![\"Hacker](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Hacker-house-300x169.jpg\")
Participants in AGI Ventures’ Hacker House work on their projects. Photo courtesy AGI Ventures<\/p>\nLaunched two-and-a-half years ago, AGI Ventures is the brainchild of Hai Nghiem and Neilda Gagn\u00e9, a pair of Ottawa tech entrepreneurs who wanted to build a \u201cgrassroots community\u201d to foster innovative ways of tapping into the power of AI.<\/p>\n
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When Parisa Zare attended her first pitchfest at Invest Ottawa three years ago, one thought went through her mind: \u201cThere\u2019s no way I could ever do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few months ago, at the 2026 version of the same event, Zare walked away with the Crowd Favourite Award. \u201cLife is strange like that,\u201d she wrote in a LinkedIn post afterward.<\/p>\n
PitchPal, the app she invented with business partner Marc-Antoine Ruel, has now been used by hundreds of entrepreneurs \u2014 including Zare herself \u2014 to help rehearse conversations with investors, partners and customers. The \u201cAI-powered pitch coach\u201d allows founders to record a pitch and get feedback on how it can be improved within seconds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can practise your one-minute pitch or you can practise your 20-minute pitch that you are going to do in front of an investor for a variety of different environments and use cases,\u201d explains Zare, whose day job is running projects designed to make Invest Ottawa more efficient at using artificial intelligence tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are hoping to empower founders and builders to do better pitches and get better opportunities as a result of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an idea that came to fruition literally overnight, thanks in part to an Ottawa-based organization called AGI Ventures Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Launched two-and-a-half years ago, AGI Ventures Canada is the brainchild of Hai Nghiem and Neilda Gagn\u00e9, a pair of Ottawa tech entrepreneurs who wanted to build a \u201cgrassroots community\u201d to foster innovative ways of tapping into the power of AI.<\/p>\n
Originally called AI Tinkerers, the organization now serves a growing community of more than 2,000 people who \u201ctend to be a very curious, playful and internally motivated bunch\u201d when it comes to quickly devising new uses for AI, Gagn\u00e9 says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll find a problem, and they will find ways to solve it no matter what,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n
AGI Ventures hosts events throughout the year aimed at bringing together AI-curious folks from diverse backgrounds and allowing them to let their imaginations run free.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The gatherings typically take the form of \u201chackathons\u201d \u2014 one-day coding marathons in which participants use AI-powered tools to come up with new software applications.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thanks to AI, Gagn\u00e9 and Nghiem note, almost anyone can build software using natural language prompts, rather than traditional line-by-line programming that often requires years to master. That\u2019s opened the door to a whole new wave of creators.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re kind of like a catalyst,\u201d says Gagn\u00e9, who founded a software company in Silicon Valley before moving to Ottawa at the start of the pandemic in 2020 to be with her now-husband, tech entrepreneur Jonathan Gagn\u00e9.
