My First and Last Collision Conf
This year, I attended Collision Conf in Toronto, and I’m glad I did since it’s the last year the conference will be held there. I’ve also attended its sister conferences before: Web Summit in Lisbon and Rise Conf in Hong Kong. Generally, I find these events enjoyable. I go to these types of conferences to meet interesting people, see what the startup community is up to, and discover the next hype.
Every time I visit these conferences, there’s always a new set of buzzwords: 5G, crypto, web3, metaverse, augmented reality… Hypes come and go; no one is talking about Web3 now, and there are no more crypto bros at these conferences. However, this time, AI is the new hype. I met an impressive number of AI startup founders, including a 15-year-old. Many startups now have domains ending in .ai, and every company claims to be doing something related to AI. While everyone agrees that AI is a great innovation (I used AI to write this blog), and it is definitely more useful than web3, I think it’s overhyped. (I experienced FOMO for not investing in NVIDIA stocks but, knowing my luck and my “golden finger,” as soon as I bought some stocks, they usually trended downward afterward.)
Startup founders are always interesting to talk to, though some can be VERY egotistical. Some founders saw from my name tag that I am a developer and seemed to look down on me, only wanting to talk to investors. I haven’t felt this much ego in a room for a long time. I attend these conferences for fun and to learn, but some startup founders are solely focused on seeking investment. It is definitely a skill to get people to put real money into your ideas. However, this is not the end. Isn’t it said that 90% of startups fail over time? Most founders believe they are the exceptions, the 10%.
Despite this, I enjoy stopping at the startup booths to engage with the founders and learn more about their ventures. Some startup ideas do seem useful. Some startup founders are definitely very charismatic. On the other hand, some startup ideas seem pretty bad, and I don’t see how they could be successful, no matter how much time and money is wasted. I met an older gentleman who created an app for text-to-image generation, something already offered for free by numerous apps. The UI and UX of his app were just bad. When I asked about his seed investment, he said it was his own money. When I inquired about existing user numbers, he seemed offended and rudely told me it was none of my business and asked me to leave. I wasn’t offended by this behavior but felt sorry that he might have wasted his retirement savings on a useless product.
Another thing I sensed from this conference is that the macroeconomy is not doing so well. There were talks from venture capitalists: they are not investing as much, they are looking for profitability even at the seed round, and it is not all about growth. The “free money” era has ended.
Additionally, the tech IPO era seems to be on pause: Reddit and Instacart IPOs are on hold. Some say that IPOs will unlikely happen before the US election due to the market volatility it will bring.
I also met a couple of people who are looking for jobs and seeking to network at this conference. From what I know, the job market is not friendly right now. I met a couple of Waterloo students. Waterloo’s CS program is well-known, but it is even hard for them to find a job.
I don’t think Canada lacks AI or programming talent, but I believe Canada has already lost in the AI arms race. It is well established that the US and China are leading in the AI space. China has a lot of AI talent and massive data to train on that US companies can’t access. However, which country is in third place? It’s probably not Canada. I don’t want to get political, but in my opinion, Canada is not an innovation-friendly place. The only successful startup that made it big is Shopify. It’s the only viable tech stock on TSX (Toronto Stock Exchange), nothing else.
No amount of SR&ED is going to fix this. (SR&ED stands for Scientific Research and Experimental Development, a tax incentive Canada provides to businesses to conduct research and development. However, what I see is that businesses pay a great amount of consulting fees to third-party companies to create and file SR&ED reports to get these tax incentives.)
This is my take on the Collision conference. It was indeed fun for me. With around 37,000 people attending, it was very well organized. My takeaway is that I am going to learn about AI so I can sound bougie to other people.
