Top 50 Startup Investors in Canada in November 2024

Early stage venture capital firm focused on Fintech

Corl is an artificially-intelligent platform that finances businesses in the digital economy and shares in their future revenue. It aims to create regulatory-compliant security and revenue-sharing token designed to support and participate in the growth of emerging companies. The company was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.

Leading global venture capital fund that invests in resource intensive industries across North America and Europe.

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.

Chris Neumann is the CEO and Cofounder of DataHero, the leading platform for visualizing data from online services. Chris was previously the first employee at Big Data pioneer Aster Data Systems, where he helped create Aster’s innovative Big Data platform. Chris holds an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University and a BS in Computing Sciencefrom Simon Fraser University.

Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. is a leading independent, full-service financial services firm, with operations in two principal segments of the securities industry: wealth management and capital markets.

Venture Capital Action Plan

FJ Labs is a stage-agnostic investment firm that focuses on marketplaces and consumer facing startups.

Emergence is the leading venture capital firm focused on early-stage enterprise software companies.

Conconi Growth Partners is committed to helping exceptional entrepreneurs build great companies.

Private Private

Our presence, perspective and people enable us to partner closely with founders to help them define this future.

Since 1980, WTI has helped more than 1,300 companies across every innovation sector finance their growth while minimizing dilution.

Portage Ventures is a global fintech-focused venture capital investor. The firm makes early-stage investments in promising Canadian financial tech companies that have potential for global impact.

Larry Mercado

Mike has a wealth of experience in building and scaling consumer technology companies in private and public markets

Ryan Pawell (Founder, Director & Chief Executive Officer) is a Y Combinator alumni, published author and subject matter expert in the areas of fluid dynamics, advanced manufacturing, and biomicrofluidics. Ryan has been invited to present his work by the Australian National Fabrication Facility, White House Cancer Moonshot Taskforce, Air Force,National Institutes of Health, and National Cancer Institute among others.

Doug Atkin is the Managing Partner at Communitas Capital and Co-Chairman of Z-Work Acquisition Corporation.

We invest in early stage startups driving social and environmental change to make the world a better place.

Precursor Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on pre-seed and seed investments in North America. The firm focuses on investments in B2B and B2C software applications and hardware. Precursor Ventures has adopted the Diversity Term Sheet Rider.

Sagard is a multi-strategy alternative asset manager building great businesses through capital, culture, and network.

David Tedman first honed his digital pioneering inclinations at the Vancouver Film School, earning his degree in Interactive Media in 2002. Soon after, he founded Novare Res, a multi-disciplinary design company that later merged with Invoke and laid the foundations for his serial successes in product development. Tedman's accomplishments, todate, include incubating memelabs, a leading branded contesting and social engagement platform and co-founding HootSuite, an award-winning social media dashboard, which spun off into its own company after Invoke helped build its first one million user base.Tedman happily splits his time between Vancouver and New York, is constantly thinking of new high-performing business models, and is perpetually looking forward to the next basketball game.

8VC seeks to enable industry transformation. In a wave of creative destruction, they believe emerging platforms will replace the decades-old technology infrastructure behind many industries, promoting greater innovation and prosperity.

Value-added investors for innovative entrepreneurs.

Jeeves provides multi-currency corporate cards, payments, non-dilutive funding, and free built-in expense management for growing businesses around the world.

Grow on your terms with fast, flexible financing. Pipe transforms recurring revenue into up-front capital for growth without dilution or restrictive debt.

Jonathan is a successful serial entrepreneur with two exits under his belt. He is passionate about helping those who are taking the entrepreneurial path to start, build and grow companies. Prior to GrowLab, Jonathan Bixby was the CEO and a co-founder of Strangeloop Networks, creator of the first network appliance and cloud service foraccelerating dynamic web applications. Under Jonathan’s leadership, Strangeloop raised over $21M in financing, including a Series A round of $11.5 million, one of the largest rounds of private Series A financing for a technology start-up in Canadian history. Strangeloop was selected the Best Employer in British Columbia for a record five straight years (2008 to 2013). In February 2013 Strangeloop was acquired by Radware (RDWR). Read more here.Prior to forming Strangeloop, Jonathan co-founded IronPoint Technology, the largest content management company in the country. As chairman of the board, Jonathan led IronPoint from start-up to successful acquisition by The Active Network (ACTV) in 30 months. Read about it here.Jonathan also served as vice president of sales, at NTS Internet Solutions and helped that company enjoy a five-year growth rate of more than 600 percent and earn placements on the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 and Fast 500 as well as Profit Magazine’s Profit 100 lists.Jonathan sat on the board of the Vancouver Enterprise Forum, the final jury for the New Ventures BC competition and is a Social Venture Partner (www.bcsvp.com), Jonathan sits on the board of Energy Aware. He is a Business in Vancouver Top 40 Under 40 award recipient.

Stacked Capital is an early-stage venture fund investing in various technology companies. The firm utilizing a systematic approach for screening and sourcing investment opportunities, including venture accelerators, incubators, seed funds, as well as direct investments. It uses a strict systemic approach to evaluate ventures for strong businessfundamentals and a path to profitability.Stacked Capital was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in New York, NY, United States.

The Government of Canada is making it easier for Canadians to find and access government information and services online through its central website, Canada.ca. The website is the single entry point for all government information and services available online and is accessible using any device with an Internet connection, including tablets ormobile phones. Its portal shows how government works, its priorities, laws, finances, transparency, digital government, and policies.

