Toronto is known for many things: its scrappy sports teams and questionable mayors, its sprawling film studios and robust financial sector. But there’s another side to the city – one that’s beginning to see some global recognition. Toronto is also, as the New York Times aptly puts it, “A quietly booming tech town.”
It’s not so far-fetched when you look at the hard facts. Toronto is the perfect storm of favourable circumstances for a tech revolution, and it’s home to some of the world’s leading disruptors and thought leaders.
In this article, let’s take a deeper dive into the Big Smoke’s burgeoning tech scene: how did it come about, and who are the central players?
Why Toronto? Why Now?
As with most burgeoning intellectual and creative scenes, Toronto’s tech scene owes its success to a confluence of favourable circumstances and inherent civic characteristics. You can point to the following as reasons for Toronto’s ascending star in the tech world:
- Open Immigration Policies: Toronto is among the most diverse cities in the world, attracting intellectual talent from all corners of the globe. While other countries and cities experience “brain drains,” Toronto is the benefactor of those drains, the meeting point for forward-thinking tech workers.
- Universities: UofT, Ryerson (read: Toronto Metropolitan), and Waterloo are renowned for their technology programs, receiving and generating talented tech thinkers.
- Centrality: Toronto is in a uniquely advantageous geographical and political position, near big tech cities like New York and Chicago, and the largest city in Canada.
- Big Tech Offices: Call it “precedent” or “leadership.” As more big tech companies (like Google, Apple and Shopify) opened offices in Toronto, the city carved out a name for itself in tech.
- The “Something in the Water” Effect: Lastly, you can’t discount that there might just be something in the water, some magic quality that makes residents particularly adept at all things digital and disruptive.
What’s Happening? A Short Guide to Disruptors and Thought Leaders
As an overview of tech disruption in Toronto, let’s focus on three industries: real estate, healthcare and education.
In real estate, you have Regan McGee – disruptor, thought leader and founder of Nobul, a real estate digital marketplace. McGee’s Nobul transformed the industry by giving power to consumers for the first time ever, leveraging a proptech platform and AI-powered algorithm to match agents to buyers/sellers. As McGee puts it to Toronto Life, “We’ve massively simplified the whole process… People think buying and selling real estate is complicated, but that’s a way for agents to justify their fees.”
In healthcare, Toronto is home to Kamran Khan, founder of BlueDot. The company made headlines recently as the first company in the world to identify the emerging risk from COVID-19 through advanced data analytics. His data-driven approach is challenging the traditional “top down policy process of governments” in dealing with crises.
Finally, Mike Silagadze and Mohsen Shahini are shaking up education with their company, Top Hat. The pair founded Top Hat to increase student engagement through dynamic, interactive software. The mission statement was simple: provide a better alternative to outmoded, rudimentary curriculum planning tools in an effort to reach a new generation of learners.
Toronto may never reach the size or exulted status of Silicon Valley, but its thinkers, innovators and tech-friendly environment are every bit as first-rate. It will be exciting to see what the city’s disruptors and thought leaders dream up next.
