Top 50 Hardware Angel Investors in Canada in September 2025

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.

Daniel Debow is the Chair of the Board of Build Canada. He attended the Stanford Law School.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 otherinnovative companies align, motivate, and drive the performance of their sales teams. Prior to joining 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Greg Rudin

Tom Williams

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.

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

Ellen Levy is the Managing Director of Silicon Valley Connect.

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

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.

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.

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

Lance Priebe

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

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.

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.

Jon Stevenson

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

Vincent Thibault Co-Founder at QScale.

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.

Rob Stevens

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jim is a 30-year veteran of the Canadian venture capital industry. He has participated actively across all funding stages from being part of founding management through personal angel investment, institutional venture capital, corporate venture investment and a variety of public and private exits. He has also been actively involved in numerouspublic policy initiatives designed to foster a healthy Canadian environment for early-stage companies and venture capital investors.Jim has been a Managing Director with Ventures West and Chrysalix Energy Management, overseen corporate venture investing as Treasurer of MacMillan Bloedel, and was founder and CEO of China Capital, CFO of the Angus Reid Group, and a Director of many technology companies. He currently chairs the Boards of Vision Critical Communications Inc., Recombo Inc. and Tyze Personal Networks Inc., and is a member of the Advisory Board of OMERS Ventures.Jim is also actively involved in the non-profit and social enterprise sector. He was a founding partner of BC Technology Social Venture Partners, has served on many other non-profit Boards and is engaged in public policy initiatives to enhance social innovation and finance.

Alex Karakozoff

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.

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.

Dylan Taylor is based out of Denver, Colorado, and is the Chief Executive Office and Chairman at Voyager Technologies. Dylan Taylor attended University of Arizona.

Nick is a serial entrepreneur, an accomplished CEO, senior Enterprise Technology executive, Outside Director, and Advisor delivering successful outcomes through leadership, integrity, innovation, and empowerment for over 20 years. Prior to Deeplite Nick was cofounder and CEO of several successful Canadian tech companies including Messagepoint,Prinova Software and Prinova Technologies. Nick leverages extensive experience in corporate governance, formulating and executing cross-functional strategic plans, developing go-to-market strategies including product, marketing, and sales. A revenue driven executive focused on growing and scaling companies whether organic or externally funded.Nick earned his Bachelor of Engineering and Management in Mechanical Engineering from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada and was recently honored by McMaster’s Engineering Faculty as being one of their Top 150 Distinguished Alumni for the role they’ve played in shaping Canada and the world.

Marc Petit As general manager of the Enterprise business, Marc Petit oversees growth of Epic Games' Unreal Engine business into markets outside of game development. Prior to joining Epic Games in mid-2016, Marc was a partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at XPND Capital, a Montreal-based investment fund where he co-founded and launchedTaxelco, a sustainable urban transportation company. Between 2002 and 2013, Marc ran Autodesk's Media & Entertainment business unit steering development and marketing of the industry's leading 3D animation and VFX software products 3ds Max, Maya, MotionBuilder, and Flame. Marc started his career at TDI in 1988, and joined Softimage in 1991, where he ran 3D products and oversaw the design and development of Softimage XSI.

Loi Luu is a researcher working on cryptocurrencies, smart contract security and distributed consensus algorithms. He is also a regular invited speaker at Bitcoin and Ethereum workshops such as DevCon2, EDCON.Loi believes in the force of the Ethereum and Blockchain technology. Much of his work revolves around this community. He developed Oyente,the first open-source security analyzer for Ethereum smart contracts. Loi also cofounded SmartPool, another open source project which embraces decentralization of mining pools in existing cryptocurrency. He continues to champion decentralisation and trustless properties of the Blockchain with KyberNetwork, taking inspiration and developing value for the community.

Avichal is Managing Partner at Electric Capital. He is a serial entrepreneur and technology executive. Avichal sold two companies and was most recently Director of Product at Facebook, which acquired his company Spool in 2012. He previously worked at Google on search ranking and ads ranking, is part-time at YCombinator, and an active angelinvestor.Avichal's firm, Electric Capital, focuses on cryptocurrencies that are rooted in technological utility. Electric performs deep technological diligence, such as compiling code, profiling nodes, and analyzing blockchains with in-house software. The founders of Electric have started and sold five companies, have been investing in cryptocurrencies since 2013, and are investors in Anchor, Bitwise, Chia, Coda, dYdX, Dfinity, Oasis, Thunder and many other crypto projects.

Dennis Phelps is the General Partner of IVP.

Jim Spatz is the Chairman and CEO of Southwest Properties Limited, one of Atlantic Canada’s leading real estate developers. Southwest owns, operates and develops residential and commercial real estate in Atlantic Canada, extended stay accommodations across Canada, as well as a multi-unit residential portfolios in four Florida cities.

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.