Some of the best entrepreneurial journeys begin with simple problems that need solving. For Ahmed Hadjeres, founder and principal electrical engineer at ProductShop, that problem was remarkably straightforward: He loved music shows but couldn’t score tickets.
That quest for free concerts led him to build access control technology that would eventually be used at Tomorrowland, Lollapalooza, and the Olympics before being acquired by Eventbrite. On the latest What The Tech podcast, Hadjeres shares his unconventional journey from first-year engineering student to venture studio founder, and why Montreal’s innovation ecosystem needs more support despite having world-class talent.
From Free Tickets to Festival Technology
Hadjeres’ entry into the tech world began during his first year studying electrical engineering at ÉTS in Montreal. When a friend mentioned his event company needed hardware solutions for their RFID-based access control gates, Hadjeres seized the opportunity.
“I improvised myself as an engineering consultant, even though it was my first year of engineering,” he recalls with characteristic candor.
That improvised consulting gig became a company that grew to provide access control technology for some of the world’s largest events. The key insight came from observing a common pattern: Businesses with great ideas often struggled to build the technology to support them.
“Most of the businesses that have a good business case, they’re shitty at building the technology itself,” Hadjeres explains. “They have this paradigm shift: ‘Hey, I’m good. I have a business, but I have zero technical capabilities. Let me build a team.’ And building a team of engineering is not just hiring a bunch of engineers. There’s a whole culture around it.”
An Accidental Return and COVID Pivot
ProductShop’s origin story involves kite surfing, last-minute flights, and pandemic-driven improvisation. In February 2020, Hadjeres was kite surfing in Cabarete with friends when COVID began shutting down the world. After a chaotic journey involving canceled flights and an unplanned detour through Toronto, he ended up stuck in Montreal with his parents.
With events illegal and Eventbrite’s business model suddenly non-viable, Hadjeres made his move. “I’m like, hey, I don’t have a job. I have a place to stay. I have nothing to do. I’m stuck at home, so let’s build some cool shit.”
His goal was simple: Build a team of engineers to hack things together. The funding strategy? Start with out-of-pocket resources, then scale by finding consulting customers who could fund internal product development.
“The whole goal was always to build IP and invest in multiple projects,” Hadjeres emphasizes. “We don’t charge by the hour. We charge by the project. So we take the risk.”
One of their first projects demonstrated this creative, risk-taking approach: “Defeat by Tweet,” a platform that automatically donated to the Democratic Party every time Trump tweeted. The concept leveraged the political psychology that “you can drive energy a lot more by saying ‘I hate you’ than ‘I love you.'” The platform scaled to several million dollars in donations.
From there, ProductShop expanded to work with clients ranging from Caterpillar to Meow Wolf, growing to 12 employees across hardware, software, and event infrastructure projects.
The Montreal Challenge: Talent Without Capital
Despite ProductShop’s success, Hadjeres offers a frank assessment of Montreal’s innovation ecosystem. The talent exists—world-class engineers and entrepreneurs populate the city—but the capital and risk-taking culture lag behind other markets.
“The tax base in Montreal is starving,” Hadjeres observes. “Early-stage investors do not exist or are super small. The ones that exist are pretty cool, but there’s just not enough diversity in the space.”
Most revealing: 90% of ProductShop’s revenue comes from U.S.-based clients. Despite being based in Montreal and loving the city, Hadjeres struggles to secure local business, even while landing contracts in Ontario and BC.
“When we pitch in Quebec, it’s just really hard,” he explains. “I see this barrier to taking risk for bigger businesses with smaller players—it’s not really happening.”
He contrasts this with Spain, where despite having less money and a smaller, highly-regulated market, entrepreneurs continue striving and building. In Montreal, the typical exit strategy remains acquisition by U.S. companies rather than building sustainable local giants.
Bright spots exist—Hadjeres highlights Triptych Fund as an example of ex-Montreal entrepreneurs who moved to Silicon Valley and are now returning to change the landscape. But the overall ecosystem needs more investors willing to back local talent.
SR&ED: The Lifeline with Timing Issues
For ProductShop, SR&ED tax credits have been crucial. After five years of claims, he appreciates the program’s competitiveness compared to U.S. alternatives but identifies a critical pain point: unpredictable payout schedules.
“You and your luck,” he says about SR&ED timing. “I got paid sometimes in less than a month. I got it sometimes taking 12 months, even though there’s no audit.”
For a business operating on tight cash flow—juggling manufacturing costs, account payables, and employee salaries—this unpredictability creates challenges. Hadjeres’ recent experience illustrates the frustration: the federal portion paid out in under a month, while the smaller provincial portion remains outstanding nine months later without any audit involvement.
His proposed solution? Give businesses the option to receive payouts spread throughout the year rather than as a lump sum with uncertain timing. “If they structure the program well, they should do payouts per month,” he suggests. “This way that will probably smooth the curve because business like me, it’s all about cash flow.”
The critique extends to broader government funding programs. Hadjeres describes reading grant documentation that “looks like someone who wrote it never built a business ever” with 70-page forms requiring technical writing expertise rather than technical engineering expertise.
“I’m technically a specialist. I should know what I’m talking about,” he notes. “But when I see the document requirements, I’m like, hey, this is really off from what I’m expecting.”
The Venture Studio Model in Action
ProductShop operates as a venture studio, ideating, testing markets, and scaling operations for both client projects and internal initiatives. They take equity stakes in many of their portfolio companies, which now range from sub-$10 million valuations to nearly $1 billion.
Current highlights include:
Phynx: A Los Angeles-based company building unified operating systems for venues and festivals. Working with Insomniac (one of the largest event groups in the U.S.), Phynx consolidates previously fragmented software systems—ticketing, guest lists, table management, POS—into comprehensive solutions.
Billfolds: A New York-based POS system specifically designed for events, deployed at major venues like Brooklyn Garage. ProductShop builds their hardware, benefiting from real-world testing opportunities where they can iterate rapidly based on live event feedback.
These partnerships demonstrate ProductShop’s core value proposition: deep-stack engineering capabilities that quickly bring innovative ideas to life, with skin in the game through equity ownership.
Looking Ahead
As ProductShop continues growing, Hadjeres remains focused on building IP, supporting innovative clients, and advocating for improvements to government funding programs that help startups survive and scale.
His journey from broke engineering student seeking concert tickets to venture studio founder illustrates a fundamental entrepreneurial truth: the best solutions often come from solving your own problems first. And sometimes, the most practical approach is simply building the cool stuff you want to see exist in the world.
Talk to an expert from Boast AI today to learn how we help innovative companies like ProductShop maximize SR&ED tax credits with predictable processes and expert support that speaks your technical language.
