On the TechTO stage ×3
SF Has a 6-Month Innovation Lag. Here's How Canadian Founders Can Use It. | TTW 2026
Watch on YouTube ↗
CTO.ai and Commonwealth Ventures
Watch on YouTube ↗
They Went to San Francisco. Here's What Actually Changed. | TTW 2026
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on the TechTO stage in 2021. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Chris ↗
In their words
Silicon Valley's speed advantage is drastically increasing. Post-AI, in the last 18 months, the speed of progress in the average startup there has exploded in terms of how fast it's going.
The old advice that you have all been taught, especially for building companies in Canada, was keep your head down and build. That is now bad advice.
Twitter is a lagging indicator of what's happening in Silicon Valley. What happens is in coffee shops and meet-ups and things like that.
More from TechTO ×2
Around the web ×3
Quick answers
What is Chris Neumann known for?
Founding four companies — DataHero, Commonwealth Ventures, The Engineer & The Designer, and Project Stag — and then investing. DataHero was acquired by Cloudability in 2016.
Is Chris Neumann still at Panache Ventures?
No. He left at the end of 2024 and no longer appears on the firm's team page. Many listings still describe him as a general partner there; they are out of date.
What is his argument for Canadian founders?
That San Francisco is running a six-to-nine-month innovation lag on the rest of the world and nobody there is sharing what they learn. He told Toronto Tech Week 2026 that going to benchmark — not to fundraise — is the most underused advantage Canadian founders have.