Speaker 1 [00:00:02] Hi, it’s John here, Speaker 2 [00:00:03] and it’s Theresa. Speaker 1 [00:00:04] Theresa, our last episode was about travel, so maybe we can kick off with the travel question. Have you ever been to the big nickel in Sudbury? Speaker 2 [00:00:12] I have, but it was during the pandemic and it was closed when I got there, so I just stood out in the rain for a few minutes, marveling at it. What’s it like inside? Speaker 1 [00:00:21] Well above ground. There is the big nickel. Great for selfies, but the real treasure is below ground. So you’ve got to go back because the trip underground is a true Canadian experience in those shafts in that ore body used to come 90 percent of the world’s nickel. And it made Canada a mining power over the past century, century and a half. In fact, entire world wars were fought in some ways with Canadian nickel, and out of that ore body came great companies like Gingko and Falcon Bridge. But here we are in the 2020s, nickel is again a thing, as we’ve all seen in the headlines, enormous chaos and volatility in nickel markets because another significant nickel power Russia is being cut off from world markets. That’s going to have a big impact for Canada as a nickel supplier, but also for a lot of disruptors and innovators out there in the tech space, including EV manufacturers who rely on nickel. Speaker 2 [00:01:18] But that is fascinating. What a timeline of Nicole’s prominence in Canadian history. And it does help inform our conversation today. Speaker 1 [00:01:27] Welcome to disruptors, the 10 minute take where we dove into the latest innovation, tech and economic buzz. Speaker 2 [00:01:33] This week’s take is on the nickel market chaos of the last few weeks. Prices soared to record highs. Trading on the world’s largest venue stopped, then restarted and then was hit with glitches. It’s been one of the most extreme events ever seen in the metals markets, Speaker 1 [00:01:46] and to help us better understand what’s going on, we’re joined by Sam Crittendon, mining analyst at RBC Capital Markets here in Toronto. Sam, welcome to the 10 minute take. Speaker 3 [00:01:55] Yeah, thanks for having me. Speaker 1 [00:01:56] Great to have you on the podcast. So Sam, first explain quickly the chaos what on Earth went on over the last few weeks in nickel? Speaker 3 [00:02:04] Yeah. So two weeks ago, you saw a perfect storm in the nickel market. It was already tight. You had low inventories. There were several supply disruptions over the last two years which got us to this place. All the while demand has been extremely strong given governance, stimulus and everything else. You’ve seen strong demand for hard goods, appliances that a big consumer of nickel. And so with that as a backdrop, when Russia invaded Ukraine, it layered on another element to this tightness in the market. And with that said, you had Singh Shen, who also happens to be one of the biggest suppliers of nickel, held a large short position on the LME exchange. And so what happened is the price started to rise. They scrambled to try to cover their short, and that results in a massive spike in the prices. So the price was hovering at around $10 a pound, spiked up to about forty five dollars a pound. So a massive move in one day forced the LME exchange to halt trading for several days, actually before they were able to unwind some of these trades. And they’re just now trying to get the market to be back into a normal state. The price is still extremely volatile. It’s been up and down 15 percent a day the last couple of days, and it’s starting to find a range at around $15. But to put that in context, the five year average before that was 840. So we’re basically double what we’ve been considering a normal nickel price the last five years. Speaker 1 [00:03:33] And so it’s this same, a new normal that we’ve had a reset and what would be the fundamentals behind that? Speaker 3 [00:03:39] Yeah. So I think the fundamentals were supporting something around $10. And I think ultimately you’ll get back to something at that level. There probably is a structural component to this. I mean, it depends on for all these commodities, how much of that Russian material finds its way into other markets, whether it’s China, India or other countries that are willing to accept that. And the reality is a lot of that Russian material does go into China on a normal basis, but nobody is willing to ship it. Nobody’s willing to insure it or finance those transactions. So just the logistics become that much more complicated. So there may be a structural component. So to answer your question directly, we are probably living in a world of higher nickel prices for now, but probably not 15 16. Forty five dollars, but maybe 10, 11, 12 is where the price settles out. Speaker 2 [00:04:29] So Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked fears of supply constraints, especially given that they produce 15 to 20 percent of a high grade nickel required for EV batteries, which is increasingly in demand as the world shifts towards net zero. Does the world have enough nickel to meet this growing demand? Speaker 3 [00:04:46] Yeah. So to unpack that a little bit. First, a lot will depend on where that 10 percent from Russia ends up. And if it does continue to go into China, then you probably end up in a similar spot where we were before the invasion. Over time, though, the. We’re seeing an electric vehicles, and it’s happening year over year. I mean, this year is expected to basically double from last year in terms of the demand needed for electric vehicles, and that is going to be very significant over the next 10 years. I mean, on our estimates this year, we have electric vehicles that are about, you know, 10 percent of global nickel demand, whereas by 2030 that could grow to about 30 percent of the nickel consumption globally. So all the while, stainless is expected to remain strong. So that requires new sources of nickel that need to come from somewhere. Speaker 1 [00:05:34] Where’s that? Some are going to be Sam. Are we seeing a nickel rush like we’re seeing with lithium and other minerals that are going to be needed for the energy transition? Yeah. Speaker 3 [00:05:43] What’s interesting with Nikola? It’s a bit unique. So as you saw the last time nickel spiked back in around 2007, you saw the development of nickel pig iron, which you’ve probably heard of and sort of capped the price for almost 10 years. And that is taking low grade deposits, lower quality nickel and upgrading it just enough to be usable in the stainless steel application. So what you’re seeing now is huge investments in Indonesia, funded in partnership with China to develop their low grade deposits and make them viable not just for stainless but also as battery materials. So that’s where a lot of the investment is happening right now, and some of it’s unproven technology. But given the amount of money they’re throwing at it, it odds are it will work if it doesn’t work. And even if it does, you will need supplies for nickel from elsewhere. And there’s a lot of other companies in other parts of the world trying to advance nickel projects. Speaker 2 [00:06:37] Have you noticed any work arounds or substitutes to reduce the reliance on nickel? Speaker 3 [00:06:42] Yeah, the big thing will boil down to battery chemistry. So right now, if you buy a Tesla in North America, you’re getting a battery that does contain nickel as well as cobalt is another metal that’s going to be already is scarce. But if you buy certain types of Tesla in China and other parts of Europe, you might get a lithium ion phosphate battery, which is a different type of technology. And like a lot of things, it’s a trade off. It’s a lower quality battery. You don’t get the same range doesn’t behave well in cold weather, but it’s cheaper, especially if nickel and cobalt continue to rise and become more scarce, so that in the short term is probably the biggest substitution point. And then other than that, there’s also other emerging battery technologies. It’s all a fairly new market, so it’s going to evolve over the next five, 10, 20 years. Speaker 1 [00:07:32] You mentioned some stainless steel, which of course, is critical to all our homes and commercial buildings, and it’s also what the majority of nickel goes into as we look at a materials revolution in many ways over the coming decades to get to net zero. Do you think there’s going to be a big shift in the demand and usage of stainless steel? Speaker 3 [00:07:51] It’s one of those things that it’s almost what’s in style at any given point. I mean, the alternative is buying something with coating on it. So steel with paint know so you buy a white fridge instead of a stainless steel fridge or something like that. So that tends to go along with consumer trends. So if nickel becomes prohibitively expensive and or used in other applications like batteries, then maybe some of that stainless does get crowded out. Some of it, though, is used in applications in restaurants and hospitals and things like that where you kind of need to use that not stainless steel product. Copper is being used as a potential alternative given its anti-microbial bacterial properties. And so that’s something that’s another alternative. So there’s other ways to substitute away from stainless, but it’s still going to be a key consumer product in a number of applications for a long time. Speaker 1 [00:08:44] I’m thinking back to Sudbury, and it sounds like it’s a good time to be in the nickel business for the years ahead. Sam, thanks for being on the 10 minute take. Yeah, great Speaker 3 [00:08:53] to be here. Thank you. Speaker 2 [00:08:55] So, John, for this episode, I was reading about people actually hoarding nickel coins as a way to make some money with the price surge, even though I’m pretty sure melting down nickels is illegal. But it makes me wonder how much would the big nickel be worth now? Speaker 1 [00:09:10] Oh, that sounds like a million dollar question. Maybe we can crowdsource that with our listeners who can come to our RBC thought leadership web page and maybe make some suggestions that Speaker 2 [00:09:19] would be hilarious. That is it for this week’s 10 minutes. Join us again next week for our regular episode. Until then, I’m Teresa, though, Speaker 1 [00:09:27] and I’m John Stackhouse. Talk to you soon, disruptors. <Speaker 4 [00:09:31] The 10 Minute Take is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit RBC dot com slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hi, it’s John here. Speaker 2 [00:00:02] And hello, it’s Theresa. Speaker 1 [00:00:04] Theresa, you know, we’ve had a lot of false starts through this pandemic, but as we tiptoe into the spring of 2020 too, it really does feel like things are taking off. Just look at airports over the recent March break, people in big crowds heading off to all sorts of destinations. And I’m really intrigued by the rise of it’s almost reversed flight shaming. All my friends who are flying off to destinations far off are kind of mocking people who are stuck back at home. It wasn’t so long ago when they were being shamed for getting onto an airplane. I actually Speaker 2 [00:00:39] love flying. I love getting to the airport early, sitting in the lounge with a glass of wine and a nice book or a magazine, and to me to start a vacation. But my partner and I, we went to the Caribbean a few months ago, and the requirements just getting into the country were extremely stringent multiple documents, validation portals and vendors that you got to go through. It’s stressful, but hopefully opening up soon and starting to feel like normal again. Speaker 1 [00:01:04] One of the false starts I mentioned last fall, I did get into the air again. I went to London, England, to run in a half marathon. Awesome. And it was the first flight I’d been on in ages and found it really unnerving. And of course, it was chaos at the airport to get onto the plane. All sorts of procedures that people were just not ready for. So maybe we’ll all just adjust back to, to flying and traveling as quickly as we’ve adjusted to other things, Speaker 2 [00:01:30] like less dress setters. And we’re not alone either. New data from RBC Economics just released mid-March confirms that travel spending has finally touched pre-COVID levels in Canada, though domestic tourism still outpaces international travel, of course, and the changes to Canada’s entry requirements meant an immediate bump in Canadians booking these long delayed trips abroad, and it’s also spurred international travelers to consider Canada once again. But John rising prices and geopolitical uncertainty definitely puts some of that momentum at risk. Speaker 1 [00:02:01] So right, Theresa, I mean, we are seeing anything but normal in the new normal. We’re seeing inflation that very few predicted. Maybe it will ease through the year, but there’s no indication that it’s going to drop precipitously. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has rattled global markets and disrupted air travel as well in a significant part of the world. The next few months are not only going to be curious to watch, but there are going to be a real test for the travel industry. There’s no doubt a lot of turbulence ahead. And with a lot of innovation, and we’ve got a great conversation coming up about how those tensions may get resolved. This is Disrupters, an RBC podcast. I’m John Stackhouse Speaker 2 [00:02:52] and I’m Trinh Theresa Do. In this episode of Disruptors, we’re looking at the return of travel post-COVID and exploring how everything from technology to global politics will affect how we travel this year and beyond to help us on this journey. We’re speaking with somebody with his finger on the pulse of Canadian wanderlust. Hussein Fazal is the CEO of Toronto-based SnapCommerce. Its flagship product, SnapTravel, is an AI powered half bot, half human service that helps customers book hotel rooms, flights and car rentals through their website, as well as through SMS, Messenger and WhatsApp. Hussein and his business partner Henry Ashi, have raised more than $100 million over the past five years, including a 2018 investment from basketball superstar Steph Curry. Hussein, welcome to disruptors. Speaker 3 [00:03:45] Thank you for having me. Speaker 2 [00:03:46] So last year it was a good year for SnapTravel: over a billion dollars in sales, but it’s been too long years of little to no travel for most Canadians coming out of the pandemic. What’s been your biggest learning about how travel is restarting and changing? Has anything surprised you? Speaker 3 [00:04:03] Yeah. So actually a lot of times to have this conversation. The first thing I tell people actually catches them quite a bit by surprise, and it’s the Covid had almost two years ago, there was obviously a huge drop in travel and everyone kind of froze. But just a few months after that, we saw the US domestic travel picked up. So obviously, the international travel has completely changed with all the restrictions that I’m one being nervous. Even people within the US, let’s say, you know, flying across the country, that was an issue, but people stayed locally and they were traveling. So in Canada, we’re a bit more conservative and we didn’t travel as much. But in the US, domestic travel picked up after just two or three months. That completely surprised me, and we actually saw us getting up to almost pre-pandemic levels just a few months into the pandemic, which was a little bit crazy. Speaker 1 [00:04:50] Hussein, do you think that’s a fundamental difference with Canadians or are we just kind of a bit or two behind where Americans were and maybe are? Speaker 3 [00:04:58] Well, there’s a couple of things going on, too. First of all, I think it’s just Canadians being more conservative than the Americans. That’s just the way it works. I think there’s more people in the U.S. who just don’t believe in the virus and care about the virus, and let’s stop them. And then secondly, I think just the geography of the U.S., there’s just a lot of places where Americans can go, and there’s a lot of cities where you can go to nearby beach towns and nearby vacation spots. And there’s just more of that geography and more of that of that, hey, I can drive under 100 miles and I can go somewhere and get away, whereas, you know, we’re a little bit more spread out and maybe don’t have so many destinations to be able to do that. Speaker 2 [00:05:36] Did you notice an impact when the federal government announced that there were relaxing COVID testing requirements? Speaker 3 [00:05:43] Yeah, so that was almost instant, so if you look specifically at Canada and you look at international travel, that’s where as soon as those types of announcements come in, you see the changes almost immediately. So you see search volume go up. You see international travel go up versus domestic as a ratio. And then the other thing you also see is how far in advance people are booking. So people used to be pretty nervous and they would say, Hey, I’m just going to wait and then maybe book a day before or two days before. But as things start to open up, more and more now, people are starting to plan for their own advance. And they’re saying, now I’m going to go plan for the next holiday and the next holiday and start booking way in advance. Speaker 1 [00:06:23] So, Hussein, there’s so much we want to talk to you about, but I wonder if we can get a sense of snap travel story. Give us give us a sense of the business model and where you’re going to take it as consumers get back on the road and in the air. Speaker 3 [00:06:36] So the business started about five or six years ago, and when we started the company, we just heard a snap travel, as we’re talking about today, which is really about helping customers save money on hotels and giving them like great service. So our customer will come in to have a conversation with us. Similar to if you were talking to a travel agent, you can get some great deals. Then we make sure we use messaging to maintain that relationship with the customer, offer them a great service, be there for support and just build that relationship over time. What we have actually been working on and what we’ve expanded into in the past couple of years as we talk to our customers, is they’ve been looking not just to save money on travel, but looking to save money, needing to save money in other areas as well. So we’ve actually sort of expanded into what we call snap commerce now, sort of the parent company and where we’re on the verge of releasing some pretty exciting stuff around shopping and around fintech and helping their customers save money across everything they buy. But the core travel business is one that continues to do well and continues to grow. So you reference sort of a billion in sales that sort of, you know, cumulative over time. We’ve sort of got to that point with, with almost half of it just coming last year and that business continues to grow. And now, with the easing of restrictions and with people being with Covid sort of hopefully the last time now, you know, going away, we’re seeing that demand pick up. I was kind of looking at that some survey stats earlier and, you know, 67 percent of people plan to take a trip in the next four months. So I mean, there’s three of us here and now I’m planning to take a trip in the next four months. And I guess one of you, hopefully one of you are as well to prove the stats that I have and one in five, we’ll plan to take two or more trips and the next four months. So be is an exciting time seeing travel opened back up. Speaker 2 [00:08:19] Staying on your platform for a second? I’m really curious why you chose to go down the route of a relationship based travel approach, because seems to me that we went from a period where we relied on travel agents to help us get these deals booked. But then we shifted to a largely DIY looking at the aggregators like Expedia and building our own itineraries. So why did you choose to go back to that travel agent approach? Speaker 3 [00:08:42] Yeah. So I would I would think of it more as a hybrid, right? So I would say the major misconception that people have when they think about travel over messaging is that we are this like ultimate travel bot that has great natural language processing technology and can read your mind and you can say, Hey, I want to stay at a nice four star boutique hotel in New York, and we know exactly what we want to give you a great recommendation. That’s just not how it works, because I don’t know you to resign when you’re searching for New York. I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. And even if I knew what you were looking for and I gave you a recommendation, you probably still want to see all the options