August did what August does - the calendar thinned out, the students wrapped up spring term, the fall term students weren’t back yet, and the rooms got a little smaller. But the month wasn’t quiet where it counted. September? More on that below.

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Build From Here: Permission and Projects

No dinners in August - S26 wrapped in July, F26 starts September 22 - but the writing didn’t stop. Two posts this month:

The Permission Layer → — Twenty years of building rooms in this ecosystem, from a borrowed meeting room in the Tatham Centre to Velocity to CDL to Builders Club. The lesson that took two decades to see: everything that worked was built without permission. The rooms were what made it work, never the mandate.

It Starts as a Project → — The case for the Fall Founder Dinner Series. Humza Ahmed sat at the first dinner in spring 2024 with a weekend project and a little revenue; a year later he’d gone through YC and raised $5M. Nobody in this series started a company — they started a project, and the project turned into a company later. The dinners exist for the gap in between.

And a milestone worth marking: The Conveyor → - the Barn VC piece from May on how US capital systematically recruits Canadian founders - crossed 500K views and kept the discussion going. The brain-drain conversation ran hot on X through August, and what happens in Waterloo is a big part of why. If you haven’t read it, start there, then the companion: Built to Support, Not to Capture →.

F26 applications close September 8. Six Tuesdays — September 22 & 29, October 20 & 27, November 17 & 24 — fifteen seats, same fifteen people every week, workshop in the afternoon and dinner at night. Confirmed so far: Ryan Gariepy (Clearpath Robotics, OTTO Motors — acquired by Rockwell Automation), Roger Kirkness (Convictional), and Michelle McBane (StandUp Ventures), with three more to be announced. Attendance at all six nights is a condition — if you can’t make the dates, this isn’t your term. If you can: apply here →

Ship For Kicks: Devin Comes Back

The biggest room of the month was August 14, when DevKick and Cognition brought Devin back for the Waterloo Ship For Kicks Night — a Friday evening build session hosted with Builders Club. Summer Nights in July, Ship For Kicks in August; the Devin crowd keeps showing up.

Earlier that same day, FounderLink ran Founders Lunch: Waterloo Edition — a midday founder meetup to round out a solid double-header Friday.

CivicTechWR Closes Season 8

Three hacknights (August 5, 12, and 19 — the 5th was the User Testing Edition) built up to the Season 8 Project Showcase on August 26. Another season of civic hacking in the books, projects demoed, and a crew that’s held its Wednesday cadence all year.

AI Builders Waterloo

A new thread worth watching: AI x Creativity ran August 27 at Builders Club with 72 signed up. The AI Builders Waterloo series is picking up steam — AI x Code follows in September.

The Weekly Drumbeat

The standing cadence held through the summer lull: Technical Wednesdays (Aug 5 & 19) and Non-Technical Wednesdays (Aug 12 & 26) at Builders Club, both KWLUG meetups (LLM Stack and PrivacySafe on the 10th, dinner at the Huether on the 24th), and Vivian Wang’s decision-making session moved to Zoom for the summer. Mind Club went golden hour - Get Snappy, a photo walk with Aggie Branczyk and Raza Naqvi on August 8 - and ELC KW ran a hike and happy hour out of Victoria Park Pavilion. DevHouse Waterloo closed the month August 31 at Builders Club with builders demoing what they shipped.

August Events

Everything on the calendar this month (recurring series listed once):

• Technical Wednesdays (Aug 5 & 19) — Builders Club

• KW: Hike & Happy Hour (Aug 5) — Victoria Park Pavilion, by ELC KW

• CivicTechWR Hacknights (Aug 5, 12 & 19) — downtown Kitchener; Aug 5 was the User Testing Edition

• Why Founders Waste Months on the Wrong Decisions (Aug 6) — Zoom, by Vivian Wang

• Get Snappy @ Mind Club: Golden Hour Photo Walk (Aug 8) — hosted by Aggie Branczyk & Raza Naqvi

• KWLUG Tech Meeting: LLM Stack, PrivacySafe (Aug 10) — UW Davis Centre Library

• Non-Technical Wednesdays (Aug 12 & 26) — Builders Club

• Founders Lunch: Waterloo Edition (Aug 14) — by FounderLink

• [devkick]: Waterloo Ship For Kicks Night with Devin (Aug 14) — by Yohann C, Builders Club & Cognition

• KWLUG Dinner Meetup (Aug 24) — Huether Hotel

• CivicTechWR Project Showcase | Season 8 (Aug 26) — by CivicTechWR

• AI x Creativity | AI Builders Waterloo (Aug 27) — Builders Club

• DevHouse Waterloo (Aug 31) — Builders Club

17 events all told. The Wednesdays held, CivicTechWR shipped a season, and the AI builders found each other twice.

Find everything on the calendar (and add your own): luma.com/waterlooevents

Waterloo Tech Week Is Going to Be Nuts

September 12–17. Six days. The Wygo board already has 40+ events on it and it’s still filling in — hackathons, rooftop mixers, robotics demo nights, quantum lab tours, VC firesides, a poker night, a golf invitational, and a liminal scavenger hunt through the UW tunnels. This is what decentralized looks like when a whole region says yes at once.

A sampling of how wide this thing goes: General Catalyst is running a one-day hackathon. Citadel is sending senior engineers for a panel at Den 1880. Garage VC and Inovia are doing a fireside on raising. IQC is opening its quantum labs. Upside Robotics, ENVGO, and Finite Robotics are demoing real machines on Gage Ave. Communitech is bringing back Startups & Beer. And the Faculty of Engineering is hosting “Canada Is The Move” with Chris Albinson and Michael Litt - a panel arguing the most exciting place to build is right here.

Builders Club is running the full stretch:

• StartupCampWaterloo (Sep 10) — the low-stakes, high-trust pitch room, one-minute pitches and votes, no judging, no prizes. Free to pitch. Kicks the week off early.

• The Top Floor: Sunset Rooftop Mixer (Sep 12) — Sip & Scale’s first Waterloo event, on our rooftop at golden hour

• pivot hacks (Sep 13) — a 12-hour adaptive hackathon where the challenge changes mid-day

• [age:AI Q3 2026] The Automation of Automation (Sep 14) — by Mind Model AI

• Why Founders Waste Months on the Wrong Decisions (Sep 14) — Vivian Wang’s session, in person this time

• GET together: Tech ethics (Sep 15) — by Gender Equity Tech WR

• Windkey AI fireside with Abraham Thomas (Sep 16) — basement to nine-figure exit to Nasdaq

• ROBOHAX: Waterloo Region Robotics Event (Sep 16)

• [devkick]: Waterloo Tech Week Devin Meetup (Sep 17) — closes the week with live agent builds and demos

The official kickoff is September 11 at Communitech. Full schedule: waterlootechweek.ca and the Wygo board.

Looking Ahead to other stuff in September

Beyond Tech Week, the month doesn’t let up. What’s on the board:

• Revenue Tuesdays (Sep 1, 15 & 29) — Builders Club — the new weekly series starts now

• Technical Wednesdays (Sep 2, 16 & 30) — Builders Club

• Non-Technical Wednesdays (Sep 9 & 23) — Builders Club

• Pancake Social at Builders Club (Sep 11)

• KWLUG Tech Meeting + Waterloo Tech Week: Pioreactor, postmarketOS (Sep 14) — UW Davis Centre Library

• KWIPS — September 2026 Edition (Sep 21) — downtown Kitchener, by Straithe

• Free Coworking Day — Work From DTK (Sep 22) — Workhaus Kitchener-Waterloo

• F26 Founder Dinners #1 & #2 (Sep 22 & 29) — Builders Club — private, applications close Sep 8

• AI x Code | AI Builders Waterloo (Sep 24) — Builders Club

Everything lands here first: luma.com/waterlooevents

One More Thing: The Waterloo Mafia

We shipped something in August. The Waterloo Mafia is a room for people building things around Waterloo, and the people who want to help them — students, alumni, and friends of the place.

The problem it solves: finding out what people are actually working on is way harder than it should be. So members keep a profile of what they’ve shipped and post updates as they go. Anyone can comment. Intros are double opt-in. It’s invite-only (but you can apply) for now - members can bring people in, and their name stays attached to who they vouched for. Everything past the door is self-serve, and what’s shared there stays there.

It’s early and we’re shipping features and tweaks daily. If you’re in, try it out and tell us what’s broken.

That was August. The quiet month is over — Tech Week lands in ten days, the dinner table is set, and F26 applications close September 8. See you in the room.

— Jesse

Hey Builders —

This week is deliberately light: a Monday-night DevHouse, the usual Revenue Tuesdays and Technical Wednesday, and a founder workshop over at the AC. That’s it — and that’s on purpose, because the week after is Waterloo Tech Week and the calendar is already packed. Use these few days to ship something before the chaos.

Featured: DevHouse Waterloo - August

Monday night, laptops open, builders in a room.

DevHouse is the one to make a trip for this week. Bring whatever you’re working on, find a spot, and build alongside other people doing the same. No agenda, no talks — just the quiet, good kind of momentum you get from being around other builders. If you’ve been grinding solo, this is your reset.

When: Monday, Aug 31 · 7:00 PM Details: luma.com/ovg3ab5m

This Week

All events can be found on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Monday — DevHouse Waterloo - August

🕐 7:00 PM · 📍 Builders Club, Kitchener Build night with other founders and makers. ⭐ This week’s featured pick — see above.

Tuesday — Expert Founder Workshop: Black Friday & Cyber Monday Playbook

🕐 10:00 AM · 📍 Accelerator Centre, 295 Hagey Blvd, Waterloo A tactical session on prepping for the biggest sales weekend of the year. Hosted over at the AC.

Tuesday — Revenue Tuesdays

🕐 12:00 PM · 📍 Builders Club, Kitchener Working session on the thing that actually keeps you alive — revenue. Runs bi-weekly, so catch it while it’s on.

Wednesday — Technical Wednesday

🕐 12:00 PM · 📍 Builders Club, Kitchener Heads-down technical work session. Alternates weekly with Non-Technical Wednesday — this week it’s the technical one.

On the Horizon

More events are being added regularly, including StartupCampWaterloo (Thu, Sep 10), the Pancake Social at Builders Club (Fri, Sep 11), and [age:AI Q3 2026] The Automation of Automation (Sun, Sep 14) — all part of the Waterloo Tech Week wave. Check the calendar, jump in where it fits, and keep building.

