Diving Into the Future of Tech Startups

This past weekend, I had the pleasure to attend Illuminate x MidtownTO’s regional conference! Throughout this conference, I was able to gain more knowledge on how the world is evolving with the number of tech startups growing every day.

Fintech - Sal Naran

From Sal Nararan's session, I was able to grasp a deeper understanding of what Fintech is "technology making financial services easier, accessible, and efficient". In his presentation, he highlighted different aspects of Financial Technology and its industrial revolution. He later spoke about the issue of Canadian banks innovating slowly for the past 75 years and emphasized that how the industry is needed more than ever in Canada. At the very end of his presentation, Sal finished his presentation by giving a piece of advice that we as young entrepreneurs have the chance now to think big and accelerate high with our goals!

Insights to Entrepreneurship

Throughout Razor Suleman's session, I learned three main lessons:

1) Turn your passion into a business model

2) Create a product that is "better, faster, cheaper"

3) Dilution is NOT the solution

From the first lesson, the main takeaway from Razor was to always have a mindset that "money isn't the key to every success" resembling the saying "money can't buy you happiness.” He additionally emphasized creating a product that is better, faster, and cheaper all key factors to easy marketing.

Finally for Razor's last lesson "Dilution is NOT the solution" he brings up the idea that as entrepreneurs we would probably like to keep much equity as possible. He elaborates that at the end of the day, the majority of the buyout should go towards either yourself or the people you care about (e.g. family, angel investors) rather than a billionaire venture capitalist.

Case competetion

By attending Illuminate x MidtownTO's virtual conference, I was able to participate in my second case study with my friends to solve a real-life problem. For this case study, our group came up with a solution that automates invoice processing. While preparing for this case, I was able to learn more about the revolution of AI and RPA.

From this experience, I was able to gain more knowledge and confidence in striving for my future goals! As well, I learn more about how technology is slowly taking over the world within many different industries.