right? You still want to see. Let me see, because I don’t know your trade off between price, location and quality. So we use messaging as sort of an entry point. And if you’ve used the service, what you’ll see is very quickly we take you to UI where you can use filters and you can see a map and you can see a list and you can sort of pick the hotel that works for you. So we’re messaging is helpful because it allows us to do some very interesting things. It’s after you’ve run your search in New York, we can continue to track deals. So if we find something that pops up and we know you’re interested in it, we can send you a message and say, Hey Theresa, we know you were looking at this hotel. You know, the price has dropped 20 bucks. Go take a look at it, right? You have a specific question. You can just pick up your phone and say, Hey, I have a question, you know, during Covid, this is actually a huge benefit for us because there are a lot of people who wanted to travel, but they were nervous and they wanted to know what’s the Covid protocol? What’s the event or even their refund policies right there? Hey, what’s the refund policy? What happens if I get Covid right? So. So messaging is great for retargeting. It’s great for continuing the conversation. It’s great for support. But it’s not necessarily better for the initial searching and browsing like, are you? A user interface is the best way to search and browse, and we continue to do that. So messaging is sort of that hybrid approach that we use. Speaker 1 [00:10:28] If you can give away the secret and your secret sauce of saying what? What is it? I mean, Speaker 3 [00:10:33] we’re super data driven company. I would say everything we do is around looking at data to help us optimize everything and women using that approach and just continuously optimizing. So that means optimizing supply. You know, what are people searching for? Let’s go and get the best supply over there, optimizing demand where the best demand channels, how can we match that optimizing product where people are dropping off in the funnel, right? And maybe if I sort of go back to that messaging approach that we talked about earlier, that’s an example, right? So initially it was all messaging. So you come in and say, Hey, I need a hotel in New York, and then we would say, OK, well, you know what kind of hotel you’re looking for? Or do you prefer boutique hotels or chain hotels? But like, OK, what’s your price range? We would ask all these questions to try and give you the perfect recommendation, but only look at the data. Every additional question you ask just results in more drop off. Just show me, show me you don’t like, don’t keep asking me questions. So you know, we said, OK. Well, why don’t we, you know, if someone says, Hey, I want a hotel, only now is will your city in your dates and like, here you go to cure all your options. Go take a look. And we’re glad to use messaging to answer any questions or to be able to target or have a conversation or do things like that. But the data driven approach tells us to stay focused on getting the customer a great deal and getting them that deal as fast as possible. Speaker 2 [00:11:42] So something that was really cool with the app as there’s an option to layer in food and nightlife and other different aspects of cities. And the way that it manifests on the platform is through a heat map, which I thought was really interesting. So if I’m looking for a hotel in Chelsea, New York, I want to know, OK, is this hotel going to be close to where I can get all the great foods that I want to eat while I’m in New York? And as you were putting together the platform and as you’re continuing to evolve, how are you taking into account changing consumer preferences for travel? Speaker 3 [00:12:14] Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. And maybe that goes back to what I said about being data driven. So we’re always, always, always talking to our customers, even when we do have any idea as so let’s say the heat map, right? So you would think that the heat map is a great feature and the reality is there it is, but we don’t take anything for granted. So if we want to put on a heat map, we’ll go and ab test mosaic and let’s have the tropical heat map. Half the traffic will run without the heat map and then we’ll sort of see what happens. We’ll see the conversion rate difference. We’ll see that that’s with those difference. We’ll see the repeat rate difference to customers come back again because I like the experience. So it’s talking to customers keeping an eye out for what sort of product innovations out there, but ultimately being data driven and seeing what sticks and what doesn’t. Speaker 1 [00:12:57] And tell us a bit about how you see the travel industry model and where you want to position yourself. Something I found always fascinating about travel is, in some ways, it’s a fixed pie. There’s a certain number of people and only so much we can travel. And therefore, over the decades, we see vertical integration or attempts at diversification. Are you looking at vertical integration, looking for different kinds of opportunities in travel? Or do you see it’s now travel’s future, maybe outside of travel? Yeah, I mean, Speaker 3 [00:13:28] we’re looking outside of travel and not not for any other reason than that’s really what our customers are asking us for, right? Or our customers are saying, Hey, you just got me a great deal on a hotel. But what I could really use is to save money on Expedia. Save money on why, right? And that’s sort of where we’re leaning towards and moving to other verticals specifically on your comment about the travel industry and sort of it being a fixed pie. I think that some of that’s sort of true but also changing and that, you know, we have customers now or lose the new generation who are wanting to spend more money on experiences than spending money on things. Are you seeing almost like a shift in percentage of disposable income that gets spent on travel and experiences, which is different? So, you know, with previous generations, it’s like, OK, I’m going to have this much money to spend on trips or I’m going to go on one trip a year or whatever it is. And now the new generation saying, you know, I’m not going to own a house, I’m not going to own a car. And when you take the disposable income, I haven’t spent it on trips and experiences, so that’s happening. And then secondly, I think that people are even doing more local trips, and I think Covid actually accelerated that right. So before when you would say, Hey, I’m only going to go in one or two trips a year because you typically be thinking about getting on a plane and going somewhere. And now with Covid, there was this period of time where people were traveling, but they didn’t want to get on a plane, so they would start to take more and more local trips. So you’re starting to see this change was like, Hey, I can go in one or two local trips here and I can go on to international trips a year. So we are starting to feel like it is expanding. Speaker 1 [00:14:58] Coming up after the break, more of our conversation with Hussein Feisal. So stay right here to see these pictures. Speaker 2 [00:15:09] You’re listening to Disruptors an RBC podcast. I’m Theresa Do, RBC Economics and Thought Leadership recently published a report called Equal Measures Advancing Canada’s Working Women in a Post-pandemic Economy. In it, we look at the importance of boosting women’s pay and participation in the labor force and tackle some of the possible solutions. Among them establish greater parity between maternity and paternity leave and reduce the financial burden of taking parental leave, create more opportunities for upskilling and pathways for women into senior roles, and recruit more women into the skilled trades. To learn more, check out the link in the show notes of this episode and visit RBC dot com slash thought leadership. And be sure to follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. All places. Speaker 1 [00:15:57] Welcome back. We’re talking with Hussein Fazal about the return of travel coming out of the pandemic, as well as some of the storm clouds on the horizon that could disrupt the recovery. We can’t talk about travel without recognizing what’s going on in the world and specifically the war in Ukraine and what that is doing, not just to that country and the region, but the disruptions it’s causing globally. Flights are being rerouted. That’s probably the least inconvenience out of the certainly from a Ukrainian perspective. But oil prices way up. How do you think that’s going to impact travel? Speaker 3 [00:16:33] It’s obviously super sad and super unfortunate to see that happen. I mean, when this started, we actually blocked any hotel bookings in Russia. We blocked anyone from making bookings and in the currency is just extremely sad to see that type of unprovoked aggression. And our hearts are out to the people in Ukraine. Yeah, we’re seeing some increase in gas prices. We’re seeing some changes to inflation. But I think again, all that stuff normalize over a longer period of time. So I’m not I’m not too concerned about the long term ramifications of that right now. For us, or at least the way I think about personally is just obviously, no one wants this war to continue. And we’re sort of our hearts are with the people of Ukraine and that that’s the most important thing Speaker 2 [00:17:14] as we are coming out of the pandemic, very high inflation and high costs or sensing this tension between the fact that it is frankly getting much more expensive to travel. And yet we all still want to do it because of the pent up demand of the last couple of years. So from your perspective, how sensitive are Canadian travelers to price increases and who is actually doing the traveling this year and next? Like who can afford to? Speaker 3 [00:17:37] Yeah, it’s you know, first of all, I would say it’s not just Canadian doubted everyone is price sensitive. It has been some very difficult times for people in Covid, and there’s definitely a large segment of the demographics that have had a difficult time during Covid and now saving money is even more important. And then and then the opposite of that sort of what you mentioned is that we see prices starting to go up because there’s all this pent up demand and people have been waiting. Right. So. So I would say there’s definitely a demographic that has been saving money as that pent up demand is ready to go. And then unfortunately, there’s another part of the demographic that is now in some ways, somewhat priced out. I mean, I expect we’re going to see things normalize. I think that over the next six to 12 months, we’re probably going to see a lot of people traveling like way more than usual to make up for them for the past two years. I mean, one of them, one of the most interesting stats I have for you is that typically on any given night, about 30 to 40 percent of hotel rooms across the US go empty. So that means there is excess capacity and obviously it depends where you’re going. There’s some boutique hotels, a fancy boujee beach. They’re going to be sold out every single night for an entire year. But if you’re going to Vegas, where there’s tons and tons of hotel rooms, there’s a lot of places across the states and even plus Canada where there’s just a lot of supply. You’re going to have empty hotel rooms, so there are rooms available. And eventually the market’s going to normalize. These hotels are going to look to maximize the revenue to fill up those beds. The biggest tip I would say in terms of booking is just kind of really being aware of the booking windows and knowing how far in advance to book. So often you’ll get the best deals when you’re booking two to three weeks in advance. When you wake up to last minute could have a chance. But there’s also a risk there that you know you end up with hotels that sell out or end up filling up. And when you booked too far in advance, you’re probably not leaving yourself the opportunity for a hotel to say, Hey, it looks like we may not be a capacity. I think we’re going to we’re going to do a price drop over here, right? So. So ideally, you can you can sort of book two to three weeks in advance or if you’re booking well in advance, you’re doing that with a good responsibility policy. So if you see a price drop, you can go and say, I’m going to catch my booking and rebook Hussein. Speaker 1 [00:19:47] You mentioned Canadians desire to travel internationally and of course, a lot of people, not just Americans, but Europeans and Asians are going to be traveling again. How do we get them and how do tour operators and hospitality operators get them coming to Canada and spending more time and money in Canada as the world opens up? Speaker 3 [00:20:06] I think that in general, as a country, we probably need to do more. One of the things that I was really excited about and this is about four or five years ago, MGM was going to come here and they were going to come to Toronto and they were going to build out a complex. They were going to build out a casino, they were going to build a theme park. They were going to build sort of a water park. They were going to build, you know, a mall, meeting rooms. They were going to build a train from the airport straight to the MGM property. That’s the type of stuff where you can say, Hey, now, now there’s a whole other reason to come into Toronto and make this destination. Unfortunately, in order for MGM to do that, they wanted to obviously have a casino in place, and that’s something that the city ended up projecting, which is very disappointing because I mean, I understand some of the problems that come with having a casino, and I think there probably would have been some ways to mitigate those problems. But net, you talk about a major company like that. Coming in and putting in a major infrastructure project that makes Toronto more of a destination, so that’s at a country level or even a city level. We need to start thinking about doing things like that and building more of this infrastructure. Speaker 2 [00:21:23] One of the great gifts that the pandemic gave us gifts or curses has been just the ability to connect with people across vast distances through a screen. To what extent do you think business travel will come back and how do you see airlines, airports, hotels changing their business model now, where they previously relied on that lucrative business traveler? Speaker 3 [00:21:46] Yeah. So this is this is an interesting question that we talked about. So I can tell you internally how we think about it. So we are now approaching 200 employees. We are about, I would say, 60, 70 percent here in Canada, about 30, 30, 40 percent in the U.S. and globally. These are just executives who used to travel quite a bit. I used to travel almost once a month to New York, to San Francisco, and obviously in the pandemic, it was almost two years of almost no business travel. I just recently, I made a couple of trip to New York and San Francisco. It what it feels like is that some business travelers are going to pick up. There’s still no replacement sometimes for having dinner with someone or meeting in person. But I just don’t think that’s going to be at the same scale as before. So I expect that a lot of staff and a lot of meetings can just happen online, but that’s like deep relationship building of those strategic partnerships. That’s the type of stuff that I think is going to happen in person. Speaker 1 [00:22:41] Hussein, as we move towards close, I wonder if you could share some parting thoughts on how we, as travelers may be changing. Something that fascinates me about travel is that it brings humans together, and we probably all longed to be on those crowded streets in Manhattan or even those awkward moments of being squeezed between people getting to their seats on an airline or trying to find a spot on a crowded beach or have a seat at a crowded cafe. And yet, after two years of pandemic, all that kind of seems weird now. Is that going to be the normal again anytime soon? Or are we as a traveling species going to be a little different coming out of this? Speaker 3 [00:23:21] I think it’s a little back to normal. Some lifestyle changes have happened like there’s been people who move from downtown to the suburbs and people who are, you know, have more space and maybe are working from home cause they’re just not going out as much. But I think the next time you’re going to get into crowded coffee shop or a crowded beach, you’re not going to think twice about it. Speaker 1 [00:23:39] So if I hear you correctly, what you’re saying is I’m going to have to stand elbow to elbow with people again to appreciate a painting at the at the moment. Speaker 3 [00:23:46] I think so. I think Speaker 1 [00:23:47] that’s OK. I’ll look. I’ll look forward to that moment. Hussein, thanks so much for being on RBC disruptors. Speaker 3[00:23:52] No problem. Thank you for having me, John. Speaker 2 [00:23:56] That conversation has me itching to plan my next trip, maybe even with an AI powered chat bot. I really love the optimism that Hussein had about where travel is going and the opportunities we might have to travel. Given the changing nature of work, that extra flexibility means that you might be able to do two weeks in a far off city as long as you can check into your computer every day and get your deliverables done. And at the same time you’re in a new place, you can close your laptop and then go out and explore a new city and eat great food always comes back to food. For me, that’s what I’m really, really jazzed about. How about you? Speaker 1 [00:24:33] Yeah, it makes me want to get on a plane probably two to three weeks from now, but I also realized how technology really is changing travel, not in the ways that maybe some of the extreme thinkers thought that we’d all sit in our basement with our VR goggles on and go places without having to leave home. But it’s technology that is optimizing the ability to travel for all of us. It’s not only making it more affordable and accessible, but as Hussein was saying, we’re getting better and better deals. Maybe not as good as we’d like all the time. But with technology getting better, the opportunity to travel will improve with it. Speaker 2 [00:25:13] And the best part is you have a machine searching up those deals for you, and you’re not spending that time trudging through websites yourself. Well, that’s all for now. Thanks to our guest again, Hussein Faisal of Snap Commerce. Next week, join us for the latest tech and innovation buzz with our 10 minute take series. Until then, I’m Theresa Do and I’m John Stackhouse. Speaker 1 [00:25:33] This is Disruptors an RBC podcast. Talk to you soon. Speaker 4 [00:25:42] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit rbc dot com, slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:02] Hey, Speaker 2 [00:00:03] it’s Theresa. Welcome to disruptors, the 10 minute Take where we dive into the latest innovation, tech and economic buzz. For this week’s take, we’re tackling cybersecurity, an issue that’s become even more prominent with the war in Ukraine. In addition to the large scale violence and physical destruction, the country has also experienced a bevy of cyber attacks and security breaches that are changing the face of war and spilling over into civilian arenas. How will this affect the way businesses and individuals protect against cyber threats? And what does it mean for the future of digital networks? To help us better understand cyber health and best practices is Matt Hedberg, software analyst at RBC Capital Markets in Minneapolis. Prior to RBC, Matt spent eight years in the software industry. Matt, welcome to the 10 minute take. Speaker 1 [00:00:50] Thanks. Happy to be here! Speaker 2 [00:00:51] Cyberattacks have been a facet of online life and digital business for years, but the war in Ukraine has put a spotlight on them, especially as we’ve seen critical infrastructure get hit areas like energy, utilities, transportation, health care. What’s changed about cybersecurity in the last couple of years, particularly as we’ve migrated much of our lives online due to the pandemic? Speaker 1 [00:01:15] You know, honestly, it started well before Covid. It started well before the SolarWinds breach of 2020. You know, ever since the dawn of computers, there has been malware. There’s been bad actors exploiting vulnerabilities, and it gave birth to obviously a huge cybersecurity industry over the last 20 plus years. Some of these trends have accelerated recently. Covid is, we think, ultimately the biggest accelerant of all of them ultimately is forcing all of us. Whether it’s work, play, exercise, vacation to leverage more technology, something