

Canada’s Bitcoin Partner


Founders, explaining what you do clearly and concisely is vital. Two experts shared 10 things you can do to ensure you’re ready to inform and impress those you meet along the way.

Getting angel investors to support you is the name of the game. Here’s a game plan to inspire you even before you start your raising journey. Good luck!
What seven founders told us about their startups and their
with
angel groups.

If you’ve recently joined an angel group and you’ve yet to write your first cheque, this one’s for you. May your investing journey begin
F our experienced investors shine a light on the good, the bad and what they’ve learned while leading.
One co-founder and angel on collaboration, partnership and support. These two truly exemplify the definition of a successful entrepreneurinvestor relationship.
Thiv Paramsothy of Hera Fertility on his experience with his first angel investor.
It’s not about how you fail — it’s about how you bounce back. Learn about turning flops into an artform that underscores success.
Ontario’s angel group champions — executive directors and group managers, past and present — spoke to us about best practices when it comes to finding founders and keeping members engaged.
Heavenly Guidance
Good angel investors are heaven-sent for the founders they work with. Could you be an even better angel investor? Let’s find out
Why do angels and founders need to understand securities regulations? Angel Investors Ontario’s Mark Lawrence fills us in.

Your guide to the 18 angel groups in the
Angel Investors Durham aims to connect entrepreneurs with capital and mentorship. Here’s what you need to know about one of Ontario’s newest angel groups.
Artist Jason Wilkins shares his thoughts on entrepreneurship and the parallels he sees between artists and entrepreneurs.
PUBLISHER
FRANK AUDDINO
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
KATE TOMEN
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AND DIRECTOR OF CONTENT
LISA VAN DE GEYN
CREATIVE DIRECTORS
JOCELYN ESCAMILLAN, PATRICK LYVER KLEURVISION INC.
EXECUTIVE CHAIR, ANGEL INVESTORS ONTARIO
MARK LAWRENCE
CONTRIBUTORS
KATIE DUPUIS, CATHY HUTCHINSON, TAMAR SATOV, JASON WILKINS
CIRCULATION
ROLTEK INTERNATIONAL INC.
PRINTER
MI5 PRINT & DIGITAL
Funded is published by Angel Investors Ontario, copyright Angel Investors Ontario, all rights reserved. Funded is the province’s only print publication that focuses on angel investing, entrepreneurship and the innovation ecosystem. Any copying or reproduction of this content without the written permission of Funded is strictly prohibited. The publication does not assume liability for content. All editorial content is intended for information and entertainment purposes and does not supersede professional advice. Funded is proudly printed in Ontario.
For editorial or advertising inquiries, please email us funded@angelinvestorsontario.ca.
A heartfelt thank you from our team to the Ontario Securities Commission for providing funding to support investor education and financial literacy for Ontario’s angel investors.
These materials have been prepared by AIO and have not been approved or endorsed by the OSC. The views, opinions and content expressed are solely those of AIO and do not reflect the official position of the OSC. Find free investor education resources from the OSC at www.getsmartaboutmoney.ca.
Saluting Ontario’s Brilliant Minds
This issue of Funded is all about investor and founder education, so it’s fitting that I’ve learned so much about the ecosystem since we started this project earlier this year. As a journalist and content specialist who’s worked in Canada’s magazine industry for more than two decades, I’m no stranger to writing about entrepreneurship for national magazines and innovation ecosystem champions like Angel Investors Ontario, Capital Angel Network and Spark Centre. But even when I’m working on the other content I specialize in (think lifestyle, health and personal finance), I find my work with founders and angels always resonates with me — the traits that make them so successful inspire and come to mind often. I like to think that in every story I tackle, I bring a little piece of ingenuity, grit and pluckiness from the hundreds of incredible innovators I’ve interviewed, as well as some of the commitment, courage and diverse perspectives I’ve learned from Ontario’s angel investors.
Speaking of those who inspire, this issue is chock-full of folks who have made a huge mark in our country as leaders, mentors, innovators and forward-thinkers — actually, we celebrate at least one on every page. As you read through this magazine, you’ll meet Claudette McGowan, the first Black woman in Canada to raise a $10-million series A (page 82) and Dr. Chao Yu, who has made mining safer for those on the job (page 22). Chloe Beaudoin and Jessica Miao (page 20) have together made bra shopping easier for tweens and teens, while Bhargavi Varma started the province’s first angel group for brown women (page 84). Dr. Lauren Foster has developed a novel blood test to detect endometriosis — a debilitating disease that affects millions of Canadians (page 103) — and the the Honourable Vic Fedeli, Ontario’s Minister of Economic
Development, Job Creation and Trade, fervently reinforces the importance of supporting founders and keeping brilliant minds in our province every chance he gets (page 88). There’s also Dr. Brian Whitestone, an angel investor who’s opened doors and supported medtech innovations that will help millions around the world (pages 40 and 103), and my youngest daughter, Peyton, who followed in my footsteps and started her own wee business — she made the clay bracelets on page 110. (OK, she hasn’t made quite the mark the other people I’ve listed here have made, but just give her time — she’s only 14 and has a bright, entrepreneurial future ahead of her.)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — this ecosystem is filled with passionate, resilient, brave, smart, remarkable people, and it’s an honour to share their stories with you in these pages.

Lisa van de Geyn Editor-in-Chief and Director of Content
Photo of Lisa by Liisa Sefton
A Word From Angel Investors Ontario
Angel Investors Ontario (AIO) is pleased to present our latest publication, supporting angel groups and members across Ontario. Our mission is to empower angels to invest in innovative entrepreneurs, driving job creation and attracting capital, while educating both angels and entrepreneurs on achieving better, less risky and more rewarding outcomes.
This publication focuses on investor education, offering insights for both sides of the funding equation — insights into what entrepreneurs need to prepare for and know before taking their innovation to an angel group, and what angel investors should expect. Our aim is to foster best practices in deal sourcing, syndication and securities compliance to protect investors and maintain market integrity.
After 12 years of service, in February 2024, Jeffrey Steiner stepped down as executive director and president of AIO. We extend our heartfelt thanks to Jeffrey for his tremendous contributions, both to AIO and the angel ecosystem.
Team Players
Curiosity and a love of learning have been the invisible thread that connects my life and career. Funded is that invisible thread, beautifully tied into a bow. It showcases Angel Investors Ontario’s commitment to uplifting the community through education and storytelling.
The stories in this issue demonstrate that, with curiosity at the core, angel investing is about more than just capital — it’s about discovery, growth and advancing innovative ideas. Within this issue, you will find stories about incredible founders, investors and innovators who are driving change and promoting inclusivity in Ontario’s innovation landscape. The province’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is crucial for boosting the economy, and we heard from subject-matter experts, government representatives and founders about the importance of thinking outside the box here in Ontario. We also spoke with top investors from around the world about the essential skills for angel investors and learned what grit and perseverance look like from this province’s leading founders.
Curiosity weaves through every stage of angel investing, motivating investors to dig deeper, ask questions, and explore the untapped potential of startups. This curiosity compels angels to stay informed and helps them identify unique opportunities that others might overlook.
The stories throughout this magazine showcase the successes, challenges and impacts that our angels and entrepreneurs have achieved together. These successes enhance Ontario’s reputation, attracting international investment and strengthening communities. Angels not only provide capital, but they also offer valuable mentorship, sharing hard-won lessons that ultimately help startups thrive.
We hope you find this publication informative and inspiring. Thank you to everyone who contributed to Funded


Mark Lawrence P.Eng., MBA, CFA Executive Chair, Angel Investors Ontario
Angel investing is truly a team sport. Just as investors come together to support early-stage companies with guidance, capital and connections, creating a magazine like Funded requires collaboration and dedication from a talented group of people. Every contributor — writers, editors, designers and subject-matter experts — brings unique insights and skills to the project. Together, we’ve crafted a publication that reflects the spirit of teamwork that drives the angel-investing community. It’s a celebration of the collective effort that not only builds companies but also brings inspiring stories to life in print.
On behalf of the Funded team, I hope you find this issue inspiring, entertaining and informative. I learn so much every day from this network of investors and innovators, and I hope this issue provides even a small glimpse of that “angel intelligence.” Regardless of whether you are a founder or an investor, I hope you feel empowered after reading this issue.

Kate Tomen Vice-President of Business Development, Angel Investors Ontario
Photo of Mark by Scott Lawrence
Photo of Kate by Natalia Dolan
MY TH: ANGEL INVESTORS MUST UNDERSTAND COMPLEX
Reality: If you can confidently say “ROI” and “valuation” while nodding thoughtfully, you ’re halfway there. For the rest, there’s Knowledge Hub. Common My ths About Angel Inves ting
ANGEL S. FOUNDERS. INNOVATORS.
CREATE AN ACCOUNT FOR FREE AND GET INVESTMENT SM ART.
Thiv Paramsothy My First Angel
About Hera Fertility
The startup’s affordable sperm tests and fertility programs allow men to take charge of their fertility.
My Angel Journey
It’s been an interesting ride. I’ve pitched to groups like Golden Triangle Angel Network and Maple Leaf Angels, plus some U.S. groups. It can feel intimidating at first, with all those eyes on you, but it’s all about showing your passion and being prepared. Every pitch is different — some are more casual, others more structured — but ultimately, you’ve got to make them believe in your vision.
My First Angel and the Importance of Early Investors
One of our first angels was a fellow tech founder named Baskar Puvanathasan, who had a successful exit and even had an IPO. I’ve always looked up to him as a mentor. Turns out, he’s a fan of my previous startup and really understood the pain point we’re addressing. What stood out to me was his willingness to take a risk so early. His confidence wasn’t just in the idea, but in me — rooted in my track record and my approach to iterating on the solution for the problem. That kind of trust makes all the difference.
My Experience Working with Angels
Working with our angels has been super helpful. I aim to bring on strategic angels who can help across the board — from clinicians and scientists refining our testing and treatment protocols, to those who can connect us with clinics and payors. They’ve offered mentorship and opened doors that have really moved the needle for us.
Advice to Founders Visiting Ontario Angel Groups
Go in with confidence. Many angels are there to support you, not just critique. It’s about build ing relationships, so focus on that. Do your homework and align your pitch with their interests, but don’t just chase the money — look for angels who can offer strategic value and connections.
Recent News
A lot of exciting things are happening. We’re securing more key partnerships with clinicians and retailers, and we’re focused on obtaining insurance coverage for our tests and services, which will be a game-changer. We’re currently raising our first round for expansion to reach our next milestone

Name: Thiv Paramsothy Company: Hera Fertility, herafertility.co Angel investor: Baskar Puvanathasan
Clear the Way
Founders, you’ve heard it before, but we can’t stress it enough: Explaining what you do clearly and concisely is vital. Hard stop. A couple of experts shared 10 things you can do to ensure you’re ready to inform and impress those you meet along the way.
By Tamar Satov
You’ve got a groundbreaking idea, a solid business plan and an intense passion to launch what could be an incredibly successful venture. (Who knows? You could be a unicorn in the making.) Thing is, it’s obviously not that easy, and you’re facing one major hurdle hordes of founders before you also initially overlooked: Not only do you need to explain your brilliant concept to other people in a way that’s not only straightforward and succinct, but you
also need to convince them of your vision — and persuade them you’re the one to execute it.
While this might sound like a simple task so some engaged and eager entrepreneurs, it can be surprisingly challenging for founders to do well. “It’s not complicated, but it’s not easy,” says Trish Snyder, president and chief storyteller at Toronto’s Upwordly Content, who has helped more than 200 startup founders at McGill University’s Dobson Centre for Entrepreneurship
improve their storytelling. “Startups are so immersed in the day-to-day of growing their business that it’s really hard to distill it down to the most important points that a potential investor or buyer needs to know.”
Indeed, whether you’re meeting with investors, talking to potential customers or networking with partners, explaining what you do clearly, concisely and confidently requires a fair amount of advanced planning and practice to get it just right. “Every time >>
someone asks, ‘What does your company do?’ you can ramble and mumble,” says Snyder. “Or you can make an instant positive impact.”
Avoiding the former and achieving the latter is the name of the game here, so read on for 10 ways to convey your story effectively, compellingly and yeah, in fewer words than you’d expect.
Highlight the benefits up front.
Don’t just describe the features of your solution — talk benefits. Focus on the tangible outcomes, and back it up with research, stats, facts and figures. “In our evidence-based society, it’s best to use some kind of data to reinforce the narrative,” says Snyder.
Snyder recalls meeting with one client who took a good halfhour to tell her what his company did. Clearly, that’s not going to fly when you strike up conversation at a networking event or plan your pitch to investors — your new acquaintances will tune out and promptly excuse themselves. You want to deliver a simple, memorable, purposeful story in 30 seconds or less, not 30 minutes, she says.
Identify the problem.
Your startup exists to solve a problem — or at least, it should. Imagine explaining this problem to someone who has no background in your field — a stranger to what you do and how you do it. If you’re having difficulty with this step, it might be a sign that your startup lacks focus. “Sit down and try to really synthesize it,” says Emil Savov, managing director of the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, who has worked with hundreds of startup founders during his 25 years in the venture capital business in Canada and the U.S. “It has happened on a few occasions when we start digging deeper into the problem and realize they haven’t really thought it through.”
Using what you’ve learned above, you can now create a short and impactful statement. Here’s the formula Snyder uses for this process, with a couple of examples:
Introduce yourself, your role, what you do and for whom: Start making a connection.
Try: “I’m NAME, founder of ABC Co. We’re food manufacturers helping upscale Canadian restaurants find the best local produce suppliers.”
Try: “I’m NAME, founder of XYZ Co. We’re a tech startup helping small businesses maintain an active and engaging social media presence.”
Once you’ve outlined the problem, it’s time to express your solution. Clarity is key here. “Founders — and people in tech in particular — have a much deeper knowledge about their field than the general population,” says Savov. “They assume a certain level of knowledge on the other side, which may not necessarily exist.” Instead, be sure to describe your product or service in simple, easily understood and digestible terms. Stick to the essentials and avoid unnecessary technical details, jargon or acronyms.
Try: “Our regional experts help chefs get their most prized ingredients at the best prices.”
Try: “Our platform uses AI to automate social media, making it easier for small businesses to connect with their audiences.”
Be relatable.
Explain your impact: Wrap with a fascinating story, fact or stat — fascinating from the listener’s perspective — about tangible impact or results.
Try: “So far, we’ve been able to help restaurants we work with cut their annual food bills by 22%.”
Try: “This saves businesses time and helps increase customer engagement. We’ve recently seen sales increase by up to 13%.”
Use real-world examples or anecdotes that resonate. Snyder recalls how the founder of one company that made household sensors did this to great effect: “He said something like, ‘Have you ever been driving home from the cottage and you’re debating whether you shut off the water before you left, but you don’t want to drive back for two hours to check? By the time you get home, there’s a call from the neighbours saying there’s water everywhere and extensive property damage. That happened to my family, which is why I created this technology.’ It was unconventional — he didn’t use the exact formula — but he got all the points across in a compelling story,” she says.
You’ll want to have a few explanations at the ready, depending on the kind of person you’re talking to, says Savov. For example, in addition to the information above, investors will immediately want to know about market potential and scalability; customers care about cost and how easy your product or service is to use; and partners are interested in the strategic advantages of working together.
If you convey any doubt or desperation, you’re going to have a different impact than if you’re filled with confidence and generosity. “I think people undervalue the importance of the energy they bring to the interaction,” says Snyder. “Do you really believe in what you’re saying? If you’re not convinced that your solution can help people solve a problem, that energy is contagious.”
Test your explanations with trusted folks from these different audiences and pay attention to their reactions and questions. If people constantly ask the same questions or seem confused, it’s a sign that you need to tweak your explanation. Refine and rehearse until you can deliver what you need to say smoothly and confidently. This will help you stay calm and focused, whether you’re in a conversation at a trade show or, eventually, standing in front of a group of angel investors pitching your innovation.
If the situation allows, demonstrate your solution. “A product demo goes a long way to convince customers and investors of its viability,” says Savov. “When people see what the product actually does, it generates questions and that’s very helpful.”
Here’s the bottom line: Explaining what you do clearly and concisely is a skill that can be honed with practice and feedback. By understanding your audience, articulating the problem and solution effectively, and continuously refining your message, you can ensure that your startup’s value is communicated in a compelling way. Remember, simplicity is powerful. The clearer and more straightforward your explanation, the more likely you are to capture interest and drive action.

Getting angel investors to support you is the name of the game. But it’s going to take more than being able to explain your startup clearly and concisely (see how to do this on page 10), a refined pitch and a ton of hard work. Here’s a game plan to inspire you even before you start your raising journey. Good luck!









As the member of his team who’s often the spokesperson when it comes to introducing his startup at conferences and pitching to angel groups, Brad Schmidt has learned a thing or two about what it takes to engage an audience, sell a vision and interact with investors. He is the co-founder and CEO of Panaxium, a seven-year-old bioelectronic medicine company that’s developing a therapy to help the 100 million people around the world currently living with brain damage after stroke. Schmidt has run startups in the past, but Panaxium is tied to his own research, which he began decades ago. This company truly has the capacity to make life better for the 85 percent of stroke survivors who are left with life-altering cognitive, speech and motor disabilities. Panaxium can change the way this neurological disease is treated using AIenabled iontronic devices, and if this just flew right over your head or doesn’t resonate with you at all, that’s okay. Schmidt is always ready to explain the business in layman’s terms — it’s one of the skills he’s honed that’s made the startup so successful so far. (Long story short, Panaxium is “building a breakthrough therapy to guide and boost natural recovery by combining technologies that allow us to find the right spots in the brain to cultivate and stimulate neurons to rewire the circuits in the brain that correspond to each physical movement the patient is attempting to recover.”) “When I talk through the science, people get very excited about what we’re doing, but one of the tips I’ve learned is that when you’re talking about a difficult or deep subject people aren’t familiar with, you have to make sure you have some way they can take home what you’re saying,” he says. “When you’re working in deep tech or med tech, you need to give angels the ability to retell your story to their networks at a level that’s equally as exciting as how you’ve pitched it.”

When you’re working in deep tech or med tech, you need to give angels the ability to explain what you do to their networks at a level that’s equally as exciting as how you’ve pitched it.

Schmidt’s first tip is just one of the many he’s learned that have contributed to the startup’s success. Following their friends-and-family round, the team started pitching to angel groups in 2021 (they’ve also pitched in the United States and Europe), and nearly four years in, they have a strong sense of what it takes to spark interest and ultimately receive support. When we asked Schmidt and other entrepreneurs what it takes for angel investors to write a cheque, they all shared similar sentiments: Founders must know their business inside-out, they must be surrounded by the right team and, equally as important as their expertise in their field, they must possess and show numerous soft skills. Not only do they need to be ready and willing, but they must also be well-rounded. And while everyone can’t be everything all the time, the founders we spoke to offered us great nuggets of advice entrepreneurs should heed when they start raising. Here are five we just had to share.

Helen Kontozopoulos is currently working on her second startup, Resiin, a professional connections management app that helps users keep track of people they meet at conferences and the like. Her first startup is one she co-founded in 2018 — ODAIA is a series B software-as-a-service startup that provides AI-driven insights that help pharmaceutical sales and marketing teams. She’s also an adjunct professor who teaches product development, design and startup creation in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, plus she’s a mentor at Toronto Metropolitan University, The Firehood and YSpace. She’s no stranger to attracting angel investors — she even decided to start angel investing herself as a member of The Firehood — and is passionate about working with founders to help them secure funding.
Now, as a second-time founder working on Resiin, Kontozopoulos says she has a better grasp of how to prep for a raise. For her, it’s about cultivating and segmenting her angel network connections. “Know who you’re speaking to at every stage and put your investor network into specific silos. You’ll start learning who’s interested in really early investments, who’s suited for series A rounds, who’s interested in series C, etc. Then you can create a short newsletter that speaks to everyone who’s in these specific groups. If you have a contact who’s an investor who only invests in series B rounds, they don’t need to be on your list that speaks to the angels who are keen to get in super early,” she says. >>



Schmidt doesn’t just wait for angels to ask questions. In making the rounds across Ontario angel groups, he’s realized he not only has to field all questions posed by investors, but he needs to take it a step further. “Even when you’re speaking with the most experienced investors, founders need to understand that when introducing an unfamiliar industry and business model, there will be some education through the process, so make sure you’re making the math straightforward for everyone to understand,” he says. “Doing the calculations for angels is a good tip. ‘Put in a dollar now and in this amount of time, this is what we’re projecting over time.’ By showing them how our business will generate their return on investment, we relieve investors of the need to do their own complex calculations and make assumptions. They can still challenge our assumptions, but having our math laid out up front makes their due diligence process easier.” We can show them that and when they challenge elements of the plan, we can go through and do the math for them.”
The other thing to remember is that angels are inundated with information and can often be bogged down by due diligence materials, etc., so founders can be proactive by simply asking them this straightforward question: “What do you need from me in order to make a decision?” Then, says Schmidt, the founder can focus their efforts on that issue. “Founders don’t often ask that question directly, and we should. There’s a lot to
If I trust you, I’m going to listen and hear more. If I trust you, I’m open to learn and I’m open to consider investing. If I don’t trust you, I’m not taking your calls; without trust, there’s really no reason to continue listening or talking.

platform that makes diagnostics more accessible by giving people the ability to monitor, in their own homes, biomarkers that traditionally require labbased blood work. He says trust is the foundation — it’s arguably the most important part of building all relationships, including with investors. “If I trust you, I’m going to listen and hear more. If I trust you, I’m open to learn and I’m open to consider investing. If I don’t trust you, I’m not taking your calls; without trust, there’s really no reason to continue listening or talking,” he explains. Trust is earned slowly through every interaction and conversation, and it creates a level of comfort that must be in place before investment can happen. “We build lay ers of trust by being truthful, transparent and open.

relationship is no different. Lahav Gil, CEO and board chair of Arma Biosciences, says being unafraid to be honest is key. As a founder and executive in med-tech for more than 30 years, as well as an active angel investor and mentor himself, Gil says developing trust with investors is one of the key reasons Arma Biosciences has raised US$3.2 million from angels and early-stage venture capitalists over the past three years. The startup developed a novel electrochemical sensor technology










This might seem like a strange piece of advice in a story that specifically looks at how founders can be successful with angel investors, but entrepreneurs who’ve been there know there’s much more to angels than cheques. There’s something Gil tries to remember to do when he finishes a pitch or a call with a potential investor, whether or not the result of the interaction is in his favour: He asks for a referral to other potential investors who might be interested in learning more about Arma Biosciences. “I’ve had people say, ‘You know what? I love your truthfulness, but I’m not willing to take the risk.’ That’s fine, I thank them, tell them I appreciate their time and ask if there’s someone they can recommend or if they can introduce me to investors who might be comfortable with the stage of the company and type of risk that is still to be tackled?” It is very important to have alignment between the investor and the maturity-stage of the company, which includes the work that needs to happen to achieve the inflection point. Casting a wide net and asking for referrals leads to success,” he says. Kontozopoulos practises what she teaches her entrepreneurship students. For her, the ask is super important, and she says teams often miss adding a crucial ask that has nothing to do with dollars on the last slide of their pitch. “Ask if they have industry partners you can be connected to. ‘Do you have any industry connections who you believe would be interested in our solution?’ A lot of times, angels who really care about the solution, team and are interested in what you’re doing will say, ‘Here are some contacts. I’d be happy to do an intro for you,’” she says. “I prefer those angels — they’re ready to work with you and that’s a great proof point.”

