Top 35 Email Startup Investors in Canada in May 2025

Our goal is to build the region's entrepreneurial community, to make the region the best place to start a business and to facilitate access to investment opportunities for qualified investors.

Scott is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is best known as a co-founder of IronPort and an early advisor and board member at PayPal.Scott Banister started his career as a pioneer in the email business. He was Founder and VP of Technology at ListBot, the largest ASP for business email list hosting. ListBot was acquired byMicrosoft. After ListBot, Scott spent his time working with other start-ups as a board member and investor. These start-ups include eVoice, creator of the first email-enabled home voicemail service, which was acquired by AOL in 2001. He served as VP of Ideas at idealab!, where he contributed numerous innovations, including the unique bid-for-placement search engine model that powers Overture. In December 2000, with Scott Weiss, Banister co-founded IronPort, an email appliance provider that was acquired in 2007 by Cisco for US$830 million.Scott Banister is co-founder and Chairman of Other private equity investments include Zappos.com, LiveOps, Facebook, Hi5.com, Tagged.com, iLike, and Causes.com.Banister attended University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from which he dropped out in 1996 to move to Silicon Valley. He currently lives in Half Moon Bay, California with his wife Cyan.

Terry Matthews is founder and Chairman of Wesley Clover. Since 1972, Terry has founded or funded more than 100 companies, including Mitel and Newbridge Networks. Today, Wesley Clover has interests around the world in next-generation companies focused on technologies and applications across many industries.

Baseline addresses the gap between individual investors and institutional venture capitalists.Since its inception, Baseline has invested in more than 100 companies and helped more than 50 companies exit profitably for founders and investors alike. We are proud to be a seed investor in the following companies (which were acquired by theseenterprises):PagerDuty (IPO) SFIX (IPO) Twitter (IPO) Instagram (Facebook) Freckle (Renaissance) Spacious (WeWork) Bloc.io (Thinkful) PacketZoom (Roblox) Apiary (Oracle) Datalot (Lightyear Capital) Pocket (Mozilla) TaskRabbit (IKEA) Gild (Citadel) Launchkit (Google) Pronoun (Macmillan) Librato (SolarWinds) Reverb (Wordnick) (News Distribution Network) TrialPay (Visa) TastemakerX (Rdio) ExactTarget (SalesForce) StackMob (Paypal) GoInstance (SalesForce) CoTweet (ExactTarget) Heroku (SalesForce) IndexTank (LinkedIn) Versly (Cisco) BookFresh (Sugar Media) DocVerse (Google) Stax (CloudBees) Town.me (fka MixerLabs (GeoAPI)) (Twitter) Parakey (Parakey) Shape Security Inc (F5 Networks) Machine Zone (AppLovin) n'Way (Animoca Brands) PopSugar (Group Nine) Weebly (Square) MangoHealth (TrialCard) Thinkful (Chegg) mLab (MongoDB) Smyte (Twitter) Appuri (Docusign) Iron.io (Xenon Ventures) Soma (Full Circle) Careport (Allscripts) Kanjoya (Ultimate Software) Piqora (Olapic) Blekko (IBM) Path (Daum Kakao) TellApart (Twitter) Citrus Lane Inc. (Care.com) Crashlytics (Twitter) Metaresolver (Millenial Media) Xobni (Yahoo) OMBPop (Zynga) Flowtown (Demandforce) Hunch (eBay) Instructables (Autodesk) Aardvark (Google) Cake Financial (E*Trade) ScanScout (Tremor Media) Yardbarker (Fox Sports) Sendori (IAC) Rupture (Electronic Arts) Parakey (Parakey)

The company writes $200K checks and back partners across multiple investments. Carried interest is paid to partners for their personal capital and time.The company uses AngelList Syndicates to make working together and closing investments quick and easy

Welcome to Calian, where innovation and expertise converge to deliver Advanced Technologies, Health, Learning, and IT & Cyber Solutions.

