Join us for a thought-provoking panel discussion as we explore the intersection of technology and Indigenous leadership. Our guest host, Ryan St. Germaine (Founder, Indigenous Tech Circle; Executive in Residence, Raven Indigenous Capital Partners), leads a conversation with Jeff Ward (Founder & CEO of Animikii), and Denis Carignan (President & Co-Founder of PLATO), to discuss the role of mentorship, community support, and capacity building in fostering Indigenous-led tech companies. Discover how these leaders have navigated pathways to tech and entrepreneurship, leveraging their strengths and passions to create meaningful change.
Transcript:
Ryan St. Germaine (00:00):
Hello everybody. Welcome to PLATO Panel Talks. My name is Ryan St. Germaine and I’m a mixed settler and Red River Métis heritage. Professionally, I’m the host and founder of Tech Circle, an Executive in Residence with Raven Indigenous Capital Partners and new ventures. I’m also a four-time startup founder. PLATO has invited me, as a guest, today to host and lead a panel discussion this month. And it’s on a topic that I know that me and my panelists are quite passionate about – technology! More specifically, building capacity with Indigenous-led tech companies and creating more pathways to tech for Indigenous peoples. Whether you want to work in the community, you want to work in big tech or found companies, I believe, and I would assume that others here believe, that you should be able to do whatever you want. We’re here to talk about how you can get there.
So, I’m very excited to be joined by Denis Carignan from PLATO and Jeff Ward from Animikii. I’ve had the privilege of founding Indigenous Tech Circle with our guests, and I’m thrilled to start the conversation. From humble beginnings. Tech Circle is now a 300-plus community for Indigenous founders and changemakers. So, we’ll tell you how to get in touch with us at the end of the session here. To kick off, I’d like to hand it over to each of our panelists to say hello and introduce himself. Jeff, maybe I’ll get you to go first and welcome!
Jeff Ward (01:14):
Aaniin, Boozhoo! Jeff Ward Ndizhnikaaz. Makwa Ndodem. Animikii Ghiwizens Ndigoo. Treaty 1 Ndoonjiba and I’m connecting to you today from Lkwungen Territory, colonially known as Victoria, BC. What I said is, hello, my name is Jeff Ward. I am originally from Treaty One in Manitoba. I’m a member of Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation. I’m also mixed heritage, so Ojibwe and Métis on my dad’s side and English and Ukrainian on my mom’s side. I currently live in Victoria, BC where Animikii is headquartered. So, I’m the founder and CEO at Animikii Indigenous Technology. I’m also the Vice Chair at APTN [The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network] and yeah, also here in circle with part of the Indigenous Tech Circle Board as one of the founding board members. So nice to be here. Thanks for the invitation to have a conversation today.
Denis Carignan (02:08):
Thank you, Jeff, and thank you, Ryan, for hosting this. My name is Denis Carignan. Pour ceux qui parlent français je m’appelle Denis Carignan. I’m speaking today from the Pasqua First Nation in South Central Saskatchewan. It is a community where I’m a member, and I’m situated actually a few hundred feet from the cabin where my mother and her family, brothers and sisters were born. I’m President and Co-Founder of PLATO. We’re an IT services company that was originally founded in 1997 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. And I was fortunate enough to meet the founder of the company in 2015. And together, we had an idea about creating a technology company that would work to bring opportunities for First Nation, Inuit, and Métis Canadians to pursue careers in technology as technology services professionals. And I’m happy to say that we’re just about to enter into our ninth year of operations as a company that is championing our cause, which is to diversify the technology workforce in Canada. Collectively, we have a workforce of just under 400 employees across Canada. We are about 33-34% Indigenous staffed across Canada. And in 2022, PLATO became a majority Indigenous owned and controlled IT services company. That’s something that we’re quite proud of and we’re continuing to grow.
In terms of my own background, I spent much of my time working in governments except for the last nine years. And I sit on a number of boards including the Board of Directors for the PFN Group of Companies, which is the development corporation for my home community of Pasqua First Nations. So, I’m excited to get into today’s conversation and excited to be a part of this circle. And I too am one of the founding members of Indigenous Tech Circle, and we met during COVID-19 and from then we’ve been carrying on the conversation and doing a combination of network building and storytelling and also helping to build that organization to do something which I think will be a part of our collective ecosystem going forward. Hai Hai.
Ryan St. Germaine (04:10):
Amazing. I’m very excited to have two powerhouses in the Indigenous tech space today, and it’s a pleasure to be on here with you guys. So, let’s dive right in. And I’m always curious, we always come to business from different reasons and different starting points and just wanted to know from you guys, what was the initial spark that led you to start your company and how did you build upon the skills and the resources that you had when you got going to build your companies?