“You don’t have to take money from everyone who offers it. I don’t think many teams realize that. They just thank their lucky stars they got offered a cheque. The thing is, not everyone is going to be a good fit, and that’s important to real ize,” says Kontozopoulos. Like product-market fit, there’s angel-startup fit, and Kontozopoulos’s advice is if an investor doesn’t get your industry, or only wants to deal with certain members of your team (if an angel will only speak to the men or women on the team, for example), it’s okay to pass. “You have to find the right people who fit you. There were times we said no to angel investors be cause they didn’t understand what we were doing, and we felt they’d come back and question our every move. There must be trust on both sides of the table.”





We all want to be inspired, and hopeful founders — or those who are at the beginning (or middle!) of their entrepreneurial journeys — are no different. So, allow us to use the song title of a tune released 40 years ago to make our point: The seven founders you’ll read about in the pages that follow are indeed inspirations, to fellow innovators and angel investors alike. Here’s what they told us about their startups and their experience with Ontario’s angel groups.
As told to Lisa van de Geyn


We met at university and quickly became best friends. We bonded over our shared puberty struggles and how difficult it was for us to find bras. That’s when Jessica mentioned her younger sister, Cindy, was going through the same awful process. We realized that 10 years after we started bra shopping, girls still felt embarrassed. We knew we had to change things.
Cindy wasn’t the only girl going through this. In fact, 90 per cent of teens feel embarrassed to wear a bra — and 84 per cent suffer from decreased self-esteem because of it. The two of us talked to hundreds of teens to better understand what they hated about their current bra options, and we learned their main issues were fit and comfort. (Of course, if you wear a bra, you know these go hand in hand.) So many girls didn’t know their size, and most were wearing the wrong size, which just made them feel uncomfortable and self-conscious about how they looked. We decided to design a line of bras that’s
Apricotton
actually made for preteens and teens that would properly and comfortably fit their growing bodies.
The result? Our bras are the only ones on the market that grow as girls grow, lasting through all stages of puberty. Every bra fits an A to D cup, meaning girls don’t have to keep buying new bras as they grow. Our bras stay invisible under shirts (thanks to our triple-layered high-quality fabric) and they’re moisture-wicking.
We’re pleased we’ve built a community of more than 170,000 followers and 100,000,000 views on social media — we’re kind of like the virtual big sister some girls don’t have or need. We’ve been able to build genuine connections with
Chloe Beaudoin Founder

Jessica Miao Founder
WHATApricotton makes comfy bras made for tween, preteen and teen girls that fit their changing bodies as they go through puberty.
WHO Chloe Beaudoin and Jessica Miao, founders
WHERE apricotton.co
girls, setting us apart from larger brands that often feel impersonal and, honestly, kind of cringey.
Apricotton is our first business, and we completed our first pre-seed round. We had to learn a lot throughout our angel journey, including how to find investors, how to build relationships, how to look for and find the right founder-investor fit, and how to build a pitch deck and data room. We realized that pitch events and meetings were great ways to present Apricotton and showcase our products, as well as connect with investors face to face. After showing up at multiple events, we noticed we kept bumping into the same investors, which helped to cultivate and build relationships.
We met a lot of our angels and VCs this way. These angels were also instrumental in helping us refine our pitch, which — as you might expect — has changed a lot since that first pitch event.
Throughout our journey, our early investors have really helped us with all things investment 101, and they continue to help us by connecting us with other mentors and investors. Beyond mentorship and connections, it’s great to have support. It’s extremely motivating when we get a happy or encouraging message from any of our investors. >>


ILoopX

founded LoopX during my PhD studies at the University of Waterloo, where I specialized in developing machine-learning-based motion planning and control technology for autonomous vehicles. Prior to this, I had led control system architecture design at General Motors for more than eight years, giving me profound insight into autonomous driving technologies. At first, LoopX targeted the autonomous last-mile-logistics market, conducting pilot trials. However, we saw the market had significant maturing to do because of safety concerns, regulatory issues and limited profitability. So, we decided to pivot to address pressing industry problems where there was a clear need: the mining sector.
The decision to focus on mining stemmed from multiple factors — the inherent dangers of underground mining made the application of autonomy highly beneficial, and the sector faced high production and labour costs, often exacerbated by skill shortages due to the remote locations of mines. We also identified a major interoperability issue with existing autonomy technologies in the mining market in Canada, which were mainly tied to specific equipment manufacturers, limiting their applicability across the diverse equipment fleets found in mines.
Enter LoopX — we’re a Canadian robotics and AI technology company that originated from Waterloo, Ont., and is now also operating out of Sudbury, Ont. We focus on enhancing safety and efficiency in mining through advanced autonomous systems. Our first product is a collision avoidance system that utilizes AI and sensors, such as cameras and LiDAR, to collect data and proactively prevent accidents. This system is designed to
Dr. Chao Yu Founder and CEO

WHATLoopX, founded in 2022, is a pioneering tech company based in Waterloo and Sudbury that specializes in AI-driven autonomous solutions for the mining industry.
WHO Dr. Chao Yu, founder and CEO
WHERE loopx.ai
be adaptable to any mining equipment, thereby enhancing safety across various operations. We are building this system using similar technology as with our autonomy solution, based on machine learning and sensor perception. This is our entry-level system in mining, but it will pave the way to full autonomous systems.
Ensuring the safety of miners is paramount, given the inherently dangerous nature of the industry. The mining environment poses numerous risks, while mobile equipment accidents top the safety risks, and harsh conditions often contribute to high injury and fatality rates. This reality underscores the vital need for our autonomous safety solutions.
The importance of these solutions has become even more critical, thanks to current challenges like personnel shortages and the need for increased productivity. According to a recent CNBC report, the U.S. mining industry is facing a significant workforce shortage, with more than half of the nation’s approximately 221,000 mining workers expected to retire by 2029. Autonomous technology helps mitigate these challenges by reducing the need for human intervention in the most hazardous tasks, not only preserving life but also filling the gap created by labour shortages.
Productivity is another crucial factor. As mines are mov-
ing deeper underground, productivity is hampered by longer downtimes due to shift changes, the need for ventilation after blasting and other factors. Autonomous systems allow for continuous operation without the breaks and shifts required by human-operated systems. They optimize processes and equipment usage, which lowers the cost per tonne of material moved or processed, directly impacting the bottom line positively. Partners like Cementation have been instrumental in field-testing and refining our systems. Their feedback on the versatility and effectiveness of our technology across various equipment types and mining conditions has helped us tailor our solutions to better meet the industry’s needs.
Our fundraising journey has been quite smooth, despite the broader venture capital market cooling off. We recently pitched at several Ontario angel groups and ultimately secured significant funding from the Northern Ontario Angels (NOA) and the Axion Fund in the Archangel Network, both focusing on Northern Ontario. This experience underscored the importance of connecting with investors who have a deep understanding of the mining industry. This alignment greatly streamlined our fundraising efforts.
Beyond the financial backing, the real value has come from the extensive network these angel groups bring to the table.

We’ve leveraged these connections to significantly enhance our engagement with key players in the mining sector, leading to valuable sales leads and opportunities. This network has been instrumental in helping us navigate the market and accelerate our growth. >>

Monark
WHAT
WHO
Monark helps companies transform their managers into high-performing super leaders with its interactive, practice-based leadership-development tool.
Kelsey Hahn, co-founder and CEO, and Amanda Julian, co-founder and chief science officer
WHERE leadwithmonark.com
Monark was founded on the idea that there had to be a better option for leaders and individuals interested in leadership growth and education. Today, it’s the world’s first leader relationship management software that gives leaders data and insights into the performance of themselves and their teams. With our AI-powered leadership development and performance optimization platform, Monark helps organizations grow and retain talent by scaling programming across multiple levels of leadership, effectively helping to cut leadership development programming costs in half.
Monark (based in Calgary) is essential right now because leaders in organizations are failing to keep pace with rapidly evolving workplace dynamics. With employee retention, engagement and burnout at historic lows, leaders need real-time, data-driven tools to connect with their teams
and foster engagement without adding to their already overwhelming workloads. The rise of hybrid work, the use of technology in communication and the demand for growth opportunities make it clear: Employees expect more from their leaders. Monark’s solutions focus on building authentic, empathetic leadership — directly addressing the disconnection and dissatisfaction driving talent out the door. It’s the modern solution to a modern leadership crisis. Companies using Monark are seeing lower turnover and burnout across their employees, and leaders are more confident and prepared, with more than 90 per cent of users reporting they are regularly applying and practicing what they have learned, and 84 per cent experiencing positive behaviour change. Monark is helping turn the often disengaged, burnt out and overwhelmed middle managers, into an organization’s best asset — super leaders.
When it comes to our angel-invest-
ing journey, Monark was connected to Maple Leaf Angels through an existing investor. Kelsey travelled to Toronto to pitch in the summer of 2023, and there, met some individual angels who joined their round (in addition to meeting The Firehood and Starforge from Archangel funds). Having angel investors from out East has helped broaden our network and expand our brand across Canada. We are grateful for all the support we have received from the angels and our investors, and with their support, are looking forward to continuing to expand our profile and client base into the East. >>
Amanda Julian
Co-founder
and chief science officer

Kelsey Hahn
Co-founder and CEO

WHAT
Nicoya
Nicoya gives scientists and researchers the cutting-edge technology they need to help advance their discoveries that will better human life. The company’s technology reduces the cost and complexity associated with complex scientific experimentation to help researchers develop better drugs.
WHO Ryan Denomme, founder and CEO
WHERE nicoyalife.com
Nicoya is a life science instrument company — we provide the “picks and shovels” of the drug discovery industry. We have used our decades of experience in biosensors and microfluidics to develop groundbreaking analytical tools that provide scientists with the ability to better understand diseases and develop drugs to treat those diseases. More specifically, we specialize in biophysics instruments which characterize how two molecules interact with each other, telling scientists how fast and how strong they bind to one another. These interactions happen on the nanometre scale and our instruments allow scientists to see them in real time, which is highly valuable data needed in the process of discovering and developing a new therapeutic. We are renowned for our state-of-the-art
Alto™ and OpenSPR® platforms that are used by hundreds of scientists from academic labs to top-10 biopharma companies. There is a very good chance that a future life-saving drug will have been developed with the help of our instruments, which is why our mission is to improve human life by helping scientists succeed.
This industry has typically been dominated by large companies using outdated technology that is decades old. These instruments, although effective, have been prohibitively expensive and complicated to use, so most scientists didn’t have access to them or avoided them in favour of simpler techniques. The value of data in drug discovery has been increasing rapidly over the past 10 years, as more complex platforms and

Ryan Denomme Founder and CEO
molecules like antibodies, RNA and proteins become available, requiring more sophisticated characterization tools. This, combined with advances in AI that are now being leveraged in drug discovery, has further increased the need for high-quality biophysics data. We saw the early indications of this 10 years ago and knew that every scientist was going to need access to this technology in their own lab. In addition to providing high-quality data, the instruments had to become simpler, smarter, more automated and more affordable to enable widespread adoption — that’s what we’ve done. We constantly hear from our customers that not only getting access to this data type has been groundbreaking, but the speed and simplicity of it has been equally important.
We funded our early stages through winning awards and grants (from FedDev and the University of Waterloo), and used that to get our first product launched. We had an
incredible amount of support from the community, including Accelerator Centre, Velocity and Communitech, as well as our early customers at many of the local universities that were essential to getting the company off the ground. That said, without access to angel networks, Nicoya would not exist. Ontario angel groups, highlighted by Golden Triangle Angel Network (GTAN), have invested nearly $5 million into Nicoya across several rounds of financing. Some of our angel investors have invested more than four times as we continue to grow and seek capital for further expansion.
Pitching to angel networks has been a great experience all around; we’ve pitched to several Ontario groups, including GTAN, Niagara Angel Network and HaloHealth, to name a few. Angels ask thoughtful questions, form
meaningful syndicates and come with a breadth of experiences that are critically relevant to any growing business. In the early days (raising through the seed stages), companies are still developing a network and group of mentors. The angel network allows founders to accelerate this process dramatically while gaining access to the capital they need to get their company off the ground. Countless capital and general business connections have been made via our angel investors and this network effect has been paramount to our success. >>


Indie Tech
WHAT
The company’s consultant platform helps enterprises manage and engage consultants working for them across all divisions, and can track and report on the performance of consultants in a more consistent, actionable manner.
WHO Sophia G. Contreras Stone, founder and CEO
WHERE indietech.ai
In 2016, I started my own consulting firm focused on risk and regulatory work in financial services, and over the next few years, I grew it to a seven-figure business working with Sun Life, RBC, Scotia and BMO. It wasn’t long before I encountered a persistent issue — the industry was highly reliant on manual processes and managing large-scale contract performance was inefficient and difficult. Driven to better understand why this was happening, I decided to go back to school. I settled on the Master of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the Smith School of Business, where I partnered with a multinational insurance firm during my studies and began investigating the root causes of inefficiency in managing professional services contracts. That’s when I realized that a significant part of the problem was the lack of data — organizations had no effective way to track and assess supplier performance throughout the lifecycle of a contract. This meant that businesses had limited visibility into how their consulting partners were actually performing.
That realization became the foundation for Indie Tech. Initially, I envisioned an AI-driven performance-management platform, but as we began to build, I quickly saw that there wasn’t any existing data to fuel it. So, we pivoted. Instead of starting with artificial intelligence, we focused on capturing much of the data locked up in manual processes and documents. We began creating collaboration hubs that could capture the essential performance data missing from procure-

ment and professional services engagements. By developing a platform that tracks outcomes, automates manual processes and generates actionable insights, Indie Tech is helping organizations gain better visibility into the entire lifecycle of their professional services relationships. The goal has always been to close the data gaps that have plagued procurement for too long. This proprietary data set will then allow us to transform the data into AI-driven insights helping businesses to make smarter, more transparent decisions together with their trusted suppliers.
Indie Tech, at its core, is about addressing a massive and often overlooked problem in procurement. The recent scandals in Canada with ArriveCAN and now McKinsey are prime examples of the vulnerabilities that exist when governments and corporations rely on large-scale consultants without adequate systems to track and measure outcomes. What we’re seeing play out in Canada — and similarly in Australia — is a failure to adequately monitor and control how public money is spent. The truth is private enterprises face the same risks with their significant procurement budgets. At Indie Tech, we provide a solution that empowers organizations to capture data and evaluate consultant performance across the entire lifecycle of a contract, reducing the gaps in accountability and ensuring that businesses get the value they’re paying for. Our mission
is to bring transparency and data-driven decisionmaking into procurement, preventing the kind of mismanagement that leads to inefficiency, waste and scandal.
What’s more, collaboration is everything, especially in today’s fast-paced business environment. The challenge many companies face when working with consultants, whether they’re from big firms or independent contractors, is managing the entire lifecycle of that engagement. It’s not just about signing a contract; it’s about making sure the work being done is on track, aligned with expectations and driving real value. When collaboration breaks down, so does performance — and companies are left holding the bag and the blame for failure is sometimes wholly placed on the consultant. Right now, with increased scrutiny on costs and outcomes, organizations are more aware than ever of the need to be smart about how they manage external expertise. We’ve built

Sophia G. Contreras Stone Founder and CEO
Indie Tech to solve for that, allowing companies to track, collaborate and measure consultant performance in real time, which removes so many pain points. What we’re hearing from partners and customers is that this is a game-changer. It’s helping them not only streamline processes, but also make more informed decisions about who they work with and how they allocate their budgets. The results? Better outcomes, reduced risks and a stronger alignment between consultant work and business goals.
We wouldn’t be where we are today without angels. I’ve found so much more value from individual angels because they understand the problem deeply. One of the big challenges we’ve faced when talking to venture firms — especially younger folks who might not have enterprise buying experience — is that the size of the market and the significance of the problem can be minimized. Angels, especially those who are senior executives, were the ones who raised their hands early on, wanting to get involved because they knew firsthand how big this issue really is. Having senior executives in our corner who can vouch for the magnitude of the problem in meetings has been invaluable. Plus, the connections and sales opportunities that have come out of these relationships have been a complete game-changer for us. >>

WHAT
Lumeto
Lumeto’s AI-driven immersive healthcare simulation platform is used for training, assessment and onboarding of healthcare professionals. The XR simulations are customizable and include AI-patients, AI-evaluators and complete healthcare environments with working equipment.
WHO Raja Khanna, Co-founder and CEO
WHERE lumeto.com
My first business, QuickPlay, created some of the first mobile video services for large mobile carriers around the world. At QuickPlay, we believed 3G was going to drive consumers to start consuming video content on their phones, which no one believed at the time (we launched in 2004, well before the iPhone). That company grew globally and was eventually sold. After QuickPlay, my next venture was based on the idea that broadband to the home was going to disrupt the cable television business, and my co-founders and I built that company into what became Blue Ant Media. During my tenure, we built one of the largest YouTube networks in the world (more than 3 billion monthly views), some of the first and most distributed independent subscription video-ondemand services and a global production
and broadcast business that grew to make Blue Ant one of the largest independent players in factual entertainment globally. In 2020, I joined forces with Kavi Maharajh, Ben Unsworth and Eyal Kleiner to create Lumeto.
For Lumeto, our vision was simple — we believed spatial technologies (like real-time 3D rendering engines, VR and mixed reality) were going to disrupt how we learn. We knew instinctively that many skills, such as the ones needed by healthcare clinicians, cannot be learned from books or videos alone, but need to be tried and repeated with real patients, or, ideally, in safer life-like settings. These new spatial technologies opened the possibility of learning skills by actually practising them in a 3D space without the need for expensive simulation centres and without the risks of learning on real patients. Creating a life-like twin of a hospital
setting, for example, with an operational life-like virtual AI-driven patient and an AI assistant/evaluator could have a profound impact on healthcare, where hospitals are understaffed and new graduates feel underprepared and, as a result, medical error remains a leading cause of death in North America. Our platform allows institutions to create, run and manage remote, multi-user simulations in extended reality (XR), while collecting and analyzing the resultant data.
The key to our platform is its ability for customers (colleges, universities, hospitals and governments) to effectively create a multitude of complex medical scenarios to use for training, assessment and onboarding without the need for developers. This is a first in the market, and a key reason why our core customers — trainers and educators — love our product.

Since its launch we have deployed the software in 27 institutions, have 20 paid SaaS customers and have facilitated the training of thousands of learners. Education directors, clinical staff and instructors have all reported incredible positive feedback from our survey data and research studies. Most importantly, perhaps, the learners themselves love the experience, feeling it builds confidence, decision-making skills and procedural knowledge — all things that lead directly to better patient outcomes.
We are now raising via angel networks and are thrilled to have welcomed several angels from Georgian Angel Network (GAN) into our cap table just this summer. We are now actively approaching other Ontario angel networks to fill out our current seed extension round, which is now 50 per cent subscribed. So far, our experience with angels has been fantastic, with incredible engagement, questions, advice, connections and more. Working with GAN has shown us how an organized group of angels can add more value than the sum of the individual investors. It has allowed us to meet incredibly smart people in group settings focused on helping you solve your challenges, which is a privilege not a lot of founders get. >>

Co-founder and CEO
Raja Khanna
[Founder 2] LOOPX

What: As a provider of AI-powered au
Asima Health
Istarted Asima Health in mid-2023 with the mission to democratize cancer testing. I am a high-risk individual for ovarian cancer and have many cancer survivors in my family. So, I have seen the journey of cancer patients firsthand, which makes the innovation Asima is working on deeply personal to me. Cancer survivors continue to rely on archaic methods that involve costly and invasive procedures like CT scans, MRIs, colonoscopies for single-organ cancer testing, etc. Through graduate students in my lab, we found a unique way of detecting multiple cancers from a single blood draw using a low-cost and highly scalable spectroscopy method. The results were so compelling that I quit my tenured engineering faculty position at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi to start Asima Health full time in Canada. For the past 20 years, I have built novel bioassays for medical diagnostics. I’m now on to a new and exciting journey of building a liquid
biopsy product that can revolutionize the way we think about cancer screening and surveillance. We are a molecular diagnostic company that can rapidly screen blood samples to tell you if you have an active solid cancer brewing in your body. So far, we have obtained promising pre-clinical results in the lab with 216 human samples (50 healthy) with about 95 per cent detection efficacy overall, including stage-one cancer samples. We are now building our first product, Asima RevTM, which we envision being housed in every lab in North America so that cancer testing becomes as accessible as thyroid or cholesterol tests, giving results to the patient close to where they are, same day and at a highly reasonable price point. Most other liquid biopsy companies rely on expensive and highly targeted gene-sequencing technologies to identify specific cancers. This process, while effective, tends to be costly (often costing several thousand dollars per test) and time-consuming (with turnaround times ranging from two to three weeks due to the need for sample shipping and complex analysis). At Asima, we have taken an alternate approach. Instead of

WHAT
WHO
WHERE
Shalini Gupta Founder and CEO

Asima Health’s innovative, non-invasive, accessible technology can quickly rule out cancer (or identify those at risk and in need of further testing) with a simple blood test.
Shalini Gupta, founder and CEO
asimahealth.com
focusing on “ruling in” specific cancers, we prioritize quickly ruling out cancer. Our method offers a cost-effective solution, priced at around $150 per test, which significantly reduces the financial burden on payors and simplifies the testing process for patients. Our technology ensures fast results before more expensive and time-intensive tests are needed, reserving those methods for when further investigation is required. So far, we’ve conducted a retrospective cancer study involving more than 15 different cancer types, including major cancers like breast, lung, kidney, brain, head and neck, colorectal, ovarian and thyroid — across all stages, from stage one to metastatic. The results have been quite compelling, demonstrating the promise of our platform to disrupt
traditional cancer diagnostics with a fast, accessible and affordable alternative.
So far, my angel journey has been incredibly rewarding, not only in terms of funding, but also because of the valuable support and mentorship I’ve received. Angel One Network has been a significant backer; I’ve had the opportunity to pitch to a few different Ontario-based angel groups. The pitching experience was insightful — every presentation honed my ability to communicate our vision more clearly and respond to tough questions from seasoned investors. Beyond the financial backing, the most valuable contributions from the angel community have been their mentorship and networking opportunities. Several angels provided strategic advice,
particularly around market entry and commercialization pathways, while others connected me to key healthcare stakeholders, potential partners and investors in both the Canadian and U.S. markets. Their collective experience has been instrumental in shaping our early steps as a company, ensuring we’re not just funded but positioned for long-term success.


