I started by trading time for money. Then I built technology so other people would not have to. Then I built communities. Now I build the relationships and institutions that let markets move at all. Here is how that happened.
I had a paper route at eight. Before that it was toys, lemonade and lawns, whatever I could sell on my street. By nineteen I was running a few jobs at once. I was proud of that for about a year.
Then a mentor asked me what I'd do when I ran out of hours. I didn't have an answer. I was getting paid for my time and there's only so much of it. That question changed what I worked on next.
I moved to Calgary in 2018 to study applied mathematics. I didn't expect the tech community here to become my whole working life. It did, almost immediately.
While I was still a student I helped start two societies at the University of Calgary: the Actuarial and Data Science Society, and the Blockchain Society. That was the first time I saw what happens when the right people keep showing up to the same room.
At the same time I was building my first company, doing data and technology consulting. Over about five years I designed close to thirty products: software, data architecture, intelligence tools, agent workflows, AI systems. Most of it for companies working in Canadian energy and major projects.
I also spent time in research and intelligence roles covering North American energy and power assets. So I got both sides. I was building the tools operators use while learning how investors actually size up an asset and decide where the money goes. Not many people sit in both seats. That gap is where deals get slower and worse than they need to be.
Then three more years volunteering across Calgary's tech community. Part of that was helping build YYC DataCon into a data and AI event people flew in for. The 2025 edition brought in more than 1,500 people from over 200 companies, with 50 partners behind it.
Running something that size forced a question I'd been ducking: what did it actually produce? A big number at the door isn't a result. I still believe in community. I stopped believing that showing up is the same as getting something done.
I'm a Big Brother through Big Brothers Big Sisters, matched with a Little I still mentor. More recently I've been co-developing Future Builders with youth accelerator communities in other countries. The idea is to get ambitious young people in front of mentors, real industries and real problems earlier than I was. Being let into the room taught me more than any advice did.
By 2025 I'd spent more than eight years in Alberta and Canada's tech community, and I kept watching the same thing happen. Big technical, industrial and investment groups would fly into Alberta looking for projects, local knowledge and people they could trust. Alberta had all of it. What it didn't have was an obvious way for those groups to find each other.
So I stepped down from my community leadership roles and started Future Summit in January 2025. It was unproven at the time: a platform putting technology leaders and legacy industries in front of capital groups, institutional buyers and government.
In the first year more than 400 executives came through the events, the curated meetings and the platform running behind them.
In year two we widened the map: trade and investment relationships across Asia, the Middle East and other markets we care about. There's one rule. Everything has to bring something back, whether that's buyers, capital, knowledge or partners. Taking Alberta global should never mean emptying it out.
Future Summit runs on its own money rather than ongoing government funding. That's less comfortable. It also means we can move fast, we get judged on whether the work pays off, and we're not stuck inside one mandate.
Most of what I've had to fix has been in me. Slowing down enough to pick better. Getting off handshake deals and onto real paperwork. Building most of our AI systems only after something had already broken. Being far more careful about who I work with, and learning to tell the difference between trust that's been earned and trust I just assumed.
I'm still ambitious. I just don't hang it on any one event anymore.
I work across industry, government, investment, counties and municipalities, connecting technology, capital, policy and projects and clearing whatever is in the way. My clients judge me on what closes. That's the right way to be judged.
An independent executive media, events and trade platform. 400+ executives engaged in year one.
AI, data and agent systems for companies that run real operations. I built close to thirty of these products before I started advising on them.
Early-stage founders in energy, compute infrastructure and applied AI. There is no fund. Most of them come from the network rather than a pitch process.
I speak about what I am doing: moving energy, compute, capital and government closer together, and what it costs when they stay apart.
Giving high-agency young people earlier access to mentors, industries and consequential problems.
Helped build it into a nationally recognized data and AI event. 1,500+ attendees from 200+ companies in 2025.
Alberta has cheap baseload power, operators who already know how to build infrastructure at scale, land, and a serious pool of capital. The corridor between Calgary and Edmonton is where a lot of the next decade of compute gets built — if grid, policy, capital and public trust line up. My job is to make that legible to the people who can act on it, and to keep the resulting opportunity here.
Josh Rainbow is an Alberta-rooted technology entrepreneur and investor who connects industry, government, institutional buyers and global capital. He is Founder & President of Future Summit, an independent executive media, events and trade platform advancing Canadian technology, energy, infrastructure and major projects. With a background in applied mathematics, AI, data products and North American energy intelligence, Josh has spent more than eight years building companies, communities and commercial relationships across Alberta's technology sector.
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