👉 https://luma.com/waterlooevents

We made a special Tech Week page for all the events at Builders Club! https://buildersclub.ca/waterloo-tech-week

Waterloo Mafia

Finally, I am trying something out. I want to expose more of the things you are working on to more of the people who are connected to Waterloo and can help. I would like every demo, every pitch, every side project out in the open to other Waterloo folks. For inspiration, for help finding solutions to whatever challenges you have, and to surface all the things people that live in or have lived in Waterloo are doing.

Testing it out. Need a lot of folks to join before it hits critical mass:

https://app.waterloomafia.com/

Hope you had a great summer. September is going to be fun!

— Jesse

Thanks for reading The Barn at Builders Club! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this work.

Hey Builders —

Lighter week on the calendar, but a good one. The headline is Friday’s Ship For Kicks Night with the folks from Cognition (yes, the Devin team) — a proper build-and-demo evening. Around it: the usual midweek work sessions, a hacknight, and two founder tables to sit at if you’d rather talk shop over food.

🍽️ Featured: [DevKick] Waterloo Ship For Kicks Night with Devin

Friday night — ship something, show it, and hang with the Devin crew.

DevKick teams up with Builders Club and Cognition for a night built around actually shipping. Bring the thing you’ve been meaning to finish, get it over the line alongside other builders, and swap notes with the people behind Devin. This is the one-off of the week — the kind of room where you leave with something built and a few new people to text when you’re stuck.

When: Friday, Aug 14 · 5:30 PM Details: luma.com/v560l0ya

📅 This Week

All events can be found on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Monday — KWLUG Tech Meeting: LLM Stack, PrivacySafe

🕐 7:00 PM · 📍 University of Waterloo, Davis Centre Library The Kitchener-Waterloo Linux User Group’s monthly meetup for the open-source crowd. This month: LLM stacks and PrivacySafe. Also joinable online.

Wednesday — Non-Technical Wednesday

🕐 12:00 PM · 📍 Builders Club, Kitchener The midday work session for the non-code side of building — go-to-market, ops, hiring, whatever’s on your plate. Alternates weekly with Technical Wednesday.

Wednesday — CivicTechWR Hacknight

🕐 5:30 PM · 📍 Kitchener Design and tech folks getting together to chip away at community problems. Newcomers welcome; bring a laptop.

Thursday — Founders Walk & Talk

🕐 12:00 PM · 📍 Accelerator Centre A relaxed lunchtime walk for founders to connect, recharge, and get moving. Good if you think better on your feet.

Friday — Founders Lunch: Waterloo Edition

🕐 11:30 AM · 📍 Waterloo A curated table for founders to actually connect over lunch — less networking, more real conversation about the hard parts.

Friday — [DevKick] Waterloo Ship For Kicks Night with Devin ⭐

🕐 5:30 PM · 📍 Kitchener This week’s featured event — see above. Ship something, demo it, meet the Cognition crew.

🗓️ On the Horizon

More events are being added regularly, including the KWLUG Dinner Meetup on Monday, Aug 24, the CivicTechWR Project Showcase: Season 8 on Wednesday, Aug 26, and AI x Creativity at Builders Club on Thursday, Aug 27. Check the calendar, jump in where it fits, and keep building.

👉 https://luma.com/waterlooevents

— Jesse

Thanks for reading The Barn at Builders Club! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this work.

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July was a closing-the-loop month. The S26 founder dinner series wrapped with its two final guests and two of the most clear-eyed conversations about venture money we’ve hosted. The Barn VC Summer Builder Sprint ran its full arc from kickoff to Demo Day. Claude for Everyone pulled its biggest guest list of the summer. And the students showed up in force — UW Blueprint ran three build nights and a hackathon in a single week. Socratica closed off their term at the Museum with Socratica Enchanted. Here’s the recap.

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Founder Dinners: S26 Comes to a Close

Season 26 finished the way it ran all summer in a small room, honest guests, no polish. The final two dinners closed out the S26 series:

Eldon on Startup Survival →

David Crow on How Venture Actually Works →

That’s six dinners, six guests, one summer. The best part is that over 3+ years of this running, all lessons shared and connections made are all here in Waterloo. It’s a living program built out of and supported by the community’s success that we don’t talk about enough.

F26 is already lined up, and it’s a seriously good one. Six Tuesdays this fall — September 22, September 29, October 20, October 27, November 17, and November 24 — 15 seats, same 15 people at the table every week. Ryan Gariepy (Clearpath Robotics, OTTO Motors — through to its acquisition by Rockwell Automation) speaks October 20 on building real enterprise revenue in one of the hardest categories to sell into. Roger Kirkness (Convictional) takes on default alive vs. default dead on November 17, no polish, no spin. Michelle McBane (StandUp Ventures) closes the term November 24 on how venture actually works. Three more speakers to be announced.

If you want to build a serious company, you need to be in that room. Applications close September 8 — apply for F26 →

Barn VC Summer Builder Sprint: Kickoff to Demo Day

The sprint is a model we keep coming back to: two weeks, one goal, ship something real. Kickoff ran July 15 at Builders Club, Demo Day landed July 29. In between: remote check-ins, office hours, and build sessions, with evenings left alone. Momentum over perfection, exactly as designed.

Claude for Everyone

Session 05 ran July 23 — at Builders Club this time — hosted by Artem Zhutov and Babajide Okusanya. Biggest guest list of the month — nearly 200 signed up. The AI-for-everyone thread keeps pulling people in, and the rooms keep getting bigger.

The Students Are Building

The first full week of July belonged to UW Blueprint: Design Night (July 6), Product Night (July 7), and Development Night (July 8), all out of Engineering 7 — then the Impact-A-Thon on July 11 capped the week. Four student-run events in six days, solid turnout at every one. Watch this crew.

The Weekly Drumbeat

GTM Tuesday leveled up with Sales Edition 1.0 on July 7. Around it, the standing cadence held all month — Technical and Non-Technical Wednesdays at Builders Club, four CivicTechWR Hacknights, and both KWLUG meetups. Mind Club kept people outside (sketching, walking, touching grass), Cole Van Vlack took Hard Tech up a hill and down to the Boathouse, and Summer Nights Waterloo drew a big room to Builders Club for the Devin meetup on July 16 (113+ on the list). AI + Voice closed the month July 30 at Builders Club with 116 signed up for AI Tinkerers

.

A Look Back at July Events

Everything that showed up on the calendar this month (recurring series listed once):

• Get Sketchy @ Mind Club (July 2 & 22) — Victoria Park, hosted by Aggie Branczyk

• KWLUG Tech Meeting: Elixir, Homelab Tours (July 6) — UW Davis Centre Library

• Blueprint’s Design, Product & Development Nights (July 6–8) — Engineering 7, by UW Blueprint

• GTM Tuesday — Sales Edition 1.0 (July 7) — Builders Club

• Technical Wednesdays (July 8 & 22) — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Hacknights (July 8, 15, 22 & 29) — Builders Club

• Impact-A-Thon (July 11) — Engineering 7, by UW Blueprint

• Touch Grass @ Mind Club: Victoria Park Walk (July 12) — Victoria Park

• Non-Technical Wednesdays (July 15 & 29) — Builders Club

• Barn VC Summer Builder Sprint — Kickoff (July 15) and Demo Day (July 29) — Builders Club

• Summer Nights Waterloo — Devin Meetup (July 16) — Builders Club

• Hard Tech Happy Hour Hike + Boathouse Pint (July 21) — Victoria Park, hosted by Cole Van Vlack

• Why Founders Waste Months on the Wrong Decisions (July 22) — Velocity, by Vivian Wang

• KWLUG Dinner Meetup (July 22) — Crabby Joe’s

• Waterloo | Claude for Everyone (July 23) — Builders Club

• Fresh Founders: Exit Velocity (July 25) — by Ben Su, SPUR Innovation & Sharif Virani

• DevHouse Waterloo (July 27) — Builders Club

• Voice AI // AI Tinkerers Waterloo (July 30) — Builders Club

27 events all told. The Wednesday lineup and CivicTechWR held their cadence, Blueprint added a whole student layer, and Builders Club hosted the biggest rooms of the month.

Find everything on the calendar (and add your own): luma.com/waterlooevents

Looking Ahead to August

The dinners are done until fall, but the calendar doesn’t slow down much. CivicTechWR closes out Season 8 with a project showcase, and a new series — Revenue Tuesdays — kicks off at Builders Club September 1. What’s on the board so far:

• Technical Wednesdays (Aug 5 & 19) — Builders Club

• KW: Hike & Happy Hour (Aug 5) — Victoria Park Pavilion, by ELC KW

• CivicTechWR Hacknights (Aug 5, 12 & 19) — Builders Club; Aug 5 is the User Testing Edition

• Why Founders Waste Months on the Wrong Decisions (Aug 6) — Zoom, by Vivian Wang

• Get Snappy @ Mind Club: Golden Hour Photo Walk (Aug 8) — hosted by Aggie Branczyk & Raza Naqvi

• KWLUG Tech Meeting: LLM Stack, PrivacySafe (Aug 10) — UW Davis Centre Library

• Non-Technical Wednesdays (Aug 12 & 26) — Builders Club

• [DevKick]: Waterloo Ship For Kicks Night with Devin (Aug 14) — Builders Club, hosted by DevKick & Cognition

• KWLUG Dinner Meetup (Aug 24) — Huether Hotel

• CivicTechWR Project Showcase | Season 8 (Aug 26) — Builders Club

• DevHouse Waterloo (Aug 31) — Builders Club

Everything lands here first: luma.com/waterlooevents

Mark Your Calendar: Waterloo Tech Week

The big one on the horizon: Waterloo Tech Week runs September 12–17 (kickoff September 11) — six days of decentralized, community-hosted talks, demos, panels, and meetups across the city, from the organizers behind Hack the North. Builders Club has events running the full stretch, September 12 through 17.

The one I’m most excited about: StartupCampWaterloo — Tech Week 2026, Thursday, September 17 at Builders Club. Waterloo’s low-stakes, high-trust pitch room: 1-minute pitches, votes, then 5-minute pitches with Q&A. No judging, no prizes, no investors to impress — just founders helping founders. If you’re pitching or want to pitch, it’s free. Builders Club members, free. Everyone else pays a small fee — it’s just there to make sure the people who sign up actually show up (and it buys the founders pizza).