we refer to as digital transformation. And with that comes a whole new digital infrastructure and a whole new security posture. So Covid really accelerated trends that were already in place. The SolarWinds security breach of 2020 was very much an on premise oriented breach, and that subsequently, we think, pushed a lot of CEOs and CTOs to even want to move more critical infrastructure to the public cloud. Ultimately, we think a precursor to a digital transformation is a security transformation that really requires a whole different way of thinking about cybersecurity and whatever the next breach might be. A week from now, a month from now, there will be more. We just think the world is not where it needs to be from a cyber defense perspective. Speaker 2 [00:02:23] How have cyber attacks evolved and what are the most common types you’ve been seeing lately? Speaker 1 [00:02:28] From a warfare perspective, obviously, historically it was very much air, land and sea, but increasingly cyber attacks. You know, people can do that from their basement, right? And it doesn’t have to be nation state. It can be a rogue group of criminals that can hide behind firewalls and have their traffic, hop around multiple networks and really conceal their activities. A lot of times it could be malware. It could be phishing attacks. It could be brute force de dos attacks. It can be identity attacks. There’s a whole bevy of tools that cybercriminals are using to inflict more cyber pain, right? Speaker 2 [00:03:00] And just a couple of weeks ago, Canada’s federal government did warn businesses and organizations to bolster their cyber defenses as the crisis unfolded. So what are the biggest gaps that still need to be addressed in terms of how companies should be guarded themselves against these attacks? Speaker 1 [00:03:16] Yeah, I think it’s, you know, part of it is a frustration. I think among a lot of CTOs that we talked to, there’s this view that no matter what I do, the cyber criminals will be one step in front of me. And so that ultimately has led to a real proliferation of I want to buy everything because the more I own from a security perspective, the safer I feel. Yet oftentimes, the more you have, sometimes the more complicated your security posture is and stuff falls through the cracks. So we think over time there will be a sense of consolidation because sometimes less is more. And the more that you can have a single pane of glass to look at all of your cyber risks and defense, that’s a powerful thing. We also think that with the advent of cloud computing, we’re seeing a lot of these cloud security vendors do more with data. So CrowdStrike, one of our favorite companies that we follow, has a massive cloud native threat graph database where they’re able to see trends and anomalies faster than, say, a company could if they were analyzing all the data themselves and really the power of the crowd in this case. So we think some sense of market consolidation, additional cloud based technologies and really, when we think of what’s critical from a cyber defense perspective, we think there’s several core pillars identity. Knowing who you are is a critical aspect of cyber defense, how then you access critical infrastructure. So this is called zero trust, and it’s effectively saying, OK, Matt, you are who you say you are. Now we’re going to authenticate you to what you’re getting after, and there’s companies that are specifically designed for this kind of secure digital gateway, if you will. Another line of defense is cloud work will protection. So putting parameters around protecting cloud workloads, that could be stuff that a company like RBC developed internally. It can be public facing applications like salesforce.com. But but protecting that cloud workload, we think, is a critical aspect. And so we think ultimately, if you’re able to address identity, secure connection and protecting cloud workload, obviously there’s other aspects of cyber defense, but those we think are critical aspects of this next gen security posture that we’ve been talking about. Speaker 2 [00:05:13] So pivoting now to perhaps the opposite end of the spectrum, looking at individuals, you know, you mentioned that some of these cyber attacks happen from non-state actors, from some person in their basement, and the same could be said for how they manifest on home computers. You know, cyber attacks could be launched from unwitting hosts. An attacker could probably take control of my computer without me knowing. And so from an individual point of view, what are the biggest vulnerabilities that most people just aren’t aware of? Speaker 1 [00:05:41] Yeah, I think there’s been so much focus on enterprise security or federal or state and local security. I think oftentimes individuals, we are the weakest link of the day, right? We could click on an email that we shouldn’t click on or a URL that we shouldn’t click on. And ultimately, so we are sometimes the last line of defense, whether that’s you and a corporation or you as an individual in your private lives. And so there’s been less technology devoted to protecting individual consumer security. There’s a handful of larger consumer security vendors out there, but some of it’s generational. I think a lot of younger kids and one feels and didn’t necessarily grow up with a fear of computers, you know, doesn’t think about cybersecurity as much as, say, like an RBC, what, for instance. And so I think a lot of it’s education. I think there’s some basic security measures that consumers can take. Obviously, identity fraud is a huge thing, but yeah, it is when we’re talking about potentially the weakest link in the chain being humans. I think there’s certainly more that we all can do individually. And some of it’s just education. You know, knowing what looks fishy is certainly an aspect of it. But deploying oftentimes, you know, enterprise grade security for individuals is not something that really happens today, but I think something that certainly could be an interesting avenue to to explore. Speaker 2 [00:06:52] OK, so when we look at the latest market moves on cyber defenses, we saw Google purchase cybersecurity firm Mandiant for $5.4 billion this week, and it’s one of the largest acquisitions in the tech giant’s history. It’s also a big bet that helping companies better address cyber threats is also very good for business. But in your view, what is the right balance for private sector companies and governments in assuming responsibility for cybersecurity? Speaker 1 [00:07:19] You know, on the Google acquisition of Mandiant, it speaks to how important the hyperscalers IWC Azure GCP are taking cyber security. Microsoft has, I think it’s a $10 billion security business internally, and so we think there will be continued spending from a public cloud perspective. Now what’s interesting, though, a lot of the public companies that we cover can play across multiple clouds. We call it like, you know, multicloud or hybrid cloud. And a lot of organizations like RBC are leveraging multiple public clouds for the workload. And so while we think the hyperscalers will continue to invest both organically and inorganically in this case, Google bought Mandiant. We also think there will be a need for independent sort of software security vendors that can play across clouds now. The question was also to what is that from a federal perspective, to an individual corporation to an individual person in their personal life? Obviously, there’s varying degrees of things that governments are doing. There’s things like Europe has implemented data security or data breach laws where if you know, if a company is breached, they have to disclose that breach to alert the public that they’re potentially their identity has been compromised. And so federal governments around the world are really deploying a number of sort of more governance based items. Corporations are clearly spending billions and billions to secure their own networks. But yeah, I think it is a tough balance, right? Philosophically speaking, a lot of federal governments take more of a defensive posture when it comes to cybersecurity. They’re not taking an offensive view, right? And so in some regards any the federal agencies are a bit hamstrung in taking a more defensive posture. But I think a lot of the enterprise security vendors that we now cover more of the cloud based cybersecurity vendors are doing some amazing things with data that can prevent breaches. And so that defense mechanism, we think, ultimately needs to make its way further, both into the federal government perspective as well as humans and individuals in their own personal lives. Speaker 2 [00:09:06] As we look forward, do you think this marks a turning point in global technology development and network connectivity? To what extent do we think this increasing threat of cyber attacks is going to slow down growth in the Internet of Things, for example? Speaker 1 [00:09:20] Yeah. Covid. If it taught us anything kind of reverting back to the sort of our conversation, the world is digital. We all know that, and we all relied on technology to survive and thrive during Covid. Those trends aren’t reversing. It’s now a function of cybersecurity to continue to make advancements to enable this. And so this is a critical thing of what we talk about in our research is that digital transformation, so moving more workload to the cloud is ultimately a secure practice. But then also security transformations to enable that has to happen in conjunction. And so therefore we think the overall cybersecurity spending environment will remain robust for a long period of time. Speaker 2 [00:09:57] Right. So as we grow more connected. It’s cybersecurity, we’ll just have to keep up with advances in technology. Speaker 1 [00:10:03] Exactly. We’re not going back to pen and paper as much as I think we’d all like the nostalgia of writing letters and receiving them in the mail. This world is digital. That’s not changing. And so we do think that cyber defense is a paramount aspect of further enabling digital technologies, and we’re not going back. Speaker 2 [00:10:22] That’s fascinating. Thank you so much for joining us today, Matt. Speaker 1 [00:10:26] Thanks, Theresa. Speaker 2 [00:10:27] And that’s a wrap for this week’s 10 minute take. I’m Theresa Doerr. Join us next time as we dig into the resurgence of travel happening in Canada right now as COVID restrictions finally ease after two years. Talk to you soon, disruptors. Speaker 3 [00:10:45] The 10 minute take is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit RBC dot com slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hey, it’s Theresa. It’s no secret that Covid has had a devastating impact on people and businesses. But the pandemic hit female dominated industries, especially hard sectors like food services, education, retail and health care hemorrhaged workers once lockdowns began. Female participation in the workforce plummeted to a low of 55 percent, a level not seen in decades. Things have since bounced back, and according to new research from RBC Economics and thought leadership, more than eight in 10 working age women were working last year. That’s the good news. But even in this hot labour market, there remains a nearly eight percent gap between working age, men’s and women’s participation rate, and that gap doubles for women with young children. The challenges women face are everywhere, from the shop floor to the corner office to the boardroom. If we’re serious about growing our economy, we need to get serious about tearing down the barriers for women’s participation. Every year, we don’t have parity. The Canadian economy loses out on $100 billion, but boosting the share of women owned small businesses could create billions and create economic momentum for decades to come. To get there, we need to change not only who gets hired or funded, but who does the hiring and funding. And that means ensuring women have a seat at the table and have a say in major decisions. Women’s participation in the labour force is not just another economic statistic. After all, it’s a benchmark for how well we’re doing as a society and how much further we have yet to go. This is disruptors, an RBC podcast, I’m Trinh Theresa Do. In this episode and recognition of International Women’s Day, we’re taking a look at what progress women have made in Canada’s labour force, especially in high skill fields such as business and finance. But we’re also asking some tough questions about why parity for employment and funding is still an issue in Canada, even as women are becoming business owners and entrepreneurs at a faster rate than men. To help answer some of these questions, we’ve convened two figures well versed in this space. Michelle McBane is managing partner at StandUp Ventures, which invests in women-led startups and just secured more than $30 million in initial capital for its second fund. RBC, full disclosure, is an investment partner contributing $5 million over the past few years, and Laura McGee is CEO of Diversio, which uses AI technology and human expertise to help organizations create tailored diversity and inclusion benchmarks against their peers. Laura Michelle, welcome to disruptors. Speaker 2 [00:02:50] Thanks. Speaker 3 [00:02:51] Thanks for having us today. I really appreciate it, and it’s always good to see Laura on the other side. Speaker 1 [00:02:55] So I’d like to start with a perception about women and access to capital. Namely, their supply of capital is not the issue that there are lots of funds ready to be accessed by women entrepreneurs. And yet female-led startups get a tiny fraction of the total VC funding worldwide. I think Crunchbase data recently showed that in 2020, the proportion of dollars to female only founders declined to two point three percent, which is tiny. So what’s going on? And Michelle, I love to start with you. Speaker 3 [00:03:23] Sure, it’s been an ongoing evolution, I would say, of investing in women that are co-led ventures. And so the numbers are particularly low when it’s 100 percent female founding team and where we focus and where we invest is at this stage because that’s where often the typical pattern recognition that you’ll see VCs and investors look for so successful founding team or telling a really, really big story that may or may not be something you can achieve or pitching folks across the table who don’t look like you. That’s where the challenge is really at the seed stage for. For folks who aren’t part of the flow to raise money, it’s always challenging to raise venture money. It’s challenging for any business. And not all businesses are venture great deals. But when you layer some of these other elements there, it makes it particularly challenging. So our goal is to get companies through that seed phase where there’s very limited data, very limited metrics, right? So that is that first piece. The second piece is often women are building companies that not all investors truly understand, and we do focus more on the traditional VC B2B enterprise. But many women founders are disrupting other industries, and that may not again be well understood by the investor across the table. So the other thing you’re seeing, particularly in the U.S., are a whole bunch of new funds focused on exactly those types of businesses. And those are also the emerging pools of capital in the new groups who are raising funds to invest in a different kind of business. Speaker 1 [00:05:03] Michelle, you mentioned a lack of pattern recognition that some of their ventures are not as well understood. Laura, I want to turn to you. Could that be in part explained by the underrepresentation of women in these VC firms? Speaker 2 [00:05:14] I think that’s a big part of it in our research and our experience it comes down to. And I’ll give you maybe the data and then our experience as a startup. So on the one hand, the data tells us that women are less likely to ask for capital. A lot of that comes down to women often prefer loans to equity. But also, there’s that scale of having a network that helps you go in and ask and value your business and ask for a significant amount of money. And then on the flip side, when they do ask where they’re less likely to receive it, I mean, we struggled to raise early on. Michelle is, I think, an outlier, an exception of someone who said, I think that this business has legs, others. The primary objection that we heard is we don’t believe that this market is willing to spend money. We don’t believe that diversity and inclusion is something businesses will actually pay for, and we’re not completely convinced that it’s going to improve business performance. And that assumption was wrong. We obviously bootstrapped and did incredibly well and raised a series on fantastic terms when we didn’t have to. And I think looking back now to a powder team on the back that we saw an opportunity that a lot of men benefiting from the existing work system we’re benefiting from. And it was hard for them to, I think, sometimes see a future that looked a bit different than that. Speaker 1 [00:06:29] It reminds me of when I was in grad school four years ago, I organized a panel discussion on innovation and we had featured a VC investor, the founder of a tech ecosystem, organization and policy expert and a female entrepreneur. And I was honestly quite shocked at how open and cavalier the discussion got about how the reasons why women were not funded and the investor had said directly that they didn’t. IT funding because they were deemed not ambitious enough or they look like they were a motherhood, pregnancy age, and so my go away and have kids or they might lose momentum or they just overall didn’t seem as committed as men. And I mean, these are hurdles I’m sure you both are not unfamiliar with at all. I’m curious, Michelle, how are you set up differently to eliminate those biases? Speaker 3 [00:07:12] We do catch ourselves as well. I think we intentionally catch yourself with some of our biases. In fact, I have seen so many pictures over the past two weeks where I’ve challenged the founders to actually raise more money than they put out there. You know, if they believe in this, they really believe that they’re ready to spend some money. And I’m not talking about, you know, if you want to raise one go race 10, I’m saying if you want to raise some fifty one should raise one and a half to two, right? Just just really think about it a bit more broadly. And I’ve been seeing that as I as I reflect on that right now. I’ve been seeing that a lot over the past the past two weeks for some reason. And so what we try and do is intentionally think about the way we engage. It’s very clear on our website what we believe in and why we do what we’re doing. I would say the founders, we’ve made 16 investments now since we started. The founders have now started to tell our stories. And what I’m also seen is I’m just so excited by this. The founders in our portfolio who’ve gone on to raise some substantial rounds of financing and have gone through, you know, when to turn to 50 to 200 employees are now coming back and spending time with the younger generation of founders, the first time founders and sharing their stories. And I think that, to me is what’s particularly unique is the power, the community that we’re building, and that’s what we’re really doubling down on Speaker 1 [00:08:33] as an investor. To what extent do you encourage or influence the companies you invest in to implement some of those D&I efforts or ESG in their organizations, Speaker 3 [00:08:43] so we don’t in the early days? Our view is that if you have and we focus on gender primarily, but if you have a more gender balanced leadership team, founding team from the get go, that’s going to trickle down and you’re going to be naturally going to be able to attract a different pool of talent. And so that’s proven to be very true and we just updated our data. But from memory overall in other employees and in all of our portfolio, 50 percent are women versus the norm. Gosh, I don’t know, Laura, 10, 15 percent in the tech startup world, there are 38 percent women on boards and all but one company has a woman on the board. So different, different other level of leadership. So the 50 percent in senior leadership, 42 percent of women overall, and we measure that regularly. And so that’s our thesis in action. And it’s really not surprising. I often talk about Uber because they’re not here, but in the early days, you know, everyone looked and felt like that CEO. And because you hire her, you know, in the early days, then you hire from your pool of talent. And it’s been fascinating to watch. So do we actively put different programs in place? We don’t at the early days and we just they just kind of naturally evolve such that when you have to start implementing them, they’re already happening. Speaker 1 [00:10:01] Yeah, well, that’s really an encouraging statistic. 