Photo by Boris Chen
My First Investment
Wei (Victoria) Xu
Why I Became an Angel Investor
I have been interested in early-stage investing since the early 2010s when I started engaging in the vibrant innovation ecosystem. Over the years, I witnessed firsthand that many industries lag in technology adaptation. So, I wanted to be part of the force to bring more innovation into use. After several years of exploration through consulting and advisory roles, I became an angel investor.
Why I Invested in Virica
Virica is a special biotech that has several applications, and it can generate revenue much sooner than typical capital-intensive biotech. For its application in the vaccine-manufacturing industry, it certainly resonated well with my personal belief in preventative healthcare. The pitch the founders made at CAN stuck with me — I was impressed with the team. Add that to my background in biomedical engineering, and I saw global potential. I joined the deep dive, and a month later, Virica was the first company I invested in as an angel.
Unexpected Learning
Many of my fellow angels were actively evaluating the deal together. That provided me with a great learning
opportunity — I even learned a lot from the angels who shared their concerns, and about the reasons why they didn’t join the deal. Aside from that, the Virica team was very accommodating, as I probably asked many newbie questions throughout the process. Not only did I make a good investment decision, but I also learned through the process from both the entrepreneurs and my fellow investors.
Investment Notes
I’m very happy with Virica’s perfor mance, but the best part is not about the financial return — it’s about being part of the positive impact they are making. It’s important to me that my investments drive a positive impact delivered by these innovative startups along their journey. Virica certainly hit this criteri on. I also want my investments to align with my background and competence so that I can be helpful to founders. Virica also fits this well. I read their investor up dates and keep them in mind when I come across rele vant information, and I occasionally reach out to share things with them. That provides a sense of in volvement and pride that trading equally risky stocks won’t offer to investors.
Advice to First-Timers
Entrepreneurs are among the most — if not, the top — resilient groups of people in our society, and angel investing can provide a promising return once you build up your portfolio.




Foresight is the “act or power of foreseeing,” and while none of us can predict the future with certainty, it’s a no-brainer to take advice from people who’ve been there when you embark on something new. If you’ve recently joined an angel group and you’ve yet to write your first cheque, this one’s for you. Read on to learn what three angels look for in startups they support. May your investing journey begin now.
By Lisa van de Geyn



Ask Geoff Simonett why he invested in a particular softwareas-a-service company, and he’ll tell you he not only invested, but he was so impressed by the founders and their company that he joined the team as CFO. “I had been working with them at Altitude Accelerator and they were growing pretty rapidly in a big market. They also seemed to have a proven formula that, if one could just pour fuel on it, you’d have an obvious way to grow. As for the founders, they had been working together for a long time and really trusted each other; they’d built a great team,” he says. “I think the most interesting thing to me was at this point, I hadn’t yet met founders who thrived in uncertainty as well as these guys did. They could juggle 30 balls at the same time, not really knowing where any one of them was going to land, and continue to make decisions, which is difficult for entrepreneurs when you’re constantly resource-strapped.”
Simonett is one of the three entrepreneurs-in-residence at Bramp ton’s Altitude Accelerator and a mem ber of Brampton Angels. He’s been supporting early-stage startups for more than 20 years and figures he’s made dozens of angel investments in that time, so it’s no surprise he has an extensive list when it comes to what he looks for before he writes a cheque to a founder. First, there are the basics — startups are high-risk investments, so he goes into every deal knowing there’s potential to lose his money, and he might need to wait five or 10 years for a return on his investment if a company succeeds. “Before I go in, I consider how much money the team needs and how far that amount will get them — I don’t want to be part of the last $100,000 in a sinking ship,” he says. “I also look at my alignment with the founders’ motivations and my personal goals. Am I interested in this industry, or does it fit my portfolio in that it’s something that can do good in the world? Of course, there’s more to it than this, but I don’t decide if I’m investing before I’ve considered these things.”

Carol Lee, an active member of Toronto’s Maple Leaf Angels and the Women’s Equity Lab who’s been investing in ear ly-stage companies since 2021, says there are three things she eval uates when determin ing whether she wants to spend the time participating in due dili gence, even before she considers writing a cheque. “Following a strong pitch, I’m looking at the founding team, how compelling the company’s solution is to the problem they’re looking to solve, as well as their moat and market opportunity. I need these pieces to be in place to want to dig in further,” she says.
All these considerations are vital, and if you ask a few dozen angels what they look for most before determining whether they’ll financially back a founder, most of them (Simonett and Lee included) mention similar criteria. We hope this list helps prospective angels — those of you just waiting to take the plunge — sign
KNOW THE RISK
BET ON THE JOCKEY
ting on the horse, or are you putting your money behind the jockey? The vast majority (if not all) investors will quickly tell you they bet on the jockey — and they’re not just looking for one who only sort-of likes horses and rides for fun, if you catch our drift. Angels want grit, skill, character, experience, fire and perseverance in their jockeys.


Lee doesn’t have decades of early-stage investing under her belt, but in the four years she’s been an angel, she’s paid attention and taken advice from angels who’ve been there. She now counsels new investors in her groups to consider angel investing as a high-risk, long-duration illiquid asset class, and to consider startups and write cheques with that in mind. “One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received is to hold off on investing in the first six months of embarking on your angel investor journey. Research areas of innovation that interest you or that you have subject matter expertise in, meet founders and listen to a lot of pitches over that time. This will all help to refine your angel investment thesis.”
Chris Adams, an angel investor at Georgian Angel Network, the founder of the reIGNITE Conference and the entrepreneur-in-residence at DMZ, has a similar list of what he looks for in founding teams he invests in. “They need to be incredibly excited about their business, and if there’s a compelling reason why they started their company, I want to know it,” he says. “I also look for people who are collaborative, resilient, confident, but know what their weaknesses are and surround themselves with people who fill those gaps.” Simonett’s list is like Adams’s, but he adds the importance of having a connection to founders you’re investing in. “It’s kind of like dating,” he says with a laugh. “You look for people who you feel connected to; who know what they’re talking about; who are confident, but not cocky; who answer questions well; who listen; and who can make decisions in a world of uncertainty and risk.” While you’re at it, he reminds investors to ask entrepreneurs about their motivations: Why did you start this? Where do you want to go with it? Is this really something you want to invest yourself in to build and exit at some point? How committed are you when it comes to time, money, lifestyle and ownership?

BE OPEN-MINDED

founders and businesses that get me excited, even if they’re in areas in which I might not have a lot of expertise,” says Lee. In other words, she’s broad-minded when it comes to opportunities — she doesn’t rule anything out right off the bat. “My background is in financial services, but I’ve gotten the most excited about data plays, artificial intelligence and innovation in healthcare. As part of my due diligence, I conduct my own independent research and leverage the expertise of my network, including that of angels evaluating the same investment. This work is key in assessing whether I can understand and ultimately get com

LOOK TO YOUR FELLOW ANGELS
angel group — take a page from Lee’s playbook and lean on the experts around you to help you make decisions. Not only are industry experts in groups, but there are also seasoned angels who know how to structure deals and are incredibly skilled at all things due diligence. Leverage their expertise and leverage their experience. “These are the people who can help you determine what’s a good investment, and what isn’t. The collective ability to do due diligence is a huge benefit,” says Simonett. Plus, investing as a group is always a good idea. “If you’re putting in $500,000 together, you have a real impact on the company and a much better platform by which you can negotiate a deal — it’s stronger than Geoff putting in $25,000 on his own.”

Photo by Dragon

Take the Lead
Most angel investors go to group meetings, watch pitches, ask questions and have the goal of writing a cheque for a startup that will flourish in years to come. But have you ever wondered what the rest of the process looks like or what happens behind the scenes to get a deal done? Here, four experienced investors shine a light on the good, the bad and what they’ve learned while leading.
By Lisa van de Geyn
Photo by Jacob Wackerhausen
Ana Misra is no stranger to the ecosystem. An active angel investor who’s made her mark as a key member of three Ontario angel groups (she’s currently the co-chair of Angel One Network and the treasurer of Brampton Angels, plus she cofounded York Angel Investors) and is a capital investment program adviser at ventureLAB, Misra has invested in more than a dozen startups over the years. But she’s rarely taken on the role of a passive investor. In fact, Misra has played an important role in most of the deals she’s invested in, taking on the duties of the lead angel in three and assisting in several others. “For me,
in shaping the investment terms and guiding the startup’s strategy.” Angels who shepherd deals are often left with a great sense of pride and accomplishment. “Providing an opportunity to foster innovation and potentially achieve substantial returns is incredibly rewarding,” she says. “However, leading a deal also comes with the responsibility of managing risks and guiding the founders through challenges. This dual aspect makes the
me, the most enjoyable aspect of leading a deal is collaborating and working with passionate entrepreneurs and my fellow investors. It’s all about people”
Ana Misra , angel investor
the most enjoyable aspect of leading a deal is collaborating and working with passionate entrepreneurs and my fellow investors. It’s all about people,” she says. “This also includes opportunities for mentorship and seeing the startup grow and succeed; learning, gaining insights into new industries and innovative technologies; and influence

role both fulfilling and demanding.” She’s not kidding — leading isn’t for the faint of heart. There are plenty of thankless tasks that come with the job, it’s easy for a deal to become allconsuming and, frankly, it’s not a great gig for folks who haven’t invested in at least a few deals and lack the experience needed when it comes to understanding the process. “Leading a deal means taking a primary role in organizing and managing an investment round for a startup, representing a group of angel investors. It’s stepping up and being ready to drive the process and act as a cheerleader,” Misra says. “Being a lead angel requires experience, due diligence skills, leadership skills, the ability to negotiate, an interest in mentorship, industry knowledge, a strong network and integrity.” But it doesn’t end there, says Toronto-based angel investor Dejana Dua. An early-stage investor, a venture partner at Anexa Capital, the capital investment program lead at ventureLAB and an angel and adviser at The Firehood (to name a few of her titles), Dua has led two deals and has made about a dozen investments across various verticals over her years investing. She says a good lead angel must take on a significant mentorship and advisory role, helping with strategy, business >>
development, go-to-market, the exit, etc. “The angel rounds I led took me outside of my comfort zone, tested my resilience and made me realize just how much blood, sweat and tears founders put in to make good on their promise to their clients, investors and themselves. Many challenges had to be overcome, starting with building trust, setting clear expectations in terms of achievements, managing conflicts and working under pressure.”
Being a lead angel requires experience, due diligence skills, leadership skills, the ability to negotiate, an interest in mentorship, industry knowledge, a strong network and integrity.” “
Ana Misra , angel investor

All this said, we need angels who will step into the driver’s seat — investors who are willing to put in the time, energy, knowledge and passion to see a deal through. The thing is, most investors don’t truly know what goes into being the lead. “A lot of people put their hands up and say, ‘Hey, I’ll be the lead on that,’ but they don’t actually know what it entails. It’s a long-term commitment — it’s not a one-and-done sort of thing,” says Robert Treumann, an angel investor and member of Angel Investors Durham. “I think of it in phases. Phase one is getting the deal closed and phase two is helping the company be successful. If they’re not, there’s no phase after two.” Often, lead angels have industry expertise in the startup’s sector, they’re fervent about the subject or they might already have a relationship with the founder, previously acting as an adviser and mentor. “As a lead, I also want to be able to give the founders value along the way,” he says, citing a deal he was leading in the call-centre space, which has similarities to eScribe, the successful meeting management software company he founded.
Misra breaks down the phases of leading a deal like this: It starts with deal sourcing and moves into due diligence, which involves “a thorough evaluation of the startup’s business model, financials, market potential and the team. This part is time-consuming, it’s highly focused and leads are often assisted by industry experts,” she says. Negotiation — including valuation, equity and investor rights — follows, then comes syndication. It’s incumbent on the lead angel to reach out to other angel groups to complete the raise, too. Capital deployment comes next and post-investment support ensues, which entails providing ongoing mentorship, monitoring the founders’ progress, etc. Finally, the exit strategy is planned and, fingers crossed, executed. Deals take time and, it goes without saying, it’s not recommended for angels to take the lead on more than one or two deals at a time. Challenges always arise — vetting the startup can take what seems like ages. There’s risk management to think about and pressure on the lead to ensure the deal is a win-win for both sides. Managing everyone’s expectations can be onerous. “The most difficult part for me isn’t the process of conducting due diligence, but rather managing founder-investor relationships, personas and expectations before, during and after the term sheets have been signed,” says Dua. “This can be somewhat mitigated by carefully selecting investors who should be considered to join the syndicate, taking into account not only the size of the cheque, but also what other value they bring to the table, past collaborations and personality types.”
Sure, there are always going to be challenges and leading isn’t easy, but angels who’ve been there share a common refrain: It’s impactful, exciting, rewarding. Brian Whitestone, who has been an angel investor for seven years and belongs to Capital Angel Network in Ottawa, has made about 10 investments and has taken the lead for two of those deals. He doesn’t sugarcoat the trials that come along with being
Photo by Olia Danilevic

the bridge between investors and founders (and mentions organizing fellow angels as perhaps the biggest challenge he’s faced), but he describes himself as a “curious and open-minded” person who enjoys the research and learning involved in leading. He says the most recent deal he steered was for Yellowbird Diagnostics, a startup based at Ottawa University that’s developing a new type of dye for radiological investigations. “I’ve been monitoring the team for quite a while, helping them refine their deck and pitch while researching the space they’re hoping to disrupt. It’s been very rewarding to simply watch the founders grow, develop their pitch skills and their understanding of early-stage company formation,” he says. “The investment, time and learnings made this a fun deal to lead.” For Treumann, it’s the satisfaction of making a connection with founders and seeing the deal through their lens. “Having been on the founder side and having been turned down for investment many times, I have an appreciation and feel for what they’re doing. That doesn’t mean I’m going to lead or invest in a company I don’t believe in, but it does mean I get satisfaction from leading a deal that will help give the founders the opportunity to achieve their goals. It’s a good feeling.”
So, you want to lead a deal…
Considering stepping up to the plate and going in for the long haul? We applaud you! Here’s some advice to help aspiring leads, founders and fellow investors find success.
Commit ample time and resources to due diligence
“Make sure it’s done right. Spend time understanding the startup’s business model, market potential, financials and team dynamics,” Misra says.
Seek advice from fellow angels
Reach out to angels who’ve been there before, and don’t be afraid to ask questions or even ask to shadow a current deal. This is the perfect time to lean on your network. “Angels who lead tend to have an impressive network of investors, advisers, domain experts and others whose support can be leveraged during the process and beyond,” says Dua.
Trust your instincts
“Data is crucial but rely on your gut feeling about the team and the business’s potential,” says Misra.
Know when to fold ’em
Not feeling passionate or committed enough to follow a deal from inception to fruition? “Step aside and let someone else do it,” says Treumann. “You can still write a cheque, but don’t put up your hand to be the lead.”
You don’t have to be a seasoned angel to know investing in early-stage startups is, well, precarious. Are there ways to mitigate your risks? Certainly. (A big one is joining an Ontario angel group; you can find the one in your area starting on page 54.) Learning from those who’ve seen the red flags — sometimes early enough, sometimes too late — is invaluable. Read on and use caution before going in on the next deal that comes your way.
By Lisa van de Geyn
About a dozen years ago, angel investor Sandy Robertson got super pumped about an earlystage startup. It was back in the early days of wearable technology, and this particular company, launched out of an Ottawa-based university, had developed a neoprene sleeve worn over the leg. The sleeve, designed for
right person was in this key role. “I was confident the board would step in and fire the founder as CEO but give him the chance to stay on as chief scientific officer. But they didn’t. And because of naivete, hubris and fantasy, the founder successfully managed to run the company that had so much potential into the ground. We got five cents on the dollar back.” By the end, there had even been talk among investors about suing the board for negligence, not properly evaluating the founder and not acting in the best interest of the company and its backers. “It was the biggest hit I’ve ever taken, and yeah, I saw the red flags.”
Personalities sometimes clash and, while you don’t have to be besties with every founder you’re investing in, a passive, lethargic, indecisive person isn’t going to get the job done. “Founders should be active. They should be energetic, and really, they should be aggressive. Someone who’s not aggressive and willing to do what’s needed is going to be a red flag for me,” says Arvin Qing, an angel investor at Launch Hub Angels Network. Patience is another must-have. “When you speak to a founder and find they’re impatient or they seem challenging right from the beginning, that’s a big problem.”
cyclists, was outfitted with sensors that read electromyographic signals in the thigh and hamstring, as well as things like lactate, cadence and other cool techy measurements that hard-core cyclists would definitely be into. “I just fell in love with the technology. In fact, I was the alpha tester and an adviser,” he says. By this time, Robertson had been an avid cyclist for 20 years, and when he learned about the technology, it seemed like a no-brainer to invest. It checked all the boxes — he saw the potential, understood the tech from a customer perspective and even had a potential buyer in mind, a global manufacturer of wearable tech used for outdoor sports. “I was convinced this was good enough to be bought by the biggest player in the space. It was that good. I saw a very realistic and achievable exit, so I invested a substantial amount of money.” Robertson wasn’t the only one — the founder ended up raising about $1.5 million, much of it from investors at the nearby angel group, Capital Angel Network.
Robertson (who founded Georgian Angel Network and is still a member today) felt good about the deal for the most part, but one aspect nagged at him — he wasn’t convinced the founder was the right person to lead the company to an exit. Still, his worries were eased knowing three angels were joining the board, and they’d ensure the
Angel investors are always looking for the next unicorn, or at least opportunities that seem incredibly promising, brimming with potential, that will eventually yield high returns. But what’s arguably even more important than finding a good one is spotting reg flags in a not-so-good one — signs that indicate failure is more likely than not. Here’s the bad news: Investors aren’t handed a definitive list of every red flag to keep an eye out for when they join an angel group. Instead, it’s reiterated ad nauseam that angel investing is a risky proposition, and, while you go into a deal hoping to support a local startup and make a few bucks, there’s no guarantee you won’t find yourself in Robertson’s shoes — writing a fat cheque, crossing your fingers and ending up with a measly five percent of your investment. And while we wish we could offer a special pullout section in this magazine with all of the possible red flags investors need to watch out for, we did what we hope is the next best thing — we spoke to experienced angel investors about what they look for and what they’ve seen in the hopes their stories will be cautionary tales.
The tip-off: The founders aren’t eager or aggressive
The tip-off: There’s a lack of clarity, and they can’t or won’t answer questions
No one should be as passionate and as well-versed on their business as founders themselves, so if they hesitate to divulge info, there’s a lack of clarity, they have a confusing pitch, they’re too concise (leaving out pertinent details) or they seem guarded, tread lightly. Every interaction counts, but don’t hedge your bets on someone who can’t or refuses to offer clear explanations. Communication and transparency are key here. “When you ask a specific question, whether it’s about progress, what’s currently being worked on, what milestones have been hit or what’s coming next, their answers should let you know they have a firm handle on where they are in their business. If their answers don’t show this, watch out,” says Qing. >>
The tip-off:
The founders aren’t on the same page
“How a team operates and works together, what their relationships are like, how the co-founders interact — investors need to know this,” says Qing. “Going in and seeing for yourself what’s happening behind the
scenes during due diligence is a great idea.” He makes a good point. Robertson once worked with a husband-andwife team who started a company focusing on a vegan product and their visions clearly weren’t cohesive when it came to the business. The wife had the smarts, but kowtowed to her husband, which affected the company’s progression since they weren’t in sync. “Founders who are strongly influenced by each other but not on the same page aren’t going to work,” Robertson says. Keep an eye out for things like lack of communication, conflicting visions and major clashes in personalities within the core team — these issues not only affect performance, but create a negative feeling and image to stakeholders and customers.
The tip-off: They’re missing paperwork
Megan Cornell is a corporate lawyer in the venture tech group at Dentons in Ottawa and a member of Capital Angel Network and SheBoot who has worked with countless startups. One of the big
problems she cites and keeps an eye out for is missing paperwork. “For early founders who end up splitting, it’s not uncommon to start a company and say, ‘We each own a third of the business’ and never do the paperwork to solidify this because they’re on a shoestring budget and don’t want to go to a lawyer. Sometimes they write these things down on napkins; sometimes they don’t even do that,” she says. It’s important to document everything and to be able to show ends are tied up in case, using the example above, the company ends up being hugely successful and Founders B and C come back trying to collect. Investors also need to see documentation when it comes to investors who come in even earlier than angels — friends and family. “You know, maybe an aunt or uncle gives them money in exchange for five percent of the company. Well, that’s actually a huge number. And if it’s not written down anywhere, how do you know what that five percent entails? Five percent of the company at what stage?” Asking questions about early financing — and asking to see the proof — is vital. “You don’t want your money in a company until you know it’s really clean and everything has been dealt with,” says Cornell.
The tip-off: They’re
not coachable or won’t pivot
Founders should be coachable and flexible and they should genuinely want angel investors to provide added value beyond writing a cheque. Robertson uses Chickapea Pasta — a company he’s worked with for years and has also invested in — as a best-in-class model of what investors should look for when it comes to adaptability and receptivity in founders. “When I started with Shelby Taylor, she knew nothing about business, so we were a perfect fit because
she had the vision and passion and I invested when she first pitched her company, which was all about creating a powder infant formula,” he says. “We got about two weeks into it and Shelby said to me, ‘You know, I’ve found the regulatory pathway for infant food is long and arduous. However, in my research in running a health foods store and speaking with customers, I’ve come up with a product they can’t find but are always looking for. She quickly identified a need, and we pivoted from infant formula to chickpea pasta,” he says. Founders who are too focused on their narrow vision should be a red flag. You want someone who keeps the blinders off and is open to pivot if another opportunity makes more sense.
The tip-off: They’re unrealistic
Beware of too many promises. Promises about future returns or about their willingness to involve you with the company should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism. Cornell says it’s a red flag when startups have an unrealistic sense of their runway. “I speak to one startup I invested in (and is not a client). I’m still waiting on it to materialize and it’s been seven or eight years,” she says. “I’m familiar enough with their space — it’s legal tech — and I see them making business decisions that I question. I’m not sure there was an early caution that would’ve stopped me from investing, but in hindsight, I now see how convinced they were of their novelty. They were unrealistic in believing that being the first in the market would guarantee success. They seem to have let that all go to their heads and lost the narrative on building a good product that people want to use. I’m not convinced this investment is going to play out.” Cornell made this investment outside of her angel group, and she says looking at passionate founders who want to disrupt an industry is a good move, but when they’re
overconfident and over-committed to what seem like unrealistic outcomes, investors should be cautious.
The tip-off: They don’t own their intellectual property
Can the founders demonstrate they own the intellectual property (IP) that comes along with their innovation? This doesn’t have to mean they have a patent — it means, says Cornell, that if they got the idea when they were working for Company X, their past employer isn’t going to show up when success strikes and say, “Hey, this looks a lot like what you were working on when you were at Company X.” Past co-founders also have to be addressed. “So, if you have a founder who started with a partner and they split up, but the project went ahead, investors need to know there won’t be someone showing up later claiming they retain ownership,” she says. “Really early-stage companies might not yet have all this documentation tied up, and that can usually be fixed, but if you as the angel investor don’t ask the questions before you put your money in, a lot can be missed.”
Terry Ludlow, an angel at Capital Angel Network who has a professional background in IP and helping founders patent their innovations properly, says he always asks about patents and trademarks during pitches — he finds out right up front. “For me, it’s part of the checkbox. If a company has a patent but goes completely bankrupt and they pretty much disappear, they still have something left in that patent — the secret sauce of their innovation — that’s valuable.”
A final word of advice: If you’re going it alone and don’t have the support of an angel group behind you, hire a startup lawyer before handing a cheque to a founder. “You can set the parameters right off the top. Say, ‘I’m interested in a limited engagement with you — I’d just like you to look at these things,’” Cornell suggests. And that should include the term sheet. “You can find plenty of information online, but you’ll get much quicker, clearer answers from a startup lawyer who has the experience in this ecosystem.”
1
The one-trick pony
So, the founder pitching you already has one customer. That’s excellent. But what if that relationship goes belly-up? If the startup doesn’t seem interested in diversification to mitigate the impact of that customer walking away, be wary.
The sycophant
2
They say it flattery will get you everywhere, but don’t fall for it. Don’t let your ego get in the way. A founder who says they’d much prefer someone like you invest in them over someone like person B is likely talking baloney.