Jeff Ward (04:36):
For the initial spark that led me to start the company rewind a little bit in my story. My whole life I wanted to be a doctor or work in the health field because both my parents were nurses, but then something happened in the late nineties when I was in high school and somebody, I say, made the mistake to pay me to make a website for them and my family’s hopes and dreams of having the first doctor in the family went out the window. I got bit by that tech bug, by that entrepreneurial bug. And I rode that wave through the whole .com boom and moved to Silicon Valley. I lived through a very interesting time in my life as a teenager and living in – we called it Candyland back in the day. It was not a safe place to be a young Indigenous technologist in the Bay Area in startup culture and all that kind of stuff. And so through the whole – there was the boom and the subsequent bust of the whole .com era. And so, early 2000s, I moved back to Canada, and after having that kind of experience, I thought, okay, how can I utilize the skills that I had learned through that experience and benefit the communities that I was raised within?
And so, I started asking around my community who needed to get a website, needed to get online, and as a developer in the early 2000s, there weren’t a lot of Indigenous technologists around that were supporting communities getting online. And those that were around, we found each other. It was kind of few and far between, so it was a lonely place to be in tech. And also seeing this thing of the internet sort of booming and growing and how do we get our communities connected and online and share their stories online and share their values online because this was an opportunity for communities to kind of control the narrative and their own voice and put their own information out there. And so, that’s what I started doing, and that was the initial spark that led to starting Animikii Indigenous Technology in 2003. And we just celebrated our 20th anniversary and been doing that ever since. Of course, things have grown and evolved throughout that time, but yeah, that’s the question about the spark, that’s sort of our creation story there at the beginning of it.
Ryan St. Germaine (06:50):
And it sounds like also it started simple, right? You started by – and maybe learned as you went, what was needed from the community and evolved services from there. So I think in the rearview, we always come up with these crazy plans that we had, but the reality is sometimes it’s iterative, and it starts from learning a little bit more and then implementing and then learning a little bit more. And so, was that maybe a part of yours as well too?
Jeff Ward (07:14):
It started as who needs a website? Who can I help get connected and online? And, I needed to make my first invoices, well, I needed to create a company in order to open up the bank account and do all that sort of stuff. And went down to – I remember the day registering Animikii Inc. and using an Ojibwe word to create this company. I thought it was creating a solopreneur type of entity just so I can make an invoice. And, in that moment, I never thought 20 years later where Animikii would get to eventually. And I think maybe if I did begin with the end in mind, maybe it would’ve been – I don’t know, would’ve been overwhelming to think because, at that time, I also just needed to support my new family. I was recently married really early in my professional career and my entrepreneurial journey, I needed to just contribute to our budding family, and the kids followed soon after. And then, it’s like, how do you create a business that can incorporate family life into that as well? And, entrepreneurialism was a big part of that for me. We can get into that later. But yeah.
Ryan St. Germaine (08:15):
Thank you. And Denis, how about you? What was the spark that got you started and the skills and resources that you had going into it that you built upon?
Denis Carignan (08:25):
The spark is an interesting one because I am trying to describe for myself what it is. And I think part of it is the fact that the place where I’m situated right now was once a fairly large farming operation managed by my Mushum [Grandfather] and my Kokum [Grandmother], so my grandparents, as well as two uncles. And it was sort of a family operation. And one of the things that we were very proud of is the fact that we basically relied on our own skills and our own work to be self-reliant within this community and within the province.
As I moved forward and got older, I went to university and somehow I probably became a bit risk averse and started to follow the path of least resistance, and I found a path into government. It was a summer student job that turned into a term job that actually turned into a career and it paid well. And I got to work with my own communities in Saskatchewan and across Western Canada and actually ended up in Atlantic Canada working with the Mi’kmaq and Inuit communities in the four Atlantic Canadian provinces. As my career progressed in government, I started to find myself getting further and further from working with individual people in community because as you move up you become more involved with the administration of, in that case, department and programs and the direct conversations with communities begun to be less and less. I also think I always wondered do I have or did I ever have what it took to be self-reliant? To actually make it in the private sector versus working in government, which has its perks. It’s a pretty secure world for the most part.