Also on the Tech Week board so far: Velocity Pitch Competition Finals (Sept 12) and ROBOHAX, a robotics hackathon kickoff + community night at Builders Club (Sept 16). The full schedule is still filling in — watch luma.com/waterlootechweek.

That was July. Six dinners in the books, a sprint shipped, and the rooms keep filling. See you in August.

— Jesse

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Hey Builders —

Good stretch this week. DevHouse kicks it off Monday night, Wednesday stacks three things back to back — the open session, 25 teams demoing their sprint work, and hacknight — and Thursday brings AI Tinkerers back for a night on voice agents. Quiet weekend on either end, so the middle is where it’s at.

🍽️ Featured: Voice AI | AI Tinkerers Waterloo

Thursday night — agents that actually talk back.

Voice is the part of AI that’s hardest to fake. This one’s all live demos: agents that hold a conversation, answer phones, take orders, and handle support calls with no human in the loop. Speech recognition, text-to-speech, real-time voice models, telephony — people showing working systems, not slides. Doors at 6, talks at 6:30.

When: Thursday, July 30 · 6:00 PM Details: luma.com/60pmk5he

📅 This Week

All events can be found on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Monday — DevHouse Waterloo - July

🕐 7:00 PM · 📍 Builders Club Programmers, designers, and vibe coders in one room building together. Bring something to work on or something to show — WiFi, food, and a projector are covered. RSVP means show up.

Wednesday — Non-Technical Wednesday

🕐 12:00 PM · 📍 Builders Club Show up and the room sets the agenda. Usually two or three topics — pricing, marketing, product, and the human side of building. Alternates weeks with Technical Wednesday.

Wednesday — Builder Sprint Demo

🕐 1:00 PM · 📍 Builders Club About 10-12 teams demo what they built over a two-week sprint. Quick demos, honest progress, no pitch theatre — just a room full of people who actually made something.

Wednesday — CivicTechWR Hacknight

🕐 5:30 PM · 📍 Builders Club Weekly civic tech night. Breakout groups working on real local problems: eviction prevention case management, accessible housing, a mutual aid app, and municipal candidate info.

Thursday — Voice AI | AI Tinkerers Waterloo

🕐 6:00 PM · 📍 Builders Club This week’s featured pick — see above.

🗓️ On the Horizon

More events are being added regularly. Coming up: Get Snappy @ Mind Club, a golden hour photo walk on Saturday August 8 for anyone who wants an hour away from a screen; the KWLUG Tech Meeting on Monday August 10, with talks on self-hosted LLM stacks and PrivacySafe; and Revenue Tuesdays will start September (trying out one Tuesday in August) for the honest conversation about what actually grows revenue. Check the calendar, jump in where it fits, add your own events, and keep building.

👉 https://luma.com/waterlooevents

— Jesse

Thanks for reading The Barn at Builders Club! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this work.

Hey Builders,

Short week, full calendar. We’ve got a hard-tech hike to kick things off Tuesday, the usual Wednesday crush of hacknights and dinners, and on Thursday a session that’s worth clearing your afternoon for: Claude for Everyone. Come out, bring someone new, and keep building.

🍽️ Featured: Waterloo | Claude for Everyone

Thursday afternoon — a hands-on session on getting real work done with Claude, no prior AI chops required.

This one’s for the whole community, not just the AI crowd. Whether you’re wiring Claude into a product or just trying to save two hours a day, you’ll walk out with something you can actually use. It’s the kind of session where the person next to you might be a founder, a student, or someone who’s never touched an API — and that mix is the point.

Bring your questions and a real problem to work on.

When: Thursday, July 23 · 5:30 PM Details: luma.com/tai6hn3g

📅 This Week

All events can be found on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Tuesday — Hard Tech Happy Hour Hike + Boathouse Pint

🕐 6:30 PM · 📍 Victoria Park, Kitchener Trade the desk for a trail. A casual hike through Victoria Park, then a pint at the Boathouse — hard-tech talk optional, good company guaranteed.

Wednesday — Technical Wednesday

🕐 12:00 PM · 📍 Builders Club, Kitchener Recurring weekly work session. Bring what you’re building, plug in, and get heads-down alongside other builders.

Wednesday — CivicTechWR Hacknight

🕐 5:30 PM · 📍 Downtown Kitchener (address on the event page) Weekly civic-tech hacknight — open projects, open doors. Newcomers welcome, no experience needed to jump in.

Wednesday — KWLUG Dinner Meetup

🕐 7:00 PM · 📍 Crabby Joe’s, 70 King St E, Kitchener Kitchener-Waterloo Linux Users Group over dinner. Casual, friendly, and a great way to talk shop with the local open-source crowd.

Thursday — Waterloo | Claude for Everyone ⭐

🕐 5:30 PM · 📍 Downtown Kitchener (address on the event page) This week’s featured event — see above. A hands-on AI session for the whole community.

Thursday — She Talks Tech: Building Confidence as a Founder

🕐 5:00 PM · 📍 Catalyst Commons, Kitchener An evening on the founder mindset — building confidence, navigating the hard parts, and hearing from women who’ve done it. Hosted by the Accelerator Centre.

🗓️ On the Horizon

More events are being added regularly, including the Barn VC Builder Sprint Demo (Jul 29), Voice AI | AI Tinkerers Waterloo (Jul 30), and the Scale Canadian Tech Connect Mixer in September. Check the calendar, jump in where it fits, and keep building.

👉 https://luma.com/waterlooevents

— Jesse

Thanks for reading The Barn at Builders Club! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this work.

Hey Builders —

Turns out this week’s got more going on than the Barn calendar alone shows — the AC and Communitech both have good sessions in the mix. Wednesday’s the big one, but there’s something worth leaving the desk for most days. Here’s the rundown.

🍽️ Featured: Summer Nights Waterloo (Devin Meetup)

Thursday, July 16 — Summer-evening meetup for the AI-tooling crowd

A laid-back get-together for people building with Devin and the wave of AI coding tools around it. Come compare notes on what’s actually working, what’s overhyped, and what you’re shipping.

No agenda, no pitch — just builders talking shop on a summer night. Worth showing up for the conversations you can’t schedule.

When: Thursday, July 16 · 5:30 PM Details: luma.com/rg6gb3wr

📅 This Week

All events can be found on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Tuesday — Founders Walk & Talk

🕐 12:00 PM · 📍 Accelerator Centre HQ, 295 Hagey Blvd, Waterloo Step away from the desk for fresh air and easy conversation with people who get the founder journey. Low-key, no agenda.

Wednesday — AI Workshops: Use Cases, Governance & Change Management

🕐 8:30 AM · 📍 Communitech Hub Turn AI strategy into action — how to spot the right use cases, manage risk, and build governance that holds up. Runs to noon.

Wednesday — Non-Technical Wednesday

🕐 12:00 PM · 📍 Builders Club The weekly midday session for the non-technical crowd — operators, founders, marketers. Drop in and work. Recurring every Wednesday.

Wednesday — Barn VC Summer Builder Sprint

🕐 1:30 PM · 📍 Builders Club A focused afternoon sprint for founders working on something real. Bring your project and use the momentum.

Wednesday — CivicTechWR Hacknight

🕐 5:30 PM · 📍 Kitchener The long-running civic tech hacknight — bring a project or join one. Weekly.

Thursday — Summer Nights Waterloo (Devin Meetup)

🕐 5:30 PM · 📍 Kitchener Relaxed summer meetup for the Devin/AI-tooling crowd (see featured above).

🗓️ On the Horizon

More events are being added regularly — next week brings Communitech’s Tech x Women Co-working Day (Jul 20), She Talks Tech at the AC (Jul 23), a hard tech hike, KWLUG’s dinner meetup, and a Claude for Everyone session. Check the calendar, jump in where it fits, and keep building.

👉 https://luma.com/waterlooevents

— Jesse

Thanks for reading The Barn at Builders Club! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this work.

After May’s density, June settled into the summer rhythm — steady, builder-heavy, and still busy most nights of the week. The S26 founder dinners kept rolling with two of the more candid sessions of the series, Claude for Everyone drew one of the bigger crowds of the month, and the standing weeknight lineup didn’t miss a beat. Here’s the recap.

Founder Dinners: S26 Rolls Through Summer

Season 26 kept its Tuesday rhythm — midday workshop, evening dinner, a guest who’s actually built something. Two guests this month, and two of the more honest conversations we’ve hosted:

Sheldon McCormick — launched uberX in Toronto (scaled driver recruiting from 30 to 800 a week from the back of the taxi line), co-founded proptech Properly, now leads Communitech. The most candid session of the series: beware the two-miracle business, pull is the real test of fit, and there’s always a move to make even when the venture outcome is gone. Sheldon McCormick on Always Having a Move →

Devon Galloway — Vidyard co-founder, now at Garage Capital. What venture money is actually for, fund math and the power law, why most software no longer has a moat, and not capping your own ambition. Devon Galloway on What Venture Money Is Actually For →

Claude for Everyone

The June 11 session of Claude for Everyone was one of the best-attended events of the month — a packed room, hosted by Babajide Okusanya and Artem Zhutov. The AI-for-everyone thread kept pulling people in all month.

GET together: Your On-Ramp to AI

The on-ramp-to-AI series ran June 4 at Builders Club — Heather Gawel of Momentum Product Co. leading the session, Sarah-Beth Bianchi moderating. Same idea as always: a real entry point for people just getting started with AI.

GTM Tuesday + the Weekly Drumbeat

GTM Tuesday ran June 9 out of Builders Club and drew a solid room. Around it, the standing weeknight cadence held all month — Technical Wednesdays, Non-Technical Wednesdays, CivicTechWR Hacknights, and the KWLUG meetings. Add Rooftop Beers for Builders Club members on June 12 and it was a full calendar most weeks.

Join the Barn VC Summer Builder Sprint

Two weeks. One goal: ship something real.

Barn VC is running a Summer Builder Sprint out of Builders Club from July 15–29, and it’s not just for startups. Students, developers, designers, founders — anyone building something. If you’ve been sitting on an idea or trying to regain momentum on a project, this is the room.