3
The speed demon
Everyone hopes for overnight success. That’s not how it works. If you’re speaking with a founder who goes on about how fast their business will sell and how speedy their exit will be, take that as your cue to make a quick exit.
Three more red flags to keep an eye out for.


Since angel investors are so essential to the innovation ecosystem, and angel groups are what brings these folks together, we knew we had to speak to some of Ontario’s angel group champions — executive directors and group managers, past and present — about best practices when it comes to finding founders and keeping members engaged. If you’re thinking about joining — or starting — a group in your neck of the woods, read on to hear from a handful of ecosystem stars.
By Lisa van de Geyn
When my 14-year-old daughter asks me what I’m writing about one sunny afternoon, I tell her it’s a story about angel groups, which obviously turns into an explanation about what angel groups are and what angel investors do. She likens these groups to clubs at her high school, and even tells me there’s a weekly student-run investor club one of her friends goes to. I tell her it’s kind of similar, but the organizations I’m writing about are so much more. I go into my spiel: These groups help brilliant entrepreneurs realize their visions and bring their
support those founders, and the best ways to keep their angels committed and engaged.
Of course, Ontario’s innovation ecosystem and economy have thrived, thanks to the angel investors who show up to group meetings, write big cheques and give founders invaluable mentorship and networking opportunities.
innovations to fruition. They play a massive role in creating jobs and boosting our economy. The cheques and mentorship that angels at groups across the province have offered founders have effected real change and are contributing to making the world a safer, healthier, cleaner place. She’s impressed enough to look up from the TikToks on her phone for more than 90 seconds, and I consider that a win.
Of course, Ontario’s innovation ecosystem and economy have thrived, thanks to the angel investors who show up to group meetings, write big cheques and give founders invaluable mentorship and networking opportunities. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t salute the folks behind the curtain — those ecosystem champions who start, manage and grow angel groups in every corner of Ontario. And when we thought about the wealth of knowledge these advocates have banked over their years in the ecosystem, we knew we had to reach out and pick their brains about what it takes to find founders, get angels to
For Prathna Ramesh, who spent five years as the managing director and chief compliance officer at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Angels (she currently serves as the vice-president of operations at FutureSight Ventures), an angel group’s main function is to ensure deal flow, and it’s on the group manager to “hustle and find deals in places where others aren’t looking, then selling those founders on why they should work with you and your group. Removing friction and showing speed to capital is the way we do it,” she says. Suzanne Grant, who leads Ottawa-based Capital Angel Network (CAN), shares a similar philosophy and says when she started at CAN, she promptly created a part-time position focusing exclusively on deal flow and strategic relationships. “Angel groups need high-potential founders and quality investors willing to support those early-stage startups.
Creating the environment for this to occur is no simple feat. We work on maintaining monthly contact with local colleges and universities, and accelerators known for the best startup cohorts,” she says. “We also work hard to maintain visibility in the market and encourage referrals through our partners and members. Great founders don’t all go through accelerators, so we need market visibility to be top of mind in our community.” While not every group manager and executive director agrees on how an angel group should be run, they pretty much all say the importance of deal flow reigns supreme, and that rings true to one of the architects of Ontario’s angel ecosystem, Bryan Watson, who initially conceptualized deal flow and syndication between groups before most even existed. He says he and his colleagues back in the early 2000s realized it would be much more difficult for groups in some areas to see quality founders, and there would be a need for deal flow throughout the province. “We knew syndicating was the way to go. Not every angel group is going to be on one highway, and not everyone was going to be based in Toronto or Waterloo — founders


wouldn’t just automatically show up at every group,” he says. “We knew we could aggregate people, build the infrastructure for more groups, then syndicate so more angel investors could see better deal flow across Ontario.”
Screening founders would also become a top priority throughout the province’s groups. “We know screened deal flow saves a huge amount of time and leads to better investments. One of our members shared that his $1,000 annual membership would’ve saved him from making a $100,000 investment mistake had he joined our group earlier,” Grant says. Screening and selection are key, and CAN has a robust process and a volunteer screening committee that works hard to select the best potential investment matches for the group. “We leave space for discussion on member-championed founders and for the screening committee to make a case for something that might not have come through in a founder’s application. Every applicant can book a call with our founder relations lead,” she says, adding CAN’s policy is to keep high-potential startups that have applied too early in a revisit file so they can consider another time. The goal of CAN’s selection committee is to create the best possible opportunity for investment to occur — every month, the committee sees six founders present, and there’s a strong culture of trust and openness for debate among members. “Diversity of expertise and backgrounds supports a stronger selection process at CAN. Our committees include active angel investors, VCs and family offices with IP, tech, legal, founder and financial expertise.”
Every group in the province puts emphasis on finding great founders, and Evan Clark, the group manager of Golden Triangle Angel Network (GTAN), says entrepreneurs are at the centre of his group’s meetings. “All our efforts are to showcase founders in their best light. It’s not solely the pitch — it’s the energy of the deal before it gets to pitching; it’s the viewpoints of trusted experts while we analyze. At

GTAN, we set the stage for the founder to shine as a dynamic person leading a company,” he says.
And while finding great founders with great potential is arguably the most important duty of an executive director, these people are also tasked with the responsibility of keeping their members engaged. As you can imagine, it’s no small feat. The Firehood, an angel group based in Toronto that was formed by women to support women founders, holds monthly meetings and special events at Verity, a member’s-only women’s club in the city. “We have consistency around what we’re offering, so members feel a sense of culture and connectivity. They know it’s happening on the last Wednesday of the month at Verity, so our meetings are habitual, and they become something women can look forward to,” says Danielle Graham, an angel investor and one of The Firehood’s co-founders. To keep CAN’s members engaged, the group offers opportunities to lead and contribute at the group development level, and to mentor founders. “As a


membership organization, ownership is at the member level. For us, engaging via mentorship is available via our CANLABS investor readiness program, at Capital MASHUP Tough Topics roundtables, and via our partnership with SheBoot,” Grant says.
The managers agree that besides business, there must be pleasure. There is, indeed, a fun part to the meetings. “There’s no getting around that,” says Ramesh. “This is a community-based investment activity, and we want the community to keep showing up in person.” Meetings structured around fun venues (some take place at regional innovation centres, post-secondary institutions and other interesting local spots) are important, as is allowing ample time to network, swap stories, share personal news and chat about whatever needs to happen before the next meeting. This part’s not much different from the high-school investment club, I’m learning.

In This Together
Your guide to the 18 angel groups in the province supported by Angel Investors Ontario.
(*Group stats up to date at press time.)

Photo courtesy of Capital Angel Network


Angel Investors Durham
From Angel Investors Durham to Prospective Angels
Angel Investors Durham (AID) is focused on raising capital with emerging companies, as well as supporting community initiatives and working with partners to overcome industry challenges. We are dedicated to empowering visionary entrepreneurs and maximizing returns for investors. AID meets monthly, and our members offer mentorship, advice, growth capital and an expert network. We care about fostering growth and innovation that will change the future and leave an impact on generations to come.
Read more about AID’s inception and what it’s like launching an angel group in Ontario on page 74.
What We’re Looking For
We seek members who are interested in fostering innovation and entrepreneurship and boosting our local economy. We welcome members who are curious, willing to participate in deal flow discussions, have valuable industry expertise, want to offer mentorship and support, are aligned with our vision and values to work collaboratively, have a good reputation in the business community and a problem-solving attitude.
Startups We’ve Supported

Ecosystem Informatics (ESI)
ESI has created an end-to-end IoT platform that measures and monitors air quality and meteorological info reporting automatically to a web dashboard.
This company’s patented digital tool called “Neotrust” secures and verifies documents using blockchain technology, showing ownership and ensuring documents aren’t altered to all types of digital files and documents.
Twin Paradox Labs
This startup builds laser hardware for the quantum industry
Angel Investors Durham raised significant funds from the community and partners to launch the group (without any membership dues we were able to raise enough capital to operate for well over a year).
Sponsorship dollars and in-kind include legal services, bookkeeping and accounting services, food and beverage costs for investment meetings, additional events and scholarships.
We’ve developed a fully automated process that helps our group run efficiently using technology systems, customer relationship management software and a digital communication strategy.
Size of Group
Total dollars invested Catchment Area Durham Region since launch in 2024
Number of investments made
2
Photo


Angel One Network
From Angel One to Prospective Angels
Angel One Investment Network launched in 2011, and it’s grown to become a cornerstone of the angel investment landscape across Toronto, Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington and Greater Hamilton. Guided and driven by its members, Angel One is deeply embedded in the early-stage company ecosystem. Our network prides itself on fostering a dynamic environment where innovative ideas meet strategic investment, fuelling the growth of promising startups. Potential angels should know that Angel One offers not only investment opportunities, but also a supportive community dedicated to nurturing entrepreneurial success and driving impactful innovation.
What We’re Looking For
We seek members who embody the entrepreneurial spirit and strategic acumen necessary to navigate the dynamic world of early-stage investments. Our members are not only investors, but they’re also active participants in shaping the future of innovative ventures. They bring diverse expertise, from technology and finance to marketing and operations, enriching our collective ability to identify and support high-potential startups. Angel One values members who are committed to continuous learning and collaboration, ensuring that our network remains a trusted and influential force in the ecosystem.

Startups We’ve Supported
OrderEase
OrderEase’s platform streamlines supply chain and order processes, enhancing efficiencies and profits by connecting systems. orderease.com
Mirsee Robotics Inc.
This startup develops humanoid robots to help technicians remotely control critical infrastructure. mirsee.com
Asima Health
Creating a non-invasive liquid biopsy test for pan-cancer surveillance, revolutionizing cancer detection and monitoring. (Read more about Asima Health on page 33.)
asimahealth.com
Angel One recently held two women’s angel investing “PowerTable” events where women investors discussed unique challenges, shared learnings and uncovered new opportunities together. This event fostered a collaborative environment, empowering these angels to voice their experiences, learn from peers and identify growth opportunities in the innovation economy.
The group expanded their membership base and strengthened connections between investors and innovators in the region, facilitating numerous networking opportunities and fostering collaborations that drive growth and innovation in the startup ecosystem.
Size of Group
Catchment Area Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington and Hamilton
Number of investments made
190
since launch in 2011
Dollars invested
$37.5 Million
TechPlace 5500 North Service Road Suite 801 Burlington, ON L7L 6W6
Photo by Mirsee Robotics Inc.


Brampton Angels
From Brampton Angels to Prospective Angels
Born out of Altitude Accelerator, the regional Innovation centre for Peel Region, Brampton Angels launched in March 2023 to support the dynamic growth of startups in Brampton and the Toronto-Waterloo innovation corridor. Our angel network represents a forward-thinking approach to investing, offering a no-membership-fee model, which sets us apart from traditional angel groups. This unique model allows a broader range of investors to join and participate in the innovation journey, fostering inclusivity and collaboration. We are deeply embedded in the Brampton Innovation District, a growing hub for innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. Supported by the City of Brampton, its economic development team and Altitude Accelerator, we connect angel investors with high-potential startups, providing both financial capital and mentorship to help entrepreneurs turn their ideas into successful businesses.
Our investors work closely with entrepreneurs, offering guidance and strategic insight. The partnership with Altitude Accelerator strengthens our ability to deliver value, drawing on the accelerator’s network and expertise in scaling startups. The backing of the City of Brampton further enhances our ability to make an impact.
What We’re Looking For
Size of Group
Catchment Area
Peel Region and beyond
Number of investments made
Dollars invested
4 $2.3 Million
bramptonangels.vc
info@bramptonangels.vc
6 George Street South Suite 301
Brampton, Ont. L6Y 1P1
Whether you’re a novice investor or an experienced angel, Brampton Angels offers an exciting opportunity to invest in the future of innovation. Joining our group gives you access to a network of like-minded individuals, valuable startups and the chance to be part of Brampton’s transformation into a premier innovation destination. since launch in 2023
Startups We’ve Supported

Revolutionizing neurostimulation therapy for stroke patients with AI-enabled technology, driving brain rewiring to restore lost functions. Panaxium’s personalized approach combines precision AI with cutting-edge medical technology. (Hear from Panaxium’s founder on page 14.)
Arma Biosciences
A leader in digital healthcare innovation, Arma Biosciences has developed sensor technology that leverages biomarker data to deliver better patient outcomes. (Read more about Arma Biosciences on page 14.)
arma-bio.com
Photo by Panaxium


Capital Angel Network
From Capital Angel Network to Prospective Angels
Capital Angel Network (CAN) is a friendly, knowledgeable group of investors who are pro founders. They are well-integrated into the Gatineau-OttawaKanata ecosystem, draw upon startups from the innovation corridor mainly (Montreal to Waterloo) and occasionally invest coast to coast. We are a technologyleaning investment group, while largely sector agnostic. Membership includes established and new angels, as well as corporate members, venture capital principals, Ontario Centre of Innovation and family offices. Each investor operates according to their own investment thesis. Investments are not obligatory, but respect for founders is. We meet monthly, except in July, August and December.
What We’re Looking For
Capital Angel Network looks for members who are excited about new ventures, are existing investors in the angel asset class or are planning on investing in early-stage ventures in the near future. Most members bring professional and/or startup knowledge to the table, including expertise in finance, legal, intellectual property, operations and technologies, providing a higher level of confidence in the due-diligence process.
Startups We’ve Supported
Afynia is a homegrown biotechnology company that has developed the first at-home test for endometriosis — a leading cause of chronic non-menstrual pelvic pain, heavy periods, frequent doctor’s appointments, emergency room visits and, in many cases, infertility. (Read about Afynia and CAN investor Brian Whitestone on page 103.)

This company has developed a prototype home blood test to control life-threatening hyperkalemia, which is a common result of many chronic diseases and their medications.
Twin Paradox Labs
This startup builds laser hardware for the quantum industry twinparadoxlabs.com
What’s Happening
In 2023, CAN reached the Government of Canada’s 50/30 Challenge metrics, with the board and senior leadership exceeding 50 percent women and 30 percent people of colour.
In 2023 and 2024, 45 percent of CAN member investments were startups led by women founders and co-founders.
In 2023, SheBoot cofounders Sonya Shorey, Julia Elvidge and Jennifer Frances incorporated and spun SheBoot out of CAN and Invest Ottawa. (Read more about SheBoot on page 81.)
Catchment Area
Ottawa, Kanata and Gatineau
Capital Angel Network (CAN) investments into early-stage startups reached $30 million since 2021. capitalangels.ca
since launch in 2010
c/o L-SPARK 350 Legget Drive
Afynia
Photo by HyliDx

Georgian Angel Network
From Georgian Angel Network to Prospective Angels
Based on the application of the results of research and investing experience, GAN is transforming pre-seed and seed stage investing. We are developing and applying better investing strategies that result in better investment performance. Our network of investors focuses on helping founders to grow and scale their businesses across the four main quadrants of marketing and sales, product development, fundraising and finance and team building.
What We’re Looking For
If you are interested in learning how to apply your years of experience and knowledge to helping founders commercialize their products and grow their businesses and earning out-sized returns from pre-seed and seed round investing, in a relaxed environment over dinner with your peers, then GAN is your angel investing network. We welcome you to come a join us.
What’s Happening
Our annual Angel Investing Winter Summit is Canada’s premier angel investing summit specifically focused on angel investor workshops to practice and improve skills and refine pre-seed and seed investing strategies. In facilitated peer-topeer workshops and masterclasses, investors learn about trends in technology, how to improve investing returns and current investing trends.
GAN participated in the reIGNITE Conference in September. The conference allows founders, investors and ecosystem leaders to meet at a camp in Muskoka, Ont., and explore new strategies and growth opportunities while surrounded by nature.
NextGAN is our latest membership cohort — this is the next generation of pre-seed and seed investors. Through vibrant and dynamic masterclasses, peer-topeer discussions and simulations, NextGAN members venture into the world of angel investing.
Startups We’ve Supported
OrderEase
OrderEase’s platform streamlines supply chain and order processes, enhancing efficiencies and profits by connecting systems. orderease.com

ColdBlock Technologies Inc.
This startup’s technologies provide faster and safer sample processing (digestion) with the same accuracy as traditional methods.
coldblock.ca
and
Get in Touch
Barrie, Innisfil, Collingwood, South Georgian Bay,
Muskoka
Photo by ColdBlock Technologies Inc.


Golden Triangle Angel Network
From Golden Triangle Angel Network to Prospective Angels
Golden Triangle Angel Network (GTAN) is located in Waterloo, Ont., home to world-leading universities and technology. While most of our members are local, we have a growing membership from across the country. We are a community of angels, super angels, funds, family offices and venture funds collaborating on early-stage technology companies. We invest broadly into preseed to series A technology companies and we’re agnostic in our vision. We believe working together can finance founders in faster, more ambitious ways.
What We’re Looking For
Angel investing is an ultra-high-risk allocation of capital. We hope to better the odds by working together. Our community is open for folks to learn and grow with each other.
Catchment Area Welcoming members from across the country While we invest into 25 to 40 deals per year, our members were part of more than 100 Canadian tech rounds in 2023. since 2009 since 2009

From GreenSky President’s Club to Prospective Angels
GreenSky President’s Club is a new model for an angel group, and it’s designed to provide serious early-stage investors with better-quality deal flow, preferential pricing and increased probability of a successful exit through experienced, professional management. GPC is a quantifiable and real commitment from a select group of high-net-worth investors to participate financially, and potentially as mentors, in deals that are sourced, carefully vetted and managed in conjunction with GreenSky Venture Funds. There are no management fees and members have the right to direct their funds into the deals of their choice.
What We’re Looking For
We’re looking for anyone interested in exposure to the deeper-tech startup ecosystem across Canada, and those who want to partner with a venture group that has been successfully operating in this space for the past 10 years.
Startups We’ve Supported

Mission Control
This startup provides purpose-built advanced software solutions to enable the remote operation of robots, rovers, payloads, etc., for space missions. Its technology is present in live missions, including the International Space Station and missioncontrolspace.com
Ethica Technologies
This company’s software ensures connectivity for Canadian naval vessels and remote retail locations, and it’s seeing increased adoption across Africa. The company has partnered with several billion-dollar network players, including Lenovo
Notable recent success stories include Cyclica Rx (exited to Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a public U.S.-based biotech firm that has established a Canadian research and development arm, thanks to the acquisition); Rank Software (exited to Arctic Wolf, one of the fastest growing U.S. cybersecurity companies, now valued at more than $3 billion); Mirexus Biotechnologies (exited to Mibelle Biochemistry, a Swiss personal-care ingredients manufacturer).
GreenSky President’s Club (GPC) is also proud of partnering with GreenSky Ventures to launch five early-stage venture funds where members can invest into a fund, which leads deals and provides Canada-wide exposure to early-stage, deeper technology investments. Currently GreenSky is fundraising for Fund VI, which is expected to close later in 2024 at a size of more than $25 million.
Size of Group
Catchment Area
Toronto
Number of investments made
since launch in 2013
Million
greensky.vc
invest@greensky.vc
5 Church Street
Toronto M5E 1M2
by NASA
Photos


From HaloHealth to Prospective Angels
You don’t have to be a financial genius to join HaloHealth. We welcome any and all physicians and dentists — we are well-equipped to help our members succeed as investors and advisers, and we do the hard work to bring you the best healthcare startups and curated compensated advisory opportunities..
We seek any and all physicians and dentists or groups who are interested in investing in disruptive healthcare startups.

Optimizing eye-care delivery with VR-powered eye exams, to reduce technician time, increase patient throughput and reduce total cost of ownership. retinalogik.com
This startup’s portable handheld imaging device provides state-of-the-art imaging insights and equitable healthcare. mimosadiagnostics.com
developed the first personalized gynaecological prosthetics for pelvic floor disorders in North America.
was
hosted by
fellows Dr. Roupen Odabashian and Dr. Geoffrey Ching — we call it “your go-to source for the latest healthcare innovation trends and insights in the healthcare investment industry.”
are pleased to now accept dentist members into our network.
lsheen@halohealth.ca
Photo by


Keiretsu Forum Canada
From Keiretsu Forum Canada to Prospective Angels What’s Happening
We are a diverse and robust global network of investors. As a sectoragnostic organization, we enhance deal flow and empower our members to make informed investment decisions across a diverse range of global opportunities. In addition, we offer educational programs on deal terms, due diligence and other key topics to support smart investing, while mentoring founders at leading universities in Canada and around the world.
What We’re Looking For
We are looking for open-minded, professional, curious, locally and globally engaged members who will contribute to our collective intelligence, experience, and network to benefit the Keiretsu portfolio ventures’ growth. Our angels are resourceful, supporting ventures financially through connections, expertise, and personal experiences and fostering growth and success.
Startups We’ve Supported
Orion Biotechnology
They are unlocking the therapeutic potential of custom protein analogs to create new and effective drug treatments. They use a unique method and a proven platform to discover and develop these molecules, aiming to treat various diseases. orionbiotechnology.com

HCN Hotel Communication Network
This company is revolutionizing guest experiences with inroom tablets that integrate key functions like room service, smart controls and guest communications into one device. These tablets streamline hotel operations, promote in-room dining, support marketing and offer curated city guides, transforming rooms into hubs for leisure and business. hcn-inc.com
OPAL Packaging Inc.
Pioneer eco-friendly industrial straps made from 100% recycled PET, offering superior corrosion resistance and safety. With a patented process, strong international presence, and Canadian residency secured through Keiretsu Forum’s StartUp Visa Program, OPAL is poised to expand across North America and lead in sustainable packaging solutions. opalpackaging.com
In January, we celebrated Keiretsu Forum Canada’s 10th Anniversary, marking a decade of stability, growth, and global syndication. The event highlighted diversity in members and deals, celebrating past successes and inspiring confidence in future opportunities.
We launched a women-led educational series to enhance member knowledge of investing and deal terms and foster collaborative discussions. This event underscores our commitment to diverse perspectives within Keiretsu Forum Canada, supporting shared expertise and growth in investment strategies.
Keiretsu Forum Canada has significantly bolstered the Canadian startup ecosystem through its Startup Visa Program. The program facilitates international entrepreneurs’ entry into Canada and connects them with vital resources and funding opportunities. To date, the organization has supported over 140 new-to-Canada companies.
90 members in Ontario 3000 members globally
Catchment Area
Canada and globally
since launch in 2014
$106 Million
Get in Touch
keiretsuforum.ca startupvisa-canada.com info@keiretsuforum.ca
100 King Street, Suite 5700 Toronto, Ont. M5X 1C7 Size


What We’re Looking For
We’re looking for members local to Southeastern Ontario who are willing to be active in our due diligence process.