So, I think what the impetus was was a leadership conference that I went to, which was about innovation and change and being disruptive. At that conference, I met Keith McIntosh, who’s the founder of a company called PQA, and who was an entrepreneur who started up a business out of his basement that had worked to create a workforce in his own province of New Brunswick by going outward into the world and finding work to be done by his workforce at home. By the time I had met him, that company had expanded to Calgary and to Vancouver, so it was already a national company and the conversation that we had was, well, what could be done to create wealth and careers in technology for Indigenous Canadians? And it was really a conversation one night in Quebec, fairly late in the evening, and we had an idea that maybe we could try something that would be sort of a private sector approach to tackling a fairly challenging social issue. How do we get more of our youth, and more of our community members into careers and technology? So it was really a conversation that led into a couple of follow-up conversations, which led to Keith saying, “Hey, I’m about to create this business and I recall you telling me that if I created this business, you’d come work for me. I’m creating the business, when are you going to come work for me?” At that point it was a decision for me, do I carry on with that which is safe and secure, or do I take a step outside and try something that has a path to do something which I think is more who I want to be and that’s somebody that can maybe use in my experience and education and training to hopefully connect people and connect organizations and help create opportunities.
So that’s been the focus I think for the last nine years is understanding that I came into a business that was already operational, that was already working without a lot of experience on delivering technology services or knowledge of how the networks work or how the business operated. But when I stepped into my first management meeting with a bunch of really experienced and well-educated technology people, as the conversation moved to, okay, how can we help promote PLATO, how can we help promote this project that we’ve initiated, all these really, really bright people went pretty quiet. I realized, okay, I know why I’m here. I’ve got experience, I’ve got knowledge that doesn’t exist at this table, and that’s my opportunity to contribute. And from that, we’ve been able to build a company that is quite a bit larger than the original company that I joined and the impacts that we feel are quite substantial. I think we just surpassed $20 million in salaries and benefits paid out to an Indigenous technology workforce. And for me, that’s going to be national in scope, and it’s really a good thing to feel that I’m a part of, and it certainly helps me get up and out of bed every day and be motivated about what we do.
Ryan St. Germaine (12:33):
That’s amazing. A couple of things that popped out to me is one, it sounds like you had an entrepreneurial family growing up as well too. So that was a component and then also that fortuitous connection, that relationship that grew with Keith and having someone to support you into entrepreneurship, again. And I know for myself, I grew up with – I was very privileged. I grew up with a dad, sorry dad, I watched him go bankrupt in the early eighties, but it gets better. He then grew and built companies. I think I was cheap labour as a kid, but I also got to experience that, and I got to see him grow those businesses, and it was very influential and very – it was knowledge transfer. And so, it’s really nice when we have that in our families, but also there’s opportunities to connect with other good folks out there that can help support that journey.
And in tech, I think it’s one of the things I really enjoy about Tech Circle is that there’s all kinds of people at different stages supporting each other. And, it sounds like that relationship with Keith has been a key piece for you, and then that relationship led to some amazing things in your experiences that were able to drive PLATO to new areas and new heights.
Alright, back to you, Jeff. So, no matter what we do, I don’t think we’re changing overnight the fact that Indigenous-led companies get 0.004% of venture funding and because of that, and maybe our company’s getting overlooked, sometimes they face funding challenges. So, given that, I was just wondering if you have any advice on scrappy strategies that you would suggest to folks that are looking to get into starting a business or are currently starting ones and want to thrive and get that early traction or hack the system in some way or other? Just any tips on that?
Jeff Ward (14:09):
Yeah, when I think scrappy strategies with funding, I think about who are your first investors. So yeah, some people go the root of going to their bank or maybe going to VCs or friends and family. Well, I didn’t have those resources. Those pathways weren’t available to me when I first started my business. I didn’t have wealthy family to get a cool mil loan from somebody to start my business, or I didn’t have friends or family that I would ask. And I got a lot of no’s. No’s from my bank of 20 years. When I was looking to scale later on my own bank said no, and I had a lot of loyalty with that bank since I created my bank account when I was a kid, and they weren’t even able to help. So, thinking, who are your first investors? You are definitely your own investor, you’re going to do a lot of work for free when you get your business up and running, maybe a lot of late nights and weekends, that kind of thing. But outside of yourself taking that chance on yourself, it’s your family. If you have people around you in your circle that are going to be there. Before I created my company, I had what I call my personal board of advisors. They don’t even know they’re on it, but a group of folks that I’ve been able to lean on and ask for support and guidance and that kind of thing and get some of their time and help me strategize and that kind of thing. Yeah, friends and family and that board of advisors.