It’s built for summer. Core sessions run 3–5 PM on weekdays, so your evenings stay yours. Optional co-working on Sundays if you want the room. And you only need to show up in person twice — the kickoff and Demo Day. Everything in between runs remote: accountability check-ins, founder talks, office hours, build sessions.

25 teams, $100 deposit you get back when you demo. The deposit is just you betting on yourself to show up.

Stop planning, start shipping. Grab a spot →

LFG.

A Look Back at June Events

Everything that showed up on the calendar this month — a genuinely full one.

• Groundwork: A 10-Day Startup Challenge (June 1) — Conestoga College, Waterloo Campus

• AI Power Hour: Set Up an AI That Knows Your Business (June 1) — City Commercial Core, by Communitech

• KWLUG Tech Meeting: BigBlueButton Setup, FOSS Tools for High Powered Rocketry (June 1) — UW Davis Centre Library

• Non-Technical Wednesday (June 3) — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Hacknight (June 3) — City Commercial Core

• GET together: Your On-Ramp to AI with Heather Gawel (June 4) — Builders Club

• GTM Tuesday (June 9) — Builders Club

• Technical Wednesday (June 10) — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Hacknight (June 10) — City Commercial Core

• Waterloo | Claude for Everyone (June 11) — City Commercial Core

• Startups & Beer (June 11) — City Commercial Core, by Communitech

• Rooftop Beers for Builders Club Members (June 12) — Builders Club

• Touch Grass @ Mind Club: Waterloo Park Walk (June 14) — Park Inn

• KWLUG Dinner Meetup (June 15) — The Prohibition Warehouse

• Poolside Chat: Founders Series (June 16) — Conestoga College, Cambridge

• Non-Technical Wednesday (June 17) — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR with Matthew Dufresne of CanadaGPT (June 17) — 165 King St W

• Launchpad.io + AWS Outcomes-as-a-Service Roadshow (June 17) — Accelerator Centre

• Mind Club: Quantum Edition (June 22) — 187 King St S, hosted by Aggie Branczyk

• Hard Tech Happy Hour: Builder’s Show and Tell (June 23) — 165 King St W

• Technical Wednesday (June 24) — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Hacknight (June 24) — City Commercial Core

• AI x Business Operations // AI Tinkerers Waterloo (June 25) — Builders Club

• DevHouse Waterloo (June 29) — 165 King St W

24 events on the calendar. CivicTechWR and the Wednesday lineup kept their steady cadence, Builders Club hosted a big chunk, and Communitech, Conestoga, and the user groups filled in the rest.

Find everything on the calendar (and add your own): luma.com/waterlooevents

Looking Ahead to July

Summer keeps building. The weekly cadence at Builders Club holds — Technical and Non-Technical Wednesdays, GTM Tuesday, CivicTech, the user groups — and the Barn VC Summer Builder Sprint runs a two-week arc from kickoff to demo. A few worth flagging:

• Get Sketchy @ Mind Club (July 2) — Victoria Park, hosted by Aggie Branczyk

• KWLUG Tech Meeting: Elixir, Homelab Tours (July 6) — UW Davis Centre Library

• GTM Tuesday — Sales Edition 1.0 (July 7) — Builders Club

• Technical Wednesday (July 8) — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Hacknight (July 8)

• Touch Grass @ Mind Club: Victoria Park Walk (July 12)

• Non-Technical Wednesday (July 15) — Builders Club

• Barn VC Summer Builder Sprint (July 15) — Builders Club

• Summer Nights Waterloo — Devin Meetup (July 16)

• Hard Tech Happy Hour Hike + Boathouse Pint (July 21) — Victoria Park

• Technical Wednesday (July 22) — Builders Club

• Waterloo | Claude for Everyone (July 23)

• Non-Technical Wednesday (July 29) — Builders Club

• Barn VC Builder Sprint Demo (July 29) — Builders Club

• Voice AI // AI Tinkerers Waterloo (July 30) — Builders Club

Everything lands here first: luma.com/waterlooevents

That was June. Thanks to everyone who showed up, shipped, and stayed late. Let’s keep going.

…and Happy Canada Day! 🇨🇦

— Jesse

We said May would be loud. It was. Akatos Arena ran two weeks straight to Demo Day, the S26 dinners brought two of the more unusual founder arcs we’ve hosted, and the events kept coming right through Toronto Tech Week. Here’s the recap.

Akatos Arena: Two Weeks, One Demo Day

The May bootcamp ran May 11–23 out of Builders Club — six evening sessions, open weekends for co-working, and a Demo Day on Saturday the 23rd, the day before Toronto Tech Week. The format was the whole point: show up, build, ship, get feedback, repeat. A $100 deposit to join, refunded if you shipped and demoed.

People shipped. Here’s a handful from Demo Day and the bootcamp demo day on the 23rd that stuck:

Diffuse — AI simulations of the conversations people actually dread: the boss, the parent, the partner. Psychology-based feedback on how you handled it. It was the throughline of the whole bootcamp — into the Laurier incubator by the 15th, 7,000 leads and a product launch by Demo Day on the 23rd.

Vivid (Baselira) — cloud browser infrastructure for AI agents. Benchmarked #1 on the Browser Arena leaderboard. The kind of unglamorous infrastructure bet that turns out to matter.

ParkSafe — real-time vehicle theft intelligence for Toronto, turning police records and community data into parking risk scores. Local, concrete, useful.

Hill Health — a smart pill box that alerts a caregiver if a dose is missed by more than three hours. Hardware that solves a real and quiet problem.

HOPE AI — an AI tutor that adapts to a student’s specific weak spots and schedule instead of teaching to the middle.

Drone Simulation — a reinforcement learning model training a drone to use the recoil from a gun as an evasion mechanism. Exactly the kind of strange, specific idea these two weeks are built to surface.

That’s six of fourteen. The rest spanned a zoning-law feasibility tool for Indian real estate, real-time lecture comprehension tracking, commercial fleet dashboards, and peer-to-peer server hosting.

Want in on the next one? Sign up to get notified as soon as it’s ready →

Founder Dinners: S26 Underway

Season 26 ran two Tuesdays in May — a midday workshop and an evening dinner with a guest who’s built something real. Two guests this month:

Adi Patel (Clearline) — a pivot-until-it-sticks founder. Moved to Waterloo on purpose for the talent and runs five days in person from day one. Adi Patel on Pivoting →

Harry Gandhi — biology to hardware to VC to robotics. He walked away from VC, relearned math and physics from scratch, built a theory of cognition, and then built the robots to test it. Harry Gandhi on Egoless Ambition →

Thanks to Osler, TD, and Communitech for making the S26 dinners happen.

Builders Club Made the Most Ambitious

BetaKit dropped its Most Ambitious 2026 list on May 25, during Toronto Tech Week — and Builders Club made it, called out as “a place for ambitious people who do things.” Good company to be in. See the list →

GET together

GET together — capped the month with a panel moderated by Sarah-Beth Bianchi. See her recap →

May Events

A snapshot of what showed up on the calendar this month. The bootcamp and dinner weeks added their own density on top of this.

• Live in the Hive: KW (May 1) — Builders Club

• AI + Breakfast in Waterloo (May 2) — Smile Tiger Coffee Roasters

• Super9s Buildathon (May 2)

• CivicTechWR Pitch Night with Eric Lombardi (May 6) — Builders Club

• PM Interview Prep Night (May 7) — Builders Club

• Akatos Arena Kickoff (May 11) — Builders Club

• Founder Dinner S26 ft. Adi Patel of Clearline (May 12) — Builders Club

• Technical Wednesday (May 13) — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Pitch Night, Season 8 (May 13) — Builders Club

• Hard Tech Hike: Waterloo Park Edition (May 13) — Park Inn, Waterloo

• Founder Dinner S26 ft. Harry (May 19) — Builders Club

• Build Your AI GTM Engine: Session 3 Demo Day (May 19) — Builders Club

• Startup Drinks KW (May 19) — Arabella Park Beer Bar

• Non-Technical Wednesday (May 20) — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Ideation Hackathon (May 20) — Builders Club

• KWLUG Dinner Meetup + LibreLocal (May 20) — Bobby O’Brien’s

• From Toolkit to Production: Vibe Coding for PMs, Pt. 2 (May 21) — Builders Club

• WRDUG May Meetup: Building a Sustainable Accessibility Practice (May 21) — Engineering 7, Waterloo

• Akatos x Builders Club: DEMO DAY (May 23) — Builders Club

• DevHouse Waterloo (May 25) — Builders Club

• Technical Wednesday + CivicTechWR Hacknight (May 27) — Builders Club

• AI + Physical World // AI Tinkerers Waterloo (May 28) — Builders Club

• Go Mental @ Mind Club (May 28) — Builders Club

Find everything on the calendar (and add your own): luma.com/waterlooevents

Looking Ahead to June

The S26 dinners run through July, so there’s more of that to come — new guests every Tuesday. The weekly drumbeat at Builders Club keeps going: Technical and Non-Technical Wednesdays, CivicTech, the user groups. A few worth flagging:

• Groundwork: A 10-Day Startup Challenge (June 1) — Conestoga College, Waterloo

• GET together: Your On-Ramp to AI with Heather Gawel (June 4) — Builders Club

• GTM Tuesday (June 9) — Builders Club

• Waterloo | Claude for Everyone (June 11)

• CivicTechWR with Matthew Dufresne of CanadaGPT (June 17)

• Mind Club: Quantum Edition (June 22) — hosted by Aggie Branczyk

• Hard Tech Happy Hour: Builder’s Show and Tell (June 23) — Builders Club

• AI x Business Operations // AI Tinkerers Waterloo (June 25) — Builders Club

• DevHouse Waterloo (June 29) — Builders Club

Everything lands here first: luma.com/waterlooevents

That was May. Thanks to everyone who showed up, shipped, and stayed late. Let’s keep going.

— Jesse

Hey Builders —

This is the closing week of Akatos Arena — Demo Day lands Saturday at the end of a week that includes GTM demos, vibe coding part two, startup drinks, and a CivicTech hackathon. A lot happening, a lot wrapping up, and a lot kicking off. Good week to show up.

🏁 Featured: Akatos x Builders Club — Demo Day

The Akatos Arena bootcamp wraps up this Saturday with Demo Day. Teams have been building all week — come see what they shipped. Hosted by Akatos House, Jesse Rodgers, and Ella P. Check the event page for location details.

