Last month’s Collision Conference in Toronto was an amazing opportunity to catch up with most of the Canadian tech ecosystem.
The question I fielded the most was, “What happened to Techvibes?”
Unfortunately the Techvibes that everyone fondly remembers, no longer exists. Here is what happened, to the best of my knowledge.
In June 2016, I announced that Techvibes had been acquired by Toronto’s Konrad Group, a digital agency best known for acquiring coding bootcamp BrainStation. The acquisition of a homegrown media property was big news in the Canadian media ecosystem, so much so that our friends at Betakit covered the news.
Thanks to the designers and developers at Konrad Group, we celebrated the announcement with an updated brand and entirely redesigned site.
During my 10+ years at the helm of Techvibes, I’m proud to have published 20,000+ articles, hosted 30 Techfest recruiting events across Canada and transformed our popular online Startup Awards into the in-person Canadian Innovation Awards gala.
After two years with the new owners of Techvibes, it was time to make a change and I stepped down in 2018.
One year later I launched Techcouver, the site you’re currently reading, as well as Calgary.tech, Decoder.ca, Fintech.ca, and Techtalent.ca – four sites you should check out now.
Shortly after my departure, the Techvibes website that readers had grown to love was rebranded by Konrad Group as Digital Magazine (borndigital.com).
With the new name came a new mission:
“Our lens is also growing as we expand our coverage beyond startups and innovation into new industries and new markets to tell new stories. Specifically, we are excited to tell stories about industry transformation and enterprise innovation through their technology, people, and spaces”.
Unfortunately Digital Magazine had a very short shelf life and all of original Techvibes content (and Canadian startup history) was absorbed into BrainStation’s blog.
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