Cheryl Cheng joined BRV in 2008. She focuses on early stage consumer and mobile big data opportunities. Cheryl also runs BRV’s alumni entrepreneur and Fortune 500 programs to bring experience and resources to the current portfolio. Prior to BlueRun, Cheryl worked at Clorox and The Sharper Image launching new products and driving retail marketingwith partners across Target, Walmart and grocery.Cheryl has a B.A. from Stanford University and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management where she was a Forte Scholar. She is a mentor at Stanford’s Bio-Design for Mobile Health course, a collaboration between Stanford’s School of Medicine and School of Engineering.

SV Angel is a service organization, investing in founders who share these values. They support entrepreneurs in building lasting companies by assisting at key inflection points and leveraging networks to help them propel their businesses forward.

Initialized Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the seed. Initialized has 6 investing partners and over $3.2B under management over five core funds since its founding in 2012. The firm's startups have created in aggregate over $200B in market value so far.

BlueRun Ventures is a venture capital firm with offices in the United States, Shanghai, Beijing, and Korea. BlueRun invests in information technology, mobile, and consumer technologies, with an emphasis on mobile opportunities. BRV has invested in over 160 companies, with select exits from PayPal (acquired by eBay), Waze (acquired by Google),Topsy (acquired by Apple), Coupa (NASDAQ: COUP), and more. In 2005, BlueRun changed its name from Nokia Venture Partners. While branded as Nokia Venture Partners, the firm helped to build emerging market leaders such as Airgo, Bitfone, Cornice, PayPal, Wavemarket, and WiderThan.

Kevin Hale was a partner at Y Combinator. He worked with their portfolio companies on user experience design, product development and customer support. In 2006, he co-founded Wufoo, which was one of the earliest Y Combinator funded startups. The online form builder was later acquired by SurveyMonkey. He attended

Insight Partners is a global software investor partnering with high-growth technology, software, and Internet startup and ScaleUp companies.

Digital Future is a leading Ukraine-born VC firm. We provide late seed and early stage funding to revenue-enabled companies with initial traction, scalable business model, indefatigable team and global ambition. Our portfolio includes companies from Ukraine, Europe, Israel, and United States.

BDC Venture Capital is a major venture capital investor in Canada, active at every stage of the company's development cycle, from seed through expansion, with a focus on technology-based businesses that have high growth potential and that are positioned to become dominant players in their markets. The company helps create and develop strongCanadian businesses through financing, consulting services and securitization, with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises.BDC Venture Capital has been involved in venture capital since 1975 and has to date invested in more than 400 companies involved in the areas of Life Sciences, Telecommunications, Information Technology and Advanced Technologies.

Guido Giordano - Director - Venture Programs @ Invest Ottawa

Alexis Ohanian is the President and Founder of 776 Foundation. He previously worked at reddit as an Executive Chair and Board Member. Alexis Ohanian attended the University of Virginia.

A Seattle native, Steve Anderson is a seed investor. Steve founded Baseline Ventures, a privately held early stage seed investor in 2006.Bringing his diverse experience from eBay, Microsoft, Kleiner Perkins, Starbucks and Digital Equipment Corporation, Steve founded Baseline to in order to help entrepreneurs build and grow their ideas intocompanies. Steve was also named to the Forbes Midas list three years running (peaking at #5) for earning top returns for entrepreneurs and investors. Since its inception, Baseline has invested in more than 90 companies and helped more than 30 companies exit profitably for founders and investors alike. Baseline is proud to be a seed investor associated with the following highly promising companies: Instagram (founding investor) and Parakey (both acquired by Facebook)Heroku, ExactTarget, GoInstant and CoTweet (all acquired by Salesforce.com)Crashlytics and GeoAPI (both acquired by Twitter)IndexTank (acquired by LinkedIn)Librato (acquired by SolarWinds)Rupture (acquired by EA)Sendori (acquired by Ask.com)Versely (acquired by Cisco)Aardvark and DocVerse (both acquired by Google)Yardbarker (acquired by Fox Sports)BookFresh (acquired by Sugar Media)Cake Financial (acquired by E*Trade)ScanScout (acquired by Tremor Media)StaxNetworks (acquired by Cloudbees)Hunch (acquired by eBay)Instructables (acquired by AutoDesk)Flowtown (acquired by DemandForce)OMGPop (acquired by Zynga)Xobni (acquired by Yahoo!)Metaresolver (acquired by Millenial Media)

WUTIF Capital (VCC) Inc. is a novel angel fund that co-invests with angel investors in promising new technology ventures in British Columbia. WUTIF was formed in mid-2003 and made its first investments in late 2004.

