October 26, 2026
Agents ran the company.
Your Weekly for October 19 to October 25.
Two afternoons, written up.
On Thursday I went from the Accelerator Centre's open house straight to Builders Club, you can read about both below. It was a busy week! On par with Techtoberfest.
Ten Minutes with Each Mentor at the Accelerator Centre: The AC's Open House put founders in front of its mentors for four rounds of speed mentoring on Hagey Boulevard. Tricia Mumby, co-founder of Mabel's Labels, said to get SEO and social working before spending money on ads.
AI Agents and the Company OS at Builders Club: Five people showed agents doing real work on their own screens, and most of them don't write software for a living. Bahubali Shete's company, TapInPass, has no employees. On a day he spent in meetings, its agents answered 17 support and sales threads and shipped 7 kits.
Later this week: my first sit-down interview, with Steve Hanov and Noah Deskin, two Builders Club founders in the YC sprint. They are building an assistant that takes the laptop work off real estate agents, and they do most of it from inside a brokerage.
Startup of the week.
A local company that caught my eye, check out Ribbit!
As someone who loves good UX and interactive designs, this site is a 10/10. The careers page is probably my favourite.
Ribbit builds autopilots and pilotless fixed-wing planes that carry cargo to places without much of an airport. Many Northern communities have only gravel or dirt runways, and a small plane with no pilot has more room for cargo. Jeremy Wang and Carl Pigeon founded it in Waterloo, it came through Velocity, and it has contracts with Transport Canada, National Defence and the National Research Council.
Ribbit's home page: a green plane drawn on pale green, with its flight path traced behind it
The whole site is pale green, dark olive type and one line-drawn plane. As you scroll, the plane climbs to the top of the page and pulls a photo of a real Cessna up behind it.
The plane at the top of the page, with a photo of a Cessna on the runway opening up underneath it
Really nicely designed site. I'm jealous! Now on with the week:
Who's hiring.
70 roles were posted this week, against a usual 33. 49 closed. 336 are open at 62 companies, and 127 of them are in the region or remote in Canada.
BinSentry posted four roles in Kitchener: Field Operations Specialist, General Labourer, Quality Manager and IT Manager. It also wants part-time field technicians in Arkansas and Alabama.
Voltera is hiring in Waterloo: a Marketing Operations Specialist, a Senior NPI Engineer, an Applications Technician and a Production Associate.
Encircle wants a Senior Account Executive, a Senior Product Designer, a Business Development Representative, a Mobile Developer and a Senior Growth Enablement Manager.
LoopX, which builds AI safety systems for mines, is hiring a Field Integration Engineer, an Electronics Technician and a Head of Commercial.
iGUIDE wants a Digital Graphic Designer in Waterloo.
Polyalgorithm Machine Learning is hiring a Data Scientist in Waterloo.
The Accelerator Centre is hiring an Office Manager in Waterloo.
Ground News wants a Senior Mobile Engineer, remote in Canada.
New on the list.
Divotron is a robot that finds and fills fairway divots and flags early signs of turf disease. It is signing six golf clubs to a Founding Partner Program.
Estare makes engineered building frames as an alternative to steel.
Cabinovo is an infill developer and modular construction company rebuilding the near-core parts of town.
Aquam Air Water makes atmospheric water generators, machines that pull water from the air, for industrial and commercial use.
ATOMS makes requirements management software for hardware teams. It traces requirements, tests, code and changes through the build of regulated products.
limena puts a price on each accessibility barrier in a product, in lost sales, sign-ups and support calls, then sends each fix to the person who owns it.
Falcon runs web-based simulations that tell air navigation providers which air traffic control candidates will succeed before training starts.
Stratodynamics flies high-altitude missions for earth observation and monitoring in the upper atmosphere.
33 companies joined the list this week. See them all.
Money.
Hive, the Kitchener-Waterloo live event marketing platform, raised a $27 million USD Series B from Frontier Growth. Most of it was secondary capital that all but bought out Avenue Growth Partners, which led its Series A in 2023.
ConeLabs, the Kitchener startup that uses AI to map bridges and other infrastructure for defects, was bought by the US engineering firm Consor. Consor announced it on Oct 14, and terms were not shared.
What to do.
Monday, October 26
DevHouse Waterloo has its October demo night on the third floor of Builders Club at 7 pm. Five minutes each on the projector, and broken demos are welcome. Free.
Founder Institute's IP for AI Startups is online at 8:30 pm. Kathryn Vatt, a former US patent examiner, covers where founders give away ownership early.
Tuesday, October 27
Revenue Tuesdays at Builders Club is an hour on sales, positioning and pricing at 12 pm. Free.
The Tech Differently KW Satellite Party streams Jill Binder's Tech Differently conference live at Builders Club from 1 to 8 pm. Tickets are $25.
Wednesday, October 28
KWSQA's How good are those AI-generated tests of yours, really? is online at 12 pm, with Bas Dijkstra.
Catalysta's What Changes When Every Product Team Starts Building With AI is online at 4 pm, with Kevin McLean of Diligent. Free.
The weekly CivicTechWR Hacknight is at Builders Club from 6 to 8 pm. Free.
Thursday, October 29
AI Builders Waterloo runs AI x Money at Builders Club from 6 to 10 pm: live demos of agents and workflows for personal and business finance. Free.
Waterloo Public Library's Detecting AI in Media is at the Eastside Branch at 6 pm.
READING RAVE (6) is at THEMUSEUM from 7 to 9 pm. Bring your own book and read with strangers to an ambient DJ set, beside the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit. Free.
Communitech hosts AI: Opportunity, Risk and Choices Ahead, a free panel with UW math faculty, the Balsillie School and the Waterloo Region AI Coalition, at CIGI at 7 pm.
Friday, October 30
The KW Engineering Leadership Community's Roundtable: Planning for 2027 is at Holly's Cafe in Kitchener from 8 to 10 am.
Heard from the companies.
The Accelerator Centre took 30 companies into the fourth cohort of AC:RevLab, its five-month revenue accelerator.
The Accelerator Centre also took 23 startups into the third cohort of AC:Studio. Founders get non-dilutive funding and mentorship to commercialize technology aimed at the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
CHAR Technologies got final electrical approval for its Thorold Renewable Energy Facility and is firing its high temperature pyrolysis kiln this week.
Conexiom opened its order and invoice automation to developers with SDKs, a REST API and an MCP server.
Arctic Wolf was named Best Security Vendor in CRN's Best of the Channel awards.
What to read.
Oct 25–Nov 1: Books + Rave, demos and a Halloween hackathon (Jesse Rodgers, Startup Barn)
University of Waterloo installs Bill Rosehart as eighth president (robertwilliams@torstar.ca (Robert Williams), Waterloo Region Record (Startups))
On the forum.
Ascent is a candidate-first applicant tracking system that shows candidates where their application stands. It is also hiring a Software Developer.
Service Zen posted its software for service businesses.
The Weekly
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