50 percent. And Laura, I want to turn to you and February diverse you and the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association released a survey on the state of diversity, equity and inclusion in the private capital industry. I’d love to hear what were the findings that most surprised you from that research? Speaker 2 [00:10:20] I would say the first thing that surprised me about that effort was actually how willing VC firms and private equity firms were to engage and how different the conversation is now that it was three five years ago when it comes down to the actual data. There was some improvement on gender representation in venture capital, racial and ethnic diversity in Mudrick Capital. So I think we are seeing some improvement on representation. For me, the most meaningful findings are on that inclusion piece. And so what experience are our investors having when they’re sitting at the partnership table, when they’re trying to make their way up the associate track? And so some of the key barriers that we saw come through are, for example, women at the partner level are struggling on a few metrics. So things like do they feel like someone senior to them is invested in their career development? We saw about basically half the degree of confidence among women, as we did among men. Workplace flexibility is another example. Women are saying that they are not always able to balance their work and home care responsibilities. It’s not about working fewer hours, it’s about working them flexibly. And so I think servicing those opportunities for how do you create a workplace where women and other diverse employees are able to do their best work, put their best ideas forward? That’s a real opportunity area. Yeah. Speaker 1 [00:11:35] And I really appreciate how we are advancing the conversation from diversity to inclusion, and I hear this phrase a lot. Diversity is what you have or don’t have. An inclusion is what you do with it. Laura, can you explain what you mean by inclusion and how does diversity track it? Speaker 2 [00:11:51] Right, so. I and everyone completely agree, and we are obsessively focused at divers here. How do you improve business performance through diversity and inclusion and getting the right people at the table is really half the battle? And so for us, when we started early on, the first problem statement was how do we find the concept of inclusion? How do we define a concept of allowing everyone to bring their best selves to work, be engaged, be productive, you know, hit those targets. And so what we did is we worked with academics and we came up with basically a framework that looks at six key metrics that are measurable. Objective can be compared to peers and collectively define what it means to have an inclusive workplace. So you’re looking at things like inclusive culture, for example. So whether your opinion is valued by your team, obviously critically important in the investment industry, which is all about, you know, the marketplace of ideas and getting to the right answer all the way to things like workplace safety. So is the workplace free from harassment? Mental, physical, sexual, which you know for obvious reasons, not only inhibits performance but creates meaningful risk in a social media era where MeToo scandal will absolutely bring down your business? Speaker 1 [00:12:59] I would imagine that as a as a leader in an organization that that can sometimes be really hard to track and I am very curious. Michel, have you experienced any challenges just measuring inclusion? Speaker 3 [00:13:10] So I’m just starting to peel that back. And so with the CDC report was very much focused on the capital allocators and at the venture level and measuring it there. I’m excited to start thinking about how we can share this with our portfolio, and I know Laura has done some work at diversity with some of the Canadian companies and measured across some VC funds the inclusion metrics in their portfolios. And I think there’s been some pretty interesting data there. The other piece is, you know, when we did the CBC benchmark report, it was to benchmark and it was seen when we do this again in two years from now, has some action been taken and has there been some changes then? What we did find just simply at the VC level is the women partners from a study that was done two years prior to now have gone up from was it 12 to 19 percent. So already a significant movement in two years of more women at the partner level allocating capital. And I think that’s the first step that you have to have to start kind of trickling down into the investment space. So. So I’m pretty excited to start thinking about how we could work with diverse you at the portfolio level because I think there’s some pretty interesting opportunities there. And the founders are ready for it. Speaker 1 [00:14:23] This has been really energizing, but we’re going to take a quick break. Coming up more of my conversation with Michelle McBain and Laura McGee. Speaker 4 [00:14:35] You’re listening to Disruptors, an RBC podcast. I’m Dawn Desjardins, deputy chief economist at RBC. As you’ve heard off the top, RBC Economics has just released a report called The Turning Point Leveling the Playing Field for women in Canada’s labor market, and we look at the importance of boosting women’s pay and participation in the labor force and tackle some of the solutions, like establishing greater parity between maternity and paternity leave and reducing the financial burden of taking parental leave, creating more opportunities for upskilling and pathways for women into senior roles, and recruiting more women into the skilled trades. To learn more, check out the link in the show notes of this episode and visit RBC dot com slash thought leadership. And be sure to follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 [00:15:28] Welcome back. Today, to commemorate International Women’s Day, we’re talking about how Canada’s VC industry can better support female investors and entrepreneurs. With my guests Michelle McBain from StandUp Ventures and Laura McGee from Diversio. I’d like to dig a little bit deeper, so in my reading of the CVCA report, I noticed there were findings for how women experience the workplace. Findings for how racialized people experience the workplace for those disabilities and people who identify as LGBTQ 2+. And perhaps I minute missed it, but I was curious as to why there was not more mention of people who fall into more than one category. And so I guess, Michelle, how would you go about addressing these barriers for women who live at the intersection of different identities? Speaker 3 [00:16:12] Oh, that’s a really great question. I’ll tell you, when I first started this fund in 2017, the questions I was getting around, you know, finding women just as the start was, well, venture funding should be around meritocracy and there really isn’t an issue and, you know, all these sort of things. So I think that, you know, the second part of the journey and really bringing everything to the table, and we’re very intentional about working with as many founders as we can. But for us, that means us going out and meeting founders that spend a little bit more challenging, you know, attending events and doing all that other stuff. The flip side is making sure at the funnel, at the top level that we’re seeing everyone that we can. We try to contribute where we can, even if a company’s not a fit, but at least meeting with people, having a conversation with the founders and getting to know them. And so do we have something formal in place? We don’t? Do we think about it? Are we as intentional as we can be about it? I think we do an OK job on it and we can always do better. It’s about how we how we just to track as broad a pool ourselves of founders to stand up. So I think Speaker 2 [00:17:19] it’s such a good question. I think size does come into play. So to your question around intersectionality, when you get to a certain number of employees that allows you to protect their anonymity, it is critical to look at things like does someone identify with one two three four even non-dominant characteristics in the organization? And we do see it’s a capability of our dashboard. Significant differences if you deep dove and white women, for example, and women of color. For most organizations, that gap in terms of exclusion does grow. So I think the implication here is, you know, you have to know where the barriers are and what kind of individual is affected and the more granular like any other kind of part of your business, the more granular you can get, the more precise you can be with solutions and interventions. But I think it also your earlier point really does, I think, reinforce you can’t assume that because you bring diversity in the door, that inclusion will necessarily result. So especially as companies grow, you need to keep an eye on creating that culture. Some of the most inclusive leaders I’ve ever worked for have been straight white men. Some of the most inclusive leaders I’ve ever worked for have been women of color who are part of the LGBT community, so everybody has the opportunity. I think it’s critical to look at both pieces together, Speaker 1 [00:18:36] going think about racialized female founders and entrepreneurs. What are some of the specific steps that could be taken there to support them? Speaker 3 [00:18:42] So community has been our approach, and for us, it’s helping the founders find a community that makes sense for them, and it could be identifying by gender, but identifying by their various other identities. And it’s getting tricky because our goal is to have more women, founders, starting companies. And so we’re building that pool and it is taking probably longer than any of us would want. But I do see a lot of momentum. So just bringing more folks around the table and then helping them find their peers, you know, the Kapoor Foundation did a study and it was around tech and in some of the larger tech companies. And in fact, they found that a black woman didn’t identify with other women they actually identified with black peers. And so it’s a combination of all of these pieces of elevating folks together, making space for it. We’re just learning all the time and all I do and what I try to do as best I can is just listen and learn every time. And you know, I started with the data of what we’re seeing and what we’ve seen over four years. So if we can take that and just continue doing these different approaches across communities, I think that’s super important. And we call the firm stand up after the little girl standing up to the ball. For us, she was a role model for the founders. She’s confident, she’s curious, she’s fearless. She’s everything you look for in a founder. And so we wanted her to be the muse for the women founders. And so I think what we’ve proven is that community does matter and role models do matter. Speaker 2 [00:20:19] I agree with everything Michelle says wholeheartedly. I actually have a very different answer around what would it take to get diverse founders funded. For me, inspiration, role models, community critical. But for me, I think an equal lever is we need straight white men at venture capital firms to personally mentor and sponsor UP-AND-COMING aspirational entrepreneurs. I had a. All today with a brilliant potential entrepreneur with this fantastic podcast company that she’s already doing is already generating revenue, incredible data and was about to go to the market and ask for about $200000 for twenty five percent of her business and had a deck. And I say this was so much love. She’s a good friend. A deck that was 40 pages long didn’t outline the size of the market and outline how she filled the business to be a unicorn. There’s like three secret things that need to be included in a deck. It’s like an exam that are not honestly well understood unless you have people in your network who have done this before. So you need, for example, what’s your line of sight through 100 million in revenue? It’s a market $10 billion or more. You know who’s on your advisory team? What is the strength of your network? Why are you the person that people are going to believe? There’s this kind of secret shortcuts that women are not always privy to? And so I think it’s going to take the veterans who have been in the industry taking those people under their wing and saying, Listen, this is how it works, and let me personally use my social capital to get you in front of the right people. Speaker 1 [00:21:47] I want to turn to some of the other issues facing women in the workforce, especially women with children. And it’s an issue whether you’re working for somebody else or leading your own business. And my question and we can start with Laura is what role do things like child care policies or support for parental leave play in leveling the playing field in business and finance? Speaker 2 [00:22:07] It really does vary by type of business and even within businesses. It varies by group. Often, things like flexibility are those unwritten rules of a particular team where, you know, some groups tend to not have meetings before 10am a.m. or after 3:00 p.m., which is convenient for parents. Other groups don’t have that culture. So for us, I think, you know, assessing individuals perception of flexibility is key number one, to identify where there’s a problem and then there are really high impact proven programs and policies that can have can make a difference. So, for example, when one of my favorites is having four hours. So scheduling all meetings between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., which allows parents to do what they need to do in the morning or after school, you know, other things like shared hours, shared scheduling. Sometimes two people can do the work of one, and those two people now have twice as much time off, which benefits both of them and doesn’t hurt the business. So I think there are a lot of shortcuts, a lot of hacks that can be implemented that have been proven and don’t just really it’s a win win. Speaker 3 [00:23:08] What’s been really interesting through COVID cover, it was really challenging for parents and families in the early days for all the reasons we know well. But what you saw happening after was a really efficient process for raising capital. So one of our founders just sat in her living room and had meeting after meeting, after meeting and within, you know, three weeks had a term sheet. And it was because the partners that the funds weren’t traveling, you could get to them fairly easily. They were open to taking meetings. Their whole lives were more efficient because they didn’t have to travel to board meetings. And so it was really, really exceptional and how you could run a process. And in fact, last year we had a founder who was. We just realized they were growing really, really quickly and were like, Oh my gosh, you should be out fundraising, but oh dear, you’re eight months pregnant. Why don’t you give it a go anyways? And she agreed, and so she could fundraise because she’s sitting behind the camera. And so that bias a woman who’s eight months pregnant walking into your boardroom isn’t there. You actually listened to her story before you saw that. Speaker 1 [00:24:12] Our final question, companies can do a lot to shift the balance. But I want to ask about the role of education and media representation. There’s been tons of studies done that show how in articles about entrepreneurs, only men tend to be quoted as experts and a lot of entrepreneurship courses in university and college. They’re typically taught by male instructors who then bring in male guest speakers and then that reinforces these long held stereotypes. Laura, how do we change the perception of what it means to be an entrepreneur? Speaker 2 [00:24:41] I recently spoke a good friend of mine is at Stanford Business School, which is kind of undeniably one of the best business schools and her biggest complaint and shared among classmates is they have no class on how to bootstrap a business. The entire curriculum is how to raise capital, how to get to the most important VCs, how to get that big stretch valuation. And what we’re seeing is a lot of women and actually a lot of men as well. They want to keep their equity, they want to build a sustainable business. They want to focus on the piano. You know, education role models needs to showcase not just another gender, but another way of doing business and building a company. And that’s going to benefit an equal opportunity for all individuals in society. So I think it’s critically important the role modeling piece. I think, you know, similar to the information sharing I love how you put it, Theresa, is all about showing people how it’s done and who can do it. And that role modeling, I think, is not just for the entrepreneurs who are up and coming. It’s for the VCs and showcasing like, Look, when this person walks into your office eight, nine months pregnant, let’s look at Joanna, who founded Knix, and let’s look at the massive success story that that company was. And you better not miss out because she’s probably running a business that has a good piano. It’s profitable. That’s going back into growth. And in an industry that you and many other competitors don’t know a lot about. Speaker 1 [00:25:58] I love that. Michelle, how do we make it easier for female led founders to succeed? Speaker 3 [00:26:03] You know, I’m going to speak specifically to two venture backed companies because that’s our world. And the answer is the answer. That’s right for the founder, not for us. But we do need to be aligned because if you are going to take external money, take partners in your business, you have to understand what our expectation is because of the promise that we make to our investors. So what we try and do is really talk founders through that journey from the very beginning and share with them, you know, any good readings. And we really encourage them to think deeply about this being the journey they want to go on or not. And then the other piece, you know, as Laura said, like, don’t give up too much equity. We my colleague actually had a thread on Twitter about raised more than you need and actually sure that you know that a valuation that is good for you because otherwise, you know, we’re not at the front of the line building the business. And if you’re not feeling alignment and and you, you’re motivated by your equity to build something, then it’s just not going to work for either party. Speaker 1 [00:26:59] Those are extremely helpful tips for entrepreneurs and Laura. Michelle, thank you so much, both of you, for your time today and for being on the show. Thank you, Speaker 3 [00:27:07] Chris. Speaker 2 [00:27:08] It’s great to have to get. Speaker 1 [00:27:11] So this has been my favorite conversation I’ve had on disrupters thus far, especially on a topic so important to me. It was animating to hear from both Laura and Michelle on the tangible steps to improve outcomes for women investors and entrepreneurs. I particularly loved Laura Straight-forward tips on the key questions female founders need to answer when making a pitch and shocked to learn that it’s not something most women are aware of the simple solution to just tell them transfer that knowledge. And I was encouraged to hear from Michelle about the support of community she and stand up ventures is creating around female founders. It reminds me of something I read recently about the effect of hiring women leaders on the rest of their organization. After General Motors named Mary Barra as CEO, an interesting trend emerged at the company. People began associating leadership qualities like decisiveness and assertiveness with women throughout the firm. Could simply tapping women for leadership roles changes how an organization perceives women? There’s lesson in there for investors, founders and companies everywhere. Thanks again to our guests Michelle McBain and Laura McGee. Next week, join us for the latest tech and innovation buzz with our 10 minute tech series. Until then, I’m Teresa Do and this is Disruptors an RBC podcast. Talk to you soon. Speaker 5 [00:28:35] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit rbc dot com, slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:02] Hey, it’s Theresa. Welcome to Disruptors, the 10-Minute Take where we dive into the latest innovation, tech and economic buzz. This week’s take is on Waterloo’s tech and innovation scene, which has received an incredible influx of investment in the last year. What’s