\n‘Variety of backgrounds’
\nIt was at one such hackathon last year that the idea for PitchPal was born.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zare, a native of Iran, moved to the National Capital Region in late 2022 and started working at Invest Ottawa a few months later as a program co-ordinator. After attending the first few AI hackathons as a curious observer, she ended up being a judge at one of the events and, despite not having any formal coding experience, finally decided to enter one herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw that everyone with a variety of backgrounds can join,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Zare had \u201cno actual plan\u201d for what she was going to create before she set foot in Bayview Yards that Saturday in September, she says. She was matched with a couple of CEGEP students from Quebec as her partners, and they \u201cwent through a few different ideas, decided to work on a pitch evaluator tool and started building,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n
Zare and her collaborators worked on the app from 9:30 in the morning until 10 p.m. \u201cWe had people testing the tool that night,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The experience ultimately changed her life, laying the groundwork for an award-winning new business. Zare says the mentors AGI provided during the hackathon were \u201csuper-valuable\u201d sources of advice and support as they helped her navigate the high-pressure environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lot of fun,\u201d she says. \u201cProviding a space to go past that fear of \u2018I’m not technical, I don’t know what to do\u2019 to \u2018I’m actually building something\u2019 was the most valuable support that I got. And also, as part of that, it’s not just the space and the time, it was for us the people in that room who could just help unblock (challenges) that came up right on the spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then, AGI has put a few twists on the traditional hackathon concept in a bid to spur even more creativity among developers.<\/p>\n
Participants in AGI Ventures’ Hacker House work on their projects. Photo courtesy AGI Ventures<\/p>\n
In January, for example, the organization hosted a \u201chacker house\u201d at an apartment in downtown Ottawa. Eleven founders chosen through an application process had access to the building from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., where they gathered throughout the month to code, brainstorm ideas and share wisdom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The venture ended up spawning two businesses that have received multiple funding offers from venture capitalists. AGI is now planning a similar event, Hacker Cottage Weekend, at a cabin in St-Sauveur, Que., over four days in late August. Gagn\u00e9 says nearly 80 developers have already expressed interest in grabbing one of the 22 available spots.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuilding never stops,\u201d she says. \u201cActual genius happens during the weekends and (after normal working hours from) 5 to 9. We just give (developers) the space and the people who have similar mindsets under the same roof, and amazing things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The organization\u2019s latest focus is AGIV Industries, an initiative launched in June that it bills as a \u201cmonthly show-and-tell\u201d where AI users gather to present real-world case studies on how they\u2019ve employed the technology to improve productivity in their workplaces.\u00a0<\/p>\n
AGIV Industries\u2019 next event, scheduled for Tuesday at Bayview Yards, will feature speakers from fast-growing Ottawa software startups Knak and Fellow and is expected to draw more than 100 people.
\nConsulting business spinoff
\nMeanwhile, AGI is hosting another hackathon next Saturday, dubbed \u201cHackers & Healers,\u201d that will bring developers and health-care professionals together to come up with tools designed to \u201cmake primary care more doable by reducing repetitive work, supporting preparation and follow-through, and protecting the continuity of patient care,\u201d the organization says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nearly 180 participants have already signed up for the one-day event, which will feature judges and mentors such as Doug Archibald, the director of research and innovation at the University of Ottawa\u2019s Department of Family Medicine, and Blake Daly, the director of innovation at Bruy\u00e8re Health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like many of AGI\u2019s events, it is free to attend. While the organization does have a few corporate sponsors, including local tech firms Ross Video and Solace, those contributions alone aren\u2019t enough to pay the bills.<\/p>\n
As a result, Gagn\u00e9 and Nghiem incorporated the business last August and began branching out into consulting early this year to generate more revenue to fund future projects. The firm, which has a handful of full-time employees, is now working with several mid-market tech companies in Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s goal, Nghiem explains, is to help clients \u201cmake sense of all the noise that is out there\u201d by offering workshops, educational resources and other tools to allow them to implement AI more effectively in their organizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
AGI\u2019s revenues have been doubling month over month, and the firm invests 15 per cent of that growing income directly into its hackathons and other events.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more money we make, the more community stuff we can do,\u201d Nghiem says. \u201cThat\u2019s been our north star since day one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company plans to continue rolling out events throughout 2026, including a conference near the end of the year. Nghiem believes it\u2019s only a matter of time before founders from across Ottawa and beyond start circling AGI\u2019s gatherings on their calendars.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really want this to be the marquee event in Ottawa for AI, where people will travel to Ottawa to attend,\u201d he says of the year-end conference. \u201cWe want it to be as big as SaaS North, if not bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
AGI appears to be gaining momentum, and Nghiem says he couldn\u2019t be happier.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I feel like I have the best job,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Gagn\u00e9, an OBJ Forty Under 40 recipient in 2026, agrees.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing around builders is my happy place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Launched two-and-a-half years ago, AGI Ventures is the brainchild of Hai Nghiem and Neilda Gagn\u00e9, a pair of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-735974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}