The Moment

Lucy Hargreaves is the co-founder and CEO of Build Canada, a non-partisan civic movement working to make Canada the easiest place in the world to build new companies and scale bold ideas. Drawing on her experience in government and helping to scale a Silicon Valley tech company, Hargreaves brings a unique perspective to the challenges facing Canadian entrepreneurs. In this episode, she discusses why Canada needs to move faster, what’s holding founders back, and what it will take to make Canada a better place to build companies.

Since joining BMO in 2000, Mike Bonner has witnessed some of the biggest shifts in banking, from the evolution of branch-based banking to the emergence of AI. As the head of distribution for BMO’s personal and business banking at Canada's oldest bank, he works closely with clients and entrepreneurs navigating a rapidly evolving financial landscape. In this episode, Bonner discusses the role AI will play in the future of banking, why face-to-face relationships still matter, and why he remains optimistic about the outlook for Canada's small and medium-sized businesses. 

After building their careers in pharmacy, Aba Anton and Mina Rizk noticed a troubling trend: many men felt ashamed to talk openly about their health concerns. To help change that, they teamed up with longtime friend Dr. George Mankaryous to launch Rocky Health—a digital platform tackling sensitive topics like erectile dysfunction and hair loss with a personalized, discreet approach. In this bonus episode of The Moment, the founders share how they balance different personalities in business, what it takes to redesign the customer journey from scratch, and why staying closely connected to users is key.

Eva Wong, COO and co-founder of Borrowell, joins The Moment to share the behind-the-scenes journey of building one of Canada’s leading fintech companies. From launching a product that failed, to navigating team tension, fundraising hurdles, and the double standards female founders face, Eva offers a candid look at what it really takes to survive—and thrive—as an entrepreneur. She reflects on resilience, finding product-market fit, balancing leadership and motherhood, and why staying alive as a company was always the top priority.

After being laid off from the oil and gas industry, Bobbie Racette found herself at a crossroads, until she took a leap into entrepreneurship, founding Virtual Gurus, a talent platform that’s redefining the future of remote work. But her success didn’t come easy. In this episode, Bobbie opens up about the 170 investor rejections she endured before becoming the first Indigenous woman in Canada to secure Series A funding, why she once walked out of a pitch competition moments before taking the stage, and the pivotal realization that led her to fire herself as CEO before stepping back into the role. She also shares how burnout forced her to rethink leadership and the mindset that kept her going when the odds were stacked against her.