A startup comes into the world with a blank slate. It inherits its founders’ vision and experience, but is fundamentally naive. This is a feature, not a bug: every great startup is a disagreement with the status quo, one that requires a kind of “child’s mind” to see things not as they are, but as they should be.
McGill professor Henry Mintzberg wrote about this in Crafting Strategy: strategy emerges from a combination of what you set out to build, and what happens along the way. Like a child, a business is a product not only of its nature, but of how it’s raised. Nature and nurture give rise to a wholly original creature.
What begins as wide-eyed surprise becomes pattern recognition. With age comes insight, a sense of what you are and the dent you want to put in the world. The recklessness of a toddler, the impetuousness of a grade schooler, even the heartbreak of a teen, make us the adults we are.
And like a child, a business comes of age.
Startupfest turns sixteen in 2026. Sixteen isn’t just a cultural milestone: it’s the moment society begins to treat us as adults. It’s when we create our identity, strike out on our own, and accept our responsibility. It’s a time of transformation from raw imagination to determined ambition. Constraints become real, confidence builds, and we turn possibility into capability. People start to take us seriously.
That’s why, for our sixteenth year, Startupfest’s theme is Coming of Age.
At the outset, every startup is young, regardless of its founders’ age. Its business models are wrong; its products are flawed; it’s selling the wrong things to the wrong people for the wrong prices. But gradually, inexorably, it learns. What everyone dismissed at first is now obvious. Each mistake reveals an opportunity, and eventually, the business can’t be ignored.
The startup creates a culture, from its public brand identity to the beliefs and behaviors that unite its team. Disparate ideas become a coherent whole, and the company leans into what makes it weird and unique. The side hustle becomes all-consuming, and the business is now responsible for others. That means showing up consistently, with integrity. People are depending on you.
We give each generation a name: the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha. While everyone’s unique, we’re also shaped by the culture and events of our time, and our common understanding of the world.
Startups have generations, too. Client-server computing gave way to the web. Software went from licenses to subscriptions. The Internet. Streaming. Cloud computing. Big Data. AI. Every startup belongs to a technological generation, with new realities that can make the incumbents obsolete and give the new arrivals their unfair advantage.
Startupfest has grown with its community, too. From our early years as a meetup, to a fledgling conference, to an annual gathering that reunites thousands of founders, entrepreneurs, and investors, we’ve changed. Entrepreneurs who first took our stage with nervous steps are now leading scale-stage companies that span the globe.
As part of this theme, we’re weaving a timeline throughout our content, continuing our legacy of connecting aspiring entrepreneurs to the people who can help them grow. Investors who see early potential. Experts whose hard-won wisdom comes from decades on the frontline of technology. And of course, our unmatched knack for blending the serendipity of chance encounters at a festival with the practical insight and in-depth conversation of Canada’s original startup conference carries on.
This July, come of age with us. Whether you’re taking your first steps, rebelling against the world, or well on your way to scale, Startupfest is the can’t-miss startup event for Canada and beyond.