Top 50 Angel Investors in Canada in November 2024

Tom Williams

Originally trained as a medical doctor, Dr. Ray Muzyka cofounded BioWare, a video game development studio focusing on story and character, in the early 1990s. He practiced emergency/family medicine for two years full time, with medicine transitioning to part-time over the following decade as he focused on his role as BioWare’s CEO. BioWare wasacquired by Electronic Arts in 2007, and Dr. Muzyka took on the roles of Senior Vice President at Electronic Arts and General Manager of EA’s BioWare division, which grew over the next five years to span eight development locations worldwide with about 2000 staff (1400 full time). He retired from video games in October 2012, with his third “career chapter” at ThresholdImpact, where he focused on sustainable, profitable impact investing: mentoring and angel investing in information technology, new media, and medical innovations with social entrepreneurs. An active angel investor and entrepreneurial mentor, Dr. Muzyka is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization, the A100, the Ashoka Support Network, and the Board of Governors of the University of Alberta (serving as Chair of the Human Resources Committee and on the Learning and Discovery Committee and as a member of the University of Alberta Advancement Council). He is Chair of the University of Alberta’s entrepreneur Venture Mentoring Service, a venture advisor at iNovia Venture Capital, and a member of the Alberta Research and Innovation Advisory Committee and the Alberta Premier’s Advisory Committee on the Economy. He also serves on a number of private company boards. He previously served on the board of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences from 2001-2008 and was on the Board of Trustees of the Stollery Children’s Health Foundation from 2012-2015. He was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame in 2011 and received the International Game Developers’ Choice Awards 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Muzyka received the inaugural Alumni Innovation Award in 2015 from the University of Alberta. He additionally was named as the 2017 Allard Chair in Business at the MacEwan University’s School of Business and as an Honorary Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary Club International in 2016, in recognition for his philanthropic efforts. Other awards include entry into Canada’s Top 40 under 40 and Ernst and Young’s 2001 Entrepreneur of the Year (IT, Prairies).He obtained his Bachelor of Medical Science from the University of Alberta in 1990, his Doctorate of Medicine from there in 1992, and his MBA from the University of Western Ontario (Ivey School of Business) in 2001.

Jacky is dedicated to angel investment and has built up a portfolio of more than thirty startup companies in Canada and the US. His target investments are the early-stage B2B companies with disruptive technologies and business potential in enterprise software, information technologies, MedTech, and Advanced Manufacturing.Jacky has acquiredconcrete business experiences as a successful founder in the startup ecosystem and an executive of Fortune 500 companies over two decades. His remarkable accomplishments range from building startups from scratch to leading a billion-dollar business with the leverage of 14,000 enterprise channel partners. The unique journey has shaped Jacky's outstanding of investing in early startups.Jacky holds the degrees of Mater's E.E. and MBA, and he graduated from CEIBS and The Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Marc, our Chief Executive Officer, co-founded Sandvine (TSX:SVC) and served as its Chief Technology Officer, developing the company's vision and technology strategy. Prior to Sandvine, he was co-founder at PixStream which was acquired by Cisco Systems.

Tobi Lütke founded Shopify in 2004. He has served as the Chief Executive Officer since 2008. Tobi worked on the core team of the Ruby on Rails framework and has created many popular open source libraries such as Active Merchant.

Daniel is the Vice President of Product (Demand) at Shopify. He previously worked as an SVP at Salesforce.com, where he drives marketing for Salesforce Work.com, a sales performance management solution that helps Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, and other innovative companies align, motivate, and drive the performance of their sales teams. Prior tojoining Salesforce, Daniel was co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, a social performance management platform acquired by Salesforce in 2012. Prior to Rypple, Daniel was on the founding team of Workbrain, which provided workforce management solutions to Wal-Mart, Citibank, and other large enterprises. Workbrain grew to $100 million in annual revenues before being acquired by Infor in 2007.A sought after speaker on how social media is changing the workplace, Daniel is a contributor to Fortune.com and the Huffington Post. He’s been widely quoted in Wired, the Financial Times, the Economist and Bloomberg Businessweek. Daniel holds a JD/MBA from the University of Toronto and an LLM in Law, Science and Technology from Stanford University.

