OCTOBER 1, 2026 • BMO CENTRE CALGARY
Presenting The TechExit.io Experience
Canada’s Value Creation Conference.
Value creation is a discipline. An acquisition is just one outcome.
Build for value from year one, and the options multiply. The same company built to be worth buying can raise, acquire, or keep going.
TechExit.io is for tech founders who want to build real enterprise value and keep the power to choose what comes next.
Whether your strategy is to absorb competitors, secure capital on your own terms, or execute a premium exit, the discipline is the same.
Clean financials. Unit Economics. Defensible product. Team depth.
The foundational work that makes a company real before anyone makes an offer. At TechExit.io, we sharpen all four whether you’re early, growing, or scaling.
Valuation drivers. Deal terms. Diligence realities.
Why two similar companies get very different valuations. AQ is a competency. Canadian founders have been building it at TechExit.io since 2017.
Relationships with operators, capital partners, and acquirers.
Optionality isn’t indecision. It’s leverage. TechExit.io is for founders who plan the moves that maximize value, not the deals accepted when options run out.
Marcos Lopez spent two decades turning a Calgary software company into a global category leader. As CEO of Solium, he scaled Shareworks into the equity management platform trusted by Shopify, Stripe, Levi’s, and a quarter of the Fortune 500, then led the company through its $1.1B acquisition by Morgan Stanley in 2019.
His perspective is rare. He has built the unglamorous infrastructure of value creation: cap tables, equity, governance, the things that decide what a company is actually worth when the moment arrives. He has scaled through acquisitions, navigated a public market exit, and stayed to integrate. As Chair of TechExit.io Calgary, he brings the founder lens that matters most. How do you build a company with real options.
I knew all my competitors on a first name basis… we’d compete during the day and grab a beer at night.
Frequently Asked Questions
TechExit.io Calgary 2026 is on October 1, 2026 at the BMO Centre. The event runs as a one-day conference with keynotes, practitioner panels, case studies, and operator sessions. Doors open early; the program runs through afternoon networking. The BMO Centre is at Stampede Park, easily accessible from downtown Calgary and Calgary International Airport.
Calgary is Canada’s fastest-growing tech ecosystem and now home to $4.75B in realized value. CoolIT sold to Ecolab for 17x value creation in March 2026. Neo Financial reached unicorn status. Blackline Safety hit $150M revenue across 36 consecutive quarters of growth. Calgary operating costs run 35 to 45% lower than Toronto or Vancouver. Provincial corporate tax is 8%, the lowest in Canada.
TechExit.io Calgary attendees are Prairie tech founders (Series A and beyond, $1M to $50M+ ARR), operators from companies like CoolIT, Neo, Blackline, Symend, Benevity, capital partners from BDC Capital, ATB Financial, Avenue Capital, and strategic acquirers active in Western Canadian tech. Energy-services operators applying operational discipline to software businesses also show up.
Calgary tech founders carry the operational discipline of energy-sector project management into software. Capital efficiency is the cultural baseline, not a venture-deck slogan. Calgary companies tend to reach scale on less capital, and Calgary exits skew toward strategic acquirers who pay for proven unit economics. Toronto offers capital depth. Vancouver offers Pacific reach. Calgary offers proven operators.
Yes. TechExit.io Calgary brings PE and growth equity firms, strategic acquirers active in Canadian tech M&A, and Canadian capital partners. Past audiences have included BDC Capital, ATB Financial, Avenue Capital, and acquirers from US strategic buyers (47.5% of Canadian tech exits go to US buyers). Founders attend to meet capital partners; capital partners attend to meet operators 12 to 24 months out.
TechExit.io Calgary is worth the trip if you are an operator who values capital efficiency, want exposure to Western Canadian deal flow, or want to learn from founders who have built scaled companies on lean capital. Toronto and Vancouver TechExit.io events cover the same pillars with different proof points.
TechExit.io gives you access to the resources, relationships, and information from leaders who’ve done it before. That’s where so much of the value comes from.
The value at TechExit.io is hearing on the ground stories from founders who have sold their companies and being surrounded by a network of people who know the upsides and downsides of selling a company.
What I like about this event is the experience of sharing behind-the-scene stories that you wouldn’t be able to Google or read in the news. People are sharing their stories very authentically and transparently.
What TechExit.io does so well is offer a smorgasbord of insights for people looking to build a valuable business.
Hearing the war stories, the struggles, the pain, and the wins from fellow entrepreneurs is incredibly valuable. That’s what makes places like TechExit.io so powerful. You get real collective wisdom
TechExit.io is the only conference in Canada that brings buyers and sellers together for candid conversations about the good, the bad, and the ugly of acquisitions
TechExit NOW
Each week: one Canadian tech founder on how they built value. Named companies. Real decisions. Value creation, operational rigor, and the stuff you can’t Google about exits.
Optionality doesn’t show up when a buyer calls. It’s built much earlier through how a company is financed, how it grows and the decisions made long before any transaction is on the table.
If you're building toward an exit, it’s easy to focus on growth, revenue, and headline numbers. But when buyers step in, they’re not just evaluating what you’ve built, they’re evaluating risk, durability and what could go wrong after they take over.
There’s a point in every company’s growth where the job fundamentally changes. At TechExit.io, moderator Mark Longo (Osler) sat down with Jack Newton (Clio) and Jeff Shiner (1Password) to talk about what it really looks like to lead through that transition, from early traction to global scale.
