Questions
worth asking.

Founders running businesses outside the digital services lane. Businesses with customers, not users. Businesses with craft and operations, with a layer of technology nobody had time to add. Construction, manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare, retail, food, education, professional services, trades, beauty, fitness, agriculture, logistics, and far beyond. Including but not limited to. Established or pre-founder. If your business is built around something tangible and your customers are people, you probably belong.

Anyone treating networking as a sport. Anyone who wants to pitch services to other founders all night. Anyone allergic to actually building. The room curates against business card theatre.

If you run a business outside the digital services lane, yes. The list is wide. Construction, manufacturing, catering, restaurants, retail, healthcare, education, hospitality, real estate, accounting, legal, professional services, trades, beauty, fitness, agriculture, logistics, B2C and B2B service businesses. Including but not limited to. If you don't see your category, you probably still belong. The room is built for founders whose customers are people, not users, and whose business depends on something tangible. Technology is the missing layer most founders never had time to learn. The Founders Loop is built for that gap. Not for founders who already build software for a living.

No. The room is intentionally 70% women, but the brand is just founders. Curation, not branding. Anyone who fits the criterion is welcome to apply.

They'll need to apply separately. Each seat is curated individually so the room stays balanced.

Three acts in one afternoon. The Showcase: ten founders pitch from the stage, one minute each, tables stay live all afternoon (30 min). The Lab: a curated AI working session where attendees bring real problems and we work through them together, plus Worth Knowing, a 10-minute talk and 5-minute Q&A from someone in the room sharing hard-won expertise (45 to 60 min total). The Loop: Data Time, a brief 5-minute survey for The Index, then open networking and close (25 min). Lunch is included.

Showcase founders get a table, a roll-up banner spot, and a one-minute stage pitch in front of the room. AI Lab attendees come to work on real problems with peer founders and the facilitation team. Both stay for the whole afternoon.

A working session, not a panel. You bring an operational headache, a marketing bottleneck, a sales process held together with tape. We pressure-test it together. You leave with something working, not a list of tools you'll never use. Bring a laptop.

The second Saturday of every month, 1 to 4 PM. The same founders come back. The community compounds.

Builders, not browsers. We look for evidence that you are doing the work, not just talking about it. A real business, a real prototype, a real plan with deadlines. Application required for every cohort.

10 to 15 minutes. We ask about what you're building, the headache you'd bring to the AI Lab, and why TFL specifically.

Within five business days. We respond either way, accepted or not.

No. Apply once, return often. The whole point of the loop is that the same founders come back. The room gets sharper every time.

Showcase Table is $50 per cohort. AI Lab Seat is $25. Both include lunch. Pricing covers food, venue, and operations. Nobody's getting rich on this.

Toronto. Specific venue confirmed with each cohort. Accepted applicants get the address with a week's notice.

Confirmed per venue. Most venues we use have nearby paid parking and are TTC-accessible.

Let us know early so we can offer the seat to someone on the waitlist. You can roll your application to the next cohort if your stage and intent are still a fit.

Mostly in-person. Certain cohorts will have a hybrid component announced in advance.

The Founders Loop publishes weekly field notes plus a monthly dispatch. The monthly dispatch features every founder who took the stage that month, ten profiles each, what they shipped, what they are building next. Over time the monthly archive becomes the directory of every TFL founder.

An annual report on AI adoption among non-IT SMB founders in Canada, drawn from the data behind the publication. The first edition publishes Q4 2026.

Showcase founders are featured by default unless they opt out. We'll always confirm with you before publishing.

The Founders Loop is the community arm of Segmentide, a Toronto-based firm offering enterprise-level services for small and medium businesses. Segmentide does the work; TFL convenes the room. Different jobs, same legacy: closing the gap between what enterprises have and what small businesses can access.

Keerthana Mahadevan, founder of Segmentide and Regional Director of AI Collective Canada.

Pricing covers operations. Margins fund the community itself: better venues, better food, better facilitation, eventually scholarship seats. The aim is for the room to be self-sustaining and growing.