Startups We’ve Supported

This startup allows physicians to complete tedious tasks in their clinics so they can spend more time focusing on patients
Known as “controlled environment agriculture,” Fieldless Farms grows produce indoors, allowing the team to create an ideal climate year-round using renewable energy and automated systems to make the perfect growing and harvesting
This digital manufacturing company is disrupting conventional supply chains with enhanced digital manufacturing alternatives.
Photo by Fieldless Farms
Photo by Onfokus


LaunchHub Angels Network
e are a dynamic group of Asian-Canadian angel investors who work on deal flows together, developing knowledge, due diligence and bonding while assisting in growing a healthy innovation ecosystem.
Accredited Asian-Canadian investors who demonstrate excellence in their professional fields and have a willingness to give back to and grow the ecosystem.
We are the first AsianCanadian angel group and running the first nongovernmental Asian-Canadian incubator/accelerator.
Angels since launch in 2022
36
Catchment Area Markham

Arc Compute is an AI and GPU infrastructure-solutions
C2RO is an AI-driven human behaviour video analytic
(16 including the predecessor LaunchHub Incubator and VC Fund, launched in 2018)
Number of investments made Dollars invested
7 $1 Million Size of Group
($5 million including the predecessor LaunchHub Incubator and VC Fund) since launch
lhangels.com info@lhangels.com
Photo by TROES
Photo byLaunchhub Angels

e are a vibrant community of angel investors from different backgrounds who help and learn from each other. We see companies every week and meet in person every month to watch amazing founders pitch, which makes the membership an interesting networking and deal-sourcing opportunity.
What We’re Looking For
We’re looking for passionate individuals who are interested in being part of a vibrant community of investors. Being an accredited Investor is required, although there’s no requirement for experience in angel investment. This is a great opportunity to be part of the Canadian tech ecosystem.

Monark helps transform managers into super leaders using interactive, practice-based learning and AI coaching. (Read more about Monark on page 24) leadwithmonark.com
This company has developed a prototype home blood test to control life-threatening hyperkalemia, which is a common result of many chronic diseases and their medications.
This preclinical biotech startup is pioneering the development of multimodal therapies. noatherapeutics.com
We’re meeting many founders who are building exciting companies in artificial intelligence (AI) or AI-powered solutions, which shows the impact of recent innovations in this field.
since launch in 2007
Photo

Niagara Angel Network
Niagara Angel Network (NAN) has always been an inclusive group toward newcomers and to our presenting companies. We believe an angel group works best by bringing people together and creating a membership that values camaraderie, networking and a sense of purpose.
What We’re Looking For
We seek investors with a keen interest and insight into emerging technologies and a willingness to explore different deal vehicles.
Size of Group
Catchment Area Fort Erie, Grimsby, Lincoln, Niagara-onthe-Lake, Niagara Falls, Pelham, Port Colborne, St. Catharines, Thorold, Wainfleet, Welland and West Lincoln
Number of investments made
since launch in 2010 31
Dollars invested
niagaraangels.com
20 Pine Street North Thorold, Ont. L2V 0A1

This biotechnology company has developed Alto, the world’s first digital health high-throughput benchtop SPR instrument, which is capable of accelerating drug discovery. (Read more about Nicoya on page 24.)
Hoverlink has developed the first modern hovercraft transit service of its kind in North America.
Greenway Greenhouse Cannabis Corporation
This startup focuses on high-quality, high-yield, low-cost greenhouse cultivation and propagation of cannabis.
Photo by Hoverlink Ontario Inc.
Photo by Wirestock


From Northern Ontario Angels to Prospective Angels Northern Ontario Angels
Northern Ontario Angels is the only angel organization in Northern Ontario. NOA connects accredited angel investors to Northern Ontario entrepreneurs looking for growth capital and investments. NOA was created as a not-forprofit corporation in 2005 as a catalyst to establish angel investment groups and create a gateway to facilitate connections between entrepreneurs and investors. Our goal is to stimulate investment capital into Northern Ontario companies to help them grow and succeed. This is accomplished by improving the flow of investment capital, investment education and management expertise into high-growth potential Northern companies. NOA is continually growing, developing and updating its angel investment groups throughout the north.
Startups We’ve Supported
CirquitIQ
CircuitIQ provides comprehensive electrical system mapping (including outlets, switches and general lighting) for commercial buildings.

circuitiq.com
Radialis Medical
This startup’s purpose is to advance healthcare and health equity with enhanced imaging. radialis.com
LoopX
LoopX specializes in developing AI-powered autonomous technologies to enhance safety and efficiency in the mining industry. (Read more about LoopX on page 22.)
loopx.ai
The group supports the principles of equity, diversity, inclusion, access and reconciliation within the organization. This is actualized through the work with and for regional First Nations entrepreneurs and communities. Approximately 10 percent of our deals have been made into Indigenous-led ventures.
NOA continues to work to increase its female group membership. Twenty-five percent of its members are female, and 25 percent of its investments have gone into female-led ventures. While proud of these metrics, the organization is committed to increasing its female membership that will, in turn, invest in female led-companies. accredited
Catchment Area
Northern Ontario since launch in 2005
Northern Ontario Angels (NOA) is proud to be one of the most active angel groups in Canada. Since inception, our activity has been heralded by the Global Entrepreneur Network, Angel Capital Association, National Angel Capital Organization and Angel Investors Ontario. This is grounded in the size of the group along with the number and size of our investments. northernontarioangels.ca


From SWO Angels to Prospective Angels
Our events are not limited to our investor membership; we hope to encourage those with ties to the angel community to view our pitches so that we can have the highest chance of supporting synergies between startups, but also to seize the advantages of larger networks incurred by our strategy. As a recently relaunched group, we’re always open to hearing more from our broad community so that we can always serve our community better.
What We’re Looking For
We always look for members who are open-minded and eager to support startups in the community, not only with their raise, but also with their networks and knowledge. We all know startups are difficult to build and scale, and we hope to work with all of our community members and allies to support the excellent startups that pitch to us.
Startups We’ve Supported

Vessl is a prosthetics company driven by the vision of empowering amputees and their champions to overcome obstacles and realize their full potential.
This startup provides a client-friendly financial-planning platform that’s white labelled, allows fee-only payments and
What’s Happening
SWO Angels relaunched earlier this year and our angels have already invested $3.5 million.
Our group features an open policy to encourage all members of the community to join our events; we believe that the wider the network at our events, the more opportunities our companies will have to get funded.
We are deeply grateful to Angel Investors Ontario, Golden Triangle Angel Network and other members of our angel investment community who have helped with our relaunch.
Uobo is an online pre-owned vehicle marketplace that allows customers to purchase their next vehicle from local dealerships completely online.
Tenomix
The Lymphonator, a bench-top robotic scanning device that guides the hospital’s pathology team in efficient and reliable lymph node identification in surgically removed colorectal cancer tissues. tenomix.com
Size of Group
Catchment Area
London, Sarnia and St. Thomas
Number of investments made
since re-launch in 2024
Dollars invested
5 $3.5 Million swoangel.com deniz@swoangel.com
999 Collip Circle Suite 115, Box 3 London, Ont. N6G 0J3
Photo by Avinash Patel
| Photo by Buzbuzzer


From The Firehood to Prospective Angels The Firehood
The Firehood meets regularly at Verity women’s club and we’re very active at tech conferences. We have significant deal flow from across Canada. The group was co-founded by Danielle Graham and Claudette McGowan, who’s featured on page 82.
What We’re Looking For
Women angel investors — including women who are new to angel investing and those who are more experienced. We welcome members who are looking to support women-led startups, act as advisers and learn from fellow angels and founders.

Startups We’ve Supported
Litus
Litus LiNC™ is a unique, patent-pending solution for selectively harvesting lithium directly from aqueous sources. Thanks to this breakthrough technology, Litus offers the world’s most efficient and environmentally responsible process for lithium production. litus.ca
This company uses AI and quantum chemistry to predict 3D models of photocatalytic structures, helping to clean polluted waters around the world.
The Firehood went on a national tour, meeting with investors and founders across the country.
Startupfest is a two-day event where The Firehood participates for the Women in Tech Prize, bringing together an incredible group of angel investors to select a winner. More than 150 female-led startups pitched at last year’s event.
150
Catchment Area
Greater Toronto Area and Kitchener-Waterloo Corridor since launch in 2021
33 $7.5 Million
Founded by The Firehood co-founder Claudette McGowan, Protexxa is a B2B SaaS cybersecurity platform that leverages AI to quickly identify, evaluate, predict and resolve cyber
firehood.net
danielle@firehood.net
Roga’s founders created a non-invasive wearable device that helps people better manage stress.
Photo by Roga
| Photo by flyzone


ECAN collaborates closely with Golden Triangle Angel Network and Angel One, enhancing deal flow across Southwestern Ontario.
What We’re Looking For
We are seeking accredited investors in the Windsor-Essex and Chatham areas. Ideal candidates have industry experience in greenhouse or automotive sectors to leverage our regional ecosystem.
and Chatham Kent
Howard Avenue Suite 101 Windsor, Ont. N8X 3T5

OrderEase’s platform streamlines supply chain and order processes, enhancing efficiencies and profits by connecting
This Toronto-based company is focused on automating kitchen processes to reduce food waste and labour costs.
The team at Montreal-based Chef Jasper is developing a fully autonomous kitchen.
Photo by Gastronomus
by halbergman


York Angel Investors
From York Angel Investors to Prospective Angels
We’re not just looking for financial input — our emphasis on mentorship and strategic guidance transforms members from mere investors to pillars of support for burgeoning businesses. This collaborative approach has led many of our chosen ventures to achieve triumphant exits, underscoring our unmatched investment acumen. Being a part of this community means delving into a dynamic ecosystem of seasoned professionals, all driven by a mutual goal of shaping, supporting and benefiting from tomorrow’s business successes.
What We’re Looking For
As one of the nation’s larger angel investor groups, York Angel Investors is revered for its unique blend of expertise, foresight and a knack for nurturing potential. Our diverse investment portfolio, spanning sectors like B2B SaaS, fintech and cleantech, provides members with an expansive window into both emerging and established markets.
One of our standout achievements has been creating and launching industry events that revolutionize the way founders and investors interact, network, engage and collaborate, delivering angel investing in an exciting new form. Our group has increased its collaborations across the founder ecosystem so we can work closely with startups and the incubators and accelerators that support them.
Our new executive director was featured on a panel discussion at Collision on “Advancing Regional Ecosystems through Connectivity,” which was held on the DMZ stage.
Catchment Area
Markham, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, Aurora and Newmarket since launch in 2008
Retinalogik
Retinalogik’s proprietary AI algorithms can track the changes in a patient’s eyesight and visual field over time. retinalogik.com

yorkangels.com
info@yorkangels.com
IT’S BECAUSE OF YOU!
With heartfelt gratitude to our members, sponsors and supporters for their unwavering dedication to being champions of founders and funders of innovation...













...thank you.






















New Kid on the Block
Angel Investors Durham is the province’s 18th angel group supported by Angel Investors Ontario, and its mission is simple: They aim to connect entrepreneurs with capital and mentorship. Easier said than done, but if anyone can give the province’s innovators the support they need, it’s AID’s three founders.
By Lisa van de Geyn

“It’s funny — it turns out launching an angel group is exactly like launching a startup,” Frank Auddino says with a laugh. “That’s exactly what we are — a startup, just like the founders we’ve seen pitch to us hundreds of times who asked us to see and share in their vision.That’s us now.” Auddino is the founding executive director of Angel Investors Durham (AID), Ontario’s newest angel group supported by Angel Investors Ontario (AIO). They say innovation is born out of necessity, and the innovation that went into starting a new group to satisfy Ontario’s burgeoning Durham Region is no different.
A stalwart champion of the province’s innovation ecosystem, an active angel investor, mentor to hundreds of founders and long-time volunteer (he’s the volunteer publisher of Funded, to name just one of the slew of projects he’s given his time, effort and energy to), Auddino, along with partners Angelo Del Duca (the group’s due diligence lead adviser and a constant in the ecosystem) and Patrick Lyver (founder of Kleurvision and AID’s marketing director), knew they were the team to bring this dream to fruition. “We knew we needed more investors to write more cheques so we can help more founders. What’s cool about this ecosystem is that angel groups and their members don’t compete, they collaborate,” Auddino says. “We envisioned a group made up of investors who care about fostering growth and innovation that will change the future and leave an impact on generations to come. Our members would be dedicated to empowering visionary entrepreneurs by offering growth capital, mentorship and networks.” When they shared these sentiments with local partners — including Sherry Colbourne of Spark Centre and Simon Gill at Invest Durham — it was unanimous: Durham Region needed a new angel group focused on driving innovation and helping companies scale. It would help
create jobs and grow the local, Ontario and Canadian economies. “Everyone agreed and came on board,” he says.
Now, the trio behind AID, who’ve long been part of many angel groups, including Maple Leaf Angels, York Angel Investors and the Golden Triangle Angel Network, have a firsthand appreciation for what goes into launching, running and growing an angel group. “We’ve been bootstrapping this and have had to do everything founders do when they’re working on their startups, right down to getting an HST number. We’ve been going after sponsors; raising money; finding places to hold our meetings; screening innova-
“This has been an incredible journey, and we’re not even a year old.”
— Frank Auddino, AID’s executive director
tive founders; onboarding accredited investors; speaking to local mayors and councillors; working with innovation hubs; getting academia involved; creating standard operating procedures; establishing key performance indicators; installing software and getting licences; getting our banking and insurance in order; and speaking to many of our fellow angel groups to learn best practices,” Auddino says. “This has been an incredible journey, and we’re not even a year old.”
The formation of AID was announced in November 2023, but the idea to start a group based in the area had been germinating for some time, and partners quickly signed on to help make the vision a reality. “We’d been keeping our eyes on Durham Region and all the great work done by Invest Durham, post-secondary schools in the area and Spark Centre, for example, to help entrepreneurs. A thriving angel
group is a big signal to founders that they can start up here — there’s access to capital, mentorship and support,” says Kate Tomen, vice-president of business development at AIO. Other organizations lined up to work with the small but mighty AID executive, including Invest Durham, Invest Clarington, Spark Centre, Synergy Lab, Durham College, the City of Oshawa, Kilgannon Wealth of RBC Dominion Securities, Kleurvision, Smart and Biggar, MNP and Lockyer and Hein LLP — they all rallied and supported with funds and/or in-kind services to help get AID off the ground. “Another angel group is good for all Ontario angels and founders, and great for the wider ecosystem. Angel investors don’t just offer financial support — they also provide startups with mentorship and networks, and that’s priceless for a founder. We were thrilled to work with AID’s founders and get behind their vision,” Tomen says. Simon Gill, the, the region’s director of economic development and tourism, echoes Tomen, and says Invest Durham is proud to work with AID, as it plays an important role in ensuring entrepreneurs with scalable ideas get support. “Our relationship with AID is important to our team when it comes to connecting our innovation community with the resources they need to succeed.”
MNP’s Niko Anastassakis and Samuel Vander Baaren were also inspired by AID’s vision. The organization has a long history of working with entrepreneurs as they navigate the startup landscape (they provide tax planning, filing, financial statement audits, advice to access capital, etc.) and Vander Baaren, a technology, media and telecommunications manager out of Oshawa, says MNP decided to sponsor AID because they “share goals of driving innovation and growth in our community. We know investing in our communities drives economic growth and creates jobs that will benefit everyone living in Durham Region.” Anastassakis, a partner in assurance and accounting, echoes
“Another angel group is good for all Ontario angels and founders, and great for the wider ecosystem.”
Kate Tomen, AIO’s Vice-President, Business Development and Operations
Vander Baaren, and says the partnership is more than a financial relationship. “We see the importance of fuelling a healthy startup community in our region. Groups like AID are important for the ecosystem because they foster innovation in communities and help support the growth of businesses and ideas. Plus, the networking opportunities these groups provide are vital to business development and allow founders to broaden their network of potential partners, investors and customers.”
By February 2024, AID had hosted its first investor meeting, and by May, its angels had made their first investment — no small feat for a brand-new group run almost entirely by volunteers. (Elsie Faria is the group’s administrator, and its first and only hire.) “When you compare what we’ve accomplished to the journeys other angel groups have gone on, we’ve been very successful. Not only have we done everything required to establish the group, but we’re leveraging our experience within the investment community to curate deals in a rapid fashion. And most importantly, these deals are syndicated with other angel groups,” says Del Duca, who adds he and the team have received a warm welcome, advice and best practices from many of the executive directors at the 18 angel groups throughout Ontario supported by AIO. “When we talk about value proposition, Ontario’s angel groups offer community engagement and fostering founders. But the real draw for local investors across Durham who join AID is the fact that there are so many exciting opportunities to invest, and we’re going to bring incredible founders in front of investors.” Jacquie
Severs, the region’s manager of marketing, economic development and tourism, credits the innovative work AID is doing — like its partnership with food security organizations in the region — and says it “connects the dots between entrepreneurship with realworld challenges, creating new ideas, innovations and partnerships.”
As of press time, the group had hosted nine meetings (they meet the second Wednesday of each month), they had 31 members, they were welcomed as members in National Angel Capital Organization (NACO), and AID angels had invested more than $1 million into founders. Like the startups who have presented to their group, Auddino, Del Duca and Lyver are ever pitching AID across the province, hoping to attract like-minded investors who want to make a difference, and make a return on their investments. And in the same way entrepreneurs recognize their networks, AID is quick to credit the efforts of its board (Jay Kilgannon, Dr. Lubna Tirmizi, Sherry Colbourne, Robert Treumann, Scott Robinson, Stacey Lepine-Fisher and Lyver), as well as the broader ecosystem for the warm reception they’ve received. “After all the volunteering and mentorship Angelo and I have done as angel investors, it’s really interesting to be on the founder side of the table,” says Auddino. “We’ve had to take our own advice and put the curriculum we’ve delivered to hundreds of entrepreneurs into action ourselves. We hope AID fosters innovation, boosts Durham’s economy, attracts talent and inspires community engagement.” Like other startups, AID definitely has lofty goals.
Standing Together
Wondering what angel groups like AID look for in members? If you’re an accredited investor and check these boxes, consider joining your local group.
Great angels have:
an interest in learning more about innovation
a curious nature, a desire to work collaboratively and the ability to solve problems and navigate challenges
a good reputation in the business community and a willingness to share industry expertise
an interest in mentoring and supporting founders by offering valuable insights, advice, strategic guidance, encouragement and relevant connections to personal networks, etc.
a willingness to participate in deal flow discussions



By Lisa van de Geyn
Illustrations by Jason Wilkins
We’re nearly a quarter of the way into the 21st century, and yet the gender pay gap, stereotypes, systemic racism, biases and inequality continue to reign , including in business, entrepreneurship and investing. Women make up only 25 percent of C-suite leaders (one in 16 are women of colour), even though studies consistently reveal that diversity in organizations leads to strategic advantage, increased revenues and a boost in intrapreneurship and innovation. Women entrepreneurs continue to earn less than their male counterparts, they still face major hurdles when it comes to financing and, in Canada, they receive less than four percent of venture capital. Women are outnumbered by men in angel groups across Ontario, yet recent research shows women angel investors are 30 percent more likely to engage with female founders than male entrepreneurs, which underscores the importance of women being at the table when investment decisions are being made.
It seems bleak, but we have hope that the tides are turning. First, there are folks in our corner who care about inclusivity and are working toward real change. We spoke to Canada’s Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, the Honourable Marci Ien, who told
us the vision of Canada she and her government have been working toward at the national level is one where “all economic actors, including angel groups, are not just inclusive in name but in action, where women and underrepresented individuals feel not just welcomed, but truly valued.” (Read more from the Minister on page 85.) Next, there are groups working hard across Ontario — the angels at The Firehood, Phoenix Fire and SheBoot, to name a few — to level the playing field for women founders and for those interested in investing. (Find out more about SheBoot on page 81.) And then there are the individuals — successful women founders and investors — who are paying it forward by empowering others through membership and access to capital. We spoke to four who put time, energy and dedication into inspiring, educating, leading, guiding and supporting. Meet Eva Lau, Claudette McGowan, Bhargavi Varma and Janet Bannister in the pages that follow, and take a page from their playbooks. Let’s take their lead and do our part to make Ontario’s innovation landscape more inclusive and equitable for everyone.






EVA LAU

We’d be willing to bet that Eva Lau, the co-founder and general partner of Two Small Fish Ventures (an early-stage venture firm that invests in the next frontier of computing and its applications), is the smartest person in every room she finds herself in. A founding team member of one of the country’s most successful tech companies to date (yes, she was on the Wattpad team), Eva is one of few women leading a venture fund in the country today. Her impressive background in engineering, artificial intelligence and semiconductors, as well as her resilient nature and huge network, has helped hundreds of startups scale and exit. You can find her sitting on several boards (including the Upside Foundation and Branksome Hall), working with incubators and accelerators and speaking across the globe on the entrepreneurial and investor journey. She cares deeply about teaching women about financial literacy and making an impact on the ecosystem.

background, which has historically been male dominated. What has your experience been like?
To give you a little bit more context, I was raised in Hong Kong and come from a very traditional Chinese family. I came to Canada when I was a teenager, and went to an all-girls high school, then straight to the University of Toronto for engineering. I was one of the 10 or 15 percent of women in my graduating class. So, you can see how my background shaped me. In traditional Chinese families, boys are more valued than girls. And I think I realized that at a very young age, and I knew I would have to fend for myself or else I’d end up being just a very traditional woman who would marry a guy and let that guy take care of me. I wanted to have control of my life.
What did your father do for a living?
Great question. He was a mainframe computer operator. So, when I was a little girl, I played with punch cards. Certainly, the company he worked for continued to evolve over time. I’ve been through the mainframe era, the mini-computer era, personal computer era and I played with the first dot-matrix printer. Technology was part of my childhood and upbringing. When I got into University of Toronto as an industrial engineering student, I felt very comfortable. That’s when I found, in some ways, there are advantages to being a woman in a man’s world. There were very few girls in my class, and when I graduated and went into technology, I was only one of two women on a team of 20, but I was used to it by then. I’ve always been a minority. And I learned very early on in my career that if I didn’t speak up, I’d never be heard. When people say, “Eva, you’re very loud; you’re very assertive,” I say it’s my upbringing. I have to speak for myself. I always said, “If you want to speak loud, I’m going to be louder.”
What was that like when you were starting out?
You’d see me having shouting matches with men in the boardroom. And I’d typically win, because I just wouldn’t back down.
And now?


That world is behind us. Now, in some ways, I think the world is much more welcoming and we’ve progressed. Men see women have been underrepresented in the workforce, and I think we’re being given more opportunities. People are embracing diversity. For example, I’m very proud that my alma mater, U of T engineering, has already reached 50/50 in male and female graduates. And that’s amazing, because it means it’s more reflective of the world.


