REGINA, Sask. — Building a successful company takes less perfect planning and more willingness to get started, adapt and learn from failure, entrepreneur Michele Romanow told aspiring founders gathered in Regina for Startup Summit 2026, hosted Sept. 9 and 10 by Cultivator powered by Conexus.
The two days of events were geared toward an audience of founders and innovators looking to bring their ideas to reality.
The summit is organized by Cultivator, the Regina-based tech incubator aimed at supporting local and global entrepreneurs. According to Cultivator, the summit consisted of two “founder-focused days of bold ideas, real founder stories and practical elements entrepreneurs are looking for.”
The first night was highlighted by a keynote speech from Romanow, a co-founder of Clearco (formerly Clearbanc) and one of the Dragons on CBC’s Dragons' Den.
Romanow spoke of her journey from grade school in Regina, Sask., to eventually relocating all the way to New Brunswick to launch her first venture — a caviar business — from scratch.
She spoke of the many failures and struggles along the way before finding a successful idea and shared her wisdom with the audience at Darke Hall.
“If I look back, I really wish I would have known three things. The first is that building a business is extraordinarily messy. So if you're going to be successful, you're going to have to roll up your sleeves and get really scrappy. The second thing that I had to learn is that I had to stop planning, and I just had to get going. That all the planning in the world wasn't going to make me successful, and it certainly wasn't going to prevent me from failure. And then the third thing that probably took me the longest to learn is that great innovation didn't come from one amazing, incredible, lightbulb idea. It came from tons of little iterations that finally built their way up.”
Day two on Sept. 10 saw the bulk of activity happening on both the main stage at Darke Hall and elsewhere. Among the events planned for that day were a Women in Tech event in the morning in which Romanow was scheduled to appear, as well as workshops and panel discussions throughout the day.
The main stage included founder stories focused on topics such as how they got their first 100 customers or getting to $1 million without a big team.
The two days saw a number of important announcements for Cultivator. The first one on Sept. 9 was the announcement that Innovation Saskatchewan will invest $300,000 over the next three years in the Agtech Accelerator, aimed at accelerating the growth of Canadian and U.K. startups in agriculture technology.
According to a news release from the province, Innovation Saskatchewan will provide $100,000 annually each year from 2026 to 2028 to support three additional cohorts of Agtech companies.
“Saskatchewan is uniquely positioned to lead in agricultural innovation, but our true advantage isn't measured in acres and output,” said Innovation Saskatchewan CEO Kari Harvey at the opening night event Wednesday. “It's measured in the expertise of our producers, researchers, entrepreneurs and inventors. The Agtech Accelerator program brings those strengths together. It harnesses the power of Saskatchewan's startup ecosystem and our agricultural community to help entrepreneurs develop technologies that solve real-world challenges.”
Innovation Saskatchewan also announced Wednesday that it is investing $35,000 in sponsorship funding to support three of the major events by Cultivator powered by Conexus. That includes $25,000 to the Startup Summit and $5,000 each to the Founders Retreat and Community Night.
Also announced Wednesday was that Cultivator powered by Conexus is renewing its Legal In-Residence and sponsorship partnership with McKercher LLP for another five years, through 2031.
Cultivator says this will represent more than $500,000 in combined monetary and in-kind support from McKercher LLP over the five years.