behind that momentum and what’s to come for the region? To help us understand these dynamics is Chris Albinson. He’s the CEO of Communitech, an accelerator in Waterloo for tech companies that helps founders start, grow and succeed. One of its members is ApplyBoard, which we recently featured on our regular show. Communitech was launched twenty five years ago by founders who wanted to make Waterloo a global tech leader. Today, it’s one of Canada’s largest innovation hubs, with more than 6500 members across Canada. Chris, welcome to the 10 minute take. Speaker 2 [00:00:50] Oh thanks, Theresa. So thrilled to be here with you. Speaker 1 [00:00:53] So recently, Communitech Waterloo was the setting for the opening bell of the Toronto Stock Exchange, the first time that the bell was rung outside of Toronto. And we have some audio of it. I would love to play. It was a big moment celebrating the IPOs of magnet forensics, not to mention, of course, the massive amount of funding raised last year. You were there. How did that feel for you and the other founders? Speaker 2 [00:01:23] Well, I can’t give you a little, you know, the backstory and how it happened, but it was really amazing for the TSX to recognize the momentum. I think, you know, as you know, Canada is now the second largest innovation hub on the planet and the fastest growing by forex. And I think what the TSX realized is, you know, it’s time for the mountain to move to Muhammad. You know, in Waterloo, we build stuff and it’s really exciting to kind of see the momentum and we can talk some more about that. But I can tell you when the confetti is blowing all over the place and you’ve got 70 founders in the audience and John Bakers ringing the bell and saying, Hey, like, we’re just getting started. It felt awesome. It was really fun. Speaker 1 [00:02:00] So what does that say about Waterloo’s growth and trajectory? Because Waterloo is an established innovation hub, but now I feel like we’re getting into a new phase for the region. Speaker 2 [00:02:09] Yeah, there’s no question. I think originally when I started, we were hoping by twenty twenty five to get to twenty four thousand tech workers in the region and a billion a year invested last year. Now 2021, that seems like a long time ago. We crossed twenty six thousand tech workers fully four years ahead of schedule, and we crossed $3.2 billion invested in the last 14 months. So we’re on an exponential curve. Waterloo’s now the second largest and fastest growing tech hub in North America. We’re on the trajectory to be fifty five thousand tech workers by 2030. So just getting started. Speaker 1 [00:02:45] Yeah, that’s awesome. So let’s actually talk about the last 12 to 14 months and especially is setting the stage for our listeners who may not be as familiar with what’s been happening. So more money. Nearly three billion dollars was raised in that period of time than, I think in the previous 10 years combined. Why was 2021 such a standout year? Speaker 2 [00:03:04] So I think like all big successes, when you have the party with the confetti like it seems like, Hey, that just happened, it came out of nowhere. But the reality is our founders have been working really hard for a long time. John Baker has been building for 20 years. E! Center that raised four hundred and forty million dollars just announced this week has been working for over 10 years. Martin Bashir, who you had on, recently started his startup six years ago. But all of that work was done, I think, fundamentally different than we’ve ever seen before. The ambition is bigger and with ambition comes more. Talent with more talent has come more capital, which is really what we’re kind of celebrating that moment. But ultimately, you know, what success looks like is 14 companies over a billion in revenue. Our mission is clear. We want to build 14 Shopifys. And I’m very confident we’re on that path. Speaker 1 [00:03:54] Right? Yeah, Rome was not built in a day, that’s for sure. At the start of the pandemic, your team and community spoke to hundred founders in 100 days. What were the most common challenges you heard that entrepreneurs were facing? Speaker 2 [00:04:08] It was really grounding a ton of work, but awesome work. Talking to founders from coast to coast to coast. And we really kind of built all of the work on Cathy Priestner’s work who was the architect of own the podium. Everyone talks about own the podium, but they don’t actually look at the hard work that she did underneath it. And that’s what we base it on. And what we heard from the founders to answer your question was a couple of things. One is they don’t want to do participation anymore. You know, for those of us who remember that, like they really do want to own the podium and they’re saying, Hey, if our ambitions here, we need the support to get there. So we actually built out a data layer for the seventeen thousand startups across the country to understand what the trajectory is not only just on the capital flows, but the performance of the companies and the human capital issues. That’s problem number one, number two and number three for founders right now. So you may have seen we acquired Prospect, the largest job board in the country last year. As of this morning, there’s fifteen thousand four hundred and thirty eight job openings across our startups, and knowing that helps us know, like, what are we got to do to help them? We need to bring more talent in. Speaker 1 [00:05:13] Yeah, exactly. And that’s what Martin Basiri said to us when he was on. And of course, his company is about finding those people around the world and bringing them bring that talent into Canada. How have things changed since those conversations? Two years now into the pandemic, Speaker 2 [00:05:28] we did some pretty cheeky things like we bought a billboard in Times Square in the middle of the pandemic when it was really cheap because no one was in Times Square. And it basically said, you know, if you got H1-B problems come to Canada. That billboard got forty five million media impressions across the United States and Congress itself in the US still had a hearing about little community trying to steal away talent from the United States. I can’t believe that that actually happened, but it did. But you know, that’s what we got to do. We’ve got to be aggressive. We’re competing globally for talent. People are going to know about if if you want to build something awesome, you want to build something big and something that’s good for humanity. Canada is the place to go, build it, and we just need to say that over and over again. And like I said, we crossed our twenty. Five target for talent in the region four years ahead of time, and we just got to bring more awesome people. Martin went from no employees six years ago to now 1500 employees, just as one example. Speaker 1 [00:06:23] So, so be aggressive, be bold. Don’t be these polite Canadians that the world knows us for. So last year, I read that only eight seed stage deals closed compared to 26 in 2019. And for those of us who don’t live in the region outside observers, it’s surprising, given that Waterloo is known for being an early stage tech hub. You know you have two universities and a robust network of accelerators such as community tech incubators, innovation hubs. Of course, the pandemic bear some responsibility for the decrease and deals. But how is this affecting the ecosystem overall? What trickle effects might there be? Speaker 2 [00:06:58] So on the one hand, just to kind of set the record straight, I don’t think the data is correct because they’re basically just using Pitchbook and Crunchbase data. And so what you have to assume is somebody did a C deal and then actually reported it to Crunchbase. What we’re seeing a lot from our founders, so we actually know what the volume was when they’re doing seeds. A lot of them are staying in stealth, so they didn’t want to kind of say, Hey, what am I doing? So they don’t actually report that it got done. So just know that the volumes are a lot greater than that. But I think what is a fair comment to say is there’s a lot of competition for talent. And so when the Googles in the Shopify size are paying 20 30 percent more year on year for really great engineers, that’s putting pressure on our earlier stage companies and it’s harder for them to compete for talent. So I think they’re we’re kind of in that cycle where the competition for talent is making it harder to start a new company. I think that’s clear. But the volume of startups actually that we’re seeing through the door is actually right beside me doesn’t show any slowdown. Speaker 1 [00:07:58] I wanna ask you about some of the solutions and what’s being done to help continue the momentum of the region and especially the true north strategy, which you had alluded to earlier. Can you tell us more about what you’re hoping to build with that 200 million other fund? Speaker 2 [00:08:12] Yeah, so really quickly there’s four parts of on the podium. So just like Cathy Priestner, we’re going to go find the companies that have the probability of success, not the possibility of success. And we’re going to slap the Maple Leaf on their back. And that’s going to be Team Canada because it’s great to say we’re awesome, but like they need to know the stories of Martin for sure, and they need to know about Clearco and Cleo and seven shifts and bold commerce, these amazing companies across the country. So we need to tell those stories that needs to connect to talent, as we’ve talked about. The other part is we need to buy our own stuff. I think coming out of the pandemic, there’s a realization of when mass couldn’t get shipped from Minnesota. We need to have awesome innovation solving Canadian problems, and that’s a big part of what we’re doing with our true north. And the last part is the fund. We don’t have what I call them water station in mile twenty one in the marathon these founders are doing. It’s a pretty standard part of company building in the valley in the US, but it doesn’t exist here. And what does that mean? Like, think about running a marathon yourself if you got two mile twenty one and there was nobody cheering you on and nobody giving you water and the things you need to finish the marathon, then you know, it’s a lot harder to finish. And so that’s really what the true nature fund is designed to do is help founders invest in each other, build big and build awesome companies right here in Canada. Speaker 1 [00:09:29] Think that sounds like a fantastic goal to work towards because I really appreciate you joining and taking the time to chat with us about this. Speaker 2 [00:09:36] Me too, your you and all your listeners are welcome to Waterloo Region any time a break. Some news here. October Fest is happening and 2022 we are going to be cracking kegs in October fast and we’re going to do to October fast and bring all the founders awesome investors from around the world. So come Speaker 1 [00:09:53] on over. That is awesome. I will see you there. Oh my goodness, that is a wrap for this week’s 10 minute take. I am Theresa Do. Join us next time for a special International Women’s Day episode where we’ll dig into the lack of diversity in Canada’s VC industry. Talk to you soon. Speaker 3 [00:10:12] Disruptors, The 10-Minute take is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit RBC dot com slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hey, it’s Theresa. We all know by now that lowering carbon emissions is one of the biggest challenges of our time. And it’s of paramount economic importance over the next decade. But here’s the unspoken truth for all the talk about regulation and technology, talent actually has to be at the heart of any strategy to achieve Canada’s new target of cutting emissions by at least 40 percent by the end of the decade. Research shows as early as 2025, Canada could be short roughly 30000 environmental workers, those that are employed by green companies or engaged in green work. So what do we need to do? We need to capitalize on the upcoming generation’s interest and purpose. I’m a millennial Gen Z after me. They want to make sure that they are having an impact more so than others and past generations, and there’s no greater purpose than saving the planet right now. As we move toward net zero, a big shift in mindset is definitely required. But so too is a big shift in skill sets. And that’s the focus of a new RBC report called Green Collar Jobs The Skills Revolution. Canada needs to reach net zero. Some of the numbers in the report are pretty jarring. 3.1 million Canadian jobs, or 15 percent of the labor force, is going to be disrupted over the next decade as the country transitions towards a net zero economy. Eight of 10 major economic sectors are going to be affected as the workforce adapts think transportation, energy, manufacturing, natural resources, agriculture. This is the lifeblood of Canada’s economy, and these changes initially are going to affect highly paid, highly skilled workers more dramatically and more than others. My colleague Naomi Powell, who is the managing editor for RBC Economics and Thought Leadership, coauthored the green collar jobs report and as she explains, upskilling is at the heart of this shift. Speaker 2 [00:01:50] The net zero transition will place new demands on the workforce, especially when it comes to upskilling or expanding existing skill sets. In the beginning, that demand will be felt most by highly skilled, highly paid workers. Managers in engineering and architecture, for example, are already seeing over 50 percent of their work tasks change. But as the transition continues, more jobs will be affected. Logistics people will need to look at the environmental impact of shipping routes. Accountants will need to audit emissions, and mechanics will need to transition from internal combustion engines to battery powered vehicles. There’s a lot of uncertainty about the pace at which all of this will happen and how fast workers will need to upskill. But one thing that’s become clear is much of the responsibility for retraining will fall to Canadian businesses, especially those developing the green technologies that will drive the climate transition Speaker 1 [00:02:38] despite the costs involved. And yes, the disruption. It’s undeniable that this green collar revolution is creating some pretty great opportunities. One is brain gain. A highly skilled Net-Zero workforce could establish Canada as a top destination for green investment and international talent. Not to mention the new industries that could be created, the new jobs that will see a combination of new and old disciplines innovation that we probably can’t even dream of today. But these opportunities can only be seized if we give workers the tools they need to succeed, and that’s a big if. This is Disrupters, an RBC podcast. I’m trying Teresa Dome. In this episode, we’re looking at how the shift to carbon neutrality is affecting Canada’s workforce, particularly in the skilled trades. Our guest today is no stranger to the challenges of greening a blue collar company. Colin Osborn is CEO of Oakdale based Samuelson and Co., a global metals and industrial products giant. Serving buyers like Boeing and the U.S. military. And its largest customer is none other than Tesla. Samuel has been around longer than Canada has been a country, in fact, and today it’s rebuilding its 6000 strong workforce for the demands of a net zero economy. Colin, welcome to disrupters. Speaker 3 [00:04:08] Thank you so much. Really glad to be here. Speaker 1 [00:04:10] A. Samuel is a major player in the green steel supply chain. You buy green steel from suppliers like Algoma, fabricate the bra metals materials and then sell those green parts to your customers across the defense, aerospace and auto sectors. Why was it necessary for you as a parts manufacturer to green your products and operations? Speaker 3 [00:04:30] Well, I think when you look at a company like this, which is pretty incredible, as you mentioned, one hundred and sixty six years old started before electricity and like before a light bulb. I think the only reason that survived one hundred and sixty years before I came along was by innovating and constantly seeing trends in the market or seeing trends in the uses of metals or materials, and then adapting or being ahead of those curves. You know, the reality is I’m the sixth CEO in 160 years. I don’t want to be the guy that doesn’t keep this company going. So a big part of our view on sustainability, aside from just carbon footprint and reduced energy, is really trying to assess market trends and position our company in a way that that it can take advantage of those trends and continue to grow and continue to be profitable and continue to sustain good jobs. And that’s really the gist of it. Two of our core values as a company, we have five, but two of them are agility and courage. And that really just speaks to the the need to constantly assess the market, constantly adapt to the market and have the courage to go after it and make some mistakes, but ultimately hopefully build a very strong, sustainable business. Speaker 1 [00:05:30] Agility and courage are such timeless fundamentals of running your business. And as we look forward, the share of electric vehicles in Canada is expected to rise dramatically over the next decade, bringing with it expanded infrastructure. And my partner and I are a Tesla driver as I’m personally so excited about having more charging options and to see EVs become more mainstream. But as a manufacturer and a key player in enabling this reality, what is at the top of your mind and preparing for this increase in demand? Speaker 3 [00:06:00] I think what’s top of mind, honestly, is positioning our product in our service offering in a way that allows us to service that change. We are metals, primarily a metals company. We process four million tons of metals we buy from all over the world and almost every customer we have, literally every customer out of 23000 customers uses metal in some way. So if we’re complacent and we don’t adjust to what those trends are, we’ll obviously, you know, not survive it. So I think as a company, what we’re trying to do and before my time, we’re investing in areas where we see this greening of the economy, taking off and driving demand. We have a business that makes components for internal combustion engines. You know, that’s not going away tomorrow or next week, but over time, we expect that to be a declining market. So if we don’t change our positioning of our product offering and our service offerings, that wouldn’t be a great outcome. So I think the big driver for us, too, is to assess those trends, look at the products and services and capabilities that we have and position ourselves to help our customers take advantage of the greening of the economy. Speaker 1 [00:06:58] Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned your customers and I’m curious, what’s that relationship like? How much do they steer conversations on sustainability? Speaker 3 [00:07:06] It’s becoming more prevalent. For example, the investment we made in aluminum blanking seven, eight, nine years ago, Tesla was already making a very small volume of cars, but there was no Rivian. There was no lucid who we also supply. So I think in many cases, it’s been our internal people looking at trends that they see and trying to get ahead of those trends as opposed to customers pushing us. But I would say now, Theresa, more and more customers are asking us about sustainability, not just in the product, not just in our carbon footprint, but even in our supply chain. You know, going all the way back through the very complex supply chain that we operate and say, How do you know you’re operating that supply chain and is green a way as possible? And that’s very complicated. And I see it’s starting to evolve where customers are actually insisting that you can disclose and track and monitor and improve if you’re going to bid on their business. So that conversation is happening more and more, especially with sophisticated OEMs, the Hondas, the Boeings, the Toyota as the BMW use Tesla’s. Speaker 1 [00:08:05] Can you give us a sense of the H.R. situation right now at Samuel was the one job you just can’t fill fast enough? Speaker 3 [00:08:14] Timing is everything I would say. You can’t fill anything now, but it’s an absolute, very difficult situation on talent. But without question, I would say we operate businesses and we’ve invested more and more in businesses that involve automation, additive manufacturing, what I’ll call Industry 4.0 Technologies. And I would say in large part, those skills either don’t exist or are in such high demand that you really have to either find channels to partner