Top 50 Hardware Angel Investors in Canada in November 2024

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Christian Sullivan is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Republic Labs and an Advisor and Investor at Republic.Christian has invested in over 200 companies including the seed rounds of Cruise, Relativity Space, Yandex, Yubico, Ozon, and was an early check into investment funds Initialized Capital and Polychain. Christian started his careerin sales and trading in Moscow, Russia in the early 90s where he was a partner at United Financial Group which was later sold to Deutsche Bank in 2007.

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.

Sebastien Marineau is the VP Software at Apple. He attended University of Ottawa.

Dean Bakes is the Principal at M3 Ventures and Investor at Foxtrot, Jaanuu, and Rhone. He is also an Advisory Committee of The Vinetta Project. He was the Creative Director at Michael Andrews Bespoke and the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Charles Dean before that.He brings to M3 Ventures a unique combination of investment acumen,relationship building, and unbridled ambition. Dean has developed a firm knowledge and understanding of branded consumer companies as well as a unique perspective as the founder of his own apparel startup

Greg Rudin

Tom Williams

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.

Dylan Taylor is a global business leader, commercial astronaut, thought leader and philanthropist. Currently, Dylan serves as Chairman & CEO of Voyager Space, a multi-national space exploration firm focused on building the next generation of space infrastructure for NASA and other global space agencies.Dylan has been recognized by HarvardUniversity, SpaceNews, the BBC, the Financial Times, Pitchbook, CNBC, CNN and others as having played a seminal role in the growth of the private space industry. As an early-stage investor in more than 50 emerging space ventures, including Axiom, Kepler, York, Astrobotic, LeoLabs, Relativity, and Planet, Dylan is widely considered the most active private space investor in the world.Dylan’s technical background, global business experience and unbridled passion for space make him a unique figure within his industry. As a thought leader and futurist, he has written many popular pieces on the future of the space industry for Forbes, FastCompany, Newsweek, SpaceNews, The Space Review, and Space.com. As a speaker, Dylan has keynoted many of the major space conferences around the world and has appeared regularly on Bloomberg, Fox Business, and CNBC.Dylan has extensive global business experience as both a board director and CEO in several industries, including advanced electronics, finance and real estate. He previously served as a Director for UMB Bank, a Fortune 500 company based in Kansas City and as a mutual fund director for the Jackson Funds where he oversaw assets of $8B across 130 distinct funds. He has also served in the roles of CEO, President and Board Director for multinational companies like Prudential PLC, Honeywell, Colliers and Jones Lang LaSalle. Dylan was recognized as a Fortune 1000 CEO with P&L responsibility in excess of $3B and operations encompassing 15,000 employees in over 60 countries. In addition, Dylan has participated in 4 IPOs over the course of his career. Dylan is a leading advocate of space manufacturing and the utilization of in-space resources to further space exploration and settlement. In 2017, he became the first private citizen to manufacture an item in space when the gravity meter he co-designed and commissioned was 3D printed on the International Space Station. The historic item is now housed in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.Dylan is an explorer of note. On December 11th, 2021 Dylan became just the 606th human to go to space as part of the crew of Blue Origin’s NewShepard Mission 19. Accordingly, Dylan earned his commercial astronaut wings with the FAA and his universal astronaut wings from the Association of Space Explorers.He is also one of only a handful of humans to have descended to the deepest part of the world’s oceans, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench as part of the Limiting Factor Expedition in July of 2022. In that mission, Dylan descended with pilot Victor Vescovo to a depth in excess of 10,800 meters (35,500 feet) into an area of the Mariana Trench that had never been visited by humans. Dylan is the youngest human to have been to the deepest part of the world’s oceans and crossed the Karman line into Space. Dylan has been a member of the Explorers Club since 2014.Dylan maintains an extensive philanthropic impact on the space industry. In 2017, Dylan founded the nonprofit and social movement, Space for Humanity, which seeks to democratize space exploration and develop solutions to global issues through the scope of human awareness to help solve the world’s most intractable problems. Space for Humanity has successfully sent two citizen astronauts to space via Blue Origin including both the first Mexican-born woman (Katya Echazareta), and first African-born woman (Sara Sabry). Building upon his passion and support for the space industry, Dylan serves as a strategic advisor for both the Archmission and the Human Spaceflight Program and is a co-founding patron of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, which promotes the growth of commercial space activity. Additionally, he is also a leading benefactor to the Brooke Owens Fellowship, Patti Grace Smith Fellowship and Mission: Astro Access.Dylan is the founder and Chairman of Multiverse Media, an integrated global media company focused on science and technology, with an emphasis on space. Multiverse is the parent company of the popular space philosophy website 2211.world as well as the Ad Astra Dinners, a Jeffersonian-style dinner series featuring some of the world’s leading influencers discussing the future of humanity in space. Another subsidiary of Multiverse Media, Multiverse Publishing, publishes books by leading authors including Frank White, Isaac Asimov and Gerard K. O’Neill. Multiverse is also the executive producer of the documentary film, The High Frontier and the forthcoming film, Fortitude. For his influence as a global leader and his commitment to creating a positive impact on the world, Dylan has been honored with numerous personal and professional accolades in recent years. The World Economic Forum recognized Dylan as a Young Global Leader in 2011 and a full member of the World Economic Forum in 2014. That same year he was named a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. In 2020, Dylan was recognized by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation with their top honor for business and finance, following in the footsteps of 2019’s inaugural winner, the late Paul Allen and subsequent winners Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.Dylan Taylor earned an MBA in Finance and Strategy from the Booth School of Business at University of Chicago and holds a BS in Engineering from the honors college at the University of Arizona, where he graduated Tau Beta Pi and in 2018 was named Alumnus of the year. He is also a graduate of the Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century program at Harvard University.Dylan and his family reside in Denver, Colorado where he is active locally with Colorado Concern and the Colorado Spaceport. In his spare time, Dylan enjoys hiking, competing in triathlons and spending time outdoors. As a weekend warrior athlete, Dylan has more than 25 top ten finishes and 25 age group wins to his credit, and he regularly interviews world class athletes whom have shown extraordinary resilience as the host of the Legendary Podcast. He is married to legal expert, consultant and author Gabrielle V. Taylor with whom he has two teenage daughters.

