We make them force multipliers by putting them in the same room.
AI is making credentials irrelevant — what matters now is capability and who you surround yourself with. Waterloo has the highest density of technical talent in Canada. Students are dropping out to build. Mid-career people with fifteen, twenty years of experience feel the same pull because the tools have changed everything. They're craving an identity, a group of people thinking the same way.
That's the moment we're capturing.
The people in this room are going to build, lead, and fund the most important companies of the next decade. We know who they are before the rest of the world does.
Barn Ventures writes first cheques before traction exists — before the pitch deck, before the raise, before most investors are paying attention.
That learning gives us an edge — and lets us enable more people to expand what they're capable of.
The range goes well beyond software. Founders working in logistics, climate, agritech, defense, and more. BC is one of the more diverse builder communities in the region.
Share-based comparison of idea categories across two six-month periods. H1: Jan–Jun 2025 (n=211) vs H2: Jul–Dec 2025 (n=246).
| Sector | H1 share | H2 share | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logistics / Supply Chain | 4.3% | 7.3% | +3.1pp ↑ |
| EdTech | 1.9% | 4.9% | +3.0pp ↑ |
| Hardware / Robotics | 8.1% | 10.6% | +2.5pp ↑ |
| SaaS / B2B | 7.1% | 9.3% | +2.2pp ↑ |
| Fintech | 3.8% | 5.7% | +1.9pp ↑ |
Trend reflects the composition of events and applications in each period. Different events attract different communities.
The community grows because people who join send others. That's the signal that matters.
Barn Ventures backs founders before they're fundable — students, recent grads, and experienced builders starting fresh. BC is where Barn sees these founders before they're raising, before a pitch deck exists, and often before they've told anyone outside the room what they're working on.
Jesse has been building in the Waterloo ecosystem for over two decades. He helped build Velocity and the Creative Destruction Lab — two of Canada's most consequential early-stage programs — before founding Builders Club and Barn Ventures.
He's a founder himself, which means he knows what builders need before they know how to ask for it. That proximity is the edge. BC isn't a program he designed from the outside — it's a room he built because it didn't exist.
His writing on the Waterloo ecosystem reaches thousands of builders, investors, and operators every month across two Substack publications and a long-running presence on LinkedIn and X.
The thesis is simple: the most interesting builders don't look like builders yet. Jesse has spent his career learning how to find them early.
Sponsorship at BC isn't a banner ad. It's proximity to the earliest builders in one of Canada's most productive tech ecosystems. If that's interesting to you, reach out.