But I think one of the biggest overlooked things in finance looking at who are your first investors and that’s your customers. Your first investors are your customers, and those were people for me that took a chance on me and said, hey. For example, if it’s some of the Indigenous governments or NGOs that hired me initially. At the time, I was like this kid trying to create this internet stuff and hey, take a chance on me. But really it was those initial revenues that allowed me to fund my business. And, then as time went on and I started building my own software products, it was through those first investments just hiring me for my services and my product that was able to build those products and get them to market. So, I think we overlook that, and I think within the Indigenous community where it’s all about economic empowerment and fighting for economic justice, how can we lift each other up? How can we create that ecosystem? Because frankly, we’re fighting a very capital colonial network of financial colonialism. A lot of our people, if you look at, okay, why are Indigenous people not able to raise – why is that one of the big challenges? And in the context of the colonial project, a lot of our people couldn’t even vote until fairly recently. So, how are you going to build or own land? We couldn’t even leave reservations without permission from the Indian agent. So how are you going to build that wealth, and how are you going to do that? So, looking forward, it’s like, okay, maybe there’s future generations and maybe it’s happening now where we have that community wealth and maybe the next generation we can support. We can do the friends and family round because there’s that economic wealth and prosperity that many of us are working so hard to build within our communities.
But yeah, that’s just sort of how I think about funding startups and early enterprises. It’s sort of looking from a community perspective, how do we – and through that gratitude of like, Hey, I’m so grateful for all the friends and family and early partners and early customers that invested in me, then it’s about how do I give back? How do I give back to that community? And, part of why I want to be involved in the Indigenous Tech Circle, for example, with all y’all is this is a way for me to give back and hopefully support other Indigenous technologists and entrepreneurs that are up-and-coming
Ryan St. Germaine (18:14):
So much there. It’s like, how do we invest in each other? Whether it’s as a customer, as somebody that maybe does have a few bucks that they can put into a business. And I think that’s a great message. And also, I love, ya know, the best source of funding is always revenue. So how do you get started? How do you find those early customers willing to take a chance on you? And as communities, how do we recognize the importance of doing that, lifting up folks with the first contract and maybe give ’em a chance, maybe let them bump around a little bit and make a few mistakes. I remember one of my first customers on a licensing with BC Jobs was the Certified General Accountants of BC, and they said, well, we’re going to need to see your P & L. And I said, P & L? I can’t believe, today, that they worked with us. But those are the breaks that you need. And I think if you work and have enough conversations and build relationships, it does happen, and it’s a great way to build some stability.
Denis Carignan (19:07):
I think that I can just echo everything that Jeff said. Some things that kind of pop out for me are one of the things that helps with getting others to invest, whether it’s even moral support or just buying into ideas is the individual passion that a person has for what it is that you’re doing. So, I’ve got an idea, and I think I can turn this into a business. Being your own champion is something that really, really helps. It helps inspire confidence in others. But you can’t get around the mechanics and you’ve got to know what your business is. You’ve got to know what it is that you do, gotta know how you generate revenue. And it gets more complicated than that. You’ve got to know, okay, if I’ve got a customer signed up, what are the payment terms? If I’ve got a contract with somebody, but the terms on that one have a 120-day bill payment cycle, well, then you’re going to have to finance yourself for a couple of months before you can expect to actually realize that revenue. So understanding nuts and bolts, things like that, and educating oneself about what they mean are very important because that can mean the difference between being able to pay yourself, or pay your employees or not. And some of the things that we have to do as entrepreneurs and as employers, there’s no legal way around it. Biweekly pay comes every two weeks and people have to be paid, otherwise you’re running other risks that are much more serious. And then when it comes to these are things that you have to know because when you go to the banks, or you go to the venture folks, or even if you go to your own individual community business development officer, they’re going to ask you these questions. How do you generate revenue? What does your market look like? How big is your market? You have to keep in mind, well, okay, usually a lot of ideas start fairly close to home. This is something that will satisfy my need for my home community. Well, who else can it satisfy a need for? Can you expand beyond that? Can you go regionally, provincially, nationally, or internationally? And keeping an eye on that roadmap is always something that’s really important.
And I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned from this one, and really plays back to some of what my own ancestors’ experiences were, is that you don’t have to know everything off the bat, but you’ve got to learn it. And, one good way to learn it is to actually reach out and ask questions and be comfortable in being vulnerable enough to ask other people who have experiences that you don’t have about how does this work or how does that work? And the Tech Circle is a great example. We’ve got people that have been in operation for 20+ years, we’ve got people that are sort of year two, year three, year four, and everyone has some experience that’s valuable and that can help inform our growth in terms of how we make decisions going forward.