Vincent Thibault Co-Founder at QScale.

Paul Buchheit co-founded social network aggregator FriendFeed, along with three other former Google employees. He is also an investor in FriendFeed and participated in a $5 million Series A round in February 2008.He was the 23rd employee at Google, where he created Gmail and implemented many of its innovative features. He developed the originalprototype of Google AdSense, and was responsible for Google's famous "Don't be evil" motto in a meeting.

Garry Tan is the incoming President and CEO of Y Combinator. He previously worked at Posterous.com as a Co-Founder. Garry Tan attended Stanford University.

Andrew Chen is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, focusing on consumer technology. Previously, he led the the Rider Growth teams at Uber.For the past decade, he’s written about mobile, metrics, and growth at http://andrewchen.co. He is an advisor/investor for tech startups including AngelList, Barkbox, Boba Guys, Dropbox,Front, Gusto, Kiva, Product Hunt, Tinder, Workato and others.Previously, he was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based firm with $2B under management.He holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Washington.

Fonds de solidarité FTQ is a private equity and venture capital firm specializing in investments in start-ups, early venture, mergers, business acquisitions, management buyouts, market development project or a buyout, financing for new programs, organic growth and cash flow, growth and expansion financings, development capital, business succession,financial restructuring, business transition financing, family and non-family buyout, consolidations, turnaround, and leveraged management buyouts. It also invests in new markets, product and business line developments, market diversification, interim financings, new product marketing, additional working capital, purchase of tangible and intangible assets, equipment modernization, equipment purchases or upgrades, and integrator projects. The firm has regional funds that do not invest in retail, real estate, farming, biotechnology, and financial services. Fonds de solidarité FTQ invests in small and medium-sized businesses. It typically invests in export projects, forest products, productivity improvement, natural resources, aerospace, agri-food, wood, pulp and paper, chemicals, construction and construction materials, printing, transportation equipment and automobiles, transportation services, furniture and fixtures, combinatorial chemistry and other lead generating technologies, mining and exploration, social economy, textiles, plastics, life sciences, business services, telecommunications, distribution and consumer goods, environment, equipment and machinery, financial services, information and communication technology, metal products, recreational tourism, and culture sectors. Within the culture sector, Fonds de solidarité FTQ seeks to invest in pre-production and creative projects, production projects, infrastructures and services, post-production projects, distribution, and broadcasting and multiplatform broadcasting. Within the environment sector, it invests in waste management and energy conversion for residual waste; air treatment and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions; processes to reduce industrial energy and water consumption; water treatment; and soil rehabilitation and decontamination (metals and organic compounds). Within the life sciences sector, Fonds de solidarité FTQ focuses on services for the biopharmaceutical industry; nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals; diagnostics and medical supplies and equipment; biopharmaceuticals and generic drugs; biotechnology, and animal health. Within the tourism sector, it focuses on urban tourism, nature tourism, resort type tourism, and local tourism for Quebecers, and in the textiles sector it invests in companies engaged in development and production of specialty textiles as well as development of industrial applications for the construction, transportation, health and safety, and work apparel industries. Fonds de solidarité FTQ prefers to invest in Quebec and in companies impacting the Québec economy. It focuses on investing in the following regions- Abitibi –Témiscamingue, Bas Saint Laurent, Chaudière-Appalaches, Côte-Nord, Estrie, Gaspésie Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Lanaudière, Laurentides, Laval, Mauricie - Centre-du-Québec, Montérégie, Nord-du-Québec, Outaouais, and Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean. Fonds de solidarité FTQ seeks to invest in projects of $3 million or more and also provides loans of up to $ 2 million. It invests in companies in business succession sector having minimum capitalization of $500,000 and EBITDA of over $35.5 million in case of majority interest; equipment and machinery sector with average investment in excess of $3 million; environment sector with funding needs of more than $500000; financial services sector having net assets between $20 million and $50 million in equity; metal products sector having annual sales of over $5 million and financing needs of at least $2 million; and printing sector having investment needs of over $1 million. In the information technology sector, Fonds de solidarité FTQ seeks to invest $2 million as initial investments while total investments can be more than $10 million. It invests in the form of equity financing (common or preferred shares) and unsecured debt requiring no collateral (debenture). Fonds de solidarité FTQ can take both a minority interest including an equity stake of up to 49 percent as well a majority interest in its portfolio companies in case of business succession financing. It seeks a minority stake for the portfolio companies in the equipment and machinery sector. It typically holds its investments for a period of five to ten years in case of equity financing and for more than ten years in case of business succession financing. Fonds de solidarité FTQ began operation on June 23, 1983. It has its headquarters in Montreal in Canada with additional offices in the same city and Quebec in the same country.