Ryan Holmes is the CEO and Founder of HootSuite. Thought leader, dog lover and serial entrepreneur, he has redefined the face of social media - bringing Twitter, Facebook and other social networks out of the dorm room and into the boardroom.Holmes has grown HootSuite from a lean startup to a global leader in social media with 8 million users,including 79 of the Fortune 100 companies. A college drop-out, he started a paintball company and pizza restaurant before founding Invoke Media, the company that developed HootSuite in 2009.Today, Holmes is an authority on the social business revolution, quoted in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal and called upon to speak at TEDx and SXSW Interactive Conferences. An angel investor and advisor, he mentors startups in Canada and around the world. Through HootSuite University, Holmes partners with major universities to deliver social media coursework to the next generation of business leaders.

Barney Pell was the co-founder, Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer of LocoMobi Inc. Barney has a long history as a leading technology innovator, product visionary, entrepreneur and angel investor based in Silicon Valley. Barney is known for being an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Mayfield, a top Venture Capital firm, which he left to becomeFounder and CEO of Powerset, which built a natural-language based search engine that read each sentence in Wikipedia and answered user queries in plain English. Microsoft acquired Powerset in 2008 to help create its new search engine, Bing. Barney then served Microsoft as Search Strategist, Evangelist, and Chief Architect for Local Search at Bing, until leaving Microsoft in September 2011 to return to the start-up world full-time.Barney also has active investor, board member, and advisory roles with multiple start-up companies and non-profits across a variety of industries. Barney is Co-Founder, Vice Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Moon Express, a private company building autonomous robotic lunar landers to enable exploration and commercial development of the solar system. This builds on his earlier career managing advanced software technologies at NASA. Highlights of innovations during Barney’s career at NASA include mission critical software to support planning and collaboration for the Mars Exploration Rovers mission; Clarissa, the first spoken dialog system in space; and the development of the Remote Agent, the first AI system to fly onboard and control a deep space probe. Remote Agent is widely considered one of the top achievements in the history of Artificial Intelligence and was awarded NASA’s "software of the year" award in 1999. Barney is also Associate Founder and Trustee of Singularity University (SU), a new university created to educate leaders for life in a future driven by accelerating technological change.Other recent active angel investments and advisory positions include: Getaround, Robotex, Halcyon Molecular, SpaceX, and CrowdFlower. Recent start-ups that have had successful exits include: Appjet (now Google), Aardvark (now Google), Hot Potato (now Facebook), Etacts (now SalesForce.com), Movity (now Trulia), and LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional social network which recently went public after acquiring its hundred-millionth member.Barney received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and his B.S. degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a National Merit Scholar.Barney is a frequent speaker at conferences and universities. These include keynote talks at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Computational Linguistics, Search Marketing Expos, International Semantic Web Conference, World Wide Web Conference, the Informational Retrieval Conference, and panels at SXSW Interactive. Barney has also spoken at the NPA and IPI conferences and has been featured in all major Parking industry magazines.

Jevon MacDonald is the Co-Founder at StartupNorth.

James Lochrie is an entrepreneur, angel investor, venture capitalist and volunteer. He is the Co-founder of the global fintech company Wave. He is a Partner at Thin Air Labs, overseeing Thin Air Fund 1 and the Capital team. He has worked with thousands of entrepreneurs to help them scale their companies and #BuildWhatsNext.

Rasool is a serial entrepreneur with experience in the software, healthcare, and CPG industries. He continues to maintain his passion for technology as an active angel investor with a focus on b2b, consumer saas and health tech. Rasool maintains an active role with CEO’s as a board member, mentor and advisor. He currently serves on the boards ofthe Victoria Foundation, VIATEC, and Checkfront Software.