That is amazing, but we still don’t have 50/50 representation in Ontario’s angel groups.
It’s a matter of time and a matter of opportunity. But there’s a major problem — I’ve seen this in my social circle. Some women lose their husbands early on, some divorce. No matter what their situation is, many women end up with a good sum of money, but so many say, “I never handled the finances; I don’t know how money works. I don’t know the difference between buying bonds and buying stock.” Women aren’t educated enough when it comes to money, so we can’t just say angel groups aren’t welcoming women — there are other factors. We will overcome this lack of education eventually. For example, I’m teaching my daughters very early on what the difference is between a bond and the public market. Over time, I think financial literacy will be ingrained in this generation.
You’ve obviously seen this change in the tech world, and the diversity that’s come along with it.
Wattpad was started by two Asian guys — typical engineers, innovators, who loved what they were doing and built awesome products. But guess what? Later, when I joined the company, I was the first woman on the team, and that enabled them to see things differently — they thought about female end users and the features they valued. That was diversity at the product level. And that’s why we ended up creating a product that’s loved by a hundred million people around the world. That’s the kind of DNA angel investors should be looking for — will these founders, women or men, build a product that’s more all-encompassing? They should be looking at this instead of saying they just want to back more women.
So, how are you levelling the playing field when it comes to women founders and other underrepresented innovators?
What I do now for basically any female founder is offer them a sounding board, when my time allows. My team looks at thousands of pitch decks every year, and it’s obviously impossible for us to meet with thousands of people every year. But if we have a woman founder in STEM, for example, we help them fast-track. Even if I know right away their startup isn’t something I’d invest in, I’ll still give them a half-hour to be their sounding board, give them some pointers and potentially make connections for them. I try to be supportive as much as I can.
You’re playing an important role. What can the rest of us in the ecosystem do to help when it comes to embracing inclusivity?
We’re still seeing more founders in STEM are male. That’s where our government can come in.
What can they do? Fund more women-led businesses?
They can do more when it comes to childcare. I used to have a woman analyst on my fund. The moment she decided she wanted to raise a family, she’s out of the ecosystem for at least a couple years. But imagine if there was infrastructure and programming that was more supportive. There will be a lot more working moms in years to come. The situation is already better than it was but imagine if there was more support for women who want to be working moms. These programs would also allow more balanced parenting between men and women within the family. I think we’d see more of these women taking a risk and diving into entrepreneurship if they could. >>
A Room of Our Own
Designed by seasoned entrepreneurs and angel investors, SheBoot is a six-week investment-ready bootcamp developed by experts in the ecosystem to prepare women founders to pitch their startup and secure investment. It sees women advancing gender diversity from the funder and founder sides by offering exceptional programming, mentorship, networking opportunities, training and a community to call our own.
Who: Jennifer Francis, Sonya Shorey and Julia Elvidge are the co-founders of SheBoot. Jennifer and Julia are members of Capital Angel Network (CAN) and Jennifer is the chair of the CAN board. Sonya is the president and CEO of Invest Ottawa.
By the numbers: More than 50 investors have been involved with SheBoot with direct investments in SheBoot companies of $1 million. Each year 15 founders participate, get investment ready and compete for prize money totally $300,000. Fifty percent of the cohort participants over the last two years describe themselves as BIPOC.
Hot-ticket event: Every March, for International Women’s Month, we put on the Women Angel Investor Breakfast, which has been a key part of activating women angels in the national capital region. Since the inception of the breakfast, CAN has moved from being five percent women to 30 percent women. The breakfast showcases successful women founders and the women angels who backed them. It shows women the impact they can have by using their capital to help women launch and grow their companies.





What are you seeing as a Black woman in tech and as an investor? What’s the landscape like from your vantage point?
Working in tech, you notice where you are the majority and where you are the minority. When I started my career, it was obvious I was the youngest in the room. I was also typically the only woman in the room, and then of course, the only Black person in the room as well. But I can say in the two-plus decades doing this, I’m seeing change. That’s the positive thing — the world is becoming more inclusive. It’s one step at a time. For example, when I worked at
CLAUDETTE MC GOWAN
You might think Claudette McGowan has had a meteoric rise — in July she closed a $10-million series A for her cybersecurity startup, Protexxa — but this isn’t the global information tech leader’s first rodeo. Her success in cybersecurity, security engineering, digital forensics, infrastructure optimization and cyber intelligence (to name a few of her skills) at organizations like TD Bank, Bank of Montreal and Deloitte is just part of what she’s been up to over the past two decades. Claudette is the chair of the Coalition of Innovation Leaders Against Racism, the founder of the Black Arts & Innovation Expo and the co-founder of Phoenix Fire (a women-focused angel fund) and The Firehood (a network for female tech founders.) And while she spends her days building her company, she is first in line when it comes to mentoring women. Claudette is all about carving out solutions that fit problems — she does it as an entrepreneur and as an investor.
BMO, I saw what they did for women empowerment. They made sure women were filling seats. They cast a wide net and ensured everyone got opportunities. Being there as a 20-something-year-old and seeing how they were able to do that was instrumental in my career. The importance of culture and mindset in a company is key.
Is that the same for the investing space?
It’s the same. It has to be intentional, and everyone has to know it’s important, then you’ll start to see things happening. There has to be a higher level of understanding at the organization so everybody accepts inclusivity as the norm.
When did you start investing?
I was investing in my early 20s, first in the market and then in companies. In 2014, I started the Black Arts & Innovation Expo, and there was something we did called the Lion’s Lair. People would come and pitch their businesses, and the audience would decide who we’d invest in. It brought the community together — unification of the tech community, the arts community and the Black community. When I connected with Danielle [Graham], she said, “Hey, I started Fierce Founders around the same time you started the Black Expo. Why don’t we get together?” That’s when The Firehood and Phoenix Fire were born. We
brought the same energy and decided to focus on women, given that women were getting less than two or three percent of the VC dollar. And if you’re a woman of colour, it was less than one percent. Imagine if I told you that you had a less-than-one-percent chance of success. Would you go for something?
No.
Most people would say no, right? Why bother? Investing in 50 percent of the population and building products that ignore 50 percent of the population is shortsighted. How do you leave out 50 percent of the population knowing it can negatively impact ROI? We just came back from StartupFest where 150 women from across Canada pitched The Firehood on the problems they’re aiming to solve. They’re working on solutions for cleaner water, recycling, air quality. There’s an intersection with social causes and deep tech. Women are pursuing big opportunities. I’m seeing women working on solutions for the UN sustainable development goals and tons of AI startups. Founders helping people with Parkinson’s disease (PragmaClin), physical mobility issues (Ora Medical) or transforming the way we learn in corporations (Learn Experts). We should challenge the assumption that fem-tech is the only segment women should focus on.
It’s true. Some people think female founders are only working on period products, and they think women investors are only interested in period prod-
ucts. Inclusivity is clearly important in innovation. Let’s talk about access and opportunity for underrepresented groups.
We need diverse minds, creative minds, global minds to solve global problems. Innovation is stifled when you don’t bring creative minds together.
But there’s something societal that’s ingrained in our system, it’s systemic. Call it whatever you want, but someone has to change the status quo. Danielle and I would say we’re setting the status quo ablaze. We aren’t happy with the way things are today, so we’re making a change.
So, what have you learned about supporting underrepresented people and carving out a space for women as an investor in what you’ve built with The Firehood?
I’ve learned to play the role of the coach and to motivate people because, as a founder, you’re going to hear way more people saying no than yes. I met a founder last year at a pitch event. She came in second and she was devastated. She came over to speak to me and said, “I thought I won. I can’t believe I didn’t. Why didn’t I?” I explained to her she was one of the few who stood out in more than 100 women, so that’s a big deal. I told her she got experience pitching, and I said the other company was selected because they were making revenue and had FDA approval. When we invest, it’s not a donation. We’ve worked hard for our money and want a return on it. If you can turn my dollar into $10 or $100, I’ll give it to you. I told her she was a rock star and would do great things one day, but that day, we believed our dollar would go further with the other company. She thanked me, then three months later, we had a call. Fast-forward to this year and she was one of the winners at that pitch event. She came over, hugged me and said, “I did everything you suggested. I got FDA approval and then I got somebody to pay.” I wanted to help her to be better.



You’ve made such an impact as a mentor and investor, but what have you learned sitting on the other side of the table from investors?
I’ve learned you have to be resilient, and you have to be prepared to hear no more than yes. You also have to share your story as much as you can because you just never know when someone’s going to get it and get you. We had someone who met an employee on an airplane and, one week later, we had $250,000 from that person. There are people who get and care about what we’re doing, but you don’t know where you’ll find them. You need to cast a wide net and enlist as many people as possible to go out there and tell your story.
So, it’s important for founders to get out there and share as much as they can, because you never really know when you’ll meet an investor or customer who provides you with mentorship, capital, etc
This year, I was asked to speak at the Toronto Board of Trade annual dinner. That turned into customers for me. I spoke for six minutes, and I probably got four new, pretty big customers. Think about this: Do you want to speak in front of 1,100 people? What happens if you trip walking to the stage? What happens if they don’t get your joke? For me, I’m just like, go do it. You never know what’s going to happen, but if you don’t try, you know what’s not going to happen. You have to get out there, knock on doors. It’s like a campaign — knock on doors, kiss babies, take pictures. Then one day — not the same day — the dots will connect, and it will turn into a bigger opportunity. >>



Starting your own angel group is a big deal, and I know when you started talking to your group of friends about angel investing, many weren’t familiar with it. Why?
Some said things like, “Yeah, I heard my partner mention it” or “I saw people talking about it online, but I didn’t get what it was, so I didn’t look into it further.” I think we’ve now moved past the era of “It’s on the Internet, go find it” to a relatable, familiar voice sharing information in a curated space.
Brown Girl Angels is still new — how many investments have you made so far?


BHARGAVI VARMA
Not everyone can say they’ve impressed Reese Witherspoon’s team, but Bhargavi Varma certainly can. The brilliant mind behind The Kushie (it’s a super-cozy luxury foot cushion that was featured as a Reese’s Book Club pick), Bhargavi is a serial entrepreneur and a former film publicist, but now she’s busy working on a new project. She recently launched Brown Girl Angels — an angel investing collective designed to support founders who identify as brown women, and help brown women like her activate their capital with impact and purpose. She’s also opening the door for a new group of investors — some of the women in the collective didn’t know what angel investing was before Bhargavi made it her mission to ensure women from her community realize their power.
We launched earlier this year, and we’ve made four investments to date. There are 10 women in the group, a lot are firsttime investors, and our investment thesis is investing in brown women. That moniker is freely used by women of multiple cultures. We also look across all verticals. One of the misconceptions that exists is female founders are only in consumer, but we’re seeing women in everything from AI to transportation to healthcare. Sahajan Skincare is a recent investment; the company was founded by a former pharmaceutical executive. There’s huge momentum in the beauty space around Ayurvedic beauty, which is traditionally from South Asia. Another one we’ve invested in is called The Saree Room, which is an e-commerce platform that has made it just as simple to buy South Asian clothing online as it is to buy what you might call Western clothing. They’re disrupting the entire South Asian shopping experience.
So, you didn’t just start an angel group — you’re creating a community that’s doing a lot of educating and opening a lot of doors. What is it like for a South Asian woman coming into this ecosystem?
There are women south of the border who have inspired me and seeing what some of them are building in the U.S. has showed me South Asian women are interested in investing. So, I looked around the ecosystem here and there aren’t enough of us in an gel groups. Forget even South Asian women — sometimes there aren’t even women in these rooms.



That’s true — many women investors say they’re sometimes one of only a couple of female investors in a room. They also say they sometimes aren’t taken as seriously, and they aren’t always showed the same respect as men.
Yes, and I’ve often heard this question asked: Why do you all need to be from the same gender and be from the same community? My answer to that is imitation is the best form of flattery. I’m just doing what the Old Boys club has been doing for a long time — I’m doing a brown girl version. I’m just copying it. I say, thank you for the idea.
And why is it so important for the founders you’re seeing to be from your community?
Brown women are building companies with the lens of serving the community. I like investing in companies that I wished existed when I was younger. I recognized there’s a need for that. So, that’s one aspect. The second thing is that being a South Asian woman shouldn’t limit that founder from being funded. And that’s currently what’s happening. Now, there are studies where a Caucasian male goes into an angel group and pitches Company A. Then a South Asian woman goes in and pitches that same company. The Caucasian male gets the funding; she doesn’t. We want everyone to have a level playing field. We want brown girls to come in and pitch. You might not get funded, but at least you’re getting through the door.
You’ve probably heard incredible stories from founders who haven’t been given the time of day.

A lot of female founders talk about being told they don’t have enough traction, and they can only get a meeting or into a pitch room when they’ve proven revenue for five years and can show they’re profitable. Meanwhile, the dude over there just says the words “artificial intelligence” and everyone’s handing him cheques. There are even memes about this now — it’s ridiculous. We need to have conversations about how we support the larger community.
How do we do a better job of that? How do we ensure inclusivity and diversity in the ecosystem and get more women into these rooms, as investors and founders?
Our male counterparts are part of that conversation; we need our allies to show up. I mean, Rihanna said it famously, “Tell your friends to pull up.” All our friends need to pull up. Our South Asian male counterparts need to show up and support, and help break down any roadblocks we’re facing, or send the elevator back down. However you want to say it, there are ways to show up. Ask us, “How can I better support you? How can I be an ally?” Inclusivity can be fostered by others who aren’t part of the community but want to show up. Say, “Hey, how can I be a part of it?” We just want you to be here. No matter who you are.
Do you see the allies coming out? Is it happening?
It is. I mean, it sometimes irks me when we hear only three percent of funding is going to female founders. That’s true, but let’s talk about progress. Let’s talk about momentum — there’s momentum now. And that fosters inclusivity, too. We’re not where we want to be yet, but it will happen. >>
A Chat with the Honourable Marci Ien
Canada’s Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth spoke to us about inclusivity and how we can even the playing field for women and underfunded people.
Q: What lessons have you learned about creating an inclusive environment?
A: It takes more than good intentions — it requires us to actively break down barriers. This might mean rethinking how we connect with potential investors and entrepreneurs. It means opening doors that have been traditionally closed and making sure that everyone, regardless of their gender, race or background, has a seat at the table not only to be seen, but heard. Real inclusion takes deliberate, intentional action. It’s not enough to hope for diversity; we must actively pursue it. Set goals, track progress, and hold each other accountable. By embracing these values, Ontario’s angel groups can lead the way in creating an ecosystem where innovation flourishes because it draws on the talents of all. Together, we can build a future where every entrepreneur, no matter who they are, has the support they need to turn their dreams into reality and build a stronger, more vibrant Canadian economy.
Q: How can we make the ecosystem a more diverse landscape and level the playing field when it comes to supporting women and underrepresented folks on both sides?
A: We need to make sure women feel empowered and confident to take their place in the investment world. Initiatives like SheBoot, Brown Girl Angels and The Firehood are doing incredible work, but we need to amplify these efforts and create more opportunities for women to learn, connect and invest. But it’s not just on women. We need to challenge the biases that still exist in the funding process. This means that angel groups and other investors must >> (continued on page 87)




JANET BANNISTER
If you’re one of the more than 25 million or so people who’ve scoured Kijiji.ca this month, you can thank Janet Bannister. She was an early employee at eBay in Silicon Valley before coming up north to play a mammoth role in developing Canada’s tech ecosystem — she founded the country’s largest classifieds site almost 20 years ago. A graduate of the Kauffman Fellows Program, Janet was the managing partner at Real Ventures, at the time, one of Canada’s most active early-stage investors. Ever the entrepreneur, she went on to launch Staircase Ventures, a venture fund focused on leading seed-stage rounds for early-stage tech companies. Janet has earned a slew of awards, recognitions, and accolades. She is one of the most recognized role models in the industry, due to both her accomplishments as well as her approach.
Do you come from a family of entrepreneurs?
I do, yes. My father was a business executive and entrepreneur. My older brothers were very interested in business, so the conversation around the dinner table often revolved around business and entrepreneurship. Another formative factor in my teenage years was my involvement in competitive long-distance running. I set many City of Toronto records and was one of the top distance runners in the province. As a result, I trained with boys, often being the only girl in the group. This taught me that I could challenge the boys and keep up with them. As a result of those experiences and others where I was the only, or one of the only, women in the group, today, it does not even register when I am the only woman in a room. When I am in a male-dominated environment, I never think about it; instead,
I think ‘I belong in this room, and I have something to contribute.’ That mentality has helped me tremendously. I’ve always thought if I work hard enough and put my mind to it, I can achieve anything.
That mindset is pretty great — many women founders say they’re concerned about going into those rooms because they don’t feel like they belong.
I remember being at an event in Europe with senior venture investors. I walked into the room, and there were probably about 60 people. All I saw was a sea of men, and I said to myself, ‘Janet, this is great. I’m going to go in there and meet a lot of terrific people. And tomorrow morning, when I follow up with those people, they will remember me because I may be the only woman they talk to
tonight.’ That’s just sort of my approach to life; I look on the positive side and try to identify how to win. That said, I know a lot of women don’t have that same experience. And there have been times when I have felt left out or treated differently. There have been awkward times when I’ve been ignored in meetings, talked over more so than the men. I don’t let it bother me. I just let it fuel me. I have an expression: You have a choice — you can either get determined or you can get discouraged, and I focus on getting determined.
That must inspire many women — fellow founders and investors who want to make a name for themselves and make a difference.
Women have told me I’m a role model, and that’s very meaningful and inspira-

tional for me. When I started Staircase Ventures, I didn’t say I would invest only in female founders. I said I would focus on investing in the very best founders across all different areas. What’s interesting is we have made six investments. Of those six investments, half of them have a female founder, and one-third have female CEOs. I think it’s probably because females are more likely to come to me and feel more comfortable. And I think I may also be able to evaluate them and see who they are and what they bring to the table. I know women are more likely to say they’re going to under-promise and over-deliver, but the problem with that mentality is it doesn’t necessarily play well when you’re trying to raise money. Women undersell themselves. I coach a lot of female entrepreneurs and most tend to put their worstcase scenarios in their plans they give to investors because they know they are going to beat it. I can guarantee you men aren’t doing that. And then women are going into their pitches, and they’re not being seen the same way.
What do we do about that?
Education is important. As an investor, I’m very proud of the role I play. Most tech companies don’t have females on their founding teams, and I’m proud that I can be a female board member on those teams and help those companies recruit strong, senior women early in their lifecycle. The longer a startup goes with a predominantly male team, the harder it is to attract women into the company. Therefore, it is important to attract great women onto the leadership team very early. This is one area where I have often helped. Women see an early-stage company with an all-male executive team and male-dominated team, but then they see a female on the board, and it makes them confident that they will be respected and that their voice will be heard.

And
why do we need diversity in the innovation ecosystem to begin with? Why do you think it’s important for women to
keep innovating and investing here, so the next generation sees them as role models?
There have been many studies conducted on diversity and the results are consistent and compelling: When you have a diverse team and a respectful environment, you get better results. Role models are important because they show others what is possible. But it is not just about women helping women. It is about everyone supporting and encouraging others. It is about everyone recognizing that the best ideas and solutions will come when there is a diversity of perspectives, from different backgrounds and different lived experiences. I have been supported by many men who saw my potential, believed in me, and gave me opportunities. And I am very grateful for that.
Is that one way we get more women to join angel groups? Getting men to work with us in that goal?
That is part of the solution, and we need to help female angels feel confident through education and support. I have been involved in mentoring some female angel investors, and I think it made a big difference for them. Role models and mentorship can make a big difference in this ecosystem.


(continued from page 85) actively seek out and support diverse entrepreneurs. We can’t just wait for female founders to come to us — we need to go to them, engage with them and make it clear that their ideas are valued and worthy of investment.
Q: Why is the time right for women to make this mark in the ecosystem, and how will it benefit our culture as Canadians to ensure we’re being inclusive when it comes to innovation and investing?
A: As a woman of colour, I understand deeply what it means to walk into rooms where you’re one of the few, to feel the weight of those unspoken doubts. But I also know the power we hold when we step into those spaces with our full selves, refusing to shrink. To the potential angel investors who’ve felt out of place, I say this — your presence is not just welcome, it’s needed. The investment world has too long been shaped by a narrow view. Imagine what it can become when it embraces the richness of our diverse experiences. As women, we bring unique perspectives and a deep understanding of challenges that others may overlook. When you invest, you are not just funding ideas — you are opening doors for the next generation of women to walk through. You are planting seeds in a garden that has long needed care, and the harvest will be abundant. And to the female founders who’ve been rejected, who’ve had to send in male co-founders just to get a fair shot, your time to shine is here. The world is waking up to what you’ve known all along: Your ideas, your innovations are not just worthy, they are essential. Your resilience in the face of rejection is a testament to your strength, and I urge you to bring that strength to the table once more. This ecosystem needs your voice, your vision, and your brilliance. Every “no” you’ve faced has only brought you closer to the “yes” that will change everything.