When: Saturday, May 23
Details: https://luma.com/iqac8mny

📅 This Week

All events can be found on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Tuesday — Build Your AI GTM Engine: Session 3 Demo Day

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Ahmed Abdullah and Colin K close out the AI GTM Engine series with a demo day. Three sessions in — come see what participants have built.
🔗 https://luma.com/2hoy2nfc

Tuesday — Startup Drinks KW

📍 Arabella Park Beer Bar, Kitchener
The regular Startup Drinks gathering — low key, good crowd, no agenda. Just founders and builders grabbing a pint.
🔗 https://luma.com/gvlovvx1

Wednesday — Non-Technical Wednesday

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
The Wednesday gathering with a non-technical lens — conversations, ideas, and community over code.
🔗 https://luma.com/uvbtlzko

Wednesday — CivicTechWR Ideation Hackathon

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener (basement event space)
CivicTech kicks off a new season with an ideation hackathon. Come with ideas, leave with a team.
🔗 https://luma.com/bmygy389

Wednesday — KWLUG Dinner Meetup + LibreLocal

📍 Bobby O’Brien’s, Kitchener
The Linux User Group takes it to the pub for a dinner meetup and LibreLocal session. Good nerds, good food.
🔗 https://luma.com/qwv3iznn

Thursday — From Toolkit to Production: The Next Chapter of Vibe Coding for PMs

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Heather Gawel and Jesse Rodgers are back with part two — taking what you built in session one and moving it toward production. For PMs who are ready to go further.
🔗 https://luma.com/z0c5h3he

Thursday — Waterloo Region DUG May Meetup: Building a Sustainable Accessibility Practice

📍 Engineering 7 (E7), Waterloo
The Data User Group convenes at E7 for a session on building sustainable accessibility practices. Worth a spot on the calendar for anyone in data or UX.
🔗 https://luma.com/1t2qywal

Saturday — Akatos x Builders Club: DEMO DAY

See the featured section above.
🔗 https://luma.com/iqac8mny

🗓️ On the Horizon

May 25 (Mon) — DevHouse Waterloo @ Builders Club
May 27 (Wed) — Technical Wednesday + CivicTechWR Hacknight @ Builders Club
May 28 (Thu) — AI + Physical World // AI Tinkerers Waterloo + Go Mental @ Mind Club @ Builders Club

👉 https://luma.com/waterlooevents

— Jesse

Thanks for reading The Barn at Builders Club!

Subscribe now

Hey Builders —

Tonight’s the night — Akatos Arena starts at Builders Club at 7pm. If you’re in it, see you on the floor. Tomorrow the Founder Dinner Series kicks off S26 with Adi Patel of Clearline. And Wednesday is doing what Wednesday does — three events in one day. Big week.

🏟️ Featured: Akatos Arena — Starts Tonight

Akatos Arena kicks off this evening at Builders Club at 7pm. This is a hands-on program for builders who want to go from idea to execution fast — running right here at 165 King St W. This week it runs Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If you’re registered, show up ready to work.

Starts: Tonight, May 11 · 7pm
Where: Builders Club, Kitchener

📅 This Week

All events can be found on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Monday — Akatos Arena Kickoff

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
The program starts tonight at 7pm. Runs again Wednesday and Friday this week.

Tuesday — Founder Dinner Series S26

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Season 26 of the Founder Dinner Series gets underway with Adi Patel of Clearline. By application (now full) — watch for posts on future dinners.

Wednesday — Technical Wednesday

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
The weekly builder session. Come work, share what you’re building, and go deep with the regulars.
🔗 https://luma.com/v47ze3c1

Wednesday — CivicTechWR Pitch Night!

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener (basement event space)
CivicTech teams take the stage for pitch night. Come see what Season 8 crews have been cooking up.
🔗 https://luma.com/5ie3bdua

Wednesday — Hard Tech Hike: Waterloo Park Edition

📍 Park Inn, Waterloo
Cole Van Vlack moves the hard tech crowd outside again — this time through Waterloo Park. Good conversations, fresh air, good people.
🔗 https://luma.com/oengh7lu

🗓️ On the Horizon

May 20 (Wed) — Non-Technical Wednesday + CivicTechWR Ideation Hackathon @ Builders Club
May 21 (Thu) — From Toolkit to Production: The Next Chapter of Vibe Coding for PMs @ Builders Club
May 27 (Wed) — Technical Wednesday + CivicTechWR Hacknight @ Builders Club
May 28 (Thu) — AI + Physical World // AI Tinkerers Waterloo + Go Mental @ Mind Club @ Builders Club

👉 https://luma.com/waterlooevents

— Jesse

Thanks for reading The Barn at Builders Club! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this work.

Subscribe now

April was less spectacle, more groundwork. The Winter dinner series closed out. S26 filled up fast. Toronto Tech Week is shaping up and I am many will take advantage of the improved GO train schedule to get there in May. And the foundations got laid for two big things in May.

Founder Dinners: Notes from the Winter

The W26 series wrapped with Jim Murphy as the closing guest. Six dinners, seven founders, one winter. Two pieces went out reflecting on it:

Jim Murphy on Capital and Commitment →

Six Dinners, Seven Founders, One Winter →

Worth Reading: We’re Fighting Over the Wrong $750M

A piece this month on a conversation on building companies in Canada that keeps getting framed wrong — fixating on the wrong things, the wrong actors, the wrong fight.

Read it here →

Applications closing soon

The S26 Founder Dinner Series is nearly full.

Applications closed April 15. Cohort selected. Same format as W26 — six weeks, two a month over three months: later afternoon workshop and evening dinner with a guest who’s built something real. Small (~20 founders), high-trust, no performative networking. S26 runs May through July out of Builders Club in Waterloo.

A few final spots open. If you’re actively building and missed the April deadline, this is your last shot.

Apply for S26 →

Akatos Arena — the May bootcamp.

If you’re a builder in the Waterloo region and you’ve been sitting on an idea, a half-finished project, or a product that hasn’t broken through yet — this is for you.

Two weeks. May 11–23 at Builders Club. Six evening sessions, open weekends for co-working, and a Demo Day on May 23 — the day before Toronto Tech Week. The format is simple: show up, build, ship, get feedback, repeat. $100 deposit to join, refunded if you ship and demo. Barn Ventures is co-hosting and actively looking to invest in at least one project coming out of it.

Applications close May 5.

Akatos Arena →

April Events

Here’s what showed up on the calendar this month.

• Technical Wednesday — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Hacknight — Builders Club

• Leaked Claude Code + AI Coding Systems Roundtable (Online & Kitchener Hybrid) — City Commercial Core

• Non-Technical Wednesday — Builders Club

• Build with AI: Product Manager Edition — Catalyst Commons

• CivicTechWR Hacknight with Kristy Guthrie of MuniciPal AI — Builders Club

• KWLUG Tech Meeting — University of Waterloo Davis Centre

• Accountability Club — Online

• Technical Wednesday — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Hacknight — Builders Club

• Hard Tech Happy Hour: Builder Bowling Night — Splitsville Bowl

• WRDUG April Meetup — University of Waterloo

• AI for Product Managers: Vibe-Coding Your Toolkit — Builders Club

• Go Mental @ Mind Club — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Project Showcase Season 7 — Builders Club

• Hard Tech Happy Hour Hike + Boathouse Pint — Victoria Park

• Product Marketing Speed Networking — Builders Club

17 events on the calendar April!

Looking Ahead to May

May is loud.

S26 launches with its first workshop and dinner. Akatos Arena starts May 11 and runs through Demo Day on May 23 — the day before Toronto Tech Week. PM Interview Prep Night, Vibe Coding for PM, Mind Club, plus the standing weekly drumbeat at Builders Club.

A few worth noting:

• Live in the Hive: KW (May 1) — Builders Club

• AI + Breakfast in Waterloo (May 2) — Smile Tiger Coffee Roasters

• Super9s Buildathon (May 2)

• CivicTechWR Pitch Night with Eric Lombardi (May 6)

• PM Interview Prep Night (May 7)

• From Toolkit to Production: Vibe Coding for PM (May 21)

• Akatos Arena Demo Day (May 23)

Find everything: luma.com/waterlooevents

April was the bridge. May is the build.

Thanks to everyone who showed up in April. Let’s keep going.

— Jesse

Hey Builders —

Big week. We go from DevHouse Monday all the way through a buildathon Saturday — with AI walks, pancakes, and a hike with a pint somewhere in the middle. And if you want to go deeper — there’s a two-week sprint starting May 11 with your name on it.

🚀 Featured: Akatos + Builders Club Bootcamp — May 11–23

Two weeks. 50 builders. One demo day.

The Bootcamp is a structured sprint for builders who want to move faster — whether you’re starting from scratch, have a half-built prototype, or have something that’s stalled and not growing. Six evening sessions at Builders Club (Mon/Wed/Fri), open weekend co-working, and a Demo Day on May 23.

Each session runs the same way: quick standups, a short practical talk (shipping, pricing, cold outreach, growth), then the rest of the night is co-working with mentors in the room. No fluff. You build.

What you get:

• Real progress on your project inside a structure that forces shipping

• 50+ high-agency peers you’ll actually stay connected with

• Direct access to mentors

• Visibility with sponsors and investors at Demo Day

• Prizes — including World Cup tickets for the grand prize

• Your $100 back if you ship and demo

The $100 buy-in is refundable if you present on Demo Day. It’s skin in the game.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Decisions out by Wednesday, April 29.