Dr. Fong is a Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary. He was formerly the Head of the Department of Radiology at the University of Calgary and the Calgary Health Region. Dr. Fong is active in funding and nurturing start-up companies. Over the past two decades, he funded over 50 companies in diverse technology sectors,with an emphasis in medical devices. Dr. Fong is the co-founder and board member of Calgary Scientific Inc. and is also on the board of Clarius Mobile Health, Cohesic Inc. and Innovere Medical. In addition to seed investing, Dr. Fong is active in the Calgary community sitting on six charitable boards and foundations.In 2015, Dr. Fong joined the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) at the University of Toronto business school as a mentor. CDL helps young entrepreneurs to shape or pivot their nascent ideas. He is widely credited with launching CDL at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, bringing together seasoned business leaders from Alberta, Canada and the US to grow budding companies. Dr. Fong is on the Strategic Advisory Board of CDL and a Fellow of CDL in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. In 2017, Dr. Fong was named to the Order of Canada for his contribution to medical technology innovation and philanthropy.

Farhan Thawar is the VP Engineering at Shopify. Attended University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management.

Balaji S. Srinivasan is the Co-Founder and Board Member of Coin Center. He was the CTO of Coinbase and cofounder of Counsyl, Earn, Teleport, and Coin Center. He was previously CEO at Earn.com, which was recently sold to Coinbase. Prior to taking the CEO role at Earn.com, Dr. Srinivasan was a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Prior to joininga16z, he was the co-founder and CTO of Founders Fund-backed Counsyl, where he won the Wall Street Journal Innovation Award for Medicine and was named to the MIT TR35. Dr. Srinivasan holds a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University. He also teaches the occasional class at Stanford, including an online MOOC in 2013 which reached 250,000+ students worldwide.

Michele Romanow is an engineer and a serial entrepreneur who started five companies before her 33rd birthday. A “Dragon” on CBC’s hit show Dragons’ Den (Canada’s Shark Tank), Michele is the co-founder of Clearbanc: the alternative funding company that gives fast-growing e-commerce brands non-dilutive marketing capital. She previously co-foundedSnapSaves, which was acquired by the American tech giant, Groupon. Michele was also the co-Founder of Buytopia.ca, which acquired ten competitors including Shop.ca and WagJag and was ranked #3 on the Profit Hot 50 list of fastest-growing companies. She’s ranked in WXN’s “100 Most Powerful in Canada” and listed as the only Canadian on Forbes magazine’s “Millennial on a Mission” list. Michele is a prolific angel investor and the winner of Angel Investor of the Year award. She co-founded the Canadian Entrepreneurship Initiative with Richard Branson to encourage more women entrepreneurs. Michele has worked driving new digital solutions to many of the world’s leading brands, including P&G, Netflix, Starbucks, and Cirque du Soleil. In addition, she’s advised Fortune 100s and governments on innovation, AI, blockchain and the new economy.Michele is a director for Vail Resorts (NYSE: MTN), Freshii (TSX: FRII), League of Innovators, Queen’s Business School and Shad, a transformational program that develops the entrepreneurial potential of exceptional Canadian youth.

Roger Martin is Premier’s Chair in Productivity & Competitiveness and Academic Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management. From 1998 to 2013, he served as Dean. Previously, he spent 13 years as a Director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where heserved as co-head of the firm for two years.

Michael Hyatt is the Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of BlueCat Networks and a recipient of the Top 40 Under 40™ Award. BlueCat is a four-time winner of “Deloitte’s Fast 50” and has received Gartner’s highest “Strong Positive” rating. Michael also co-founded Dyadem, a highly successful software company that was acquired by IHS (NYSE: IHS).Michael is a weekly business commentator on CBC Newsworld and has been featured on the cover of Canadian Business Magazine. He is also a finalist in Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award and an active participant and lender for three special charities: Kiva.org, OneProsper and Future Possibilities for Kids.

