At 9:30am on an overcast Wednesday morning in downtown Vancouver, more than 200 startup founders gathered inside KPMG’s offices for what looked like just another tech event.

There were nametags and coffee stations. Founders nervously rehearsed elevator pitches. Investors and ecosystem leaders floated through the room in blazers and sneakers. Up front, executives from companies like Klue, Hiive, and GeoComply shared lessons about scaling businesses in British Columbia. Later in the day, founders would practice pitches and compete in a pitch-off.

But this wasn’t just another tech event.

It was more like a training camp.

Just days before tens of thousands of people descend on Vancouver for the second edition of Web Summit Vancouver, Innovate BC’s “Road to Web Summit Bootcamp” had become something more sophisticated than a simple prep session. It was part founder accelerator, part ecosystem coordination exercise, part export-readiness initiative—and increasingly, part of a broader provincial strategy to turn a global tech conference into long-term economic infrastructure.

“Web Summit, the event, has really become an integral part of our startup programming,” said Peter Cowan, president and CEO of Innovate BC, in an interview between sessions.

That evolution may be the biggest story surrounding Web Summit Vancouver heading into year two.

Last year, the focus was largely operational: could Vancouver successfully host one of the world’s largest technology conferences after Web Summit relocated from Toronto? Would founders show up? Would investors care? Would the city capitalize on the moment?

The answer, at least by the numbers, appears to have been yes.

According to Web Summit, the inaugural Vancouver event drew more than 15,700 attendees, 1,108 startups from 117 countries, 681 investors, and hundreds of media representatives. For a first-year event, it was one of the strongest launches in the company’s history.

But somewhere between last year’s closing party and this year’s opening keynote, something else happened: the ecosystem began reorganizing itself around the opportunity.

“This year we’re running the bootcamp plus many other programs,” Cowan said. “We’re also scaffolding that with later-stage support under the Road to Web Summit banner.”

That scaffolding now stretches far beyond a single conference week.

Over the past year, Innovate BC and its partners have built an increasingly coordinated network of founder programming around Web Summit. AI-specific networking sessions. Scale-up tracks for later-stage companies. Media training. Trade show strategy workshops. Investor-readiness sessions. International delegation support. Intellectual property education.

The conference itself has become less important than the machinery forming around it. “It’s been able to jumpstart the flywheel of how our programming across the province can work together more efficiently,” Cowan said.

“We can run Road to Web Summit programming all year with purpose,” he added. “We know there’s investors coming to town. We know there’s media coming to town. So we can help facilitate meetings and conversations through Web Summit.”

That “purpose” matters in a startup ecosystem where timing, coordination, and momentum are often fragmented.

A founder preparing for Web Summit today is no longer simply showing up to a conference booth hoping for serendipity. They’re increasingly entering a structured pipeline designed to help them sharpen pitches, connect with investors, think globally, and understand how to compete on an international stage.

Part of that shift reflects broader geopolitical and economic changes reshaping the innovation economy.

For years, many Canadian startups viewed the United States as the obvious destination for growth and expansion. But amid rising geopolitical uncertainty, trade tensions, and growing conversations around economic sovereignty, many founders are increasingly thinking more globally from the start.

“The global environment is where they need to sell into,” Cowan said. “It’s not just about, ‘Hey, we’re going to grow and sell south of the border anymore.’”

That framing subtly changes what Web Summit represents.

It is no longer simply about attracting tourists, headlines, or conference spending. It is increasingly being treated as a mechanism for helping BC companies build international networks, diversify export relationships, and position themselves within a rapidly shifting global economy.

A new focus on intellectual property is another sign of the ecosystem maturing. Cowan, whose background includes intellectual property strategy, said conversations around IP have changed dramatically in recent years.

“Five years ago, we couldn’t even get companies in a room to talk about IP,” he said. “Now we had an IP summit in Vancouver last week with 200-plus companies in the afternoon.”

“They’re starting to realize they need IP to sustain themselves if we want to have sovereignty and they want to grow and work on a global stage,” he added.

That evolution may sound niche, but Cowan believes it’s foundational.

“You need talent, capital, regulatory management, and IP,” he said. “You need those four pieces to succeed on a global scale.”

Those conversations are increasingly showing up everywhere—from startup panels to federal industrial policy to defence strategy discussions. And Web Summit, in many ways, has become a forcing function accelerating those conversations inside BC’s tech ecosystem.

Perhaps the clearest sign of that evolution is how Innovate BC now talks about success.

Last year, much of the focus centred on attendance numbers, investor meetings, and media exposure. Those metrics still matter. This year’s event is expected to draw roughly 20,000 attendees, 700 investors, and 600 members of international media.

But Cowan increasingly describes success in cumulative terms. “It’s not a one-time shot,” he said. “It’s cumulative over time.”

He compares Web Summit to a trip to Disneyland.

“If you’re just showing up and you haven’t practiced walking all day with your kids’ stroller, and you haven’t figured out what rides you need to be on, you’re going to have a hard day,” he said, laughing. “But if you’ve mapped out who you’re going to meet with, how you’re going to take advantage of it, and then post-Web Summit you know how you’re doing follow-through—that’s where the value comes from.”

The analogy is funny. It’s also revealing.

For all the hype surrounding massive tech conferences, the real value often comes later: the investor follow-up call, the partnership email, the founder relationship that compounds over years rather than days.

Cowan recalled speaking with a founder months after one of Innovate BC’s earlier programs. “He told me this story about how our funding helped them do this thing that had a multiplier effect on revenue down the line,” Cowan said. “Those are the stories you don’t get from a report.”

That may ultimately become the real test of Vancouver’s Web Summit experiment.

Not whether the conference itself succeeds. Not whether celebrities visit Vancouver or whether the 75+ networking events feel busy. But whether the ecosystem can convert concentrated global attention into durable company growth over time.

The signs of ambition are everywhere this year.

The BC Pavilion at Web Summit will feature 75 companies over three days. Multiple elected officials—including Gregor Robertson, Brenda Bailey, Ken Sim, Evan Solomon, Ravi Kahlon, Rick Glumac, and Premier Eby—are speaking on stages throughout the week. BC companies will appear across all content tracks. Innovate BC and government leaders have spent the past year building relationships with Web Summit organizers in Lisbon and Qatar, creating new opportunities for BC startups to participate globally.

“There’s a lot more opportunity this year,” Cowan said.

But perhaps the biggest shift is psychological.

For years, Vancouver’s tech ecosystem often felt slightly hesitant about its own ambitions—large enough to matter, but still somewhat uncertain about its place on the global stage.

Web Summit appears to be changing that.

Not because one conference can transform an economy overnight. But because repeated exposure to global competition, investors, media, and ambitious founders begins changing how an ecosystem sees itself.

And maybe that was the real opportunity all along.

“I hope Web Summit becomes a piece of the tapestry of the journey of a company’s success,” Cowan said. “A piece of the tapestry that had an inflection point on moving them to where they need to be.”

In the coming days, thousands of founders, investors, media, and tech executives will once again flood Vancouver Convention Centre. Deals will be discussed. Panels will trend online. AI demos will attract crowds. Some founders will leave disappointed. Others may leave with relationships that reshape their companies.

But behind the spectacle, perhaps something quieter is happening.

British Columbia is learning how to build around ambition.