with universities or you have to do on, in all honesty, train your own people. In the case of an evolving industry like additive, we really just rely on taking smart people out of university and training them ourselves, to be honest. But it permeates a lot of areas. I would say it just broadly I.T. We are a company that will have one of the largest cloud based ERP systems in the world, where about two thirds of the way through that. Even getting those types of skills for people to do cloud based systems is very hard. So it’s one of the frustrations of manufacturers that we always seem to lag in the academic community and the university community, the ability to seed those types of skills so that we’re ahead of that curve. We always seem to be scrambling to catch up when there’s things like mechatronics or automation skills that are required. Speaker 1 [00:09:18] Can you explain to our listeners what exactly is mechatronics and additive manufacturing? Speaker 3 [00:09:23] So starting with mechatronics, the whole field of automation obviously is exploding and we’re investing in companies and automation. We’ve bought two companies in automation and even before the labor in the workforce and the skills issues became so prevalent right that that Amazon’s giving signing bonuses. Automation was a good business. Now it’s going to be, I think, an incredible business. So when you look at an automation business, a skill you want is somebody that can combine mechanical engineering, knows how to put things together, but also electronics and programing. So it’s not like you want a pure mechanical engineer or a pure electronics engineer. You want a mechatronics person who can combine mechanical and electrical and programing skills all together. And that’s your kind of your perfect automation engineer. And so that’s what a mechatronics engineer is. And there’s some very good schools in Canada like Waterloo, who I think have been pioneers in actually developing the field of mechatronics. So that’s what mechatronics is in terms of additive. Additive is my whole life has been manufacturing in every aspect of manufacturing is subtractive and you take something big and then you machine it or you cut it or you fold it or you drill holes in it. But you keep removing and removing material a bit like sculpting until you get to a finished part. But in additive, you literally start from nothing and you build from the ground up. People call it 3D printing. That’s a little bit of a simplistic view because there’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens before you ever get to the printer. But but basically, it’s this additive a building from nothing versus subtracting and taking away. And I do think and we can probably come to it later. I think the adoption of additive is in early stage, but it will be a linchpin or keystone in the greening of manufacturing. Speaker 1 [00:10:55] I wanted to ask you about that. So it sounds to me like it would reduce the much less waste additive manufacturing compared to previous forms of manufacturing. But what other ways is it considered more of a green practice? Speaker 3 [00:11:07] There’s many elements of their green, but I would say there’s two big buckets. One is the first that you mentioned. You can imagine taking a giant slab of aluminum or steel and then cutting it and machining it, and you keep cutting away. And in some cases, you end up with a component where you’ve had 70 or 80 percent yield loss. By the time you get or even higher compared to additive where you print powder and you generally retain 99 percent of the powder, there’s one percent that’s melted slightly. That’s not usable, but you have 99 percent recovery versus 20 or 30 percent. So all of the energy that’s wasted in all of the yield that’s lost is a huge carbon footprint loss. But the second piece that I think sometimes underestimated is the way global supply chains work. You could be buying something in Indonesia, which ships to Canada, which is processed and shipped to the U.S. and maybe goes to Mexico and maybe comes back. So you, before you end up with a component, we make tubing for fuel injectors that metal travels all over the world before it ends up in an engine, as opposed to printing it at the site or close to the site. And so you don’t just have the gain of yield loss, but all of the energy that’s wasted, all the fuel that’s wasted transporting all of these semi-finished components, thousands and thousands of miles back and forth, you know, there’s a very significant carbon footprint. Emission and the transportation industry in general, of course, is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas. So if you can literally produce a component right at the assembly line where it’s going to be put into use and eliminate that whole supply chain, that’s a huge greening of the manufacturing industry. Speaker 1 [00:12:34] So you’ve mentioned that one of your biggest challenges is getting that new breed of engineers to think differently about manufacturing and that you’ve actually tried to retrain mid-career engineers to unlearn what they know. What’s that been like and what makes engineering so challenging to reskill within the manufacturing space? Speaker 3 [00:12:53] Yeah. So I’m a bit of a I’m an engineer by training, so I’m an engineer snob. But I will say that I think is really two elements of this one is getting engineers into the environment because I still think back. When I was in university, the scary exams where they would say you can bring anything you want into the room, you can bring any book, you can bring anything, it’s not going to help you and it creates that mindset where you realize it is you just your brain and creative problem solving and true innovation that’s going to solve the problem, not memorizing something, not not using something that everybody else does. A big part of my job, I think, is creating a culture in our company where that is the mindset you can challenge. You can innovate, you can take risk, you can fail and we’ll learn from that. But in terms of engineering specifically, additives very different because there really there’s very few places you can go in the world and find an additive program. And so we have found when we bring in more mature people that have spent 20 25 years in manufacturing, in a subtractive mode thinking about casting and machining and so on, they have struggled. We have had we have spent most of our time, I would say, bringing people literally out of school who have a mechanical engineering degree or a heat transfer engineering or something and really retraining them from scratch and trying to teach them using 3D modeling techniques and other techniques. How to design for additive It’s called Devam, which is designed for additive manufacturing, how to become competent in devam, and we basically train at our plant. That’s really the answer we have today. There are pockets again, Waterloo in this area, Mohawk College in this area. McGill University, U of T. These programs are evolving. And now there’s dozens and dozens of graduates out of these programs every year. So it’s getting easier. But certainly for the first three or four years that we were operating, we were more or less training our own people Speaker 1 [00:14:35] coming up after the break, more of my conversation with Colin Osborn. Plus, I’ll reveal the top six emerging green jobs in Canada. You’re listening to Disruptors and RBC podcast. I’m Theresa Do. As you heard off the top RBC Economics and Thought Leadership has just released a report called, “Green Collar Jobs: The Skills Revolution Canada needs to reach net zero”. In it, we dove into some of the transformative changes coming to Canada’s labor force. To learn more, check out the link in the show notes of this episode and visit RBC dot com slash thought leadership and be sure to follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. We’re talking with Colin Osborne of Samuel Son and Co. about some of the challenges facing Canada’s manufacturing sector and how companies like Samuel are working with their partners along the supply chain to invest in new green skills and understand that you often have new employees working directly with big clients such as Boeing or Pratt and Whitney to learn how to design from first principles. Tell us more about that approach. Speaker 3 [00:15:42] Yeah, and it’s a very good point. I think it’s interesting because it’s actually quite intimidating. I think we bring these young men and women out of university and we put them in front of Boeing engineers and sometimes it’s 10 engineers. And so it’s quite intimidating when you look at the differing skill sets, but it is a big part of the process. And in fact, one of the, I would say, the biggest barriers to entry today and additive is not so much, just as it’s actually educating the customer know that you can actually print something that will go on a plane and perform even better than the way you cast it. So that’s a huge leap for engineers, especially in industries like aerospace that have to be conservative. But it is a very interactive process, Teresa, where you take people that understand design for additive people that are responsible for the design authority and building a plane or a train or a car and putting those people together in a room. We actually do weeklong workshops where we put those people together, try to get them to blue sky. You know, what is it you’re trying to do? Forget how you used to make it. What is it? You need this part to do. So don’t worry about it, and we’ll figure out how we can print it. And that’s an amazing process to watch. It’s as educational for our people listening to people from Boeing and Tesla and GM as it is for I think those engineers and, you know, very mature companies thinking about how to live in a different way. Speaker 1 [00:16:54] It reminds me of I read Elon Musk’s biography a few years ago, and he talks about first principles when he was starting out space. And a key component of that was just questioning how SpaceX has operated for the last several decades to the space program in the 60s and 70s. It was remarkable, and if you subtract all of things that add noise to how you work and just think about what do I need to get this thing out the door and then start the next process and the next process, and you just focus on those things and how you can completely reinvent an industry by doing so. So I think that’s fascinating. How well are you being served by the current skills training and educational programs that are available? Speaker 3 [00:17:35] I think it’s getting better quickly. I think, you know, one of my best friends is actually the dean of engineering at Waterloo, and I’ll give a shout out to her. I think they’re doing a great job. But what I do find just a little challenging and it goes all the way back to even additive manufacturing. And mechatronics is very sexy, but you can obviously have a whole conversation about skilled trades too, about welding, right? And we do a lot of welding, try to find a good welders, try to find good electricians. So I just feel like sometimes we don’t maybe promote properly where the jobs are, what the compensation is, what the opportunity is. And because of that, we don’t fill the pipeline effectively. You know, and again, skilled trades is maybe the poster child for that. But I think in the case of mechatronics, in the case of additive manufacturing, I just I feel like we need to be just more proactive to identify technologies where we can be a big player and try to nurture the school system to shift that way. Because I’m sure, as you know, you know, when you go into university, it’s not like it’s published that if you take this program, you have an 80 percent chance of getting a job that will pay this much money. That kind of it doesn’t exist. I feel like if we did a more transparent approach to that, people would migrate more to these great opportunities. And I do think government can play a role. I actually think in the case of additive manufacturing, we have in Canada a pretty incredible hub between our company here, between Waterloo, between McGill and U of T. There’s some very good other 3D metal printing companies in Canada and Winnipeg and other places. Very good powder manufacturers. I think we have a center of excellence here in Canada that we could be absolutely world class. And I think if the government supports that and nurtures that and you at the university level and provides that feeder for this system, we could be a quite a powerful entity in the additive world. Speaker 1 [00:19:14] What kind of jobs just simply can’t make the transition? Speaker 3 [00:19:17] I think what we have to do is migrate product more than skill for me because I look across my business it like I have a blanking business that used to do metal blanking. We migrated it to aluminum freebies. I have a very good aluminum extrusion business, which did all kinds of stuff for windows and doors, but now they do massive amounts for solar panels. I have a pressure vessel business that does pressure vessels for pharmaceutical and oil and gas, but now they’re doing pressure vessels for renewable natural gas, where you capture waste gas out of landfill. So I’m sure there are jobs that are marginalized, but I think in large part for a company like ours, it’s more about migrating skills to different applications. But I think it’s actually necessary of I would say that the basic labor jobs where which were great entry level jobs for people that didn’t have more education. I think those jobs are going to start to disappear because we have no choice for the labor market is shrinking. Baby Boomers retiring, the number of people entering the workforce is shrinking. I saw data that the workforce is going. A grow by 0.2 percent in the US from 2024 to 2031, which is nothing. And so all of this let’s onshore, let’s build semiconductor plants. Let’s do all this great stuff. Where are those jobs going to come from? You know, I think if anything gets marginalized, it’ll be the unskilled labor jobs and those will have to be automated Speaker 1 [00:20:35] in 10 years. How do you think the composition of your workforce will look? Speaker 3 [00:20:40] We’re doubling down on automation in our company, and I believe that I don’t know if I will say the vast majority, but I would be hopeful that the vast majority of unskilled labor has been automated, and I would hope that a significant proportion of our workforce is actually in the design element. You know, everything from whether it’s pressure vessels or blanks or additive or automation. The proportion of people that are in product design and development is increasing in our company, and I think that’ll be a huge competitive advantage for us. Consider that our company not that long ago, was primarily viewed as a metals distributor, one of the largest. It’s still one of the largest in North America. I hope 10 years old, it’ll be looked at as a product innovator and core companies are around design and bringing product to market would be good. And again, I think there will be a necessity. It’s not. It’s not a nicety. It’ll be a necessity that most of the manual jobs will have been automated Speaker 1 [00:21:30] as we round out this conversation based on your expertize and your experience. What should Canadian workers and employers be doing to not just compete but set themselves up for success on a global stage as we transition to a net zero economy? Speaker 3 [00:21:45] Gentleman, that works for me. He was in a corporate development role in BlackBerry, and of course, we all know the BlackBerry story and sad as it is. And so I feel like as a government, as an industry, we should be sitting down and identifying technologies that are going to drive the green economy and investing like crazy. And, you know, everyone looks at will oil and gas, what will it be like? Of course, they’ll be an oil and gas industry for many decades. But what’s next? Is it mechatronics? Is it automation? Is it additive manufacturing? Is it solar or what are those industries that are going to be manufacturing driven that we can nurture and invest in all the way from the school system up through government to build these centers of excellence? Canada has lost so much manufacturing base, right? And so many corporate head offices, and I feel like we’re becoming a service economy and that’s OK. But I think as you know, the compensation is less than the spinoff jobs are less. And so I feel like if we don’t figure out what manufacturing trends are really going to be driving the next 10 or 15 years of growth and invest heavily in them now, then other people will. And it’s why I’m passionate about additive. I actually think Canada is has a unique opportunity to position itself as a center of excellence globally on additive, you know, but it’s going to require academia and manufacturing and industry and government all to align around that. Speaker 1 [00:22:58] And are you hopeful that they will? Speaker 3 [00:22:59] Yeah, I am. I do see I see government support. It’s never enough, of course, but I see government support. I see academic momentum in this field. We’re competing against obviously some pretty credible people in the US, in particular in Europe. But I do see some pretty positive momentum. But if I’m discouraged in any way, I just feel like in general, Canada has let manufacturing dwindle. You know, for decades, like people have been talking about the hollowing out of manufacturing Canada forever. And once you get past the mining industry and the oil and gas industry and a decreasing amount of automotive, you have to start to look pretty far for industry leaders in manufacturing in Canada. And I think that’s something we should reverse. Speaker 1 [00:23:36] Colin, this has been a really insightful conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Speaker 3 [00:23:41] Thank you, Teresa. My pleasure. Speaker 1 [00:23:43] That was Colin Osborn, CEO of Samuelson and Company. It was a fantastic and fascinating conversation, especially on the point of additive manufacturing, which strikes me as an emblem of the challenges to come as we green our economy. There are only a few but growing school programs that are offering that specific training, but everyone needs to play their part to make this climate transition work. Companies that are developing these cutting edge innovations are already leading the charge in training and work integrated learning, but they need support from governments at all levels, not to mention collaboration and alignment with the universities and colleges that are educating the workforce of tomorrow. And now, as promised, the top six green jobs, as revealed by a new report from the Green Skills Network research projects in no particular order. Home Energy Auditor Home Energy Retrofit our solar panel installer bioenergy plant operator when a turbine maintenance technician and wind turbine manufacturing technician. If you’re looking to go green and put some green in your bank account, you got options. Thanks again to our guest Colin Osborn. Next week we’ll have another 10 minute tech with details on a historic moment for the TSX and why the opening bell has just been rung outside of Toronto for the first time ever. Until then, I’m Theresa Do and this is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. Talk to you soon. Speaker 2 [00:25:11] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit rbc dot com, slash disruptors. by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit our rbc.com slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:02] Hi, is John here. Welcome to the inaugural edition of Disruptors, the 10 minute take. Every two weeks, Theresa and I will take a deep dove into the latest in technology innovation and economic buzz. Speaker 2 [00:00:15] That’s right, and this week’s take is on the Big Tech sell off. What’s up with that and what does it mean for Canada startups and tech sector? Speaker 1 [00:00:22] Who better to help us with that question than sit back at the head of RBC? Our BBC’s highly specialized tech and innovation banking team, which has a mission to help companies scale cities, are widely respected leader in the tech space, in fact. Before joining RBC, he was a managing partner at OMERS Ventures. Sid, welcome to the 10 minute take. Speaker 3 [00:00:41] Thanks, John. Thanks for having me. Really, really happy to talk about this subject. Speaker 1 [00:00:45] It’s great to have you on, Disruptors Sid. And I want to start with what’s going on out there in tech. We’ve seen some big sell offs, but some different movements in the private market where valuations continue to be very impressive. How are you thinking about that possible divergence? Speaker 3 [00:01:01] Yeah. Listen, I mean, the tech markets have been extremely frothy with tons of IPOs, and in a lot of cases, some really, really solid tech companies have been out there. But then we’ve also got a lot of the, you know what I would classify as the ride the coattail IPO is as well, right? So, you know, a number of the companies don’t have the growth trajectory, they don’t have the long term business model, nor do they quite frankly have the management teams to excel long term in the public markets. And I think, you know, when you look at the public markets, you’re seeing retail investors starting to identify this. Quite frankly, I think what you’re seeing right now is just a lot of that crazy upside being taken off the table. And so when you look at the tech offerings that are out there in most cases are in a lot of cases, they’re trading in some cases, like two thirds to three quarters less than their initial IPO value. And that is something that again is pretty stark and leads a lot of folks to go, Oh my God, what’s happening right? Is this blowing up? But on the same token, when you look at the private markets, there’s a ton of capital in the system and this isn’t going away in the near term, right? Because remember, funds get created, they raise capital. That capital takes a number of years to deploy. And so these blips that you see in the public markets don’t necessarily translate into the private markets immediately. Right. And when you look at the private markets, you’re really coupling a hyper competitive tech sector with this abundance of capital in the system and you’re creating this perfect storm for increased valuations. And if this market correction continues to be more than just a blip, there’s absolutely going to be an impact on private company valuations as well. And every venture fund in the world leverages public company multiples as part of their valuation justification exercise. And so when public company multiples fall off for a sustained period of time, there’s certainly going to be an impact on the private market valuations as well. Speaker 2 [00:02:50] What about the private later stage companies, the ones that were on the cusp of going public? Do you anticipate that this correction is going to slow down those potential IPOs? Speaker 3 [00:02:59] Yeah, so it’s a great question. And then I think we just have to step back and go, What is an IPO, right? It’s really a financing event. And so when these organizations need capital, they’re either going to top the private markets or the public markets. It’s a hard thing to generalize across all companies, you know, in terms of say, Hey, you’re late stage, you’ve raised a lot of capital, you’ve now looking to the public markets because really it’s going to depend on, you know, obviously the profile of the company, do they have the ability to continue to top the private markets? In the case where they do, you are starting to see them put the IPO processes on hold and really look to go, OK, hold on. Let’s just look at the private company options again before we jump into the public markets. And that’s just because you’ve got this drop off on valuation. You know, you’re starting to see some of this value come out of the ecosystem. And so it’s going to be very specific company by company. But I think if you were to generalize, you know, certainly people are thinking about this, Speaker 1 [00:03:59] said you’ve been through, I don’t want to get you on this show, but you’ve been through a few cycles. What are you telling entrepreneurs? Speaker 3 [00:04:06] Yeah. So, you know, in terms of what we’re telling entrepreneurs, there’s probably not a lot yet that we’re starting to talk about. That’s going to be different from what we’ve been advising entrepreneurs all along. You know, maybe if I just step back for a moment when I look at the huge influx and the velocity of companies going from private to public, you know, if you step back like a decade, two decades ago, like it used to take companies between 18 and 24 months to become IPO ready. And what did that mean? That meant OK. Well, you know, there’s management team, you know, upscaling a whole bunch of things like that. There’s systems up scaling. There’s, you know, just really making yourself optimized for the public markets with the frothy ness of capital and the, you know, the openness of the public markets to bring on all of these tech issuances. You didn’t see the rigor around that sort of like beefing up management. And beefing up processes, and so I think what you’re going to see is, you know, again, we’ve been advising our companies to do this all along is take a little bit of time to do some of those things because ultimately down the road, it is going to pay massive, massive dividends for you. And I think certainly a lot of the companies that are on the public exchanges, they actually didn’t do a lot of those things, right? And so when a lot of us look at these things objectively, you go, OK, well, you don’t really have a public ready team as yet. Right? And so quite frankly, the you know, if it’s a blip or whether it’s sustained, who knows. But this this kind of taking some of the capital out of the out of the system and taking a little bit of air out of that balloon, I think is allowing organizations to have a little bit more time to think about those things in advance and quite frankly, prepare themselves to be really successful as a public company. Speaker 2 [00:05:51] You mentioned earlier that we’re seeing the companies that have strong fundamentals and then the companies that are sort of riding on the coattails of general market sentiment. Is this almost like a clarifying moment in time where we can start to see, you know, the companies that have strong fundamentals rise to the top and it’s clear which companies are, you know, I don’t want to classify them starkly as good and bad companies, or maybe stronger and not so strong companies. But is this like a paradigm shift of a moment? Speaker 3 [00:06:17] Not yet. And I think it’s really going to depend on will additional capital start coming back into the public markets from a valuation perspective, right? So we haven’t yet demonstrated this is a long term impact. But you’re right in the sense that there are different stages. There’s some really, really good tech public issuances. And you know, why did they decrease in value? Absolutely. Did they lose, you know, 75, 90 percent of their value? Absolutely not. And that’s because business fundamentals are strong. A team is strong, a whole bunch of things. And then you’ve got other companies which are struggling a little bit more with some of these things, right? Maybe their business model dynamics shifted. Maybe the market has shifted on them. And so certainly you’re going to start to see a bifurcation. The best companies will always get funding both in the private markets and in the public markets, and you’re probably going to see a little bit of separation when it comes to that particular issue. Speaker 1 [00:07:09] As you noted, everyone’s talking about the war for talent. Is this having any bearing on companies ability to compete for, especially the world class talent that is such a differentiator in the tech sector? Speaker 3 [00:07:21] That’s a great question, John. And you know, I haven’t actually thought about it that way. So just kind of, you know, in our discussion right now, I’m guessing that, you know, in some cases, it’s actually going to be really beneficial, right? Because who like, let’s say I’m in a public company that’s seen a 90 percent decrease in value as an example, I’m probably going to be a little bit more concerned about the long term viability of the organization. There’s going to be all kinds of internal pressures within that organization on me as an employee and a leader, et cetera. And I suspect you probably have a lot more of those people that are going to be a little bit more loose in the socket, so to speak, and more easily plucked out by organizations that maybe are doing better. Or maybe even perception wise, they’re doing better because they’re in private in the private market, and not everything is laid bare. So I suspect you may have that opportunity, right, where some of those organizations that again are getting hit disproportionate to their peers. But yeah, they’re probably, you know, it’s going to be a bit more of a struggle for them on the human capital retention side. Speaker 2 [00:08:23] What are the lessons that companies can learn from this moment and use to positively position themselves to attract investors that maybe didn’t consider Canada in the past? Speaker 3 [00:08:34] Yeah, I think, you know, really is a learning opportunity here is just, you know, focusing in on management teams and business fundamentals, right? And don’t be in a huge rush to go public. Definitely. There’s going to be a number of companies that have gone public that I suspect at some point in time. Boards of directors, et cetera, are going to start thinking about the going private route. And so I think just focusing in on those like, quite frankly, those long term sustainable business fundamentals, it’s going to be really well serving for, you know, whether you’re public or whether you’re private. And so I think if there is a learning moment here and again, I think we’re really early in this process, to be clear. Valuations are extremely frothy. Don’t get me wrong, and we’re seeing a little bit of a correction in the public markets that over time will reflect in the private if it if it continues to sustain. But, you know, make sure you’re ready for what it is you’re about to engage on. And from a public perspective, literally everything is public, right? And so you need to have things buttoned up. You need to be able to represent these things on a quarterly basis. You need to have the systems in place to allow you to do, you know, allow you even to do reporting and you know, your business shifts right to where you’re now, a quarterly report or an annual reporter. And that may not have been the case to the same rigor when you’re a private company. And so for the companies that may have jumped in a little bit too early. This could be a little bit of a warning signal, but again, we’re still pretty early in that process, so we’ll have to see how sustained this is and whether it’s just a little bit of profit taking that’s coming off the top. And then ultimately, we kind of come back to a natural equilibrium. We’ll have to wait and see. But if this does become more sustained and prolonged, then the learning opportunity here is get your house in order before you go public. For sure, Speaker 1 [00:10:22] it’s going to be a great year or two to watch. Thanks for being on disrupters, John. Speaker 3 [00:10:27] Theresa, thank you so much for having me. Speaker 1 [00:10:29] That’s a wrap for our ten minute take. I’m John Stackhouse Speaker 2 [00:10:32] and I’m Theresa Do. Join us next week for a regular episode where we’ll take a look at the green skills Canada’s workforce will need on our journey to a net zero economy. See you soon, disruptors. Speaker 4 [00:10:45] The 10 minute take is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit our rbc.com slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hi, it’s John here, and Speaker 2 [00:00:03] hello, it’s Theresa. Speaker 1 [00:00:04] Theresa, welcome to 2022, I hope you’re not looking for a job, but it seems like everyone else is. What’s going on out there? Speaker 2 [00:00:11] Oh yeah, there’s so many shifts happening. People are rethinking their work-life balance. They’re finally taking on that next job after two years of sitting still. So yeah, what’s happening? I’m excited to dig into them through this episode. Speaker 1 [00:00:24] The great resignation, the great reshuffle of the great retirement. Maybe it’s all going on all at once and it’s going to be the biggest force or among them for twenty twenty two. And what we want to dig into on this episode is how it’s going to drive innovation. Of course, shortages drive a lot of employers crazy. They excite a lot of employers, too. But we’re in an employee market and that actually can be good for innovation. It creates opportunities, but in the right work environment where employees are driving change. This is when organizations can really take off. Speaker 2 [00:00:59] Yeah, exactly. And despite the ominous headlines, this is actually a good news story. As BlackRock’s Larry Fink said in his 2022 letter to CEOs, workers seizing new opportunities is a good thing. It demonstrates their confidence in a growing economy. The war for talent is on. The big labor shakeout has started, so fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Speaker 1 [00:01:29] This is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. I’m John Stackhouse Speaker 2[00:01:33] and I’m Trinh Theresa Do. In this episode of Disruptors, we’re looking at Canada’s red hot labour market, what’s causing some of the dramatic shifts in who is seeking and leaving jobs and what can Canadian employers do to come out ahead? Speaker 1 [00:01:52] After the break, we’ll hear from a Kitchener, Ontario based entrepreneur whose educational technology firm is one of the fastest growing tech companies in Canada. He’s struggling to fill key roles across his operations, and he’s trying to do the same for universities, colleges and businesses across the country. He’s got some provocative ideas about how we can all meet this challenge. But first, our conversation with a Canadian born Nobel Prize winning economist who’s made studying labor issues and understanding moments just like this. His life’s work. Our next guest has been studying, writing and talking about labor markets for more than four decades. David Card is professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of its Center for Labor Economics. Before joining Berkeley, David taught at the University of Chicago, as well as Princeton. He’s written hundreds of journal articles and of course, in 2021 was one of three people awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. David, welcome to disrupters. Speaker 3 [00:02:54] No, thank you. Nice to be here. Speaker 1 [00:02:56] I want to start with just an open reflection on what we’ve been through. Maybe we’re still going through it, but arguably the last two years has been the biggest disruption, if not shock, to labor markets that any of us can remember. I’m curious at this stage what you have found most surprising. Speaker 3 [00:03:15] I think to me, the most surprising thing was how quickly the economy bounced back in April 2020. There was the sharpest job losses. There had been really on record. I mean, we don’t have data from 1929 and 1930, but it was just a monumental job losses. And if you think about how the recovery went from the 2008 recession, it was a very long slog to get those jobs back. And in this case that we came back really, really quickly and I was quite surprised by that. Speaker 1 [00:03:49] What do you think made that resilience? Speaker 3 [00:03:51] So there’s two kind of ways to think about recessions, and economists have been arguing about this since 1929. One is that the recession is caused by a drop in demand that employers just don’t want to hire anybody because they don’t see ways that they can sell their product. The other view is that employees are being kind of outrageous in their demands and will only work if employers agree to set their wages. So one actually the kind of leading view among the more neoclassical economists is recessions are times when workers take vacation. And I think that view sometimes gets more traction, especially when there’s a prolonged recovery, because it seems like, OK, the workers took a vacation and now they don’t want to come back. The demand view, I think, is workers want to supply their work. Employers don’t want it or there’s some obstacle to, you know, making that work transaction go through. And I think that what this was an episode showed is that the demand side is really the driver. The supply basically with everything withdrew. But then people were able to come back quickly as soon as employers could find a way to get them back into the job. Speaker 1 [00:04:55] So employment, certainly in aggregate, came back with a roar. But we also have this thing going on called the great resignation or great reshuffle, depending on your point of view. Curious how you look at the so-called great resignation, which has surprised a lot of people and maybe even defies certain elements of economic thinking? Speaker 3 [00:05:16] If you look at the ratio of job openings to unemployment, it’s at an all time high, at least in the U.S. I don’t know the exact numbers for Canada, but I assume it’s very similar. And so there’s a lot of opportunities out there. And what had been happening really since 2005 or 2006? A number of leading economists, including, for example, Edward Lazear, the WHO was Bush’s main economist, had written articles saying, We don’t have enough movement in the labor market. People are sticking with their jobs too long and we need to have more mobility to kind of get dynamism going to, you know, get people moving between jobs and filtering up the job ladder and so on. So actually, the perception was that the labor market was becoming more ossified and then this has really changed. But again, I think it isn’t necessarily bad. A labor economist tends to have the perspective of the workers. We tend to sort of take the view of the workers and say, OK, when something happens, is that good for workers, bad for workers? And this switch of jobs, almost all of it is good for workers. Speaker 1 [00:06:21] We talk a lot on our podcast about innovation and disruption, and one of the statistics I’d argue over the years has been that lack of labor, mobility, lack of dynamism. So it’s encouraging to hear you take a positive view to this. But curious if you see this as kind of the new normal. Maybe it’s the old normal coming back, this kind of more dynamism in the in the labor force. Speaker 3 [00:06:45] So one reason why we don’t have as much mobility in the labor market as we used to have is our average workforce is quite a bit older. So right now, the baby boom, I’m the peak of the baby boom. I was born in 56, and so we’re all 65, 66 years old and many of us are starting to retire. And so the the big, huge bulge of children born in the late 50s and early 60s is gradually going to go through. And the average age of the workforce is is going to fall a little bit and old workers don’t change jobs. So even if you’re, you know, if there’s a better opportunity, but you’re 50 years old, you’re just not going to take it because it’s too disruptive. So you so I think one thing that’s really important is understanding the. At demography of the workforce in that regard, another thing is, you know what sectors people are working in, you know, a lot of employment growth has been in sectors where these days there’s, you know, not such long term jobs for young workers, retail and things like that. But then there’s a lot of employment growth in the service sector, especially like health care and those jobs actually persist. Speaker 2 [00:07:46] I’d like to jump on that, David. I’m curious with the different sectoral impacts that we are seeing, do you see that there will be greater job polarization over the next several years? Speaker 3 [00:07:56] Much of the increase in supply of workers is kind of what you would call polarized. So you got a, you know, increasing number of people who have college degrees or master’s and above degrees. That’s really a growing workforce. And then of course, you have a pretty large and consistent supply of people with basically less than high school education because of immigration from low skill countries. And so if you have those two combinations of demography, you’re going to have what appears to be polarized job growth. But it isn’t really, you know, it’s not anybody’s fault, it’s just a type of type of workers you have. So as the workforce has fewer people that are exactly, you know, 12 years of education to just finish high school, then you’re going to have more of what you’re talking about. In addition, there is another kind of inequality which is generated by performance of firms. So some tech sector firms, for instance, in the area that I work in, you know, someone with a Ph.D. can start, you know, in all honesty, can start working at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. That’s a lot of money. But somebody who’s working the Ph.D. teaching in a community college earns about $60000 a year. So that that gap is ginormous. Speaker 1 [00:09:04] One of the challenges we’ve been wrestling with, and this harkens back in some ways to the work you did around