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NACO Academy Podcast leverages the collective wisdom of 4,200 angel investors that have invested $1.12 billion into 1500 companies. Join us on a journey into the depths of the innovation economy and bring you the knowledge you need to build, grow and scale at the intersection of innovation, capital and entrepreneurship. Learn more about the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) at www.nacocanada.com
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Built by Angels is a new podcast series that will guide you on the road to venture capital scale and growth. Interested in funding the next big thing? Are you an entrepreneur searching for capital, to fund and scale your company? Are you on the sidelines, wondering how to jump in, while everyone else is building, backing, and supporting the next generation of entrepreneurial companies?Stay tuned, subscribe and join us on this exciting journey, as we transform ordinary listeners into extraordi...
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is based on the book "A Practical Guide to Angel Investing, 2nd Edition" authored by Steven Gedeon PhD and published by the National Angel Capital Organization. Content discussed is for general guidance on matters of interest and should not be taken as professional, legal, business or investment advice.Most angels have enjoyed a successful business career and want to share their expertise and experience with younger entrepreneurs. Of course....
What will you do with the next 20+ years of your life? For most angels, the answer is: "I want to contribute to the good of my community""I want to continue to do what I love.""I want to be involved in strategy, important deals and major decisions.""I want to lend my expertise."The value of angel groups is that they essentially help mitigate your risk. Angel groups help you attract the highest quality deals and help you go through a due diligence process that vets out the deals that have a di...
We are here with Senator Doug Black, Chair of the Senate Banking, Finance, and Trade Committee. The innovation ecosystem in Alberta has a tremendous potential. We see an opportunity to transition the risk capital, that has historically been in more traditional industries, to the high growth industries that can contribute so much to the economy. From your perspective, what can we do as a national organization and what can angel investors do to contribute to Alberta's renaissance? We ...
Angel investors bring more than capital. The knowledge that you have, your experience, what you've done in your professional life is exceptionally important for helping the next generation of entrepreneurs achieve success. High potential entrepreneurs in Canada do not need to exit. They do not need to sell their companies in order for the investors to achieve liquidity, Where only a small percentage of angel investors do exceptionally well, a very wide range that don't do well at al...
How do you value a company? How many companies do you need in your portfolio? The general suggestion among Canadian angels is 20 companies. Dr. Wade Brooks estimates that you need 40 companies to have a 95% chance of getting the average internal rate of return of 27%. A portfolio of 20 companies would give you a 60 to 70% chance of hitting the average. This is based on NACO data from the National Angel Summit in 2015. However, these numbers can be misleading. Angel investment practices across...
Lessons learned from Patrick Lor, Co-Founder of iStockphoto and Managing Partner at Panache Ventures based in Calgary, Alberta. "I don't know if there's anything secret about this. But, we grew iStockphoto off the side of our desks and eventually iStock became such a success that we sold it for $50 million U.S. A few years later, they were doing about $300 million worth of revenues. The company would have been worth a few billion dollars. We didn't have that billionaire mindset."Part 2 o...
What is the role of angel investing in the economy? If there is no capital, there is no company. It's as simple as that. Without investment capital, there would be no new companies and no new jobs. Our economy would be in zero growth mode. This is based on a quote from Carl Furtado from the Golden Triangle Angel Network. Small to medium size enterprises, referred to as SMEs, are defined as companies with fewer than 500 employees and they represent over 98% of companies in North America and Eu...
Replay of the NACO Roundtable on Canadian Angel ActivityGood morning everyone. Welcome to today's Roundtable on Canadian Angel Activity. I'm Claudio Rojas, CEO of NACO and I will be your host for today's discussion. Thank you all for making the time to join us. Entrepreneurs are under severe pressure. COVID-19 has unleashed a combined health pandemic and economic crisis. The necessary shutdown to stop the spread of the virus has impacted company operations, dried up revenue, and the...
Replay of the NACO Roundtable on Canadian Angel ActivityWe have Ginette Mailhot, Chair at Anges Québec, a prominent angel group and member of NACO that does extraordinary work in unlocking capital in the Province of Québec.Also, joining is Derrick Hunter, President and CEO at Bluesky Equities based in Calgary, Alberta. Derrick was recognized this past year as the BDC Angel Investor of the Year at the NACO World Angel Investment Summit and is a member of Valhalla Angels. We also have Lynn Davi...
