Get to Know Day and Edmonton Startup Week helped founders find opportunities

Get to Know Day and Edmonton Startup Week

On Oct. 1, Lelia Lawson spent Get to Know Day in a room full of other founders, service providers and government officials helping each other. Four days later, she was on stage at Edmonton Startup Week.

Get to Know Day lunch

Lawson is Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Zylotex, an Edmonton company turning hemp fibre into advanced materials. She credits the relationships, expertise and support across Edmonton's innovation ecosystem for helping her company grow.

"Zylotex wouldn't exist without this ecosystem," Lawson says.

Zylotex was named one of Edmonton's 10 companies to watch for 2026 and pitched at Edmonton Startup Week's Launch Party. Its path reflects a bigger story. Get To Know Day, hosted by the Edmonton Regional Innovation Network (ERIN), and Edmonton Startup Week took place just four days apart. Get To Know Day introduces Edmonton's innovation ecosystem to itself. Startup Week shows it to everyone else.

Where connections are sparked

The Edmonton Regional Innovation Network's annual Get to Know Day helps founders make meaningful connections with the supports and resources around them.

ERIN is one of Alberta's Regional Innovation Networks. Funded by Alberta Innovates, these networks connect companies to early-stage funding and programs, such as Edmonton Unlimited's Experts on Demand, to support them as they grow.

This year's event also included the Startup Obstacle Session, a session where founders presented real challenges to the room, including government, service providers and other entrepreneurs. Attendees responded with solutions, contacts and resources.

Janice Baskin, Manager, ERIN

According to Janice Baskin, Manager of the Edmonton Regional Innovation Network, the value founders are looking for often lies in connections they can't make on their own. Too often, founders reach out through a website and hear nothing back.

"People get annoyed with going to websites and filling out a contact form and not getting a response," Baskin says. "The more we can facilitate actual introductions to people that can answer their questions, the better."

At Get to Know Day, those introductions happen face to face, and one conversation can be enough.

At last year's event, a single conversation opened new doors for CassaVantage Ltd, founded by Mosh Louisa Biasa Hevi. While describing the company's work to establish cassava as a viable crop in Canada, Hevi mentioned field trials in St. Paul, Alberta. That's the region served by Matt Peck, Manager of the East Central Regional Innovation Network. The connection quickly became a partnership. Today, CassaVantage grows its plants at the CP Farms in St. Paul and is exploring new opportunities with Lakeland College.

"It would never have happened without the Get to Know Day," Peck says.

Get To Know Day made the introductions. Four days later, Edmonton Startup Week put companies like Zylotex on stage.

Edmonton steps into the spotlight

Mike Mahon, CEO of Alberta Innovates

Edmonton Unlimited hosts Edmonton Startup Week each year. This year it ran Oct. 5 to 9, with events across the city celebrating Edmonton innovation.

At its Launch Party, 10 companies each had three minutes to pitch a room full of ecosystem partners, investors and fellow entrepreneurs.

"A startup week like this … reminds us that innovation doesn't actually start with a company," Alberta Innovates CEO Mike Mahon told the crowd. "It starts with an idea."

For Lawson, rooms like that are where opportunities begin. "It's who you know, it's who you bump into," she says. Her advice to other founders is to show up. "If you participate, people see you, people want to help you."

That's how Zylotex found its way to InnoTech Alberta. A conversation with Neil Yaremchuk, Manager, Energy Pilot Facilities and Operations, led the company to test its materials on InnoTech's carbonization line, with the goal of developing high-strength, lightweight carbon fibre for uses such as drones, vehicle parts and sporting goods.

Together, ERIN's Get to Know Day and Edmonton Startup Week form a foundation of support for Edmonton's startups: the first sparks the conversation, and the second fuels the fire. For companies like Zylotex and CassaVantage, those conversations have already led to real partnerships and new momentum.

Startup Week's Launch Party

A photo inside the hall at Startup Week's Launch Party

“It is all about making new connections, sharing knowledge and ideas, and celebrating Edmonton's growing startup community,” said Lorena Forster, Technology Development Advisor at Alberta Innovates. “The ERIN Get to Know Day has evolved into a signature ecosystem event bringing together startup founders and support organizations and Edmonton Startup Week provided countless networking, sharing, and learning opportunities for everyone.”