fast food employment that was part of the Nobel Prize. Recognition is why we don’t see greater displacement of lower wage employment by technology, fast food being an example. Lot of repetitive tasks that arguably are automatable and yet employment in the sector continues to go up even when wages go up. And you showed how, you know, an increase of minimum wage does not necessarily lead to less employment. But it also doesn’t lead to a greater capital allocation, arguably to technology that has become more of a pressure point through the pandemic, as there have been these disruptions. And all firms have been thinking about, OK, do I need to get people back or can I use this as a bit of a transition moment to invest more in capital? We seem to be lurching back to the labor side of the equation. And I’m curious how your how you think through with that kind of long view of history and economic cycles, but also technology cycles in terms of the transition of labour to capital. Speaker 3 [00:10:12] Well, in the in the slightly longer run, I think most Western economies are going to go into a period of declining labor force. What you’re seeing in Japan, Korea, Italy, Spain already, we’re going to see that in most Western economies, we’re basically I don’t know about Canada, but the United States is it just does no longer has the tolerance for immigration. Western Europe, most of them, those countries don’t have the tolerance for immigration, and that’s the main source of population growth. And so if we stop migration, which I predict we will be doing, which, you know, that’s what’s going on in Japan, and that’s why there’s, you know, that’s why they’re going to have declining population in China. They’re not going to have immigration. So you’re going to have declining workforce and then you’re going to have the kinds of innovations that you’re starting to see in Japan, where people are thinking, you know, pretty hard about how to replace low skilled labor, to look after old people. How do you do that exactly? And still have, you know, quality of life for the people in the shorter term, paying 50 cents an hour for workers extra or something? I don’t think, you know, that’s that is cut into the pocketbook of the owners of firms and stuff, but it doesn’t necessarily change the balance of if I had to pay a dollar an hour extra for a truck driver or try and invest in a self-driving truck. Now, in other cases, it’s it’s easier, you know, like converting some aspects of maybe fast food restaurants to some kind of other system. Actually, when I first went to grad school in New York City, there were still from the 1950s. These famous restaurants that were automatic. There were you walked in and there weren’t any people. There were just kind of rotating counters and you put money in called automatic. Speaker 1 [00:11:55] There’s a lot of us. Exactly. I remember thinking they were so exotic when I saw them in New York. Speaker 3 [00:11:59] It was like a totally awesome thing from your childhood movies and stuff. Speaker 1 [00:12:04] It was that they disappeared. Speaker 3 [00:12:05] So that technology existed, but it didn’t. It didn’t dominate, right? Is people, you know, McDonald’s works better. Speaker 2 [00:12:12] So when we think about other levers that employers control in attracting and retaining workers, increased wages are certainly one of them. But are you seeing other non-monetary benefits making a meaningful? Dent in this issue, things like, you know, a four day workweek, remote work, as we’ve been seeing, are you seeing that play out on a bigger scale? Speaker 3 [00:12:32] I don’t study that, you know, with my own research, I only have direct experience in two places academia and tech sector. I do consulting for the tech sector and they are definitely innovating quickly and academia. We probably were on the flexible schedule, you know, decades ago. Most of my colleagues didn’t come into work only a couple of days a week and even before the crisis. But the private sector tech companies, they are innovating quickly. So one thing, for example, a lot of those companies rely on foreign labor at the high end because there’s very, you know, acute shortage of highly skilled statisticians and computer scientists and economists. And most of the graduate students in those programs in the United States are actually foreigners. In economics, we’re half and I think in CSI and math, it’s above that. And so basically what they’re doing is setting up branch operations in Western Europe and Canada. So this is great for job opportunities in Vancouver. My favorite example is Berlin. I don’t know if anybody knows this, but Berlin is, you know, probably in many ways the most interesting place to live in Germany. But there’s no good jobs in Berlin. There hasn’t been good jobs in Berlin since, you know, at the end of the Cold War. They used to have a subsidy during the Cold War to have firms put plants in Berlin, but they disappeared. And basically lots of people want to live. There is no good jobs, but now there’s a lot of tech jobs and you can work remotely for lots of tech companies there. And so I predict that this is going to be really good for interesting high wage cities that are off the chart. So Berlin is much different than Paris or London. It’s relatively cheap. There’s lots of people looking for work. And so cities like that are going to benefit. I don’t know what’s the Canadian equipped? Was that like Winnipeg? Speaker 1 [00:14:10] Well, it’s fascinating. There’s a great opportunity here for all sorts of communities to make themselves hubs and even destinations for those kinds of work from anywhere populations. What else should we learn from the tech sector in terms of where the future of work? Some people call it may be going. Speaker 3 [00:14:31] I think actually the management of people is still just getting started. So we made amazing changes in like selling stuff to people. But I think we’ve made less progress in managing people and putting teams together and figuring out how to do that and how to best compensate them, how to best allow them to do what they’re doing. I think there’s enormous frontiers there. And you’re starting to see a lot of consulting companies that are coming in and telling firms how to do things, how to how to pay people, how to recruit people. Because I think that as I said, I think in the in the intermediate and longer run, we’re going to be in an era where there is actually declining workforce and shortages of talent. And that’s going to be great for workers because we’ve been in an era for, I don’t know, since 1980 80. Maybe we’ve been in roughly 40 years of pretty depressed labor markets. Basically, my entire professional career has been one where, you know, most of the time it was pretty crappy. Real wages were stagnant in North America, and there wasn’t really the kind of productivity gains that you might have thought at least passed through to workers. And so I think we’re in an era where that might be kind of a change, and that’s going to be a whole new time. And people are going to have to start thinking creatively about how to use and better utilize the people that they have instead of treating workers like commodities. So I’m a bit optimistic there. Speaker 1 [00:15:55] David, thank you for being on RBC Disruptors. Coming up after the break, we’ll talk to a tech entrepreneur in Kitchener, Ontario, who’s at the forefront of a massive shift in the global labor force. He’s connecting students as well as workers with opportunities all over the world through his company apply board. Speaker 2 [00:16:20] You’re listening to Disruptors, an RBC podcast. I’m Theresa Do. Canada’s transition to a net zero economy promises significant opportunities for innovation and growth, but none of it will happen without the right people in the right places at the right time. An upcoming report from RBC Economics looks at some of the big changes coming to Canada’s labor force as it sets out on the climate transition. The report maps out the sectors and jobs undergoing the greatest disruption. The way skills are shifting within specific jobs and highlights what workers and businesses will need to build the green workforce of the future. To learn more, check out the link in the show notes of this episode and visit RBC dot com slash thought leadership. And be sure to like and follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. We just heard from economist David Card, who has some keen insights into what’s underneath the changes in the labor market right now. But to really understand what the situation feels like, you need to speak with somebody working in the trenches, trying to fill positions and keep them filled in a fast growing company. Our next guest, Martin Bestiary, is the co-founder and CEO of Kitchener, Ontario ApplyBoard. ApplyBoard has an AI-enabled software platform that lets students from around the world quickly identify and apply for university or college programs across North America, the UK and Australia. This platform takes up the middle man in education, and it’s made applying for university or college from wherever you live as easy as signing up to Spotify. And since launching in 2015, Apply Board has grown to 1500 employees and has attracted over $600 million in venture capital. Martin, welcome to disruptors. Speaker 4 [00:18:06] Thank you very much for having me. Speaker 2 [00:18:07] Martin, I’d like to start with your story. You yourself are an immigrant from Iran originally, and you and your younger brothers went through the international student application process to pursue post-secondary education in Canada. And it was a difficult process, and that’s one of the reasons you created your company apply board. I’m hoping if we can get your thoughts on the broader challenges confronting Canada’s labor market, how does your experience, how does that inform what we could be doing to welcome international students and immigrants into our workforce? Speaker 4 [00:18:38] Absolutely, yes. As you mentioned in 2010, I came to Canada to get my master’s degree at the University of Waterloo, and my brothers came to do their undergrad at Conestoga College. And we left Canada. And then we decided to make this country our home and never regret that international students is, I think, the brightest part for talent shortage or enhancement for any country. And Canada is a country with one of the countries that’s really, really taking advantage of this global movement. Think about it. We can bring someone at the age of 18 or 22 for their bachelors or diplomas or postgraduate master’s degrees. Bring them, educate them. They’re young, energetic, ready to join the society. All of that adaptation to the new country, learning a new language, their college time give them the opportunity to integrate with their culture, country, everything and right away they can join the society and start contributing paying taxes, being an impactful part of the society, and I don’t think it can get better than that. Speaker 1 [00:19:54] And that’s a great way of describing our journey as a country with international students. I’m curious because you’re part of the story, but you’re also an author, frankly, of the Canadian story and the Canadian journey. If we have a chance to write the next chapter and maybe be a bit more thoughtful about how we go about this kind of flow of international students, how can we be more strategic as a country and taking it on? Speaker 4 [00:20:17] Yeah, and that’s exactly what we are working at Applied Birds and our Vision 2030 is to make it available for students along the board to access the best education, even if they’re poor, even if they’re from a country that there were like problems, regardless of their nationality, education, background, their family situation, village situation. We want to make it accessible, but how can the country be more strategic? So, for example, we know our health care system needs a lot of help right now, over hundred thousand jobs available literally in nursing and caregiving. All we need to do is point the ship to to the direction of which easier path to get into those colleges that get faster, processing time for the government to partner with companies like us to be able to access talent all over the board to bring the smartest and most driven people to this country, to the gaps that we have. We know software developers, we know data scientists. We know engineering in general is one of the areas that we in Canada. We really have a lot of positions of and for our country to grow and write the next chapter of the rest of 21st century. These are essential jobs. Speaker 2 [00:21:34] Martin, we’re seeing right now just massive job vacancies in Canada. In June 2021, we saw job vacancies surged past 700,000. You know, every day on LinkedIn, there seems to be another, you know, x number of job postings listed. But if we dig underneath the numbers, anecdotally, people are saying they’re still having trouble finding a job that even though they’re reaching out, these companies have a lot of postings. They can’t seem to get past the recruitment stage, if at all. So I’m just curious, what are you seeing in your work? What are you seeing in the tech sector and beyond about what could be behind? This this tension and what should employers be thinking about as they’re looking to recruit for their companies? Speaker 4 [00:22:17] Very good question. So there are a couple of things happening at the same time that is affecting the job market and we need to like break it down because the couple of effect is going together. So number one, the right now is a prosperous economy, as you said, seven hundred thousand job vacancies. That means we need a lot of people. A lot of companies downsized during the pandemic. Now they need to go back and those people already went somewhere else or they changed jobs, so it’s harder for them. The other thing that is happening people is almost two years that we are literally working from home, right? They are staying home. And Canada was one of the, I’d say, more restrictive countries in terms of keeping people distance. And I think too, one way or another, everyone is kind of affected that there’s something might not going the way that they want in their personal life and they need changes. The other thing that is happening is especially in the younger generation that for a long time the market was employer market and now is the employer market. And when there are so many jobs, a lot of people talked about what are the other means in life. You know, you see the rise of social challenges that we’ve seen in Black Life Matters in the United States. The environment is a big topic, right? Health care is a big topic. People want to do something good. People want to have a meaning with their life because Covid kind of opened a lot of people’s eyes that what are we doing? They are not robots. So a lot of people are looking for something to be able to have a big impact, and they’re searching for that. Speaker 1 [00:24:04] As we come out of this pandemic and kind of think of not just the great resignation, but the great reshuffle and people moving jobs, how do we need to be thinking differently about the kind of optimization of choices out there, either before us or somewhere far away, and ensure that we’re all making kind of the best decision with the best information? Speaker 4 [00:24:25] John, I have a mentor, his name is Howard Behar, he was the president of Starbucks for a long time. And one of the advisors he gave me is right your core values. What is your personal core value? What are you after? If you want to run or if you want to go to work, you put the OK from here to go to downtown Toronto. It takes like forty five minutes. OK, this is the part, and that’s what we are building at ApplyBoard. We are building a base for your life. And yes, we have started with international students because that was the starting point. I had to start from somewhere because that was what my life was. But what it is underneath is like, who are you? What you would like to do and what are the options for you to get there? People go and they just say, Oh, I need a job, why do I need a job? Think a little bit about it. You know, what are you seeking for? And I think our education in K-12, we need to invest more in our K-12 education of teaching students to ask why and be less worry about the content. Because content these days are commodity. You can find it on the internet. You don’t need to teach someone like necessarily all the how to write a new code because they can Google and find in GitHub a similar libraries and they figure it out. But what we need to teach them is to ask why? And that’s something that we humans don’t do it much. Speaker 2 [00:25:57] It’s such a profound way to think about the work about think, thinking about how work fits into our lives. What do you think it would take to have more CEOs and more aspiring CEOs to think the way you do and to view the world? Speaker 4 [00:26:13] Similarly, I think it starts from the CEOs themselves to be able to go and talk to people what they think and talk about their vulnerabilities and talk about their values. I think it’s important to talk about these things as much as it’s important to talk about market events. Market came down said This does that does that, and that’s why I love to talk to people, said what is the impact of apply board? Here’s one thing last week we had a day that for everyone to apply board employees, one students will enroll because of the work of us in that day alone, enrolled in a university. So when I go, I tell them, I tell my employees and I tell our investors. I said, today I’m sleeping better because I feel every two of us change one person life. Speaker 1 [00:27:03] Martin, I wonder as we move towards close, what do you think will be the biggest difference about? Work coming out of the pandemic from the way it was before the pandemic, Speaker 4 [00:27:14] the definition of work, the value of human being to themselves, to the respect of human being, to themselves, that they are not trading over time for money. We are going to a place because we want to have impact, because we love our teammates, because we want this mission to happen in the world, and I hope this is the outcome of it. Speaker 1 [00:27:37] That’s a great point to wrap up on. The meaning of work will change. The meaning of work has changed. The economics of work has changed as well. It’s going to be amazing to watch the next few years unfold. Martin, thank you for being on RBC Disruptors. Speaker 4 [00:27:52] Thank you very much for having me, John. Speaker 2 [00:27:57] What a fascinating set of conversations we’ve had in our program today. Two very different thinkers and speakers on this massive issue that we’re facing right now. The great resignation. What were your takeaways? Speaker 1 [00:28:10] Both David Card and Martin Basiri explained from very different perspectives. How work will continue to matter a lot to individuals and to the society. David Card said one of the biggest surprises for him and he’s won a Nobel Prize from the pandemic is the resilience of the labor force. People want to go back to work and many of those who are employed or who have gone back to employment are putting in a lot of hours and their quality hours because there’s a meaning and purpose and perhaps greater return to what we engage in. But it also speaks to the power of technology and even automation. If we can think about deploying technology wherever and whenever we’re so-called working and use our brains and our human ingenuity and instincts to pursue perhaps a higher purpose than just the task at hand. It’s not so much work. Speaker 2 [00:29:07] Exactly. And that’s the optimistic view about this whole great reshuffle, right? Is that you finally now, maybe not. Finally, but you have this opportunity to seek out that work that is appealing to you if it’s not at your company. Maybe it’s another one next door. And because we can work from anywhere, the opportunities seem limitless. Speaker 1 [00:29:25] Theresa, maybe we need to start calling it the great redefinition. Speaker 2 [00:29:29] I like that. Although it asks the question, what are we redefining it to? Speaker 1 [00:29:33] That’s for a future episode. That’s all for now. Thanks to our guests David Card and Martin Basiri. Speaker 2 [00:29:39] And join us next time when we’ll explore how Canadian employers and workers are preparing for a new era of climate action. Until then, I’m Theresa Do. Speaker 1 [00:29:47] and I’m John Stackhouse. This is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. Talk to you soon. Speaker 5 [00:29:57] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit rbc-dot-com-slash Disruptors.