Jean François Grenon brings more than 25 years of expertise in the telecom and wireless space. Prior to forming Vectrad Networks and then NTF-Capital in 2003, Jean-François was Chairman and CEO of Innova Corporation, a company he led folllowing its listing on the NASDAQ.Jean-François graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal andholds a Harvard Business School MBA.He sits on the board of several innovation driven corporations including Inter-Mobile S.A.S, a NexTFund portfolio company.

Boris Wertz is the Founder & General Partner of Version One Ventures. He previously worked at Ether Capital as a Lead Independent director. Boris Wertz attended the WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management.

Jon Oringer is the founder and chairman of Shutterstock.

Lance Tracey - Founding Partner @ Full Stack

Edward Lando is the Founder of Pareto Holdings. He previously worked at Horizons School of Technology as a Co-Founder. Edward Lando attended the Wharton School.

Jon Oringer is the founder and chairman of Shutterstock.

Satish Kanwar is a VP of Product at Shopify, where he oversees strategic product initiatives for over 1 million merchants globally. Satish led Shopify’s formative expansion from online stores to multi-channel commerce, accelerating merchants' sales across eCommerce, brick-and-mortar, and new sales channels. Satish previously co-founded userexperience studio Jet Cooper, which was acquired by Shopify in order to establish its product development footprint in Toronto. Satish is an active angel investor, public speaker, and advisor.He attended the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Dennis Bennie is a pioneer, entrepreneur and innovator in the Canadian technology industry. Over the past 20 years, Bennie's entrepreneurial management has powered Mission Electronics, Ingram Canada and Delrina. In 1997, he founded the XDL Venture Capital Fund, focusing on information technology opportunities. The $25 million fund hasyielded exceptional returns to date. One of its most noteworthy investments was a 1997 start-up, Delano Technology Corporation (NASD:DTEC). XDL Intervest, a $150 million fund was started in 1999 and is now fully invested. Bennie currently manages an experienced team investing in private equity opportunities as the XDL Capital Group. From 1988 to 1996, Mr. Bennie was CEO of Delrina Corporation, an independent software developer and publisher, which forged the new software categories of electronic forms and PC fax communications. Under Mr. Bennie's leadership, Delrina pioneered the development of PC fax software called WinFax and became a world leader in the communication software market with annual sales revenue exceeding $130 million. Listed on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, Delrina cultivated a reputation for leadership, growth and profitability, and completed several public offerings. In November 1995, the company was successfully sold to Symantec Corporation for share consideration valued at $560 million. Mr. Bennie entered the world of technology in 1979, when he co-founded Mission Electronics. He drove the expansion of this leading British audio equipment manufacturer to become a dominant force in the high-end stereo market. In 1982 he sold his interest in Mission Electronics and founded Aviva Software, an independent, mass-market software developer. Under his direction, the company expanded its scope to include software distribution and merged with Ingram Micro Inc. in 1986 to become Canada's largest software distributor. Residing in Toronto, Canada, with his wife Laura and three daughters, Dennis is an avid golfer and runner. A member of the World President's Organization, he also regularly serves on various charitable boards including the Toronto Hospital Board.

Harley Finkelstein is the Co-Founder of Firebelly Tea and the President of Shopify. He previously worked at C100 as a Board Member. Harley Finkelstein attended the University of Ottawa and Concordia University.

Jason Warner is the Co-founder, CEO of poolside. He previously worked at Redpoint Ventures as a Managing Director. Jason Warner attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Founder & CEO. Entrepreneur, passionate about transforming investment management.