WannaBiz is a startup incubator and angel seed fund focused on seed stage global projects in the ad and SaaS-based technology sectors. It also invests in web and mobile development projects.The company’s investment criteria include the market size, business model, early traction, and team. Its goal is to build and develop global projects in linewith the competitive market.WannaBiz was founded in 2012 and is based in Odessa, Ukraine.

Jayson Dacosta

Boreal Ventures invest in some of the deep tech companies from Centech and from the rest of the Quebec ecosystem.

Philip Barclay is a co-founder and CEO at YourExtraLife.com, a real-life gaming platform. He specializes in tech startup management, branding, copywriting, content marketing, gamification mechanics implementation, UX and UI design for iPhone, team management, and more.

Yanis Mellata is the Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Kosy.

Gradient is a seed fund that focuses on supporting founders in the artificial intelligence sector. The firm collaborates closely with innovators to integrate AI into various business processes and drive technological advancements. Gradient aims to foster disruptive ideas that can redefine industries and enhance operational capabilities.

We are a leading early-stage investment platform. We are at the center of a global ecosystem that attracts and fuels the technical founders and product teams building the next wave of global businesses.

Since its creation in 1996, Fondaction has been based on the belief that it is not only possible to do things differently in the financial and business world, it is a necessity.Fondaction helps Québecers prepare for retirement by offering affordable retirement savings to everyone. The savings collected are invested in companies across Québec.This way, Fondaction helps create and maintain quality jobs, contributing to a stronger, more equitable and greener economy.Created in 1996, Fondaction is a labour-sponsored fund with assets in excess of one billion dollars collected as retirement savings from more than 131,000 shareholders. Fondaction's direct investments and those made through investment funds support the development of more than 1 050 SMEs in different lines of business, in large part involved in various components of the social economy.Fondaction has always been resolutely committed to socially responsible finance, from the moment it was created. The principles of sustainable development are integrated in everything it does. Whether investing in businesses directly or in capital markets, Fondaction always applies the principles of responsible investment to the money entrusted by its savers.Fondaction was one of the first institutions in Québec to make accountability reports an obligation in an effort to improve its practices and contribute to moving sustainable development forward in Québec. It produced its first report on sustainable development in 2006 in accordance with the international standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the highest standards of precision and transparency in economic, social and environmental accountability.In 2010 and 2012, Fondaction remained at the forefront with its 3rd and 4th sustainable development reports, having them reviewed by an independent firm and achieving an application level of A+ from the GRI. Fondaction is the only financial institution in Québec to achieve this level.In 2014, Fondaction tabled its 5th sustainable development report, produced in accordance with the latest GRI guidelines, the G4. Fondaction also opted for Comprehensive compliance, becoming the 1st financial institution in North America and the 9th in the world to voluntarily adhere to these requirements.

Prolific Venture Capital is an NYC-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology companies led by disruptive entrepreneurs. Prolific Venture Capital invests in all areas of technology including the e-Commerce, mobile, and consumer internet sectors.

Canada's leading nationwide pre-seed venture fund.

Marc Bell Ventures is a venture capital firm that offers early-stage and private equity investment services to firms in the finance, hospitality, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 2000 by Marc Bell and is based in Florida.

Export Development Canada (EDC) is a Crown corporation dedicated to assisting Canadian businesses of all sizes in achieving global success. It provides them with the tools they need to grow their business with confidence, including trade knowledge, financial solutions, equity, insurance, and connections.