I think that’s what I’ve also found is that when it comes to Indigenous business, there are a lot of people that are Indigenous or non-Indigenous who are really interested in seeing us succeed in business and are really interested in sharing their knowledge and their networks. So, if you can go in and say, okay, I’ve got an idea. I’ve learned what I think I need to know, I’m starting to ask questions and you can demonstrate that passion and that ability to move something forward people will lend you a hand. Whether it’s investing in what you do, or simply just giving you access to a network or giving you some pointers on where you might want to consider going next. These are things that I think are very important because it’s a very rare thing, and I think Jeff will probably reiterate this as well, and even yourself, it’s a very rare thing for somebody to do everything solely on their own. There’s always been some helping hands on the way that will help you find your way. So, learning which voices to listen to is something that you have to be able to do.
Ryan St. Germaine (22:28):
I love that. And being willing to accept a hand, as well, and learning how to ask for it. That’s what I heard there. And when you talk about that domain expertise and not knowing anything, I think most of us – one of the common threads they see with a lot of entrepreneurs – tend to go into it not really knowing what the hell they’re doing. It’s not uncommon for that. And the differentiator I see with the ones that are successful is that they’re dedicated to continuous learning, and they’re okay with some of the rejection that comes. And sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes you’re going into a bank or an institution where traditionally it may not have been all that amazing, and you’re asking for money and they have all these questions for you and things like that. And, it can be tough. And there’s also sometimes it’ll make your business better, I think, for knowing that information too. So, it’s like how do I take that in and how do I respond to it and get better every time? Because there’s so many pieces of rejection that come with business, and I think that’s part of the domain experience. I’m very fortunate when I was younger it would energize me. A lot of the times, maybe not the right way, I would be negatively motivated, like I’ll show them! <Laughter> But I think as you get a little bit of experience under your belt, you realize that most people are actually not – I mean there’s a lot of BS that goes into it as well too, but most people are trying to do the right thing with what they know. So, sometimes they might be right, and sometimes they might be wrong, but it’s always new information. And so, how do we continue to grow? Yeah. Anyways, I’m going on a tangent here, but Denis, there’s so much there and thank you for sharing that.
So I’m going to merge a couple of questions together here and just talk about how do we create more accessible pathways for Indigenous people to explore different paths. My feeling is you should be able to do whatever the hell you want in life. And whether that is going out in the water, or being out in the bush or doing heavy machinery, you should also be able to start companies. You should be able to be a software developer at a company. You should be able to be in product design or sales or marketing or whatever within the companies you enjoy. And so, there’s challenges that we need to overcome to do that as a whole. It can be, to Jeff’s point, and I’ve heard this echoed quite a bit, lonely to be Indigenous in tech. And so, how can Indigenous people find these pathways? How can they hack the system?
And as an example, I know Denis, maybe I’ll start with you on this one because PLATO, if memory serves, you guys have 580+ hours of QA training for new team members. I don’t know if that’s changed or not, but I know there’s a lot of training that goes into the onboarding process, and I see that as being an excellent pathway into tech. Maybe you love QA, and you keep doing QA, or maybe you’re like, hey, you know what? I really like this, but what are these guys that are building this doing? Maybe I want to get into software and have other people QAing my stuff. And so, how do you see people being able to navigate the ecosystem in order to get a starting place to work from?
Denis Carignan (25:10):
Whether it’s technology, or any other kind of career or vocation it really starts with what do I want to do? And, if I have my own personal interest in technology and I’ve got my own little passion in it and I’ve been able to turn that into a business idea and help move it forward, I think it’s that individual passion that becomes the biggest enabler for somebody to succeed at a career or vocation, regardless of what it is. I think part of it is when it comes to that whole pathway discussion is that – Jeff and I are probably close to similar ages – and if we look back at our youth, I can certainly see different initiatives that happened that were targeted at bringing more of our community members into careers in education, in medicine, in various professions, or even skilled trades. And, there were some programs that were initiated, and the first group of people went in because there really weren’t any Indigenous people in those areas. And now a generation later, we have people that are working and succeeding in those areas, and we even have individuals who are national leaders in medicine, and engineering, and law, and different areas.