Roham is founder and CEO of Axiom Zen, an award-winning venture studio that specializes in emerging technology. Axiom Zen’s first public blockchain project, CryptoKitties, is the world’s most successful blockchain game and the first decentralized application to effectively engage a consumer audience. CryptoKitties has been covered by Fortune,Bloomberg, and the BBC, accounting for roughly a quarter of the Ethereum network’s traffic within a week of launch and introducing hundreds of thousands of new users to blockchain technology. Axiom Zen was named first among Canada’s Most Innovative Companies by Canadian Business. Their products have touched 200+ million consumers and are used by the world’s leading companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, and NASA, as well as by eminent academic institutions and government organizations. They pride themselves in diversity of talent: a team of ~80+ creatives includes published authors, over a dozen former founders, diversity from 20+ national origins, and decades of collective experience at startups and Fortune 500s alike. Axiom Zen has been working with Bitcoin and various forms of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies since 2014. Axiom Zen is also the team behind ZenHub, the world’s leading collaboration solution for technical teams using GitHub; and the developer of Timeline, named Apple’s Best App of January, Editor’s Choice in 10 countries, and Best New App in 88 countries. Axiom Zen is the creator of Toby, recognized as Top Chrome Extension of the year by both Google and Product Hunt, and the parent company of Hammer & Tusk, a leader in the world of immersive experiences (AR/VR). Axiom Zen's work has been featured in TIME Magazine, The New York Times, Vice, and Fast Company. History Prior to founding Axiom Zen, Roham served with the Rising Tide Fund bas

Tim Draper is the Founding Partner of Draper Associates. He attended Harvard Business School.

Yoshua Bengio (PhD in CS, McGill University, 1991), post-docs at M.I.T. (Michael Jordan) and AT&T Bell Labs (Yann LeCun), CS professor at Université de Montréal, Canada Research Chair in Statistical Learning Algorithms, NSERC Chair, CIFAR Fellow, member of NIPS foundation board and former program/general chair, co-created ICLR conference,authored two books and over 300 publications, the most cited being in the areas of deep learning, recurrent networks, probabilistic learning,natural language and manifold learning. He is among the most cited Canadian computer scientists and is or has been associate editor of the top journals in machine learning and neural networks.

Andrew Wilkinson is the Co-Founder of Tiny. He attended Ryerson University.

Bryan Rosenblatt (born July 4, 1989 in New York, New York, United States) is an American Venture Capitalist and entrepreneur. He is a Partner at Craft Ventures, a venture firm with over $2 billion AUM started by David Sacks. He is also a founder of Riverside Ventures, which he started in 2017, and a former executive at Reddit and Twitter. Hepreviously worked at Reddit as the Head of Sales. Bryan Rosenblatt attended the University of Connecticut School of Business and Charles University.

Ajay Agrawal is the Co-Founder of Sanctuary Cognitive Systems Corporation. He previously worked at Queen's School of Business as a Assistant Professor. Ajay Agrawal attended the University of British Columbia.

Arjun Sethi is the Co-CEO of Kraken Digital Asset Exchange. He attended the University of Maryland.

Kevin Patrick Mahaffey is the Founder of Lookout and SNR. He is also the Executive Chairman of Stork Club and an Investor.

Marc Altshuller is the President and CEO at Varicent. He attended Schulich School of Business - York University.

Alex is a tech entrepreneur, an active angel investor and community builder who is currently the General Partner at N49P, the Canadian Partner of AngelList and the Managing Director of TechToronto. Previously Alex, co-founded, grew, and sold HomeSav. Before HomeSav, Alex worked at Lehman Brothers, McKinsey and several venture-backed start-ups inNYC, the Valley, and London, including Simply Business which recently sold for $400m+ USD.

Paul Geyer, a successful Medtech Entrepreneur and experienced Board member. Over the past 20 years Paul founded and led two companies through their growth phase, in one case to a successful private exit and in the other case through growth as a public company with numerous acquisitions. Both companies have grown to be anchor medical devicecompanies in the Vancouver area, employing more than 350 people.In 1991 he founded Mitroflow International Inc., a tissue heart valve company. Paul grew the company from 9 employees to more than 125 employees in 1999. In 1999 Paul sold Mitroflow to Sulzer Medica, for more than $50 mil. Paul's leadership resulted in Mitroflow growing to more than 200 employees, making it one of the largest medical devices companies in the Vancouver area. In 2001 Paul started Medical Ventures, a new specialty vascular device company where he is currently Chairman of the Board. From its inception to June 2008, Geyer held the position of CEO at Medical Ventures (now Neovasc) and was responsible for raising over $40 million in Equity financing and growing the company’s product portfolio through internal development and the acquisition of 3 other companies. In 2008 Paul began focusing on sharing is expertise to assist other Entrepreneurs to build successful businesses, through his involvement as a mentor or Board member. He also focused on building the local community through his involvement as a Board member of BC technology industry association, along with a number of non-profit community based organizations. Paul is actively engaged as a Philanthropist, as Chairman of the Board of Social Venture Partners Vancouver, involved with Science World, Entrepreneurship at UBC, Project Somos Children’s Village and other organizations.Paul is currently the CEO of LightIntegra Technology Inc., a spin-off from Canadian Blood Services which has developed the ThromboLux technology, used to determine platelet quality for blood transfusions.

