Jesse Brown moderates a fireside chat with FreshBooks co-founder and CEO Mike McDerment on the final day of Techtoberfest 2014.

After a packed day of festivities Thursday, startup entrepreneurs and venture capitalists awoke ready for the second and final day of Communitech’s Techtoberfest.

The two-day event, sponsored by Christie Digital, Google, TELUS and the University of Waterloo, attracted 57 venture capitalists from near and far to the sold-out startup festival.

Mike McDerment, co-founder and CEO of Toronto’s FreshBooks, kicked the morning off with a fireside chat moderated by Jesse Brown at the Tannery Event Centre. McDerment spoke about growing his cloud computing startup from his parents’ house with a cheque for $10,000, to a multimillion-dollar company with 10 million users worldwide.

When asked for his opinion on Canadian talent feeding U.S. companies, McDerment said he’d like to work at keeping the companies here.

“Why not rush to Silicon Valley because that’s what you’re supposed to do? I guess I’ve never done what I’m supposed to do,” he said.

His advice to keep talent here: talk about our companies.

“We need to champion what we are doing. We’re going to build big companies to spawn even more companies,” McDerment said.

John Ruffolo, Executive Managing Director and CEO of OMERS Ventures, gave the last word before attendees headed off to individual learning sessions throughout the Communitech Hub.

Ruffolo believes we’re witnessing the rise of the entrepreneur in Canada and giving other global players a run for their money.

“The whole notion of what it is to be an employee is going to change. We need to treat entrepreneurship as a profession,” Ruffolo said, explaining that entrepreneurialism as a career option should be introduced early in education.

He ended with a final message to “be loud and be proud,” and encouraged everyone to become involved with Canada’s future by being an entrepreneur, working for a startup or supplying capital.

“Once they know we’re an innovation nation, we can kick some ass.”

Techtoberfest wrapped up Friday afternoon with a series of private one-on-one meetings between startup entrepreneurs and VCs.