Kevin Oulds
Willful Founder
Erin Bury
Willful Founder

Why it’s so vital for us to break new ground, stay ahead of the curve, think outside the box, push the envelope (and every other innovation idiom you can think of) here in Ontario.
By Lisa van de Geyn
Photo by Willful
You can’t talk about innovation in Ontario without talking to an innovator in Ontario. Erin Bury and Kevin Oulds launched Willful in 2017. The online estate-planning service helps people get their affairs in order in a much easier, more convenient and certainly less expensive way than what’s been available in the past. With three goals in mind for their platform — affordability, ease of use and peace of mind — Willful’s married co-founders have helped take the stress out of endof-life planning for Canadians across the country. (There’s even a fully bilingual offering in Quebec.)
As is common when it comes to innovation and entrepreneurship, the idea behind Willful came from personal experience. The two conceptualized the company after Oulds’s uncle passed away suddenly in 2015. He had a will, but the experience was stressful on the family, who didn’t know what his end-of-life wishes were at a time when they were grieving and dealing with arrangements. “We set out to remove the traditional barriers of cost and convenience that prevent people from creating their estate plans, but we were not software developers nor estate lawyers. In the early days, we partnered with estate lawyers in Ontario to draft our legal documents, and we hired a software developer to build our platform, which is akin to TurboTax but for estate-planning documents,” Bury says. Earlier in her career, Bury was the founding editor of BetaKit, so she had deep knowledge of what the innovation landscape looked like for early-stage startups. “When I first started working in the startup space in 2008, it was very nascent — there weren’t many resources for founders, whether events, funding sources or grant programs. When we started Willful, we faced the same challenge as many founders: How do we fund our business from zero to our first dollar of revenue? We couldn’t secure any bank loans, so we funded our early work through friends-and-family funding,” she says.
Having unique knowledge of the ecosystem from her connection to startups, Bury says the pair took advantage of several programs to help them scale. They were part of FounderFuel, a Montreal-based accelerator program, then they joined the MaRS Venture Services program. “As part of this program, we received market research reports and, most importantly, we were paired with a seasoned investor named Jenny Yang, who served as our adviser while we were raising funding in 2023. This program opened a lot of doors and helped us resource key projects like enterprise partnership outreach.” They’ve leveraged government grants, including funding from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (better known simply as IRAP) and the Canadian Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Incentive Program. Provincially, Willful received the Canada-Ontario Jobs Grant funding several times, allowing Bury and Oulds to train their employees on a variety of skills. “Grants are so powerful for founders like us, since they’re non-repayable, and they allow us to hire and offer resources that we
program, and then we received funding from several members of York Angel Investors as part of our seed round in 2020,” she says. “In our experience, angel investors have really resonated with the mission at Willful, and they’ve gone beyond writing cheques — we’ve had angel investors who have purchased wills for their employees, who have made introductions to large enterprise partners and who have helped with other key business challenges.”
At this point in their journey, the two have seen a ton of success. Not only have they disrupted the end-of-life industry, but they’ve also become the first online will provider to be accepted into the Law Society of Ontario’s Access to Innovation program. They made a deal on Dragons’ Den in 2021, and Michele Romanow is a current investor. They’ve made enterprise partnerships with the likes of Scotiabank, CIBC and Meridian Credit Union. And they’ve raised more than a whopping $2.5 million, mostly from angels and VC firm Tactico. Building Willful in Ontario has been good for the couple and business partners, and not just because they both grew up here, their families still live here and they’re raising their two daughters here.
“We’ve built our professional networks here and we’re proud to operate Willful out of Ontario.”
Erin Bury, Willful founder
otherwise wouldn’t be able to provide to our team.”
And then there are the investors in the innovation ecosystem who helped them along the way. As Willful grew, Bury says angels became a key source of funding. “We were lucky to have several ex-Shopify angels invest in our pre-seed round in 2019 while we participated in the FounderFuel startup accelerator
“We’ve built our professional networks in Ontario — our enterprise partners and investors are largely based here, and Ontario is our top customer market at Willful. We have employees based across Canada, but we’re proud to operate Willful out of Ontario,” Bury says, adding the province is a great place for creating, cultivating, fostering and growing innovation because it houses the Canadian tech and startup hub and the government. “It’s close to major startup centres in the U.S., like Boston and New York City, and it’s easy to travel to Europe and other international markets. There’s amazing talent in Ontario, thanks to universities like the University of Waterloo and its record of producing amazing software engineers, and there are tech companies like Shopify
that do a lot to foster the tech ecosystem, in addition to companies like Google and Amazon, who have established large presences here,” she says. “Not to mention, when you live in Canada, you enjoy the benefits of our beautiful country.”
The Willful team’s experience here isn’t unique from other successful innovators who have made Ontario their home base, and as a society, we’re lucky they’ve selected our province as the place to grow and thrive. Innovation centres on coming up with something new — a new idea, product, service or method of doing something that improves our lives. If you look at it on a micro level — in businesses and organizations, for example — innovation is necessary to give companies a competitive advantage and find new opportunities. It also increases productivity, boosts ROI and has a pretty great effect on workplace culture, among other things. When we talk about innovation on a more macro level — what it does for society — we almost always talk about the economy. Innovation is an enormous source of economic development, and it creates jobs. Those are the two biggies. But that’s not all innovation has to offer us as a society. When founders come up with game-changing ideas, products, services and methods that, say, fight food scarcity and climate change, or find ways to eliminate diseases or make our jobs safer, it does wonders for our culture — we become a healthier, happier, more sustainable society.
That’s why cultivating, fostering and keeping innovation here in Ontario is so vital. We know, we’re preaching to the choir here, but the importance innovation has to Ontario bears repeating. Don’t take it from us — take it from the people who put innovation at the forefront each day. Take it from our provincial Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, the Honourable Vic Fedeli, who speaks tirelessly and passionately about doing business
in Ontario and supporting the players in the ecosystem. And take it from the angels who invest in Ontario’s founders and support the big ideas that have the potential to change the world.
Bury and Oulds have seen huge success here, and they pay it forward to entrepreneurs every chance they get. “We devote a lot of time to mentoring young entrepreneurs and advising companies. I’m an adviser for Quill, Doormat and Category Communications, all of which are based in Ontario,” she says. “And now that we live in Prince Edward County, we have a long-term goal of starting a foundation locally that would help local youth start businesses. We hope to contribute to the success of many future entrepreneurs.”
INNOVATION FROM OUR ECOSYSTEM CHAMPIONS AND CONNECTORS
I“genuinely believe that Ontario’s innovation ecosystem is unmatched, not only in Canada, but globally. We have a robust and dynamic network of innovation centres, accelerators, incubators, innovation organizations, angel investor groups, VCs and founders, and that creates an environment that promotes and fosters entrepreneurship,” says Claudia Krywiak, the president and CEO of the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI). “So, if you are an entrepreneur looking to start and grow your company here, there is literally no better place to do it in because of the very vibrant innovation ecosystem that we have.” OCI is an ecosystem connector — it’s
an organization that brings industry, academia and government together, plus it puts supports and programs in place that accelerate the development, commercialization and adoption of new and advanced technologies, helping entrepreneurs in Ontario succeed. This past year, OCI supported 623 companies across Ontario, leading to the creation and retention of 5,542 jobs, $361 million in incremental sales revenues and $734 million in private sector follow-on investments. Perhaps of greatest importance for angel investors especially, OCI de-risks innovation. “We help attract first customers, early adopters and early investors to startups they might otherwise overlook due to the risks that are associated with earlystage ventures and emerging technologies. So, we accelerate, we connect and we de-risk,” she says. Krywiak doesn’t just toe the line when it comes to talking up Ontario’s innovation ecosystem — she is a staunch believer in the province being a one-of-a-kind place for innovators and angels alike. “We have world-class skilled talent; 71 percent of Ontarians have a post-secondary degree, which is the highest of any OECD country. We have the highest concentration of post-secondary institutions anywhere in Canada, and we’re a top producer of STEM graduates. That drives the talent. Plus, the angel investor and VC networks are very well established here. If you combine all of that with our IT and life sciences sectors, Ontario is a great place for cultivating and fostering innovation. There’s so much opportunity.” Of course, economic growth is a major reason we need innovation, but Krywiak is also quick to mention how important innovation is when it comes to providing solutions to some of the most pressing challenges Canadians face. “We like to say prosperity from innovation doesn’t just mean economic prosperity — it means social and cultural prosperity, too.” >>
Chris Greenfield might just have more innovation experience than anyone in the country, so it’s fitting he’s the managing director of OneEleven, a Toronto-based tech accelerator that offers a strong community of tech founders, peer groups, programming and a support network that helps their companies scale. With more than $700 million in current member raises and more than $4 billion in alumni raises, their curriculum-based learning designed for members includes customer success,
losophy of coaching. Some places have entrepreneurs-in-residence or coaches who have never been entrepreneurs or had startups. That’s not the case here. Founders can learn from people who live in Toronto and have seen success here — there’s one-on-one coaching and peer groups that focus on driving innovation.” The DMZ at Toronto Metropolitan University is another ecosystem champion when it comes to supporting entrepreneurs — it provides the next generation of tech founders the tools they need to build and scale.
“I think when we invest in founders and entrepreneurs, we really show what we value as a society. Entrepreneurs and founders are some of the most resilient people in society— they’re the ones looking for solutions, and when we support innovators, we’re not just supporting our economy. We’re supporting our culture and bettering our way of life.”
Skaidra Puodžiūnas, Director of Ontario affairs, Canadian Council of Innovators
product, marketing and leadership, and they have a team of mentors, advisers and experts-in-residence who help founders get their innovations ready to pitch and grow. When Greenfield talks about founders working on their innovations in Ontario, he says they benefit from some of the best and brightest — folks (like him) who’ve been lifelong entrepreneurs and are willing to impart all the knowledge, advice and guidance they can offer. “OneEleven has a phi-
Its world-class incubator program — which offers end-toend support, coaching and access to capital — has helped more than 1,000 startups raise more than $2.7 billion in capital and create more than 5,200 jobs. “Ontario is the only Canadian province recognized among the top 10 startup ecosystems globally. It’s the lifeline of our economy and culture — it drives economic growth, creates jobs and keeps us competitive on the global stage,” says Abdullah Snobar, the executive director of DMZ.
“On the world stage, we’re recognized as leaders across AI, fintech and cybersecurity, thanks to our leading post-secondary institutions, research hubs, government support and strong tech talent pools.” Snobar says our province is built on the premise that diversity is our strength, and our innovation space is a true testament to that. “Ontario has a vibrant innovation ecosystem made up of entrepreneurs from different backgrounds, ethnicities and religions. When you bring together a rich mix of perspec-
tives, creativity and groundbreaking solutions emerge naturally; our varied lived experiences make innovation second nature for us,” he says. “Innovation also enriches Ontario’s culture by instilling a spirit of creativity and hustle. It encourages diverse thinking and brings together people to drive technology advancements and strengthen our community. In Ontario, innovation is more than just business; it’s a way of life that shapes our identity, outlook and our future.”
INNOVATION FROM OUR GOVERNMENT
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s more vocal about the need for innovation in Ontario than the Honourable Vic Fedeli, the province’s Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. It makes sense, since his government has made major investments in the innovation ecosystem over the last several years, including $300 million in the Venture Ontario Fund (supporting the growth of companies in cleantech, IT and AI), $15 million to launch the Life Sciences Innovation Fund and $107 million to support the adoption, development and commercialization of critical technologies by Ontario companies. “Our province is an economic powerhouse, and home to the best-skilled and talented workforce in the world that has led to cutting-edge innovations, such as the discovery of insulin and the development of the first cardiac pacemaker. Our worldclass workforce is why businesses at the forefront of innovation have chosen to call Ontario home. With low and competitive costs and a thriving
research and development ecosystem, Ontario is the best place for innovators to be,” says Minister Fedeli, who points to the automotive sector as an example of the province’s competitive edge and ability to secure good-paying jobs. “We are committed to promoting the best of what Ontario companies have to offer across all sectors, and our current and prospective angel investors can ensure our success by taking several actions. Get to know our strengths in sectors such as AI, aerospace, auto, life sciences, fintech, manufacturing and others. Think of Ontario first as your destination for investment and take advantage of our unique talent and innovation ecosystem.”
“The
very good news is that not only is there no better place to start a company than in Ontario, but there’s also no better place to be an angel investor because you can actually plug into this vibrant innovation ecosystem. So that would be my kind of call to action: Just plug into the innovation ecosystem.”
Claudia Krywiak, President and CEO,
Ontario Centre of Innovation
We’d be remiss if we didn’t bring Ontaio’s angel investors into this conversation. Ask angels why they invest in startups in the first place, and you’re bound to hear a bunch of similar answers — the most common being how they want to contribute to a big idea that solves a big problem in the world. They also say they want to give back (many are innovators and want to pay it forward after being successful in their own companies) and they want to make a few bucks on every dollar they invest. Jim Brown, >>

an angel investor and member at Georgian Angel Network (he’s made about 15 investments over the years), says the possibility of being part of an innovation that saves the world is not lost on him. “I’m not going to save the world myself, but I’m going to do my part to help someone else do it. But I don’t look at this as charity. I put a dollar in, I want to get a few dollars at some point. Still, making the world a better place for my grandchildren and generations after is attractive. There are lots of things that need to be worked on, and we can help,” he says.
Pose this question to angels: Do angels drive innovation or does innovation drive angels? You’ll find a handful take one side or the other, but most say it’s a combination. Pedro Serrador, an angel at Maple Leaf Angels and Golden Triangle Angel Network, says angels don’t just foster that initial innovation, they ensure the innovation keeps growing. “To me, angels aren’t necessarily driving innovation — I guess maybe we’re like the midwives to innovation,” he says. “Our role is important in companies that might not make it without us. We’re giving money and advice for them to keep building and building. Many innovations don’t reach their potential without angel investors.”
Sally Morris has made 20 investments since 2019; she’s a member of Maple Leaf Angels and the Women’s Equity Lab. She says innovation must come from entrepreneurs who are willing to take risks and try new things, and then it’s up to investors to also take risks and back their innovations. “I think innovation belongs with founders, but I like the idea that angels and entrepreneurs are working together to drive change in the world and keeping Ontario’s economy and society booming. We all have our part to play.”


Ask a Founder
What can the innovation ecosystem do better to ensure Ontario remains a thriving innovation powerhouse?
“We need to do a better job of helping entrepreneurs get from idea to market. We have a robust angel and VC ecosystem in Canada, but these folks are largely investing in companies when they’ve found traction. It’s very difficult to get pre-revenue funding in Canada, whether that’s from a bank, a private investor or the government. If you’re an entrepreneur who can’t self-fund your venture, or who doesn’t have access to friends and family money, you’re often running your business off personal credit cards. I would like to see more government grants that fund early-stage startups versus established businesses; more banks lending to early-stage startups without personal guarantees; and more programs like Futurpreneur that provide early-stage capital, ideally without age restrictions.
– Erin Bury, co-founder of Willful
HEAVENLY Guidance



Guidance
Good angel investors help companies soar to new heights, and those of you who do it are heaven-sent for the founders you work with. But could you be an even better angel investor? Let’s find out.

By Kate Tomen
Angel investors are vital, but not all angels are created equal. While anyone who meets the accredited investor rule can technically become an angel, there are specific qualities that separate guardian angels from demons in disguise. What does it take to get your wings? It’s a question many potential investors have asked over the years, and one with a slew of answers.
When we reached out to handfuls of people who have spent years investing in early-stage startups and asked about the must-have qualities successful angels need to possess, patience topped the lists. Angel investing is not for those looking for instant gratification. The timeline to an exit can be a long and winding road, an angel may >>



MEET


Maggie Sellers

+ Investing since 2021
+ Location: Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, CA
Leave it to Beyoncé to spread words of wisdom: “Gimme my check. Put some respect on my check. Or pay me in equity, pay me in equity.” We’d be willing to bet Maggie Sellers shares this sentiment, too. Sellers has built a name for herself in the consumer ecosystem. An influencer, she has amassed more than 185,000 followers across her social media channels, where she discusses finance, fashion, beauty and wellness. She’s on a journey to becoming the hottest, smartest, richest version of herself, and she’s taking her followers with her so they can, too. After pioneering Angel Investing and Private Market Investing Tok as a content creator on TikTok, she founded Hot Smart Rich Media, a cate gory-disrupting media, entertainment and investment holding company that empowers women and the startup ecosystem through community, content and commerce. She sells witty merch like the iconic Cash Poor, Equity Rich trucker hat, which her website says is “perfect for any founder, investor or startup enthusiast who can feel the powerful truth of this statement.”
Follow Sellers’s Hot Smart Rich adventures on Instagram, TikTok and X. Find her @maggiesellers on Instagram and @maggiesellers_ on TikTok. —KT
not see a return for seven to 10 years and many startups will fail. “Startups frequently encounter numerous challenges and may take many years to become profitable,” says seasoned entrepreneur, investor and author Trevor Dickinson. “Patience is essential for angel investors to support startups through tough times, and they have to do it without expecting immediate returns.” Dickinson emigrated to New Zealand from the United Kingdom in 2011 under the INZ Business Entrepreneur Immigration program. He’s pretty much done it all — from pioneering technological advancements in the oil and gas industry to actively fostering innovation in New Zealand’s startup ecosystem to investing in more than 170 startup companies and numerous funds. He’s earned the distinction of being one of the country’s most active angel investors, and even received the coveted Angel Association New Zealand Arch Angel Award for his contributions to the investment community. For Dickinson, good angels must have patience and resilience — in fact, he says these two qualities go hand in hand. “Resilience is just as important as patience,” he says. “It allows investors to remain committed despite setbacks, navigating the often risky and uncertain journey of a startup.”






health venture fund. Sellers is from Toronto but lives in Beverly Hills. She says she fell into angel investing after spend ing time in the music industry getting hit up with equity deals instead of cash sponsorship deals for some of the talent she helped represent. “I saw what it was like when we went through a funding cycle and what it was like when cash was tight,” she says. When she transitioned out, she worked for some of the biggest celebrities in the world. She recalls leaning on her net work and instead of charging a fee, she negotiated equity, and that began her love affair with early-stage investing. Her top quality for angel investors is maintaining a healthy sense of curiosity. “You’ll rarely know as much about the industry you’re thinking of investing in as the founder you’re potentially in vesting in. So, being curious enough to keep asking questions to go deeper is incredibly important. Your curiosity can help you spot the reasons why a startup won’t work just as much as the reasons to see how it can,” she says.



MEET
Marcia Dawood

Jeffrey Lang is an angel investor, the CEO of Startup Ecosystem and the former board chairman of Desert Angels, an angel organization in Tucson, Arizona. He’s been in the ecosystem for more than three decades and has enjoyed success as a senior executive adviser and consultant with years of >>

In September, angel investor Marcia Dawood released her book, Do Good While Doing Well — a comprehensive “why-to” manual for angel investing, which illuminates how individual financial contributions can go far beyond monetary value. By the end of the book, readers are equipped with tools and knowledge to align their portfolios with their values.
With more than a decade’s worth of experience investing in and advising startups, Dawood takes on a different angle of angel investing in the book. “Most people don’t even know what it means to invest in a startup company. They think that charity is the way that they’re going to give back and that is their only avenue,” she says. “Charities are amazing, but we cannot put the burden of, like, saving the world on nonprofits.” The book pulls back the curtain on the mechanics of angel investing and encourages readers to use their financial and intellectual leverage as a force for good in the world, all while potentially earning both emotional and financial rewards. Dawood lets her investments be the change she wants to see in the world, and so can readers. marciadawood.com —KT




Trevor Dickinson MEET

Angel Association New Zealand (AANZ) is the national organization for those actively involved in early-stage venture capital in New Zealand. I first met some of the folks AANZ at the Angel Capital Association Summit in New Jersey in 2022. It was fascinating to hear AANZ’s members speak, bringing lessons from Oceania. I was particularly impressed with Bridget Unsworth’s leadership and grace as executive director. It stuck with me how Bridget and her colleague spoke of the indigenous peoples of New Zealand and how their government continues to include indigenous culture in its strategic plan. While years have passed and I have changed their words surely, a saying adapted from Maori that they used has stuck with me. They said, “It takes a village to raise a child, but a community to raise a startup.” And I couldn’t agree more. Tātou Tātou is a Maori saying that means “all of us together.” It’s fitting here. —KT
C-suite experience. He created and guided five startups to successful exits and is a frequent speaker about and champion of angel investing. He agrees with curiosity being a super-vital trait for angels, and says “an inquisitive mind with no fear about asking questions” is part of what makes an awesome angel, as is diligence, which he describes as the ability to ask intelligent, informed questions. This includes asking founders to justify and quantify their solution, asking about the ability of their team to realize their solution and go-to-market plan, and their ability to recognize where their team or plan has weaknesses.
The angels we spoke with are also big proponents of remembering to keep yourself in check. Confidence is necessary, but too much ego can hinder angels and the entrepreneurs they work with. The best angels don’t let their egos drive their decision-making. Those with high self-awareness understand that not every investment will be a success, and they manage their expectations accordingly. They approach investing with humility, knowing that the startup ecosystem is unpredictable. This balanced mindset helps maintain healthy investor-founder relationships and promotes more objective decision-making. “If you were just going to be an angel investor because you thought you could pick the best three companies and you were going to become a multi-gazillionaire, that’s probably not the best approach to take to angel investing,” says Marcia Dawood, who’s been investing since 2012 after she attended her first angel group meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since that first meeting, she has collected several accolades and titles within the angel ecosystem. She is an adviser to the SEC’s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee, a venture partner with Mindshift Capital, a member of Golden Seeds and the chair emeritus of the Angel Capital Association, the global professional society for angel investors. “So, I think it’s really important people have that kind of self-awareness of what and why they want to do it.” Dickinson, reflecting on his early investments, says, “I made numerous errors in my first four or five angel in vestments, which all ended in failure. I invested too much capital and failed to leverage the collec tive wisdom of more experienced investors. Self-awareness is definitely an important trait when it comes to acknowledg



reflect on their own process to identify what could have been done differently. This ability to learn and grow from mistakes is critical for long-term success in angel investing.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that the ecosystem needs founders and angels with soft skills. Talk to Dawood for just a few minutes and you can see how genuinely kind and warm she is. “Entrepreneurs work so hard. They’re trying to fundraise, they often have a fulltime job, they’re working on their business. They rarely get to see friends and family. They give it their all,” she says. A little kindness and compassion go a long way. Sellers agrees, and says even though kindness is an often overlooked, it’s a powerful trait in angel investing. “We’re talking about people who believe in birthing an idea from their head so much that they sacrifice everything to make it happen. And when things aren’t going well, they don’t need angel investors to be the ones breathing down their necks making them feel worse than they probably already do.” Kindness as an angel investor goes far beyond being “nice” — it creates an environment of trust, collaboration and mutual respect that benefits both the investor and the founder. By being kind, angel investors can build stronger relationships, foster better company cultures and support entrepreneurs in more meaningful and impactful ways. Finally, perhaps one of the most important attributes we heard time and again is actually the title of Dawood’s latest book: Do Good While Doing Well. She says there are a lot of whys involved in angel investing besides making money. “I think it’s important that people think, hey, I’m doing this because I want to see change in the world, or because I believe in this founder and what they’re doing, or because I want to pay it forward or I want to leave a legacy.” Sellers has a similar philosophy. She has found that angel investing brings her the most joy because, “to me, the purpose falls far beyond the return, which, to be candid, is unlikely. But growing my network, skill set and exposure to products, services and technologies is a win.”