Ajay Agrawal is the Co-Founder of Sanctuary Cognitive Systems Corporation. He previously worked at Queen's School of Business as a Assistant Professor. Ajay Agrawal attended the University of British Columbia.

Joseph Fung is the CEO and Co-founder of Uvaro.

Since 1999, Mark MacLeod has been helping fund, grow and exit venture-backed startups as either a CFO, advisor or VC. Mark has been involved with many high profile companies including FreshBooks, Shopify, Frank & Oak and many, many others.Mark MacLeod is the founder of SurePath Capital Partners, the premier strategic financial advisor totoday's emerging technology leaders.

Meltem Demirors is Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares, an investment firm that manages $750M in assets, and is a trusted partner to investors and entrepreneurs navigating the digital asset ecosystem. Meltem oversees the firm’s managed strategies group and its New York office, and leads corporate development as a board director. Previously, shewas part of the founding team of Digital Currency Group. She teaches at MIT and Oxford, and serves on the WEF Blockchain Council. Meltem leads CoinShares' venture strategy and is an active angel investor, having invested in over 150 companies in the digital currency ecosystem since 2015.

Kirk Simpson is the CEO of Confirm. He is a passionate team builder, innovator, and entrepreneur with more than two decades of experience leading disruptive technology ventures.Before his current role at Confirm, Kirk co-founded Wave Financial Inc., a company dedicated to providing financial services and software solutions to small businesses.Under his leadership as CEO, Wave expanded significantly, achieving $100M in annual revenue and growing its team to 370 employees. This growth culminated in Wave’s acquisition by H&R Block for $537M in June 2019.In the same year, Kirk’s exceptional leadership was recognized when he was named Canada’s Most Admired CEO in the growth category by Waterstone Human Capital.Beyond his role at Confirm, Kirk actively contributes to the North American startup ecosystem as an angel investor and advisor.

Bootstrapped Debt Financing

Mark Pincus is the founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Zynga. He has served as our Chairman from April 2007 to March 2016 and the company's Executive Chairman since March 2016. He previously served as Chief Executive Officer from April 2007 to July 2013 and from April 2015 to March 2016, and as Chief Product Officer from April2007 to April 2014. In 2014, he founded superlabs, a San Francisco-based product lab focused on developing products that connect and empower people, which was acquired by Zynga in 2015. Pincus also founded Zynga.org in 2009, a non-profit organization dedicated to using social games for social good.From 2003 to 2007, Pincus served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Tribe.net, a company he launched and one of the first social networks in the industry. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Chairman of Support.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPRT), a help desk automation software company he founded, and he served as Chief Executive Officer and President from December 1997 to July 1999. From 1996 to 1997, he served as Chief Executive Officer of FreeLoader, Inc., a web-based news company he founded.Pincus also made founding investments in Napster, Twitter, and Facebook.Pincus graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is an angel investor in multiple Silicon Valley startups and regularly gives lectures to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Jordan Banks is the Co-Founder at Thunder Road Capital. Jordan Banks attended York University - Osgoode Hall Law School.

Lance Priebe

Nadav Ben-Chanoch - Partner @ Pareto Holdings

Patrick Hankinson is a Partner at Concrete Ventures. He attended Dalhousie University.