Top 50 Software Angel Investors in Canada

Tom Williams

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Lance Priebe

Jevon MacDonald is the Co-Founder at StartupNorth.

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

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

Jennifer Lum is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Biospring Partners, a growth equity firm that invests in Life Sciences Technology. She is an accomplished entrepreneur and investor. She has cofounded several companies and has worked with many others from formation through to M&A.Jennifer is a Venture Capital Advisor at Harvard BusinessSchool and an Advisor at MIT’s Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship. She is also an Advisory Board member at The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.Jennifer co-founded Forge.AI (acquired by FiscalNote) and Adelphic (acquired by Time). She was an early team member at Quattro Wireless (acquired by Apple), m-Qube (acquired by VeriSign) and WebHosting.com (acquired by AT&T).She has also held various roles as a management consultant with financial services and technology companies.Twitter: @lum

Ellen Levy is the Managing Director of Silicon Valley Connect.

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.

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

Jon Oringer is the founder and chairman of Shutterstock.

Gavin Uhma - Co-Founder / CTO @ Cape Privacy

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.

Jaclyn Johnson created her career. A powerhouse entrepreneur, by the time she was 28, Johnson had sold her first business, (No Subject)and launched her second multimillion dollar company, Create and Cultivate. Johnson recognized a gap in conversations, resources, events and community for female millennial entrepreneurs and responded with asolution, Create and Cultivate, the wildly popular media platform and nationwide conference. In the process, Jaclyn’s own work-life philosophy, built on the cornerstones of female empowerment, hustling-hard and innovation have propelled her voice to the forefront of the discussion on workplace equality, a new thought-leader for millennial women and Gen-Z-ers on the career come up. A graduate of NYU, Johnson’s trajectory has been skyrocketing since she founded (No Subject) in 2010. With the launch of Create and Cultivate in 2012, she gained global visibility. Six years later, Create and Cultivate is bigger than ever, with hundreds of thousands of followers and attendees, and over 75 events to date. The conference has landed major cities around the country and boasts sponsors that include top Fortune 500 companies like Amazon, LinkedIn, QuickBooks and Microsoft to the buzziest brand names like Laura Mercier, LaCroix, Clinique, Chandon, Urban Outfitters and more. Past speakers and panelist include the biggest celebs and CEO’s like Kim Kardashian West, Chelsea Handler, Jessica Alba, Chrissy Teigen, Gloria Steinem, Issa Rae, Nicole Richie and more front-runners in fashion, technology, design and business. Named a Forbes 30 Under 30, an Adweek Disruptor and profiled in Fast Company, the LA Times, Entrepreneur and more, Johnson has earned her way to the frontlines of a workplace revolution at a time when change-agents and disruptors are flexing real influence.

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.

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.

Patrick Lor is Managing Partner at Panache Ventures. He attended the University of Calgary.

Colin is Chief Operating Officer of PMC-Sierra Inc. Colin is a founder of PMC-Sierra, has served as Vice President, Chief Operating Officer since February 2007. Prior to this appointment, he served as Vice President of Worldwide Operations at PMC-Sierra from July 2004 and Vice President of IC Technology from May1997 to July 2004. Colin is anelected member of the Global Semiconductor Association Board of Directors and serves on the advisory board of the Design for E-Beam (DFEB) initiative. Colin currently also serves on the board of directors for Yaletown portfolio company Redlen Technologies

Jon Oringer is the founder and chairman of Shutterstock.

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.

Mike Murchison is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ada, the leading provider of AI customer support chatbots. Ada provides a simple and powerful authoring environment, cutting edge machine learning, and lightning-fast deployment, automating millions of chat conversations per month for clients such as TELUS, Coinbase, and Shopify. In partnership withGenesys, Ada is helping companies improve their customer experience, dramatically reduce costs, and increase support team productivity.

Brice Scheschuk is a Co-founder, Director and the Chief Financial Officer of Globalive Communications / Wind Mobile. He has been with Globalive / Wind for eight years in a senior finance capacity and is responsible for all aspects of finance, facilities and business planning including direct responsibility for raising in excess of $1.2billion in capital. Brice is the Co-President of Brave Investment, an investment holding company focused on private and public company and fund investing and manages over $10 million in assets across a number of investment classes including alternative funds, private and public equity, venture capital, angel, real estate, CPC’s, SPAC’s and RTO’s. He is the Chairman and Director of Samba Days, a gift experiences company, and a past director of a number of public and private companies including Web Host Industry Review, iLookabout, Hy-Drive Technologies and Varicent Software. Brice is a Canadian Chartered Accountant and earned his designation at Coopers & Lybrand in 1997. A passionate entrepreneur and investor, Brice has been involved in some of the most exciting start-ups in Canada over the past 15 years.

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.

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.

Greg Rudin

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 cofounder 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.

Neal Dempsey is the Managing Partner of Bay Partners.

Gerry Pond is the Co-Founder and Chairman at Mariner Innovations. Gerry Pond The University of New Brunswick.

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.

Entrepreneur, investor.

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.

Markus Frind

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.

Andrew Chau is the co-founder of Neo Financial He used to be the co-founder of SkipTheDishes. He handles business development and strategy for this company.

Matt Wyndowe is Head of Product Partnerships at Uber. Before that he was Product Manager for Facebook NYC where he oversaw 4 groups, including profile growth, identity accuracy and 2 to-be-announced (and pretty darn cool) product launches coming soon.Before that he was back in Menlo Park where he was the Product Manager for Facebook Apps& Games, where he oversaw product for the Facebook Platform games ecosystem. Prior to this role, Matt worked as a Manager and then Director of Business Development for 4 years, focusing on product launches (e.g. Connect) and major company partnerships (e.g. Zynga and Microsoft). Before Facebook, he founded KoboCafe, a reasonably unsuccessful app company, and worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. Matt has a BA in economics with a minor in computer science from McGill University, and attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford D.School. Matt lives in between SF and NYC depending where he is in his career, but is moving back to SF soon.

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.

Jason Warner is the MD at Redpoint. Jason cares deeply about the future of technology, developer experience, and growing companies. He is a people-oriented product technologist, who is passionate about building both the technical and human systems needed for scale and growth. Prior to joining GitHub, Jason was Vice President of Engineering atHeroku, the world’s leading PaaS and one of the largest cloud computing providers in the world. Before Heroku, Jason worked to make Linux accessible to everyone by leading product engineering for Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Phone at Canonical. Jason is also an active speaker, writer, and advisor on cloud computing, technology and leadership. His activities include formally and informally advising startup and established executives, as well as active coaching and mentoring future product and technology leaders.Jason graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a BS in Computer Science, and Rensselaer University with an MS in Computer Science. He lives with his family in Victoria, British Columbia, where he writes, sketches and enjoys the water as much as possible.