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.

Mike McCauley was co-founder of BufferBox (acquired by Google), a network of automated package delivery lockers. One year after its founding, BufferBox was awarded the 2012 Velocity Venture Fund, and went through the Y Combinator program in Silicon Valley. Mike is now Product Manager of early stage Google X projects and is based in Silicon Valley.Most recently he co-founded a start-up fund to help early-stage tech firms in the Waterloo Region in 2014. Mike completed a BASc, Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2011 and is passionate about sharing his expertise as a founder with others.

Hanif is a serial entrepreneur who has raised $150M USD across the 4 companies he has founded and invested in over a dozen startups.

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

Sergio has a diversified investment portfolio of companies across the United States and Canada ranging from B2B Cloud & SaaS startups (leveraging Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Analytics and Security) to B2C Consumer startups (leveraging Mobile Apps, IoT/Wearables and eCommerce). Sergio has +15 years of experience as a multiple timestech entrepreneur with startups in Aerospace, eCommerce, Manufacturing, AgTech and Financial Technologies. Over the last 8 years, he has been deeply involved in the international entrepreneurial scene (incubators and accelerators) through his involvement in Founder Institute, Techstars Startup Programs, McGill X-1, Startup Chile, Startup Peru, Startup Bootcamp FinTech London, MsB Tunisia, Flat6Labs Tunisia, Kuwait National Fund, World Bank 'Tech Entrepreneurship Program for Innovation in the Caribbean', Krypto Labs in the Middle East and Creative Destruction Lab in Artificial Intelligence. He has been pioneering the Canadian investment scene by launching one of Canada's very first super angel funds: BCFventures.vc

Scott Roberts is the VP & Head of Business Development at LinkedIn.

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.

Jeff Bonforte is the Chief Executive Officer at Grindr. He attended University of California, Los Angeles during 1990 - 1993.

Peter M. Kern has been a director of Expedia since completion of the IAC/Expedia Spin-Off.Peter Kern is a Managing Partner of InterMedia Partners, LP, a private equity firm.Prior to joining InterMedia, Mr. Kern was Senior Managing Director and Principal of Alpine Capital LLC.Prior to Alpine Capital, Mr. Kern founded Gemini Associates in1996 and served as President from its inception through its merger with Alpine Capital in 2001.Prior to founding Gemini Associates,Peter Kern was at the Home Shopping Network and Whittle Communications.Since April 2013,Peter Kern has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hemisphere Media Group, Inc., a publicly-traded Spanish-language media company.Mr. Kern also serves on the boards of a number of private companies, including Televicentro of Puerto Rico, LLC, Luxury Retreats International Holdings, Inc. and Cine Latino, Inc.Mr. Kern holds a B.S. degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ellen Levy is the Managing Director of Silicon Valley Connect.

Paul Rochester is the Chief Executive Officer of Slope45. He attended Queen's University.

Alex Karakozoff

Lee Lau is a Partner and Co-Founder of Alignvest Management Corporation. Mr. Lau co-founded ATI Technologies in 1985 and built the company into one of the world’s largest supplier of graphic chips and add-in boards to the personal computer industry. In addition to managing the company, Mr. Lau was ATI’s largest shareholder, first employee andresponsible for innovation and development of all products. Mr. Lau helped build ATI into a TSX and NASDAQ listed global market leader, with annual sales in excess of $2.2 billion and over 3,000 employees. ATI was sold in 2006 to Advanced Micro Devices for cash and stock consideration of $5.3 billion. Since then, Mr. Lau has managed his family office investing in a variety of alternative asset products. Prior to founding ATI, Mr. Lau held various design engineering positions with Mitel, Motorola and Plessey.Mr. Lau holds a Masters in Engineering and a BASc from the University of Toronto.

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.