So, really, what it helped, if we look at people that are going into those areas now, is that there’s someone to follow and in technology we know that there’s been a lag there. We don’t have that same group of people that are sort of right at the very top that have created that career path for others to simply follow. And it seems like when we look at many of our communities, we have a lot of people who use technology, and they’re consumers of technology and develop some exceptional skills on it, but haven’t really thought of pursuing a career in technology because maybe they don’t know anybody who’s actually doing it. What I see with groups like the Tech Circle, with this particular conversation, and with some of the other networks that I think we’re all involved with across North America is we’re seeing people who are that first vanguard into technology who are building companies in fintech and in solar energy, or even different platforms that are helping either individuals or communities connect and using technology as the platform for doing that. We’re seeing a path for others that can come in and follow and say – certainly in our own company, what we’re seeing is people that work for us, and they’re the first members of their families that are pursuing a career in technology and they’re succeeding and everyone around them is watching, right? And we have a conversation with people and they’ll say, yeah, no, my niece, or my nephew, or my younger brother wants to become a software tester or wants to pursue a career in gaming design. And, it’s easier to do because there’s somebody who’s gone before. And, I think if we’re able to collectively be successful in making this bridge and finding more and more of us into these types of careers – if you look at it from a really big public policy perspective, if you look at generation down the road, maybe we don’t have a challenge with our youth going into STEM related post-secondary training because they’ve got a path to follow and they’re doing what mom, or dad, or auntie, or uncle is doing.
And where I see that being really beneficial for us is that we look at many of our communities, which are in many cases fairly remote, and the opportunities for pursuing livelihood in communities is usually limited to whatever natural resources are close by or how close we are to cities. And yet, with the knowledge economy and the work that we do, as more and more communities become connected, it really becomes a question of how can we invest in people to build the skills necessary, build the professional acumen, necessary, build the experiences necessary, and all of a sudden we can create jobs in our communities that aren’t reliant on forestry or mining or something like that. They’re reliant on an individual’s capacity to create a product that others are willing to buy. So, I think the pathways, we’re just starting to discover them now, and I think as we talk about it more, we’ll be able to define them better. And, I think that’s the first part to actually building structures around whether it be at post-secondary level or community level programming that can help direct and support more people into these types of careers.
Ryan St. Germaine (28:59):
Amazing. It does feel like the time is now. I think when Tech Circle began, the conversation I was having is where are the Indigenous tech people at? And people would respond, well, there aren’t any. And I would respectfully say, B.S., I don’t believe that. And so, I think what we’ve discovered through Tech Circle and through other groups that are doing amazing work is that, is it equitable? No. Nascent? Yes. There are a lot of amazing people doing different great work. You guys with the work you do. Anita from RaceRocks 3D, you’ve got Bobbie [Racette] from Virtual Gurus. We’ve got groups like FNTC [First Nations Technology Council] and ATI running that. We’ve got Indigenous Friends Association doing education and training, as well, and we’re building an underground network. We’ve got people like Tara at Google, Tashea at Telus, and Kyle at Shopify. So, there are all these really amazing people that are there and can support that next generation. So it’s like how do we get a seat in those spaces more? And, it feels like the time is now. Jeff?
Jeff Ward (29:51):
Yeah, time is now. I’ve been saying this line, it was lonely place to be as an Indigenous technologist starting out. I mean, that was in the early 2000s. Maybe I need to change my talking point here because I think I’ll just declare it is no longer a lonely place in tech, hear yee, kind of thing. Through all those groups that you just mentioned, Ryan, we do have Indigenous technologists in those spaces as well. But yeah, Denis, we see that in the community. It started out like, okay, health and medicine and law and social sciences and this kind of stuff. And in the trades. Yeah, in the last 20-years, I’ve seen those investments into tech, and we’re seeing those next generations of young, bright, talented Indigenous youth that are just really going to shake things up even more. And we’ve got people everywhere in every major industry on this planet, including we have Indigenous folks working at NASA, working in space, yo! We got people working on the Mars rovers and things like this and going to space. So, the future is Indigenous, so how do we build that sort of mentorship chain and levelling up when people get to the next level? How do you reach down and pull the next person up? And how do we build a culture within the ecosystem of when you get to the next level, you always reach down and pull the next person up who’s sitting there with their hand reaching for support because, yeah, to pickup on the previous question, we’ve got to figure out how to do the things that you don’t know how to do. You know, as a software developer, for me, one thing I tell other software developers is the number one skill you need to have as a developer is learning to teach yourself how to learn all the latest tech and stay on top of everything. And it’s something I do to this day, even as CEO, where I’m doing a lot less code, I’m still keeping my skills sharp. I want to keep learning things. And that commitment to lifelong learning, yeah, starting my first company, I didn’t know how to do that. And so, we need to ask friends and ask around, and who’s done that before. Launching my first product software product, see who’s out there that can help support me building that, or building a software as a service and everything that’s needed for that. To my first hire, my first employee, that was a big step going from zero to one in that way of like, okay, now we’re on the hook. We’re employing folks. We need make sure we take care of the people that are in our care from 9:00 to 5:00. To even raising venture capital. When I did my seed round with Raven Capital, I had not gone through that process before. I had to do a lot of learning, and luckily, they were gracious enough to walk me through that process, but I also had help from others in my circle, Indigenous and not Indigenous that could kind of shed some light on experiences there. And now that our next big raise will be at the Series A level, well, luckily, now I have Bobbie Racette in my circle that I can ask. She’s at that next level to me and has been a great mentor, and is part of that sort of informal advisory circle that I can look up to. And I’m so grateful for people like Bobbie and others that you mentioned, Ryan.
