Helping our founders by supporting the whole team
When we developed our core beliefs, we spent considerable time thinking about our investment philosophy, as well as how we should work with our portfolio companies and what kind of resource we want to be. Specifically, we included two points involving our role: 5) We can make the greatest impact as a Seed investor. The seed […]
Having the greatest impact requires believing when others don’t
As investors, we want to have an impact. We want to help entrepreneurs, build sustainable companies, improve lives, and change industries. When I think back to those situations where we’ve made the biggest impact on entrepreneurs, they’ve all got one thing in common: they were all times when we believed when others didn’t. For example, […]
The challenges in implementing tech policy and what government can do
Over the past couple of years, I have been asked to give input on tech policy for all levels of government: city, provincial, and federal. This has been both informally and formally through committee work. I feel lucky to live in a country where elected officials seek input from industry to come up with the […]
Some quick reflections on the current tech M&A market
We’re just a few weeks into 2018 and have already completed three portfolio exits: @Mattermark (by @FullContact), @MemoAIHQ (by @coinbase), and @GoPike13 (by $CSU.ca). This is a good time to share some observations about the current state of the tech M&A market – both specific insights from these transactions as well as broader observations. More […]
How to scale hiring without breaking company culture
After a company finds product-market fit and has raised an A Round, it usually starts scaling the team aggressively. This is a critical time: you have already shown that you’re on to something; now it’s all about executing that business model at scale. And that means you need to grow the original team, while keeping […]