MEET
Jeffrey Lang
+ Investing since 2016 + Location: Phoenix, AZ
A clear trend is emerging among seasoned angel investors: Their motivations often extend beyond financial returns. Many are driven by the desire to create positive social impact, investing in startups tackling issues such as climate change, poverty or healthcare access. This is something we’re thrilled to see — impact investors aim to support ventures that can generate both societal benefits and financial rewards, and that’s key for our ecosystem.
Yes, there are a bunch of traits angels should possess, and we know that we’ve only scratched the surface here. But that’s pretty fitting — we’re always learning, just as angels are. Investing is a continuous learning journey, where each investment presents new challenges, lessons, insights and opportunities for growth. If you’re not yet an angel investor but you’re considering spreading your wings, be sure you have these attributes. Life as an angel will be easier for you if you do.
I first met Jeffrey Lang in 2022 during a webinar I participated in for Dealum called the Future of Angel Investing. In 2023, Dealum invited us both to speak on a panel called Angel Collaboration at the Angel Capital Association summit in Las Vegas. We are both fans of how Dealum, a deal-management platform for early-stage inventors, makes collaboration over a large geography so easy. Little did I know that this would be the start of a beautiful friendship. Jeffrey is a great asset to both the angel investor community and startups, serving in various roles on both sides of the table. Angel investing is a team sport, and Jeffrey is seemingly playing every role. When it comes down to it, we need more team players like him. —KT




Joint Effort Fast Facts
Afynia’s co-founder Dr. Lauren Foster and angel Dr. Brian Whitestone talked to us about collaboration, partnership and support. The two truly exemplify a successful entrepreneur-investor relationship.
Funded: Lauren, why is it so important to have angels like Brian who not only write cheques but also offer support and help you work toward success?
Dr. Lauren Foster: Having Brian invest in Afynia was incredibly valuable to us. In part, it was validating to have an independent outside expert invest and share in the risk of Afynia and what we are building. While my co-founder, Dr. Jocelyn Wessels, and I know the science and clinical side of the business, we quickly recognized there was so much more that we needed to learn and understand about building the business and commercializing our vision. Having Brian support us with recommendations and referrals to key players was outstanding to our growth and development. >>
Hamilton, Ont.-based Afynia is a femtech company that’s developed a novel blood test to detect endometriosis, one of the leading causes of chronic debilitating pelvic pain affecting millions of Canadians. Their mission is to develop and distribute new products to fill current gaps in women’s health.
Their flagship product is EndomiR, the first minimally-invasive blood test designed to detect endometriosis.
Dr. Brian Whitestone and fellow investors from Ottawa’s Capital Angel Network (CAN) were the first angels to invest in Afynia (previously AIMA Laboratories), and Afynia closed a $2-million pre-seed round led by CAN earlier this year.
The Afynia lab is established and now processing clinical samples.
A minimum viable product (MVP) is available and in use at multiple clinics across Canada.
Two patents were awarded in 2024, and pilot market sales revenues is $150,000 (at time of publication).
Third-party validation has been achieved.
Learn more about Afynia at afynia.com.
Dr. Lauren Foster

Funded: What did you learn from Brian and his fellow angels about the raising journey, due diligence, investor-founder relationships and the ecosystem in general?
LF: The current funding environment is particularly challenging, especially for a deep-tech company. We have learned the importance of honing our message, listening carefully and acting quickly to incorporate advice into practice. Due diligence is an important process that can be made much easier for all parties by understanding what the investor needs and ensuring that it’s available to them in an easily accessible space. At Afynia, we value our investors not just for the capital infusion but also for their expertise. We are eager to reach out for advice and recommendations as we trial different sales and marketing hypotheses and seek connections in the broader customer ecosys-
tem. As Afynia grows, we have found it’s important to keep our investors informed of both our success stories as well as emerging challenges. We see investing as bidirectional and a long-term partnership for each other’s benefit.
Funded: What advice would you offer a fellow founder who’s about to embark on their own journey with an engaged, supportive angel?
LF: Know that angel investors might take a little longer in the due diligence process, but it is worth it. Embrace their support and eagerly draw out as much advice as possible. Building a company and commercializing your ideas is a long process and there is no point re-inventing the wheel if you don’t have to. Learn as much as you can from those who have gone before you and listen to the success stories, as well as the failures. There is so much to learn — be open to their input and be prepared to pivot if an idea or team member isn’t working out. Most of all, remember the success or failure of any venture will hinge on the efficacy of the leadership’s ability to communicate. Be open to new ideas, seek advice and communicate regularly with your investors.
Funded: Now, Brian, as an angel, how important is it for you to have a founder like Lauren — someone who brings a wealth of expertise and passion in their field, but who’s also willing to take advice and learn from investors?
Dr. Brian Whitestone: People are what make a company tick and bring it to life, so I pay particular attention to the founder’s personality traits and leadership style. I was impressed by Lauren’s even-keeled manner, depth of knowledge and experience in this field, and her desire to significantly improve the lives of so many women who are suffering from endometriosis and the complicated path to both diagnosis and treatment. She has always been very approachable, open to answering questions both thoroughly and promptly. Likewise, Lauren has a genuine awareness around her deficiencies and demonstrates a willingness to be coached. There were no “blind spots” per se, which is an extremely important trait
in an entrepreneur. In other words, Lauren is a great example of someone who embodies all the desirable traits an investor wants to see in a founder. For an early-stage investor, the greatest key to a company’s future success lies with the founder. Period.
Funded:
What have you learned
from Lauren about the raising journey, due diligence, investorfounder relationships and the ecosystem in general?
BW: It is crucial for the founder to have deep knowledge and firsthand experience in the field they are intending to disrupt/ improve. Lauren is clearly an expert in this field and her breadth of contacts has allowed her to successfully implement early trials of the test and develop founder-led sales. This has enabled Afynia to gain test traction through engagement at multiple fertility clinics. The diagnostic space is not an easy one for investors to understand and feel comfortable with an investment. As such, the crafting of the story and message is critical when it comes to fundraising. Likewise, the business case must be solid as there are significant risks in this space. Lauren instilled confidence in our group with her thoughtful and well-presented messaging.

Funded: What advice would you offer a fellow angel who’s about to embark on their own journey investing in a founder?
BW: Spend time with the founder on multiple occasions in a variety of ways. This enables an investor to really get a feel for the founder, who they are and how they think. There is a definite correlation between the amount of time undertaken in due diligence and favourable outcomes, so take the time to do this well.
Dr. Brian Whitestone

Failure is universal; no one’s immune. But here’s something you might not have considered: It’s not about the failure — it’s about how you bounce back. Read on to learn about turning flops into a catalyst for success.
BY KATIE DUPUIS
Failure’s a funny thing. Most of us live in fear of bombing, to some degree (and if you’re an entrepreneur reading this, we’d be willing to bet you’re nodding right about now), but some of history’s most recognizable and successful leaders and businesspeople flopped big time. Think Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs. No one’s categorizing them as failures, with their mammoth contributions that have spanned (and will continue to span) generations, but if you asked them about the early days of their careers? They’d cringe. Take Edison, a prolific inventor with more than 1,000 patents to his name. He tried thousands of times to get the electric lightbulb to work before succeeding. Disney, who arguably built the most recognizable brand of all time, filed for bankruptcy when his first run at a film studio tanked. And Jobs? He was kicked to the curb at Apple — the company he founded — after he championed a series of products that ultimately went belly-up. Would it have been easy for these extraordinary minds to slink away out of the public eye to nurse their wounds? You bet, and, honestly, no one would have blamed them. But if they had, the industrialized world would look drastically different today. So, the question is, how did these innovators — and so many others like them — recover? How did they turn their failures into the prodigious success stories we know and look up to? It all comes down to how you fail and what you do in the aftermath.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAILURE
Believe it or not, whether you’re a founder, investor or just an average Joe or Joanne out there doing your best, the way you approach a challenge determines how well you will deal with failure. People with an innate fear of failure — and this can be for myriad reasons, like childhood trauma, negative role models or past public humiliation — don’t go into a situation with an eye on success. Instead, they approach the task just trying not to fall flat. So, what’s the difference? Isn’t not failing the same thing as succeeding? Not really, actually. To truly succeed, you can’t count failure out — you must learn to use it as a driving force. “Failure means different things to different people,” says Jen Peacock, founder and managing partner of Straight Up Health, a mental health, wellness and development clinic in Toronto. “The attitude you have toward failure is what makes the difference. Failing is inevitable; it’s part of life. We are all going to fail at something, at some point. If you understand >>

“The attitude you have toward failure is what makes the difference. Failing is inevitable, it’s part of life. We are all going to fail at something, at some point. If you understand this, you can prepare for it and shift the narrative to accept and embrace failure as an opportunity to grow.”
JEN PEACOCK founder and managing partner of Straight Up Health
this, you can prepare for it and shift the narrative to accept and embrace failure as an opportunity to grow.” People who go into a situation — including starting or investing in a business — with the understanding that failure is a possibility are open to growth and improvement, even if that means looking silly or having to drastically change course. They get that missing the mark isn’t a reflection of who they are or a ding to their self-worth. Failure and confidence
THE NOTION OF FAILING
ADMIRABLY
In addition to your mindset, there’s another important factor in determining your likelihood of success: preparedness. And that essentially means doing your homework. It seems like a no-brainer, but you cannot be a true failure if you’ve looked at your venture from every angle. If you’ve plotted every potential path and are prepared to adapt (or, to use a throwback term, “pivot”), you aren’t a failure. Sometimes things happen that are complete-
“Failure and confidence are interconnected. Failure builds confidence, and confidence helps with managing failures.”
JEN PEACOCK founder and managing partner of Straight Up Health
are interconnected,” says Peacock. “Failure builds confidence, and confidence helps with managing failures.”
For folks who are failure-avoidant, their definition of success means not folding. They may know that something isn’t working, but they’ll still dig their heels in, or procrastinate, or choose to disengage instead of asking for help.
“You don’t have to understand everything yourself,” says Brian Tansey, an organizational performance and fit expert in Ottawa. “You just need to be willing to talk to other people, both experts and people who know you well, so you can look at a situation from more than just one angle.” People who think they should have all the answers struggle to take this step. They take failure personally, and it shows. Ironically, for people with this approach, failure is pretty much inevitable, because nobody gets it exactly right the first time. You’ve no doubt heard the adage, “attitude is everything” (and you probably rolled your eyes a bit). But where failure is concerned, this is bang on.

ly unforeseen, and completely out of your control. When you’re a casualty of circumstance, you cannot be a failure. As far as the experts are concerned, this type of failure — an admirable failure — isn’t really a failure at all. “There’s something to be said for intuition, and if you’re an intuitive person, of course you have to use that. But it’s having all of the information that allows you to take the big swings,” says Tansey.
We know what you’re going to say: There are people who have thrown caution to the wind and launched a wildly successful company or product without much to go on. And that’s true. But a fire has to be stoked. They may have had success right out of the gate, but without ongoing research and analysis, and the willingness to make changes and keep developing, they’re doomed to be a flash in the pan.
FAILURE IS TEMPORARY
If there’s one thing innovative giants like Edison, Disney and Jobs prove, it’s that failure isn’t forever. You’ve no doubt heard the stats: 20 percent of new businesses don’t make it past the first year; half don’t last beyond five years. But we don’t have so much concrete evidence about what the people behind these “failures” did after their ventures closed. More than 90,000 new businesses open in Canada every year — a chunk of these are presumably started by founders who have dusted themselves off to try again. “We have to try different things, different ways, at different times, in order to have different results,” says Peacock. “Growth isn’t linear. There are ups and downs, successes and setbacks.” Tansey agrees. “Resilience and open-mindedness are the keys to so many things.” And just because you’ve failed before doesn’t mean you’re destined to continue to fall flat. Remember that the next time you turn on the lights, stream on Disney+ or swipe up on your iPhone.

RESILIENCE AND OPEN-MINDEDNESS ARE THE KEYS TO SO MANY THINGS.
BRIAN
TANSEY organizational performance and fit expert
REFRAMING FAILURE
Five ways to recast a setback.
Give yourself time to grieve. Resilience doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge when something feels crummy. Just don’t let that feeling bench you.
Get used to the idea of “failing forward.” Examine every obstacle through a lens of how it can ultimately move you ahead.
Don’t try to find someone to blame (including yourself!). Instead of looking back and pointing fingers, look ahead and make a plan.
Celebrate failures the same way you celebrate successes. There is a pearl of achievement in every failure if you’ve learned something new along the way.
Accept that failure is inevitable. It’s what you do with that failure that matters most. 1 2 3 4 5
Meet Calvin. He’s a 14-year-old alpine ski racer and budding entrepreneur — he’s also the son of Funded’s creative director, Patrick. To help fund his racing dreams, he’s launched his own tuning business, bringing precision, passion and care to every pair of skis he tunes by hand. He’s following in his entrepreneur parents’ footsteps. Go, Calvin!

by Patrick Lyver
Photo

From the Playpen to
Dragons’ Den
Reading, writing and arithmetic were once considered the top skills demanded by Fortune 500 companies. But in a world where the future of work is constantly evolving, entrepreneurial skills are becoming more valuable than ever. The entrepreneurial mentality is one that encourages problem-solving, resilience and innovation. So, how do we instill those lessons in the next generation? We talked to kid CEOs and their investors — er, parents — to find out.
by Kate Tomen
Mercedes, 16, and Anastasia, 14, are sisters and the co-founders of Small Bits of Happiness. Their mission, as stated on their website, is to “help people of all ages, especially teens, find small bits of happiness in every day, build happy habits and boost parent-child/teen connection.” They were 13 and 11 when they founded the business in 2021. “We started during the pandemic because being a teen is hard enough. The current world we’re growing up in is very stressful,” Mercedes says. Along with their parents, Mercedes and Anastasia decided that focusing on the good things in life during this time helped them to feel better daily. So, they started sharing affirmations, fun facts and quotes to social media. Their following grew, and they transitioned the business to a website. “Now, we have a whole product line of tangible tips to build happy habits and connect parents with their kids and their teenagers,” Mercedes says. When asked what she thinks of the business, the kids’ mom, Monika, says that Small Bits of Happiness started as a passion project her daughters worked hard on. Now, it’s a passion-fuelled company. “They’re really driven.”
Passion is a common theme when chatting with kid entrepreneurs, and it’s an indispensable and important element on the road to entrepreneurial success. Entrepreneurs thrive >>
when they work on things they are passionate about. Just ask Peyton, 14, who started selling handcrafted bracelets online a few years ago. “I liked making bracelets with clay beads and other people liked them, too,” she says. The impetus for her business was a simple case of supply and demand. She started wearing the bracelets she made for herself, as did her mom, sister and grandmother. People took notice of the bracelets and asked where they were from. Peyton soon started to receive requests from family, friends, neighbours and even teachers. When her mom put the bracelets up on social media, orders started to roll in. So, she figured she’d start a business.
Juliette, 12, had a similar start to her dog-walking business. “I was hanging out with dogs and their owners after school and then I thought, what if I started walking or dog-sitting those dogs?” she says. “I love dogs, and my parents don’t want us to have one of our own right now. So, this felt like a great opportunity.” The inspiration behind her business is straightforward. “I wanted to make my own money and do something that I like at the same time,” she says.
Peyton and Juliette offer an important lesson for us adults: Keep it simple. Like Small Bits of Happiness, these kid-founded businesses started in a similar fashion — with a minimum viable product. Building a successful startup isn’t easy. That’s why only one in 10 startups succeed. If you’re going to have any chance of survival, you need to keep it simple. You have to boil your idea down to one specific thing, initially, and stay focused on that end goal. Simplicity also helps when balancing a thriving business with high school. “I think it really helps not having those extracurricular activities before school or after school,” says Monika. “They wake up early, they go to bed late. It’s hard to put them to bed because there’s work to do on their business.” Mercedes and Anastasia have their mom’s support, and that’s key when launching a startup, no matter your age. As an entrepreneur, your social network can be your most critical source of support.
but also many other things when talking about future careers.” Monika says she helps here and there with her kids’ business — she’s on-call to take product photography and the girls’ headshots when needed. The business partners also mention their dad, who has several businesses — they acknowledge they come by entrepreneurship naturally, and he instilled an interest in innovation and running your own show from a young age. Peyton’s mom, Lisa, is a freelance journalist and has been self-employed since Peyton was born. Lisa is no stranger to entrepreneurship, or even writing about entrepreneurship — she’s the editor-in-chief of Funded and has written about angel investing for years. Lisa is Peyton’s biggest supporter and biggest investor. “I definitely spent a small fortune at craft stores when Peyton expressed an interest in this business, but her work ethic has been impressive to watch. My kids know running your own business requires an absolute ton of time, dedication, passion and energy — they’ve watched me do it for as long as they can remember,” Lisa says. “Peyton’s older sister is in Grade 11 and she’s not sure what she wants to do yet, but we talk about the pros and cons of running your own show all the time.”

“I think it really helps not having those extracurricular activities before school or after school. They wake up early, they go to bed late. It’s hard to put them to bed because there’s work to do on their business.”
Take Davina, Juliette’s mom, who spends her days as the vice-president of Impact Investing at Spring. Spring is a global incubator, accelerator and advisory firm that empowers entrepreneurs, impact investors and ecosystem organizations to build better businesses and change the world through innovation. So, Davina knows a thing or two about building a startup and she is passing that knowledge on to her daughter. Juliette agrees, naming her mom as the person who helped the most in starting her business. “We often chat about business ideas as a family in a casual way, more for fun and exciting ideas,” Davina says. “We talk about entrepreneurship
These parents walk the walk and talk the talk. They are demonstrating entrepreneurial behaviours in their daily lives, sharing their experiences with problemsolving and creativity and showing their kids how to navigate challenges. Children emulate the attitudes and behaviours they observe in their parents, so it’s no surprise these kids started businesses. Children are also influenced by their surroundings. If entrepreneurship is part of the family culture — through discussions at home or involvement in community projects — they are more likely to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset themselves. When it comes to advice for budding entrepreneurs, Mercedes is quick to say, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint” — something she says her dad has taught her. “It’s OK for things to take longer, or maybe for them to get postponed, especially when you’re working with other people.” Her sister also shares wise words: “Just do it. There’s never going to be a moment when all the stars align. If you have an idea, just start working on a rough draft. It doesn’t have to be perfect; just put something out there.” Peyton learned important lessons from discussions around the family dinner table. “I learned
Monika, mom to Mercedes

it’s hard work and you have to be really excited and interested in what you’re doing,” she says. “You also have to be pretty organized to make sure the right customer gets the right product in the way they ordered it.” In her 14-year-old voice, Peyton offers crucial advice for entrepreneurs of all ages. It is not only about the idea — it’s about the execution. An idea and its execution can be two inseparable factors, like cause and effect, but an idea alone is not a pathway to success. It’s the execution of an idea that also puts its feasibility to test. Juliette offers advice that only a 12-year-old who is still carefree can articulate. “Be loyal and reliable. Be friendly.” Beautiful and simple advice for building relationships with customers and clients.
The sky is the limit for these young entrepreneurs. Only time will tell what is next for them. They, smartly, seem to be keeping their options open. As for the future of Small Bits of Happiness, Mercedes and Anastasia are working on expanding into the U.S. for the retail side of the business. They also have a digital learning platform called Learn Small Bits, which is in more than 100 schools. Mercedes says she sees a lot of room for growth beyond their current product lines, which include an e-commerce store, a podcast called “Hack Your Happiness,” content, speaking gigs and a program for schools. Business acumen aside, Mercedes is wise beyond her years. “Happiness is something that, you know, I think everybody can use a little more of.”
When asked about what’s next for Peyton, Lisa says she still has lots of time to decide, as she’s just started high school. “She might want to be a veterinarian or zoologist. Her latest idea is to open her own sno-cone store — like an ice-cream shop but just cool, custom sno-cones. I told her she should franchise it.” While the funding round for Peyton’s sno-cone franchise empire will likely be oversubscribed (get it while it’s hot...or cold?), it’s clear the future is in good hands with this next generation of founders.
Extracurricular Activities
Author’s Note
Kate Tomen’s love letter to her mother.
My mom ran her business while I was growing up. My dad is also an entrepreneur, but I don’t think he would call himself that. My parents shared an office — I worked there for my first job. I would help with the filing and cleaning up and as I grew older, I helped my mom create ads for the local newspaper and radio. I watched and observed closely as she worked tirelessly to provide for me and my brothers and to fulfill some of her own dreams and goals. I am not sure my parents know how much their small businesses inspired my own foray into entrepreneurship. If they didn’t know, they know now! Some of the greatest gifts in my life come from my mother’s entrepreneurial journey — the ability to think creatively, take risks and develop a mindset of independence. Similarly, Lisa was the first to support Peyton by posting her bracelets on social media, and Davina encouraged Juliette to take the plunge and start her dog-walking business. So, thank you to my mom, Kim, to Lisa, Davina and Monika, and to all the other parents working to create full, vibrant personal and professional lives as examples for their children. The women in my life laid the foundation of entrepreneurship. They taught me to be curious and gave me the ability to see opportunities where others see obstacles.
So, you’ve enrolled your kid in soccer, piano lessons and math tutoring, but what about business school? We’ve gathered up some resources for kid CEOs.
1 — Durham District School Board (DDSB): DDSB knows entrepreneurship is a skill set for the future. They encourage these skills through programs like the annual entrepreneurship fair, which includes informative and interactive workshops, and students presenting their prepared pitches. These programs provide students with varied experiential learning opportunities, including supporting business proposals through grants.
2 — The Firehood Summit for Girls: The annual Firehood Summit for Girls hosts more than 100 girls ages 9 to 13 who get to meet and learn from the incredible success of leading businesswomen who have made a positive impact in the technology industry. This event is part of The Firehood’s goal to increase the participation, leadership and prosperity of women in technology.
3 — The Knowledge Society (TKS): TKS was founded in 2016 by two brothers, Navid and Nadeem Nathoo, who wanted to build what they wish they had growing up. The program focuses on transforming teenagers through mindsets, frameworks and skills. Its mission is to empower youth ages 13 to 17 through a rigorous 10-month program leading to significant achievements such as venture capital funding and prestigious university placements.


By Lisa van de Geyn

We were so blown away by Jason Wilkins’s awesome work (he designed the cover of this issue of Funded, and illustrated the incredible women we feature starting on page 78), we asked the uber-talented Peterborough, Ont.-based artist to share his thoughts on entrepreneurship and the parallels he sees between artists and entrepreneurs.
Funded: artist loves this question, but how do you define your work and yourself as an artist?
Jason Wilkins: Great question, and it’s one I’ve always felt sort of inadequate when try ing to answer because it’s very “what you see is what you get.” My work is grounded in a place of just trying to put out positivity and vibrancy into the world. The bold lines and bright colours I use have a childlike quality about them and, honestly, when I’m working, that’s exactly how I feel.

Funded: Tell us about the Jason Wilkins Factory — when did you open and what happens at the studio?
Funded: As an artist and entrepreneur, how have you built your customer base?
You’ve worked with some cool clients and brands. Tell us how you’ve been able to expand your business and client roster.
JW: I’ve always felt that what must be paramount in your personal and business life is to be super self-aware. This has a huge part to play and is a powerful tool in maintaining and building relationships. From social media marketing, face-to-face visits at the
JW: Opening the studio in October 2021 was the culmination of 20-plus years of clawing my way up — becoming a full-time freelance artist is a tough ride and nothing is guaranteed. The studio is my day-to-day working space. I needed a big space to create my large canvas pieces, but I had so much space that I decided to build it out as a spot to help other emerging artists. I created The Peterborough Arts Collective, where there is a very low financial barrier for entry to join the group, and I allow anyone who needs a spot to show their art to use my studio walls. (I named the walls “The George Gallery” after my grandpa, who passed away in 2021.) We now support more than 50 adult and youth artists — many have gone on to make a living from their art.



This is my soft spot. I had such incred ible family support from the first moments I showed interest in the arts, but many kids don’t have that support, or they haven’t dis covered it within themselves. My hope for the studio is that the moment they enter my doors, they feel empowered and confident in their own personal creative development — there’s no one telling them they can’t

enjoy most about being an

I’m not going to sit here and say I love the business end of what I do. I don’t — it’s an oil-and-water situation for me, having to balance being a cre ative and running my business, and I’ve had to navigate lots of losses. I’ve failed before and I’ll fail again. But I weirdly also enjoy this constant pursuit of, ‘Well, now let’s see what I can do,’ along with having full autonomy. Living without a net is equal parts terrifying and addictive, and that’s what I love about entrepreneurship the most.
Funded: What similarities do artists and entrepreneurs share?
JW: I think artists and entrepreneurs are both anarchists in their own way. We’ve got something to prove, and whether that’s a form of art or a business endeavour, there is something that fuels us. I’m doing something really difficult, and I find that incredibly gratifying.