Matt lives to pursue challenging technical problems and push the envelope of computing. He served as CTO of DotSpots, and previously worked on building scalable and fast solutions for energy companies, both as desktop and web applications. Along with Ryan Perry, he worked with StumbleUpon to build a newest generation of IE Toolbar prior totheir acquisition by EBay.Matt has a BSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Calgary

William Tunstall-Pedoe FREng is a British entrepreneur focused on world-changing products powered with Artificial Intelligence and other deep technology. He is based in Cambridge and London UK. He founded the British company Evi (formerly True Knowledge), the AI platform acquired by Amazon and where William, the team and the technology developed byEvi was used to create Alexa. He left in 2016. William is an active angel investor with investments in more than 100 startups. He is a fellow of the Creative Destruction Lab and a full member of Cambridge Angels.

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.

Lance Priebe

Bryan Freeman - Co-Founder @ HitGrab

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.

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.

Stephen Curry currently works as the Founder and Partner at Unanimous Media. He previously worked at Slyce.io as co-founder. Stephen Curry attended Davidson College in 2006.

Kevin Sandhu is the Co-Founder and CEO at Otter (www.otter.ca).

Eliot Durbin is the General Partner of Boldstart Ventures. He is a former co-founder and Managing Partner at Penny Black. He attended Georgetown University and Columbia University.

Vincent Thibault Co-Founder at QScale.

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.

Rob Stevens

Jon Stevenson

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

Fred is an out-of-the closet design and technology geek who envisions a world where software enables the full potential of ideas, enriches lives, and is a joy to use. He has led Macadamian in its tremendous growth to become a multi-million dollar consultancy with an award-winning work culture. Frédéric started his career at Corel Corporation in thesoftware engineering department, becoming the Senior Development Manager of Paradox, the company’s flagship database product. Having learned the ins and outs of creating successful software he began his entrepreneurial journey by starting Macadamian in 1997 with 3 other founders.As Chair of the Information Technology Association of Canada, Fred is an ardent advocate for technology-based innovation in Canada. He is also a community leader and mentor, who encourages a passion for healthcare, science, and technology in high school and university students. Frédéric graduated from the Université de Sherbrooke with a B.S. in Computer Science. He resides with his wife and children in Gatineau, Quebec, where he enjoys mountain biking, skiing, and cooking for family and friends.

Startup enthusiast and coffee addict

Marco Schnabl is a Co-Founder & Managing Member at automotiveMastermind, Inc.

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

Pat Morand is Managing Director of the SWMF Life Science Fund. He currently sits on the Boards of numerous companies in the medical device, biotech, medical informatics, and agtech fields. Prior to joining SWMF, Pat was Executive in Residence of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, a Public/Private investor in regional life sciencescompanies. At PLSG, he grew his personal portfolio from 14 to 65 companies (diagnostics, therapeutics, medical devices, services), representing $100M of investment and 121 employees. Prior to PLSG, Pat was a three-time CEO in the biologics industry, Vice President of Commercial Operations for Genesis Therapeutics and Executive Vice President of Sequitor Medical Technologies. Mr. Morand is a graduate of The Athenaeum of Ohio with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Philosophy.

James is responsible for managing the vision and growth of Levven Electronics, developing and executing long-term corporate strategies, and building relationships with partners, stakeholders and investors.He is a life-long entrepreneur with a commitment to innovation, excellence and enhancing people’s lives. Prior to founding Levven, Jamestransformed a struggling local manufacturer into a successful international company.James is an active member and contributor to several entrepreneur organizations including Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO Edmonton), Alberta Women Entrepreneurs, and Rainforest Alberta.James’ drive for success also extends into other facets of his life. He’s completed Iron Man competitions and mountain bike races. In one extreme challenge, he swam 15 km across the Northumberland Strait from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island.When he isn’t focused on the business, you can find him with his family in Edmonton.

Allison Pickens is an internationally known thought leader on Customer Success and scaling teams during hyper-growth. As former Gainsight's Chief Operating Officer, Allison manages corporate strategic planning, corporate development, and operational responsibilities that are critical to the company and its customers’ success.Allison wasnamed one of the top women leaders in SaaS, one of the 50 people in the sales and business development industry, and named a Customer Service Influencer. She is an international speaker and blogger, and the host of The Customer Success Podcast. She also serves as a Board Director at SaaS companies RainforestQA and eCompliance and is a Growth Operating Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. She has a passion for helping companies create exceptional Customer Success initiatives across their company.Allison built and scaled Gainsight’s post-sales functions, including a global team of more than 150 team members across Customer Success Management, Professional Services, Support, Business Operations, Customer Marketing, Value Consulting, and Customer Engineering. Before that, she built Gainsight's Sales Development and Business Operations, teams.Allison started her career in management consulting for Fortune 500 companies while at Boston Consulting Group and later worked in private equity investing at Bain Capital. At both companies, she helped organizations drive change and scale teams. Allison has a BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University, as well as an MBA from Stanford University. On weekends you can find Allison geeking out about blockchain or hiking in the Marin Headlands.

Ty Danco is an entrepreneur and angel investor out of Burlington, VT and Boston, MA. He founded eSecLending in 2000, sold to TA Associates in 2006. He co-founded BuysideFX in late 2011. More on Ty can be found at http:linkedin.com/in/tydanco.