But yeah, I think these accessible pathways begin with your network. It begins with community and that mentorship, and I think it’s something that is a big part of the Indigenous Tech Circle way is that already, there’s a budding ecosystem there of people just willing to help each other out. And then you fold in other amazing initiatives from folks like PLATO, which has mentorship baked in at its core and kind of stuff that we’ve been doing at Animikii is just how do we get more Indigenous people into tech and entrepreneurship?
Ryan St. Germaine (33:45):
Right on. You’ve mentioned building networks, and sometimes I think that comes with finding confidence to ask questions and to ask for help. And so, for those just starting out on their journey in tech and/or entrepreneurship, what advice would you give them about how they can develop their skills but also develop their networks and get comfortable to ask those questions? And, how can they identify opportunities when they’re just getting started? Denis, do you want to lead us off?
Denis Carignan (34:13):
Sure. For me, that’s probably – if I think about myself, the biggest barrier I have is that acknowledgement that I don’t know. That I don’t know everything and accepting that. And then the next part is having the courage and confidence to ask people. Basically to be vulnerable and say, you know what? I don’t know. Can you help me? Can you give me some ideas? And it seems like – I don’t know whether it’s the fact that a person of my generation, where we had to fake it till you make it or whatever that expression is, that there was a lot of fear about being that vulnerable with others, especially if you did not know. I don’t know if I’m the only one that experiences that, or if that’s something that we experience sort of culturally when it comes to trying to get into a new type of profession, or a new type of institution, or organization, is that, geez, am I going to be judged?
And, when it comes to pursuing a career as an entrepreneur, the nice thing about today is that there are, across Canada, a lot of organizations that have been created to help support new entrepreneurs regardless of whether you’re Indigenous or non-Indigenous or a newcomer to Canada and the culture of the startup community, the culture of the tech incubator community is very supportive of everyone, regardless of your gender, regardless of how you identify, regardless of whether you are Indigenous or non-Indigenous or somebody who’s new to Canada. Those organizations are created with the intention of helping people to pursue ideas and then providing some supports in the form of mentorship and the form of access to capital.
In some situations, what I find is that if I’m not alone, the biggest barrier is actually getting up enough courage to go and knock on the door and get to know people and let them get to know me so that we can find ways to work each other to build trust. And I think that that’s the biggest thing that we collectively need to find a way around is to trust each other. Because when I think about it, with the work that I’ve done across my career, usually when I come into either individuals or communities that are struggling with something, it’s knowledge, or a skill or a deficit of some kind that doesn’t exist right where it’s needed. But if we were to kind of draw a circle around ourselves of a hundred kilometers, there’s probably somebody inside of that circle that has the knowledge, has the experience, and has the networks that if we had them, we would be able to succeed at what we’re trying. The challenge is that we don’t talk to each other enough. And if we’re able to get past that and start asking questions, get to know each other, start building some trust, I think the whole notion of knowledge transfer and skills transfer, something that you mentioned right at the start, Ryan, I think that becomes easier. It’s not like we have to invent something new every time. We just have to find a way to access that piece of information or that connection that we need. So I think for me, if there’s something that we need to work collectively at it is finding out a way to talk to each other, and trust each other a little more, and find a ways to actually create things together as opposed to being in competition with each other.
Ryan St. Germaine (37:15):
Fantastic. Jeff?
Jeff Ward (37:17):
Well, I can pretty much track down every good thing that’s happened in my life down to spending time with humans. It could be a coffee that I went for with some random person that I never knew where that was going to go, or a tea, or meeting somebody at a conference, or somebody within my community. And one thing leads to the next, leads to the next, and having that network to lean on, I think, is super important to learn the things that we don’t know how to do. Like Denis, you mentioned, I don’t know everything. This comes down to humility. Practicing our value of humility, and sort of, the willingness to try things and make mistakes too, because that also leads to building trust too. Trust within teams, trust within yourself, trust within community, and also trust that when we fail, when we falter, that we can lift each other up and support each other. Because it’s important too that we do make mistakes and that we support each other through that.
