Before global investors landed at YVR and international media filled the halls of the Vancouver Convention Centre, something remarkable happened across the city: thousands of people gathered for a grassroots, volunteer-powered celebration of entrepreneurship. That something was Vancouver Startup Week (VSW) — and it played a quiet but powerful role in setting the stage for Web Summit Vancouver.

Over four days and 60 events, VSW 2025 drew more than 5,000 attendees, featured 200 speakers, and mobilized 100 volunteers to do one thing: help local founders get ready. Ready to pitch. Ready to connect. Ready to tell their stories with confidence when the global spotlight arrived.

While Web Summit brought the scale, the spectacle, and the spotlight, Vancouver Startup Week focused on something far more foundational: substance. We helped founders refine their pitches, build relationships with mentors and investors, and practice telling their company stories — not in front of cameras, but in front of the community.

And we did it with a radically different approach. VSW is volunteer-run. It’s funded by modest local sponsorships. Passes were under $200. Web Summit tickets, by contrast, ranged from $800 to $8,000, backed by multimillion-dollar contributions from corporate and government partners. One wasn’t better than the other — but they served very different purposes.

Vancouver Startup Week is now in its eleventh year — over a decade of showing up for this city’s founders, builders, and dreamers. We’re not going anywhere. This isn’t a global brand testing a market; it’s a local movement rooted in the community, built to last.

This year, we felt a unique responsibility. With the world looking at Vancouver, we knew local founders needed more than access to a global stage. They needed preparation. Vancouver Startup Week became that launchpad. Whether someone was part of Innovate BC’s Road to Web Summit program or attending their first-ever tech event, our goal was the same: make them feel like they belonged, and give them the tools to thrive.

We often say innovation is about ideas. But more often, it’s about the conditions that help those ideas grow. That’s what Vancouver Startup Week was designed to do. And we believe it worked.

When Vancouver founders stepped onto the Web Summit stage, into investor meetings, or into conversations with media, many of them were more confident, more compelling, and more connected — because of the work they did at VSW.

We’re proud of that. And we’re even more excited for what comes next. Vancouver Startup Week – Start Local, Think Global.

Katty Wang and Vivian Lago are the co-chairs of Vancouver Startup Week.