Replay of the NACO Roundtable on Canadian Angel ActivityWe have the privilege of bringing international insights from Jacopo Losso, Director Secretariat at the European Business Angels Network (EBAN), and Pat Gouhin, CEO at the U.S. Angel Capital Association.Both Jacopo and Pat lead the equivalent organizations of NACO in their respective jurisdictions (Europe and the U.S.). We also have Colin Mason, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Glasgow. Colin is the author of NACO's Ann...
Replay of Part 4 the NACO Roundtable on Canadian Angel ActivityIn relation to how do we keep investment moving and in Atlantic Canada… the most crucial things we need to be looking at are… matching funds from government… and investor tax credit –Stefanie Corbett, Director of Operations at Island Capital PartnersWe have had successful applications from companies who have retooled their manufacturing to produce face masks, hospital gowns, hand sanitizers, etc. Four of these deals closed just la...
Replay of Part 1 of the NACO Roundtable on Incubators, Accelerators, and Entrepreneurial Activity"The Council of Canadian Innovators has determined that the wage subsidy is probably going to help maybe about 25% of their businesses... but the businesses that are being left out right now are all pre-revenue companies" John Ruffolo, Vice Chair at Council of Canadian InnovatorsToday is the second instalment in a series of conversations on stimulating angel activity, supporting the innovation eco...
Replay of Part 2 of the NACO Roundtable on Incubators, Accelerators, and Entrepreneurial Activity"The biggest issue companies are facing is liquidity and cashflow. And that cashflow can come in the form of a bridge and then deal with our burn to get to that raise."Iain Klugman, President & CEO at Communitech"Everyone is saying we need to find a way to help these companies bridge. And I think the only thing that's getting in our way is that speed wins in times of crisis. We need to make su...
Replay of Part 3 of the NACO Roundtable on Incubators, Accelerators, and Entrepreneurial Activity"The bigger concern we're really seeing is founders that are pre-revenue or at that very early stage of development. They're the ones that are, are at this point, falling through the gap" John MacRitchie, Assistant Vice-President, Zone Learning and Strategic Initiatives at Ryerson University"Let's move at the speed of trust. Let's move things and audit later if we have to... when we're talking to ...
Replay of Part 3 of the NACO Roundtable on Incubators, Accelerators, and Entrepreneurial Activity"The good part about the BDC program for matching funds is that it might help to speed up the process knowing that the BDC will be able to match some of those funds. But a challenge in the early stage in Canada is to find leads" Emilie Boutros, General Partner at TandemLaunch"Many of these companies that we're supporting, they're just not going to be eligible for venture capital. And so we really ...
Welcome everyone to our Roundtable on Sustaining the Innovation Ecosystem. Today’s agenda includes Opening Comments by David Skok, CEO & Editor-in-Chief at The Logic, Special Remarks by Anthony Lacavera, Founder and Chairman of Globalive. And an important conversation with The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages –– with angel investors, innovation leaders and most importantly entrepreneurs.The National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) was...
Earlier this week, an article that appeared in the Toronto Star stated that “The Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy program should be broadened to include high growth firms, software-as-a-service firms, firms whose revenues are seasonal or project-based and pre-revenue firms that are heavily invested in research and development.”With economic confidence low, investment capital is drying up. Many of Canada’s highest-potential companies will run out of it in coming months. Without quick, strong gove...
We all know the idiom credited to philosopher Plato: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” It means, of course, that new ways of doing things are often created or discovered when there’s a real, intense need for them. And as we navigate this COVID-19 pandemic together, it’s fair to say this adage rings true louder today than in recent history — especially when it comes to the rising number of brilliant innovations materializing and flourishing in the health-tech sector.The National Angel Ca...
“The main takeaways… are the difficulties people are having in projecting a way out of this and building a plan, and the difficulties in taking care of teams right now, as we are locked in self-isolation in trying circumstances.” — Douglas Soltys, Editor-in-Chief at BetaKit Originally Recorded on April 23, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.
“Cultivating that strong grassroots ecosystem from the ground up is so important right now… there are a lot of opportunities here to make a stronger ecosystem and it will take us all working together.” — Victoria Lennox, Founder of Startup CanadaOriginally Recorded on April 23, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.
“We have really bright minds working on how to solve various aspects of this pandemic… we want to make sure these folks are able to bring their solutions to market sooner rather than later. We’re changing the way we work. We’re deploying funds in a matter of weeks rather than months.” — Benton Leong, General Partner at ArchAngel Network of FundsOriginally Recorded on April 23, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.