👉 Apply now

📅 This Week

All events can be found on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Monday, Apr 27 — DevHouse Waterloo

📍 165 King St W, Kitchener
Monthly builder hangout. No agenda, no panels — just people showing what they’re working on. High signal, low pressure.
👉 luma.com/6dqx75iw

Tuesday, Apr 28 — Build Your AI GTM Engine — Session 2

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Ahmed Abdullah and Colin K are back for round two. If you missed Session 1, jump in — this one stands on its own.
👉 luma.com/nhnk5b9i

Tuesday, Apr 28 — Claude Code for Everyone 03

📍 Check event page for venue
Artem Zhutov and Babajide Okusanya are running the third session of this series. Hands-on Claude Code for builders at every level.
👉 luma.com/x6vzxc4k

Wednesday, Apr 29 — Technical Wednesday

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Weekly dev hangout. Bring what you’re building.
👉 luma.com/97y3zrar

Wednesday, Apr 29 — Hard Tech Happy Hour Hike + Boathouse Pint

📍 Victoria Park (Alternative Parking Lot), Kitchener
Cole Van Vlack takes happy hour outside. Hike the park, finish at the Boathouse. Great way to end a Wednesday.
👉 luma.com/578t049o

Wednesday, Apr 29 — KWLUG Dinner Meetup

📍 Crabby Joe’s, Kitchener
KW Linux User Group does dinner. If you know, you know.
👉 luma.com/dksfwrf6

Thursday, Apr 30 — Product Marketing Speed Networking

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Fast-format networking for the PMM crowd. Sushmita, Apurva, and Neeraja are hosting.
👉 luma.com/ubguu9hb

Friday, May 1 — Pancake Social at Builders Club

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Pancakes. Community. Friday morning. Come hang.
👉 luma.com/xo43ty6m

Friday, May 1 — Live in the Hive: Kitchener-Waterloo

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
The Nonprofit Hive brings their live event format to KW. Worth checking out if you’re in or adjacent to the nonprofit world.
👉 luma.com/d2kxu9ci

Saturday, May 2 — AI Walk in Waterloo Park

📍 Waterloo Park, entrance by Silver Lake
The AI Collective is hosting a morning walk. Good conversations, fresh air, no slides required.
👉 luma.com/wat-walk

Saturday, May 2 — AI + Breakfast in Waterloo

📍 Seven Shores, Waterloo
Follow up the walk with breakfast. Casual, community, coffee.
👉 luma.com/waterloo-breakfast

Saturday, May 2 — Super9s Buildathon

📍 Check event page for venue
Nine-hour buildathon from Honest Create x The Product Folks. Tight format, real builds, good energy.
👉 luma.com/n49s65n9

🗓️ On the Horizon

May is filling up — PM interview prep, CivicTech Pitch Night, Vibe Coding for PMs, and more Wednesdays at Builders Club. And the Bootcamp starts May 11.

👉 https://luma.com/waterlooevents

— Jesse

Thanks for reading The Barn at Builders Club!

Subscribe now

Hey Builders —

Packed week. Whether you’re figuring out your AI go-to-market, want to see what CivicTech WR has been shipping, or just need to get outside on a Wednesday — there’s something here for you. Let’s get into it.

📅 This Week (and next)

All events can be found on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Tuesday, Apr 21 — Build Your AI GTM Engine

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Ahmed Abdullah and Colin K are running a session on building your go-to-market engine with AI. If you’re a founder trying to figure out how AI fits your growth motion, this is the room.
👉 luma.com/vkvj5bnn

Tuesday, Apr 21 — AI Meetup: Making Agentic AI Enterprise-Ready

📍 Check event page for venue
Tara Khani and Majid Fekri dig into what it actually takes to deploy agentic AI inside enterprise orgs. Practical, timely, worth your evening.
👉 luma.com/wr46yhkh

Tuesday, Apr 21 — Go Mental @ Mind Club

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Aggie Branczyk hosts a mental health-focused gathering. Good for the head, good for the community.
👉 luma.com/j2kaqny0

Wednesday, Apr 22 — Non-Technical Wednesday

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Weekly hangout for founders, operators, and builders who aren’t living in a code editor. Show up, meet people, no jargon required.
👉 luma.com/u85rggjy

Wednesday, Apr 22 — CivicTech WR Project Showcase | Season 7

📍 Builders Club, 3rd floor (buzz 301 if you need the elevator)
Seven seasons in and CivicTech WR keeps delivering. Come see what local volunteers have been building for the community.
👉 luma.com/54jgqcd9

Monday, Apr 27 — DevHouse Waterloo

📍 165 King St W, Kitchener
See feature below. 👇

Wednesday, Apr 29 — Technical Wednesday

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
The weekly dev-focused hangout. Recurring, casual, bring what you’re building.
👉 luma.com/97y3zrar

Wednesday, Apr 29 — Hard Tech Happy Hour Hike + Boathouse Pint

📍 Victoria Park (Alternative Parking Lot), Kitchener
Cole Van Vlack takes happy hour outside. Hike the park, end at the Boathouse for a pint. Great way to close out a Wednesday.
👉 luma.com/578t049o

Wednesday, Apr 29 — KWLUG Dinner Meetup

📍 Crabby Joe’s Bar & Grill, Kitchener
Kitchener-Waterloo Linux User Group does dinner. If you know, you know.
👉 luma.com/dksfwrf6

Thursday, Apr 30 — Product Marketing Speed Networking

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Sushmita, Apurva, and Neeraja are hosting a fast-format networking night for the PMM crowd. Meet people, move quick.
👉 luma.com/ubguu9hb

🏠 Featured: DevHouse Waterloo — April

📅 Monday, April 27
📍 165 King St W, Kitchener

DevHouse is one of the best recurring events in the region — no agenda, no panels, just builders hanging out and showing what they’re working on. It’s the kind of event where you walk in not knowing anyone and leave with three people you want to build something with.

Monthly, low-key, high-signal. Don’t sleep on it.

👉 luma.com/6dqx75iw

🗓️ On the Horizon

More events keep getting added. Check the calendar, jump in where it fits, and keep building.

👉 https://luma.com/waterlooevents

— Jesse

Hey Builders,

This week is one of those rare ones where something’s happening almost every single day — from Arduino garage doors and Linux tinkering on Monday, to vibe-coding your own PM toolkit on Thursday. Wednesdays are stacked as always, so pace yourself. If you’ve been meaning to show up to something, this is your week.

🎳 Featured: Hard Tech Happy Hour — Builder Bowling Night

It’s not all laptops and whiteboards. This Wednesday, the Hard Tech Happy Hour crew is taking it to the lanes at Splitsville Bowl in Waterloo for a Builder Bowling Night. Whether you’re a seasoned striker or a gutter ball regular, this is a great chance to connect with hardware and deep tech folks in a low-key setting. Come for the pins, stay for the conversations.

When: Wednesday, April 16
Where: Splitsville Bowl, Waterloo
Details: https://luma.com/6u69v7h5

📅 This Week

All events can be found on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Monday — KWLUG Tech Meeting: Arduino Garage Door Opener, Vibe Coding & R

📍 University of Waterloo Davis Centre Library (DC 1568) · also online
The Kitchener-Waterloo Linux User Group kicks off the week with a hands-on session covering Arduino home automation, vibe coding, and R. You can join in person or hop on at https://webconference.kwlug.org/room/kwlug.
🔗 https://luma.com/1qj1v26t

Tuesday — Accountability Club (April–June)

📍 Online
Sarah-Beth Bianchi’s bi-weekly Accountability Club is back. This is a recurring online session for folks who want to stay on track with their goals — sign up and session invites will follow.
🔗 https://luma.com/5lebf569

Wednesday — Technical Wednesday

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
The weekly technical deep-dive at Builders Club. A regular fixture for builders who want to go deeper on what they’re working on and hear what others are shipping.
🔗 https://luma.com/f4bqg9r1

Wednesday — CivicTechWR Hacknight

📍 165 King St W, Kitchener
CivicTech Waterloo Region’s regular hacknight for people building tech for the public good. Drop in, find a project, and contribute.
🔗 https://luma.com/lfeyzfsz

Wednesday — Hard Tech Happy Hour: Builder Bowling Night

📍 Splitsville Bowl, Waterloo
See the featured section above — lace up your bowling shoes and come hang with the hard tech crowd.
🔗 https://luma.com/6u69v7h5

Wednesday — WRDUG April Meetup: Critical Dates at the University of Waterloo

📍 University of Waterloo
The Waterloo Region Data User Group convenes for their April session, focused on critical dates work happening at UW. A good one for data nerds and analysts in the region.
🔗 https://luma.com/qfguoory

Thursday — AI for Product Managers: Vibe-Coding Your Toolkit

📍 Builders Club, Kitchener
Hosted by Heather Gawel, this session is built for PMs who want to get hands-on with AI tools to build out their own workflows and toolkits. No deep coding background required — just curiosity and a willingness to experiment.
🔗 https://luma.com/u6ggsol4

🚀 On the Horizon

Go Mental @ Mind Club

📅 Tuesday, April 21
📍 Builders Club, Kitchener

Aggie Branczyk hosts this mental health-focused gathering at Builders Club. A space to talk openly, connect with others, and take care of the person behind the builder.
🔗 https://luma.com/j2kaqny0

CivicTechWR Project Showcase | Season 7

📅 Wednesday, April 22
📍 Builders Club, Kitchener

CivicTech Waterloo Region wraps up Season 7 with a full project showcase. Come see what teams have been building all season — civic tech at its best, live and in person. Enter through the outer door; a volunteer will meet you. Third floor (buzz 301 if you need the elevator).
🔗 https://luma.com/54jgqcd9

Hard Tech Happy Hour Hike + Boathouse Pint

📅 Wednesday, April 29
📍 Victoria Park (Alternative Parking Lot), Kitchener

Take the weekly hard tech hang outside — this one’s a hike through Victoria Park followed by a pint at the Boathouse. A great way to close out April.
🔗 https://luma.com/578t049o

Product Marketing Speed Networking

📅 Thursday, April 30
📍 Builders Club, Kitchener

Hosted by Sushmita Banda, Apurva Mahendra, and Neeraja Shanker — if you’re in product marketing or adjacent, this speed networking event is a fast, fun way to expand your local network.
🔗 https://luma.com/ubguu9hb

🗓️ Keep an Eye On the Calendar

More events are being added regularly — workshops, networking nights, and builder sessions of all kinds. Check the calendar, jump in where it fits, and keep building.

👉 https://luma.com/waterlooevents

— Jesse

P.S. Yeah, this will be a regular thing again. Weekly emails are back!

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March didn’t let up. The Socratica Symposium filled Centre in the Square and then The Tannery the next day: live demos, experiments, builders showing half-finished things that were more interesting than anyone’s polished deck. Last year it was a huge one day spectacle, this year was refined with an even bigger impact!

Socratica Winter 2026 Symposium

68 booth demos. 10 stage performances. Two days: Centre in the Square on the Friday evening, The Tannery the next afternoon.