Kensington Capital Partners is an investment firm in the business of wealth creation, providing access to high quality investments for over 25 years.

Connetic Ventures is an investment firm that provides its services to early stage startup companies.The firm participates with venture capital firms and angel syndicates for companies that are in the seed stage. It focuses on developing core investment strategies and deploying them on startups to build up their portfolios. Connetic Ventures wasfounded by Brad Zapp in 2015. It is headquartered in Covington, Kentucky.

Plaza Ventures’ micro-fund model was designed to efficiently pool capital from the firms high-net-worth investor community into annual investment vehicles targeting a basket of Series A and Series B investments. These micro-funds have built a proven track record, backing successful entrepreneurs through multiple funding rounds.Half of each PVFund is allocated to new companies with proven business models ($3M+ annual revenues) that are resistant to macro-economics and need capital to meet current demand. The remaining capital is re-invested into 4-5 successful businesses from prior funds.Plaza Ventures identifies as sector agnostic but has an affinity for, as well as expertise in enterprise SaaS, location-based services, IoT, Smart City, digital media, and marketplaces.

HarbourVest is a private markets firm with 40 years of noteworthy insight, interwoven skills across asset classes, and relationships that build futures.

The RBC Generator is a $10-million impact investment venture capital fund raised as part of the RBC Social Finance Initiative. The fund invests in entrepreneurs that are addressing social and environmental challenges while generating financial return, primarily within the thematic sector areas of cleantech, water, energy and employment fordisadvantaged populations.

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

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

Real Ventures is an early-stage venture firm focused on serving daring entrepreneurs with the ambition to create successful, global companies. Since 2007, Real Ventures has dedicated itself to building the Canadian startup ecosystem on the belief that people, not money, build game-changing companies. Real Ventures provides stage-specific guidance,mentorship, and access to networks and resources to fast-track founders’ personal and company growth. Real Ventures manages $325 million across five funds and its active portfolio of 100+ companies is currently valued at $10 billion. www.realventures.com

Riley Keohen

Berggruen Holdings is an investment firm takes a long-term, value-oriented, often contrarian view. It prefers to build organically and through acquisitions, partnering with management, as opposed to quick, opportunistic exits. Depending on the opportunity and asset class, Berggruen Holdings is prepared to make relatively small investments as wellas equity commitments of up to $100 million in any one transaction.

Dave Johnson - Director of Engineering, PhoneGap @ Adobe

Private Private

Christopher Bissonnette is the President at Pallasite Ventures. Whether it’s as a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer disease therapies, or as an executive in control of investment portfolios and commercial real estate, Christopher has taken an analytical approach throughout his career. This varied experience has given him valuable insightinto Chicago’s most desirable locations for advertisers and a deep understanding of the complex leasing and permitting restrictions involved. As co-founder and CFO of GreenSigns Chicago, Christopher helps ensure that our advertisers and landlords receive the best possible value. As an avid biker and hiker, he helps ensure a high-energy level throughout the GreenSigns’ office.

Geoff Entress is a Managing Director and Co-Founder of PSL. He was formerly a venture partner with Voyager Capital and Madrona Venture Group. Prior to PSL, Geoff was the most active angel investor in the region and has invested in over 200 private Pacific Northwest companies during the last two decades.Geoff represents PSL on the Board ofDirectors for JetClosing. He is also a current investor in over eighty private companies in the region and is a board member of Hiya, Meritage Soups, Bonanza, Foodee and LiquidPlanner.Geoff is also a long-time member of the Executive and Screening committees of the Alliance of Angels, the largest angel investor organization in the Pacific Northwest, as well as serves on the advisory boards of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington, the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Notre Dame and the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.A former securities lawyer and financial analyst, he has also held positions at Perkins Coie, Jones Day, UrbanEarth.com, Salomon Brothers, The Prudential Home Mortgage Company, Mellon Bank, Priority Investment Management and Duquesne Capital Management. Geoff is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Notre Dame.

Invest in our experienceGrowthWorks* offers you more: more accountability, more experience and more proven know-how to make the most of your investment.A principled approach to adding valueOver the last 20 years, we've built GrowthWorks into one of Canada's venture capital management companies. We've done that by managingfunds that rigorously follow core principles: structure strategic investments in growth-oriented companies, value portfolio assets conservatively, build vital industry connections and minimize risk through diversification. It's a simple formula that delivers powerful results.Regional know-how. National ReachAt GrowthWorks, we offer regionally based retail venture capital funds (RVCs) right across Canada.GrowthWorks specializes in the management of and growth of regionally based venture capital funds. The funds under management include the following RVCs: Working Opportunity Fund, GrowthWorks Commercialization Fund and GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund.Partners in performanceWe have specialized teams in each of our core sectors to identify and structure investments in potential winners. These skilled teams also help create success by helping the companies that GrowthWorks managed funds invest in to grow with strategic management support and advice. This way, the companies get guidance from experienced leaders. In turn, the funds’ investors know that these companies receive direction to help them thrive.

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

Founders Fund is a San Francisco based venture capital firm investing in companies building revolutionary technologies.

VantagePoint Capital Partners (formerly VantagePoint Venture Partners, until 2011) has more than $4.5 billion in capital under management and invests in the cleantech, healthcare, and IT sectors.

We support entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey and build technology companies that generate a positive impact on society.

At Social Capital, we make big bets on transformational ideas, technology, and people.

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