"This week’s respected roster of speakers spoke about how we can all do our part — the way we can lean in, support the emergence of new med-tech initiatives and help these small and medium-sized enterprises get their innovations and technologies to market sooner. “It is in precisely these times, as we navigate unchartered waters, that new solutions are needed, that people look to innovation and we all have a role to play". “There’s an opportunity for innovators and for investors and in this n...
“We have billions of dollars across Canada right now earmarked for technology, so doesn’t it make sense that the government becomes the biggest customer as we face this economic slowdown for our tech scale-ups and SMEs?“I believe tech procurement is the biggest lever that the government has as an economic stimulus. They definitely need to take some mission critical actions to help our technologies sector and our SMEs, using crisis as a catalyst for change. This crisis is a window of opportuni...
“What’s changed significantly is how I practice medicine — the delivery of virtual care to patients has increased dramatically. It’s taught me it is possible to do phone and video visits with patients you know quite well. We now need to increase the level of virtual care we provide that we were forced into by this pandemic. I think there will be strong demand for the kind of technologies that will help enhance the virtual visit going forward.” “When I look at how this pandemic has treated soc...
“The horse is out of the barn on virtual care. Once the horse is out of the barn it can never really be corralled, and I think this is going to become part of our permanent care-delivery landscape.” “The world changed almost overnight when we consider how COVID-19 took on our practices. We were looking at near zero virtual care use in primary care and moved to virtually widespread adoption in this space in less than two weeks. It’s almost like doctors were waiting for the right moment to intr...
“Everyone knows that post-COVID-19 — the next two years — are not going to look like a month ago. It’s not a switch you can just turn back on. We have glimmers of what that’s going to look like for anyone who’s been to Loblaws or any grocery store, and the question is healthcare providers need help from startups to think about what does the ‘X’ service look like in the post-COVID-19 world? What does the Loblaws for endoscopy look like? Or medical imaging, or the operation room, or the emergen...
“A lot of people understand diversity is important, but they actually don’t know how to translate that into action and really don’t understand how to bring more diverse perspectives, whether it’s female board members or female executives or female staff,” said Nicole Leblanc, the Toronto-based Director of Investments at Sidewalk Labs.Originally Recorded in September 2019. Sign-up to our newsletter for an invitation to future events.
Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, we had the opportunity to speak with three founders of the Atlantic Women's Venture Fund at the NACO Summit in Halifax. Their words still ring true in the current environment. More so, perhaps.Originally Recorded in September 2019. Sign-up to our newsletter for an invitation to future events.
This untapped segment of the population signifies incredible opportunity for investors and innovators. Increasing access to capital remains a persistent impediment to growing world-class companies. “This generation of women is going to inherit or have earned the most amount of wealth that women in Canada have ever had before,” says Cathy Bennett, entrepreneur and cofounder at Atlantic Women’s Venture Fund. “And we need to ensure that that’s deployed in the communities, not only in creating fe...
NACO’s fifth weekly collaborative roundtable on Thursday April 30th focused on activating capital for the next wave of great founders. In partnership with The51 and Atlantic Women’s Venture Fund, NACO welcomed an impressive panel of industry insiders and experts well-versed in the intense need to support enterprises led by women and to remove barriers standing in their way. In the wake of COVID-19, there’s an urgent need for high-potential entrepreneurs — both male and female, from urban...
I would argue that over the past couple of decades, there has been an overemphasis in the startup world on growth for the sake of growth. Employees hired, companies acquired. There have been startups that I’ve interviewed that can barely explain what they do, and leaders who have been praised for a lack of a moral compass. Today, I believe that we are looking in the rearview mirror at these realities. The old ways of doing business are fading away.” “While many businesses, mine included, are ...
Rachel Bendayan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade, in a conversation with leading entrepreneurs, Bobbie Racette, Founder & CEO at Virtual Gurus; Dr Franziska Broell, CEO at Motryx; Stephany Lapierre, CEO at tealbook; and Jennifer Wagner, President at CarbonCure Technologies."I think we're going to get through this, and we'll get through it by government and the private sector working together and doing whatever it takes in...