And we’re talking a lot today about mentorship here. And mentorship within teams and within networks, it’s important. Because that’s how we create these safe spaces to try things out, to experiment, to innovate, because things might not work out. And, I’m the first to tell my team, I literally don’t know what I’m doing. We’re figuring this out together and we will figure it out together, and I also need your help in order to do this. And, all of those things I was sharing earlier about what I didn’t know how to do, first hire, raise money, all those sorts of stuff – yeah, I had to get good at being a ‘don’t-knower.’ And I think that would be – my advice would be just with that humility, knowing that we are trying to figure it out, and we need that safe space, as well, as CEOs, as leads in our industries. People need that in teams, that sort of freedom to make mistakes. And I’ll point to Elaine Alec and the Cultivating Safe Spaces Framework, which is incredible. And I really, I think the tech world, the tech ecosystem would be much better for weaving in some of these Indigenous ways of building in. How do you build trust within communities, and creating those safe spaces. Yeah, there are those networks out there that are there to support each other. And again, I keep pointing back to the Indigenous Tech Circle because I’m looking at a bunch of Indigenous Tech Circle folks on my screen right now, but it’s not as lonely a place to be anymore in the Indigenous tech world.
Ryan St. Germaine (40:09):
Incredible. I think the thing I hear and love throughout this entire conversation is the humility and the recognition that it is a journey that we go on. I heard both of you say in that last bit that it’s okay to fail. And the word failure, even like that pass or fail, that black of white within that, it’s not the way it is. Failures are information, it’s learning, it’s growth. Through the struggle comes the reward. And echoed from both of you, I don’t know everything. I remember when I was a kid, I used to just think this was funny cause I wanted to learn all these Spanish catchphrases, but I used to go around saying, “solo sé que no sé nada” which translated means I only know that I know nothing. At the time, I thought I knew everything though, if I’m being honest. And, as I get a little bit older, I start to realize that really, I don’t know anything. What I thought was true I no longer think, sometimes. So we change, and we grow, and we learn.
I heard so much shared today that that was amazing around continuous learning, and around the determination that you both have. It’s not easy to do this, and I think it’s worthwhile and the things that are worthwhile aren’t easy. And so that struggle and that willingness to fail and then get up again and do it, and to continue learning, to be willing to put out your hand and to say, you know what? I could use a hand right now. Can you help me out? And to be okay when it doesn’t go your way too sometimes. And to try again. Thank you both. This has been an amazing session for me. You’ve filled me up, being able to hang out and listen to you share the amazing strength, experience and knowledge that you have. This is something I’m so glad that you take the time to share.
And also, thank you everybody who’s tuning in today. I know these conversations will continue here on PLATO Panel Talks, and we would love to hear from our listeners if there’s anything that we chatted about that resonated with you today. So, maybe I’ll just get you guys for the final to share just how can everyone reach out to you? How can everybody connect with you? Jeff, do you want to maybe lead off? Then Denis, and then I’ll share some my information and we’ll close this thing out?
Jeff Ward (42:05):
Yep. Follow me on LinkedIn, Jeff K. Ward and on socials at @Jeffio. We also have an Indigenous Tech News River over at animikii.com, if you want to stay on top of some of the things that are catching our eye.
Denis Carignan (42:21):
For me, on LinkedIn, Denis.Carignan, that’s D-E-N-I-S C-A-R-I-G-N-A-N. Also on PLATO, at platotech.com. We’re also on LinkedIn and Facebook as well. So, you can reach out through that. And then, of course, I expect you’ll talk about it as well, Ryan, through the Indigenous Tech Circle.
Ryan St. Germaine (42:41):
Anybody who knows me knows I’m not shy <Laughter>. And also, yeah, I think @PLATOTesting, is where you can find PLATO’s LinkedIn page. And so if anybody wants to reach out to me, LinkedIn is usually the best place to do that. And it’s Ryan St. Germaine, and that’s S-T. space, G-E-R-M-A-I-N-E. And you can also join us [at Indigenous Tech Circle]. So if you want to go to www.jointechcircle.com, there’s a sign up there and you can come join your family. We’d love you to rate and review PLATO Panel Talks on whatever platform you’re listening to if you enjoy these discussions. And, thank you again for listening, and we’ll talk to you all again soon.