The range was the thing. Hardware projects sat next to indie games, sat next to original music, sat next to serious research. A few that stuck:

Tiny-TPU — students with no prior chip design experience reverse-engineered Google’s TPU from scratch. The kind of project that makes you recalibrate what “zero experience” is allowed to mean. (They connected with Jonathan Ross from Groq as a result.)

MagicMidi — play your laptop like an instrument. The demo that inspired The Soil, Not the Gardener.

Batter Up — a pancake-flipping robot that imagines its failure modes in advance and uses them to succeed. Quietly one of the most interesting robotics demos there.

Antihypotensionator — a wearable heart monitor paired with an auto-inflating compression bladder that predicts blood pressure drops. Built by a student. Functional.

Anysense — turns an iPhone into a robot’s sensory system, running robot policies directly on the device.

Mingletron 2000 — a receipt printer that generates connection prompts between strangers. One button, one receipt, one conversation.

That’s six out of 68. The full list is at showcase26.socratica.info/demos, worth a scroll if you want to understand what this generation is actually building.

Worth Reading: The Soil, Not the Gardener

This month I wrote an open letter to the next President of the University of Waterloo, inspired by what I experienced at the Socratica Symposium.

Krish Shah showed a room full of people how to turn a MacBook into a musical instrument, not by following a tutorial, but by breaking down how the machine actually works and using it for something it was never designed to do. That moment didn’t come from a classroom. It came from curiosity that was given enough room to run.

The piece is about what makes universities actually work: not the lectures, but the place. The campus as a container for free thought. And the reminder that the institution’s job is to create the conditions, then get out of the way.

It’s also about Waterloo specifically: the alumni network, the talent, the goodwill that’s here, and the invitation to re-engage with it seriously.

Read it here →

Barn Ventures

Two things worth flagging.

The Founder Dinner Series S26 is open for applications.

Six weeks. Real founders. No performative networking. Every Tuesday: a midday workshop and an evening dinner with a guest who’s built something real. The format is intentionally small (~20 founders) so conversations stay honest and high-trust. S26 runs May through July out of Builders Club in Waterloo. Applications close April 15.

If you’re actively building and want real momentum, not another event on your calendar, this is for you.

Apply for S26 →

Barn Ventures is now writing $50k checks into very early ideas.

Before the deck. Before the traction. Before most people would pay attention. If you’re at the earliest stage of something real, we want to hear about it. Start at barnvc.com.

Akatos Showcase

Waterloo’s hacker house showcased 20 startups to a packed room! You can see the demos posted on youtube.

March Events

Here’s a snapshot of what showed up on the calendar this month. This doesn’t capture all the side events that formed around the Socratica long weekend: there was a lot of informal activity that never made it onto Luma.

• Technical Wednesdays and Non-Technical Wednesdays (recurring) — Builders Club

• KWLUG Tech Meeting: Marp, Lessons in Homelabbing — University of Waterloo Davis Centre Library

• WRDUG March Meetup: Welcome to the Dark Side — University of Waterloo

• Claude Code for Businesses — Builders Club

• World Model Survey Paper Review Pt. 2: JEPA, Dreamer, Genie, Sora, World Labs and more — AI Scholars (Zoom)

• Founder Dinner #3: Mike Kirkup on Building AI-Native Products at Breakneck Speed — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR Hacknight — Builders Club

• KWLUG Dinner — J & B Family Restaurant

• Founder Dinner #4: Brad Murray on Building Things That Last — Builders Club

• StartupCampWaterloo v2: Socratica Long Weekend Edition — Builders Club

• Fireside Chat with Clover Labs & Ripple Ventures — Waterloo

• Hiring Social ft. YC-Backed Founders: Northside Ventures x WVG — Kitchener

• Susa Ventures & KP Fellows Mixer — Waterloo

• Late Night Cafe Hang with Ripple & Pear VC — Smile Tiger Coffee Roasters

• Socratica Winter 2026 Symposium (Evening: Stage Demos) — Centre in the Square

• Socratica Winter 2026 Symposium (Afternoon: Booth Demos, 68 projects) — The Tannery

• Hard Tech Potluck Brunch — Builders Club

• FCI x LangChain: Building the Future Cities Hackathon (Hybrid)

• Founder Dinner #5: Hongwei Liu on Playing the Long Game — Builders Club

• Codescape — Engineering 7

• Data Drinks Waterloo (Inaugural) — Barley Works

• CivicTechWR Hacknight — Builders Club

• Claude Code for Everyone Waterloo — Builders Club

• Stupid Ideas Hackathon: Waterloo Edition — Builders Club

• Craft and Coach: Craft Your Tag and Master Your BRAG — Builders Club

• DevHouse Waterloo — Builders Club

29 events. Builders Club hosted a significant chunk of them. The Socratica long weekend alone brought density that’s hard to count: between the symposium, StartupCamp, the brunch, and everything that wasn’t listed anywhere, the week of March 19–22 was its own thing.

A lot of surface area, and the energy matched it: demos, real conversations, and builders showing up to work on things that matter.

Find everything on the calendar (and add your own): luma.com/waterlooevents

Looking Ahead to April

Two moments worth circling. The Leaked Claude Code + AI Coding Systems Roundtable kicks things off at Builders Club on April 1: a room of people who are actually using these tools comparing notes on what’s working. Then mid-month, AI for Product Managers: Vibe-Coding Your Toolkit and the OpenClaw Waterloo Meetup keep the applied AI energy going. Hard Tech shows up twice: a Builder Bowling Night on the 15th and a Hike + Boathouse Pint on the 29th.

Technical Wednesdays, Non-Technical Wednesdays, and CivicTech keep the weekly rhythm going, including the CivicTechWR Season 7 Project Showcase on April 22, which is always worth showing up for. S26 applications close April 15. Find everything at luma.com/waterlooevents.

Thanks to everyone who showed up in March. Let’s keep building.

— Jesse

Founder Dinners

The dinners kept doing what they do best: honest conversations with people actually in the work. This month we sat down with Mike Kirkup and Brad Murray, two people with deep roots in what it takes to build real things in this region. No pitches, just the kind of candid back-and-forth that happens when experienced builders are in the same room as the people coming up behind them. You can read more about the conversations happening at these dinners over at Build From Here.

These dinners are where a lot of the real signal lives. If you’ve been thinking about joining us for spring, now’s a good time to put your hand up. Apply for the spring dinner series here: https://tally.so/r/68KAx5

Barn Ventures

We also want to flag something that’s been quietly taking shape: Barn Ventures, an early-stage fund rooted in the same builder ecosystem you’ve been showing up to. If you’re building something and want to know more, start at barnvc.com.

Hackathon Energy

The AI Agents Waterloo Voice Hackathon packed the room where over 170 people showed up, near capacity. Teams formed, ideas got tested fast, and real work happened. That’s what a good hackathon does. Not long after, the Claude Code Meetup brought ~145 builders together to share how they’re actually integrating Claude into real coding workflows: what’s working, what isn’t, and where things are heading. Both events were less about learning in theory and more about learning by doing.

Demos, Drinks, and DevHouse

DevHouse returned and delivered with lots of demos, the usual energy of builders sharing half-finished things that are more interesting than polished decks. Startup Drinks KW drew 60+ and served its purpose: low-barrier, high-density networking for people who just want to be around other builders. Hard Tech Garage Night at AutoCate brought a smaller but focused crowd for hands-on energy outside the usual software world.

February Builder Events

Here’s a snapshot of the builder-centric activity that showed up across the community this month:

• KWLUG Tech Meeting – Home Assistant, MariaDB and ProxySQL — University of Waterloo Davis Centre Library

• Technical Wednesday — Builders Club

• age:AI Generation Beta — Builders Club

• Non-Technical Wednesday — Builders Club

• Difficult Conversations with Anne Bermingham — Planitar

• Pancake Social at Builders Club — Builders Club

• AI Agents Waterloo Voice Hackathon — Builders Club

• KWLUG Dinner Meetup — Yo Sushi

• Hard Tech Garage Night — AutoCate

• Learn & Connect: Building an AI-Native Go-To-Market Strategy — Communitech

• Hub n’ Grub: How to Podcast — Communitech

• Black Excellence Pitch Night — Community Event

• AC:Studio Innovation Showcase — Accelerator Centre

• Purpose as the Triple Bottom Line: SDG Lens for Value Creation — Waterloo Region Small Business Centre

• Marketing Peer Group Kickoff — Communitech

• ShipTech Forum — Vanguard Canada

• Defence Innovation: NATO DIANA, Ukraine and Opportunities for Waterloo SMEs — Communitech

• Close More Deals, Faster, With Less Friction — Waterloo Region Small Business Centre

• Software Engineering Peer Group Kickoff — Communitech

• AI Evenings: Theoretical Potential vs Engineering Reality — Communitech

• Technical Wednesday — Builders Club

• Claude Code Meetup Waterloo — Builders Club

• DevHouse Waterloo — Builders Club

• Non-Technical Wednesday — Builders Club

• Startup Drinks KW — Arabella Park Beer Bar

• GET Together: StrikeUP Watch Party — Builders Club

• AI Agents Waterloo OpenClaw Meetup — Builders Club

29 events. 13 at Builders Club with over 750 attendees across the month.

A lot of surface area, but still builder-heavy: demos, discussions, and people showing up to work on real problems.

Looking Ahead to March

Two moments worth circling. The Socratica Winter 2026 Symposium runs March 21–22, spanning an evening of stage demos at Centre in the Square followed by a full afternoon of booth demos at The Tannery. It’s the closest thing the region has to a builder science fair. Past editions have had self-driving go-karts, indie games, experimental hardware, and more. Worth showing up for.

Beyond that, March stays anchored by what’s been working: Technical Wednesdays, Non-Technical Wednesdays, and the usual community touchpoints across the ecosystem. No hype. Just staying in motion and building in proximity.

Find everything on the calendar (and you are free to add your own events!): https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Thanks to everyone who showed up in February. Let’s keep building.

-Jesse

January was a strong start to the year. Lots of people showed up, shared what they’re working on, and kept things moving without turning it into noise. A few highlights and then a look ahead.

Founder Dinners

January’s dinners continued to do what they do best: create space for honest conversation among people actually building things. No pitches, no panels, just founders and builders comparing notes on what’s working, what’s stuck, and what they’re learning along the way.

