IBM Client Innovation Centre (CIC) for Western Canada, planning to create 250 new jobs in Calgary.
Listen to the latest episode of Hashtag Trending
GlobalWafers’ new chip plant awaits government funding, Apple’s new smartwatch may be able to tell when you have a fever, and Ford Motor recalls Mach-E SUVs.
Listen to the latest episode of Cyber Security Today
This episode reports on cyber insurance rate trends, a penalty for the Wegmans grocery chain, cyber attacks on a provider of services to US governments and why an insider was fired at HackerOne
Listen to the latest episode of Hashtag Tendances (Hosted by Direction Informatique)
If you live in Quebec, or prefer to consume the latest technology news in French, our sister publication Direction Informatique has you covered. Follow them on Twitter as well.