Sandi Gilbert, CEO at InterGen and Board Chair at NACO moderated a discussion with Abdullah Snobar, Executive Director at The DMZ and Nicole Verkindt, Founder at The OMX on their leadership journeys and insights on sustaining a business in crisis mode.Originally Recorded on April 30, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.
“About 51 percent of our population are women, and we get four percent of venture-capital funding. Quite frankly, that’s an awful lot of capital to leave, and a lot of people out of the competitive ecosystem underutilized.”“We really need also to remember that when you think about women as a whole, there’s significant underrepresentation of women of color, Aboriginal women, LGBTQ women.These are sisters who I want to include in our fund because by teaching and training and deploying their cap...
Innovating at the speed of the crisis is a concept that speaks to the importance of angel investing in early-stage start-ups and scale-ups, as well as the government’s decisive response to supporting the ecosystem. “We’ve already seen our government lead the way innovating at the speed of the crisis with unprecedented collaboration to catalyze and harness the power of the private sector. This level of speed and a willingness to take bold steps to support the economy can and will usher in a ne...
“I use the analogy that you can’t grow a tree without planting a seed. And similarly, there’s no way you can build massive tech companies in Canada without supporting a robust pipeline of young, promising start-ups. Fostering of these early-stage tech companies must be done in Canada by Canadians.”“We need to keep investing in seed and pre-seed ecosystems. I sometimes get concerned when I hear a narrative that says that we should shift our priority from early-stage to later-stage companies. I...
“History is unfolding right before our eyes. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that this pandemic is maybe one of the most important and significant events in human history. We’ve never had a moment where the entire planet has been crippled by a tiny little virus in the way that COVID-19 has impacted us,” said Dr. Kamran Khan, the founder and CEO of Toronto-based BlueDot, on the National Angel Capital Organization’s (NACO) collaborative roundtable on Thursday May 7. “But I think this is a m...
“Over the past few months, we’ve been working hand in hand with companies as they retool and rapidly scale up to produce critical equipment such as masks, face shields, ventilators, medical gowns and test kits. This is an excellent opportunity for Canadian innovators. As many of you may have heard, Minister Bains likes to say this often and loudly—our approach to personal protective equipment has been buy, buy, buy, build, build, build.”“We will need Canadian entrepreneurs to lead the way and...
The combined impact of the health pandemic and economic crisis hit hard and fast. This resulted in initial government relief taking what was described as a “people first” approach, with an emphasis on employees at risk of layoffs, and trying to minimize the impact on individuals. –– All of this was focused on helping to flatten the curve. And the curve is flattening. As provinces begin to slowly open up, the longer-term economic realities are starting to take hold. In a recent surve...
“To get to the punchline, the government should set up a co-investment fund that matches angel investments dollar for dollar. It should adopt a national tax incentive scheme that already exists in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia. And it should consider replacing the loans that are being made available through its support packages with convertible notes. The Canadian government should leverage angel investments to ensure that early-stage, high-growth companies are going to survi...
“You’ve heard the government say they are not afraid of adjusting the measures that have rolled out. Getting money out there as quickly as possible was important, but there would be adjustments. I think that’s what you’ve seen the government do the last number of weeks — they’re not afraid of saying they need to tweak, add more programs, expand eligibility and change program parameters.”— Frances McRae
“We crunched data a few weeks ago and the risk that the pandemic poses — in terms of erasing the gains that Canada has made on supporting diverse entrepreneurs — is significant and undeniable. The proportion of women-led business in a ‘do-nothing scenario’ will drop from 17% to 12%. Businesses everywhere are struggling and failing. According to our statistics, the diverse ones are going down quicker and more frequently. We all know diversity leads to better results so, in my view, it’s absolu...
Season 2 is packed with actionable content and intimate conversations. For pure concentrated knowledge on mobilizing capital and scaling the next massive global success story, we will be interweaving content from a Practical Guide to Angel Investing and you will hear from over 100 prominent thought leaders at the intersection of entrepreneurship, capital and innovation, including: Arlene Dickinson from CBC’s Dragon’s Den to help you descipher between good and bad angels, We hav...
Benjamin Bergen is Executive Director of the Council of Canadian Innovators, a national business council led by the CEOs of Canada’s fastest growing technology firms.It’s easy to be a pessimist these days. We have now been slogging through the turmoil, strain and heartache of a global pandemic for more than a year — long enough to grind anybody down. But by their very nature, innovators are optimists. We don’t accept the world as it is today. We insist that it can be better, and when we see p...
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