We also put out a series of posts spotlighting some of the founders and operators who’ve joined us. Worth a look if you missed them, Matt talks about robots in agriculture, and Michael + Humza share perspectives on building products today versus the last 15 years. They give a good sense of the people in the room and the kinds of conversations that happen when builders sit down together.

These dinners keep being where the real conversations happen, and we’ll keep iterating on them as the year goes on. Apply for spring here.

Hackathon Energy

We also saw strong momentum heading into hands-on building with UmmahHacks 26. Hackathons remain one of the best forcing functions for progress. Teams form quickly, ideas get tested, and real work happens fast. It’s a good reminder that shipping beats planning every time.

January Builder Events

Here’s a snapshot of the builder-centric activity that showed up across the community this month:

• KWLUG Tech Meeting — University of Waterloo, Davis Centre Library

• Technical Wednesday — Builders Club

• Non-Technical Wednesday — Builders Club

• CivicTechWR (Guest Speaker: Rory White, Civic Searchlight) — Builders Club

• StartupCampWaterloo v2 — Builders Club

• Akatos Winter ’26 Kickoff — Builders Club

• Learn & Connect: Turning Startup Ideas into Reality — Communitech

• Velocity Innovation Open House Mixer — Velocity Incubator

• She Talks Tech: Implementing AI with Purpose — Accelerator Centre

• Prompt Engineering for Outreach — Virtual

• 2nd Annual Battle of the Bands: Tech Edition — Maxwell’s Concerts & Events

• GET together with Toast: Women Doing Cool $h!t — Builders Club

• Build Canada Waterloo Chapter Kickoff — Waterloo Region

• KWLUG Dinner Meetup — Crabby Joe’s Bar & Grill

• Learn & Connect: A Founder’s Guide to Early Hiring — Communitech

• UmmahHacks 26 — Builders Club

• Australia Day Tim Tam Slam Afternoon Tea Party — Builders Club

• DevHouse Waterloo — Builders Club

• AI Tinkerers: Waterloo — Builders Club

A lot of surface area, but still very builder-heavy with demos, discussions, and people showing up to work on real problems.

Looking Ahead to February

February keeps the steady builder rhythm going, with two moments worth circling.

The AI Agents Waterloo Voice Hackathon brings hands-on energy back into the room with a chance to ship, experiment, and collaborate around AI agents and voice interfaces. It’s not a talk. It’s a forcing function.

We’re also looking forward to the Claude Code Meetup at Builders Club, where builders are sharing how they’re actually using Claude in real coding workflows. What’s working, what isn’t, and how it’s changing how they build.

Alongside those, February stays anchored by Technical Wednesdays, Non-Technical Wednesdays, and CivicTech, plus familiar community touchpoints like KWLUG and GET together. No hype. Just staying in motion and building in proximity.

You can find them all on the calendar: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Thanks to everyone who showed up in January. Let’s keep building.

-Jesse

Hey Builders —

Kicking of 2026 with a StartupCamp on Wednesday — you don’t need to have a pitch ready to attend but it will be more fun if you do. Last time, 22 pitches were made. This time, I expect there are 12 and time to dig deeper into 5 of them.

Founder Dinner Series — Applications Open Until Thursday

Applications are now open for the next Founder Dinner Series — small, curated dinners for founders and senior operators building real things.

No panels. No posturing. Just honest conversations with people who’ve been there.

Featured speakers include:

• Matt Stevens — Finite Robotics

• Humza Ahmed — Automax.ai (YC)

• Michael Litt — Garage VC, Vidyard

• Mike Kirkup — Elderella

• Brad Murray — Beeper (acquired by Automattic)

• Hongwei Liu — Mappedin

• Jim Murphy — Elora Brewing Company, Boltmade (acquired by Shopify)

Deadline is Thursday Jan 8th. Details and the application are here: https://tally.so/r/3qx4Zd

This Week

All these events can be found on our calendar here: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

Monday — KWLUG Tech Meeting: Fedora Atomic Linux, Incus
🕖 7:00 PM · University of Waterloo, Davis Centre Library
A deep technical session hosted by the Kitchener-Waterloo Linux User Group.

Wednesday — Technical Wednesday
🕛 12:00 PM · Builders Club
Midday conversations and builder collisions. Bring a problem, a demo, or just curiosity.

Wednesday — StartupCamp Waterloo v2
🕕 6:00 PM · Builders Club
Pitch night energy with real community feedback. Early ideas welcome. Builders encouraged.

Wednesday — CivicTechWR
🕕 6:00 PM · Builders Club
Weekly meetups focused on civic problems, public-interest tech, and people who want to build practical solutions together. (Runs every Wednesday.)

Featured: Upcoming Hackathons

UmmahHacks 26
🗓️ Saturday, Jan 24 · 🕘 9:00 AM
📍 Builders Club
A full-day hackathon bringing together builders, designers, and problem-solvers from across the community.

AI Agents Waterloo — Voice Hackathon
🗓️ Friday, Feb 13 · 🕕 6:00 PM
📍 Builders Club
An applied AI hackathon focused on voice agents and hands-on experimentation.

More events are being added regularly, including AI + Builders, DevHouse, and more.
Check the calendar, jump in where it fits, and keep building.

Be sure to follow along here: https://luma.com/waterlooevents

— Jesse

December always flies by — and this year was no exception.

As a month of reflection, December is also a good moment to look back further. I revisited our first monthly update from two years ago, and then the one in December from 2024, the growth is hard to miss. Over the past year alone, more than 1,400 people (unique emails) have attended events across the calendar. At this point, a traditional highlight reel doesn’t really work anymore, there’s simply too much happening.

For me, two moments this year signaled that Waterloo is awake again: The Socratica Symposium in March, and Waterloo Tech Week in September.

Both were student-led. Both were full of the intensity and curiosity Waterloo is known for. That energy matters. What also feeds that energy is depth of the experienced builders in the community that are there between the big moments. We saw the experience on display in October at the Techstars and Build Canada events.

The constant mixing of new student energy and proven experience building things is what makes Waterloo special.

Founders - you don’t want to miss this

Founder Dinner Series - Winter 2026
This winter, founders and investors actively building in Waterloo are joining us at the table for a small, focused dinner series.

Who’s joining us:

• Matt Stevens - Finite Robotics

• Humza Ahmed - Automax.ai (YC F25)

• Michael Litt - Garage VC/Vidyard (YC)

• Mike Kirkup - Elderella

• Brad Murray - Beeper (acquired by Automattic)

• Hongwei Liu - mappedin

• Jim Murphy - Elora Brewing Company, Boltmade (acquired by Shopify)

👉 Apply for the Winter 2026 Founder Dinner Series

Six Tuesday dinners. Small groups. Honest conversations with people who’ve actually built. Thanks to the support from Osler and TD Innovation Banking.

If you’re actively building and want momentum through the winter, this series is worth a close look.

Also, we are kicking off the winter with a Startupcamp… great place to try out that pitch and have some fun! You don’t need to have a pitch ready to attend.

Coming up in January

Expect more to be added to the calendar, so far we have:

• KWLUG Tech Meeting – Fedora Atomic Linux (+ 1 more, maybe) — Jan 5, 2026 — University of Waterloo Davis Centre Library

• Technical Wednesday — Jan 7, 2026 — Builders Club

• StartupCampWaterloo v2 — Jan 7, 2026 — Builders Club

• Accountability Club – January through March — Jan 13, 2026 — Online

• Non-Technical Wednesday — Jan 14, 2026 — Builders Club

• KWLUG Dinner Meetup — Jan 19, 2026 — Crabby Joe’s Bar & Grill

• GET together with Toast: Women Doing Cool $h!t (KW Edition) — Jan 21, 2026 — Builders Club

• DevHouse Waterloo – January — Jan 26, 2026 — Builders Club

• AI Tinkerers — Jan 28, 2026 — Builders Club

What happened in December

Akatos Fall Showcase

Akatos hosted their Fall Showcase with 16 builders pitching live, drawing a strong crowd and solid community energy. Always good to see builders putting work in the open and getting real reps.

👉 Read more and see photos from the event:

Catalyst Commons Holiday Block Party

Catalyst Commons hosted their biggest Holiday Block Party yet, with 35 member spaces opening their doors and roughly 300 people coming through. A great example of companies showing their work, celebrating community, and giving back — with over $7K raised for the Humane Society of KW & Stratford Perth.

👉 See photos and highlights from the event:

All the events for December:

• KWLUG Tech Meeting – Party Planning, Cycling Guide — Dec 1, 2025 — University of Waterloo Davis Centre Library

• Akatos Fall Showcase — Dec 2, 2025 — Builders Club

• ⁂ F25 End of Term: Socratica Express — Dec 2, 2025 — THEMUSEUM

• Technical Wednesday — Dec 3, 2025 — Builders Club

• Catalyst Commons Block Party — Dec 4, 2025 — Catalyst Commons

• ELC Happy Hour — Dec 5, 2025 — 57 Jubilee Dr, Victoria Park (Boathouse)

• Craft and Coach: Craft Your Tag and Master Your BRAG — Dec 7, 2025 — Builders Club

• Non-Technical Wednesday — Dec 10, 2025 — Builders Club

• The Waterloo Thesis: A Builders Conversation in San Francisco with Barn Ventures — Dec 10, 2025 — Schroeder’s (San Francisco)

• AI Tinkerers | Waterloo — Dec 15, 2025 — Builders Club

• Technical Wednesday — Dec 17, 2025 — Builders Club

• KWLUG Dinner Meetup — Dec 17, 2025 — J & B Family Restaurant

• Holiday Pancake Social at Builders Club — Dec 19, 2025 — Builders Club

• Game Plan 2026: Architect Your Year & AI Match Making with Like-Minded Visionaries — Dec 28, 2025 — Zoom

Looking ahead to January

January brings us back into a steady rhythm: Technical and Non-Technical Wednesdays, Civic Tech, DevHouse, and the start of the Winter Founder Dinner Series.

If December was about reflection, January is about momentum. Fewer distractions. More shipping. More time with people who are serious about the work.

We’ll keep the calendar full, the rooms warm, and the conversations honest.

Interested in joining the Winter Founder Dinner Series?

Apply here → https://tally.so/r/3qx4Zd

P.S.: If you are missed the news on the Groq exist, there is a Waterloo connection. Go see how it connects back to the Waterloo mafia.