On September 28th Startup Open House is back in the city that started it all for its fifth anniversary event.

Since the first event in 2013, the amount of startups in the city has continued to expand, and Startup Open House is an opportunity for all of them to open their doors and invite the public in.

“We created Startup Open House because we believe it’s an important initiative that helps support entrepreneurship and innovation. What we want is to offer an invitation to everyone in the general public to discover what makes their city unique,” Charlotte Martin, Project Manager at Startup Open House told MTLinTECH.

Between 4pm-8pm, the general public will be invited inside around 150 anticipated local startups to get a sense of their different corporate cultures, talk to members of the team, and catch a glimpse of what goes on behind closed doors. At 8 pm, everyone will reconvene for a networking event.

“We’ll have headquarter (HQ) meeting points for participants to come and talk to a Startup Open House representative. We’re going to offer themes for some participants that maybe are not as aware of the startup ecosystem. And we can personalize routes depending on their interests and what they’re looking for during this event. They can come get their stickers and information package there, or they can go directly to the startups they want to visit. And then it’s four hours of roaming through the streets of your city, talking to different types of people.”

It’s recommended for visitors to build a personalized path through the website, which shows the participating startups’ locations, what they do, and what they focus on. But everyone is invited to join, from students considering the future job market, to tourists interested in seeing more of what Montreal has to offer.

“We want to keep it open for everyone. For young graduates that are interested in the field but not really sure what happens behind closed doors, we’re offering them this opportunity to be exposed to the startup culture. We’re also open to investors that are intrigued in meeting new entrepreneurs, being exposed to new ideas. We also have a lot of fellow entrepreneurs and tech lovers. We have a lot of different things because it’s a community event, and very accessible.”

The only requirement is to sign up for a free online ticket starting September 1st. Startups that are interested in participating and opening their doors to the public can register now on the website. The deadline for free registration is August 28th, with a $50 registration fee in place for registration after that date up until the final deadline of September 18th.

“We’re celebrating our fifth birthday, and we’re celebrating our city’s 375th as well, so it’s a year that we want to make extra special. So we made new kinds of partnerships to offer our startups, because one of our main points is we want to help startups attract talent and maximize their brand exposure to the entire community.”

This year we’re having a partnership with Jobbio, the hiring platform. Startup Open House has negotiated free access to that platform for our startups and our attendees, which will really help them target jobs, see what happening, and have a centralized job opening system for startups to hire or to increase their visibility on the market. It’s going to be a great way for job seekers to go into the startups that are hiring and show themselves, showcase their talents to the HR person directly or to the team to see if it’s a great fit, rather than just applying online.

By keeping the event free to all, Startup Open House hopes to help local fast-rising startups attract the talent they need to continue to develop at that pace and remain dynamic in our ecosystem.

“We just wanted to thank our partners and sponsors in general, because this wouldn’t be possible without them. We’re very thankful for those big startups that are success stories and offer support to the ecosystem in general. I think it’s really representative of the community spirit we’re trying to promote. We’re really looking forward to September 28th, another chance to meet this city’s incredible talent.”