SPEAKER_03 0:00

In October 2025, Wealth Simple raised$750 million at a$10 billion valuation with CPP investments, Canadian pension plan investments at the table. That story started with a$250,000 angel check. Entre the premier check and l'investissement d'un fonds de pension d'investissement qu'on ne voit pas toujours. Chaque étape of the continuum has investisseurs de démarrage ont soutenu un risqué. The investisseurs de croissance l'ont propulsé. That is what a functioning capital system looks like. Angel capital, venture capital, pension fund participation, domestic capital. The question in front of us as a nation, as an ecosystem, in the days and months ahead is whether we can make that system work consistently, not just for one company, but for hundreds across the country. Canada has just committed$1.75 billion to answer that question. It's the largest federal commitment to venture capital in our history and the most sophisticated. It recognizes that you need an end-to-end capital pipeline to drive the flywheel effect. But that commitment doesn't alone determine success. Design does. At the National Angel Capital Organization, we represent over 4,000 angel investors who write those first checks. More than 100 early stage investment organizations across the country. Angel networks, early stage funds, venture studios, organizations mobilizing private capital. We operate at the pre-institutional phase of the capital continuum before institutional capital. Our members are active in every region of Canada, from Wakehorse Yukon to St. John's Newfoundland. More than$1.8 billion in angel capital has been deployed across our membership over the past 15 years, fueling the early stage companies that later stage investors rely on. We've done this for over two decades, so we see the pipeline before anyone else does. And what we see is a structural problem.

SPEAKER_06 2:48

Over the past 10 months, we've been asking how do we build a capital continuum that works as a system from the first check to the growth stage? In October, alongside our sister organization, the CVCA, we called for a unified capital strategy. Budget 2025 responded with$750 million aimed at entrepreneurs and the networks that fund them. In partnership with Startup Genome, NAGO undertook the most comprehensive study of Canada's funding gaps ever conducted, analyzing 65,000 funding rounds since 2006. The findings were stark. Not because we lack talent, but because we're structurally underfunding companies at the very beginning.

SPEAKER_03 3:51

After 10 months of consultations with angel networks, denture funds, entrepreneurs, and policymakers across the country, more than 250 senior leaders, we put together two concrete recommendations for the$750 million early stage envelope. The first is a$500 million early stage matching funds program, two to one public-private matching at pre-seed and seed. What does that mean in practice? When an angel sidecar fund in Halifax invests$500,000 in a startup, this program matches that with$250,000 of public dollars, ramping up the total capital deployed to$750,000 and increasing the speed to which that company can then close their round. Less time raising capital, more time building. That's the difference between surviving and thriving, between a company barely making it over the valley of death or entering its Series A from a position of strength and momentum. Over five years, this program will fund 500 to 1,000 companies. It will mobilize more than$1 billion in private capital, 60% directed to strategic sectors, 30% to non-urban regions. The second recommendation: a$250 million early stage infrastructure initiative. This is about the people and the organizations behind the checks. We're proposing support for 125 angel networks, pre-seed funds, and seed stage venture capital funds in every region of Canada. Human capital, diligence and governance, technology and shared infrastructure. Because you cannot mobilize private capital at scale without well-resourced organizations doing the work on the ground. Together, these two recommendations will mobilize more than$1.5 billion in total capital over five years. The five-year funding gap at Pre-Seed Seed and Series A is$1.6 billion US. That's$323 million a year in capital that should be reaching Canadian startups, and it isn't. The result is significant.$66 billion in lost ecosystem value in our three largest cities alone. And our seed rounds are 40% smaller than those of our American peers. But here's what the data really tells us. At seed stage, Canada funds 30% fewer companies than the United States. At Series A, that gap widens to 40%. By series B, it's 50%. A 30% deficit at seed castades into 50% fewer companies at Series B. This is not a growth stage problem. This is an early stage problem showing up at the growth stage. And the human cost is real. 68% of Kenyan founded startups that have raised a million dollars or more are now being started outside Canada, according to a 2025 study by Leaders Fund. We're not just losing companies at the growth stage, we're losing founders before they even begin. But there is a structural advantage that we have not fully leveraged. Pre seed and seed investing is hyperlocal. It's high risk. It's relationship driven. Those are the exact conditions where US capital does not compete. It's geography. A Silicon Valley fund might struggle to find fund and fuel an agri tech startup in Saskatoon with a$250,000 check. An American LP might not be looking for deep tech founders in Winnipeg. But our angels are. Our pre-seed and seed stage venture capital funds are. This is our space. This is our country. These are our communities. And it is the single most powerful by Canadian play that we have. Because early stage investing fuels companies at stay. Companies that are embedded in Canadian networks, funded by Canadian angels, and that arrive at the growth stage with enough momentum to choose where they scale. When it's the founder's choice, they choose Canada. But it's not always a choice.

SPEAKER_06 8:43

Some might ask, why not invest this capital at the growth stage? The answer is that you need a robust flow of companies moving from the early stage to the later stage to achieve the returns that crowd in private capital. Companies that have achieved meaningful scale in Canada, like Well Simple, Kepler Communications, and others, share a common characteristic: access to strong early networks and capital. A weak pipeline cannot be fixed downstream. Canadian Pension Plan Investments now allocates 47% of its portfolio to US assets and only 12% to Canada, the lowest domestic share in the fund's history. That's not because Canadian funds are too small. It's because the pipeline hasn't produced the returns to justify domestic allocation. Fix the pipeline and you fix the return. Fix the returns and you bring the capital home.

Roundtable with Senior Leaders

SPEAKER_03 9:41

The full case is in our white paper, Seating Growth, which is available today at NACOCanada.com. Before we move to the roundtable discussion, across this country, we have angel investors, angel group leaders, venture capital fund managers, and sounders driving economic growth in a policy-constrained environment. Like Olympic athletes training at high altitudes in oxygen-constrained conditions. There's a founder in Fredericton right now who has a company that could defy the sector. An angel investor in Edmonton who's ready to write her first check if the infrastructure exists to support it. There's a seed stage fund manager in Twelve Greek VF that could be the next great Canadian venture fund if it can close its round and focus its energy on deployment. Less time raising means more time building. The$750 million envelope is how we connect those dots with a network of organizations in every region doing the work that only they can do. That's the case we're making. Hans Knapp, co-founder and general partner at Yale Town Partners, based in Vancouver. Alex McBath, managing partner at Island Capital Partners and Charlottetown PEI. Carolyn Schaefer, angel investor based in Kelowna, BC, Jacques LePointe, co-founder of Matiquity Ventures, based in Calgary, and Shelly Kuypers, CEO of the 51. Also joining me is Lisa Grassen, Director of Operations at NACO, to bring the voice of the audience into the discussion. Please ask your questions and share your comments in the QA, and we'll do our best to address them in the flow of today's discussion. Alex, I'd like to kick things off with you, if I could. You've had a 12-year front row seat to Atlantic Canada, going from a nascent ecosystem to one producing billion-dollar exits. Could you take us through that arc and what it tells us about where the leverage point is?

unknown 12:04

Sure.

SPEAKER_05 12:04

Thank you very much, Claudio. And hi, everyone. More than happy to talk about the Atlantic Canadian perspective. And I retired back to PEI 12 years ago after many years in Toronto and the last few in London. And over that time, as an investor, as a mentor, involved in the ecosystem in many ways, I've had an opportunity to have a front row seat to watch the maturation, the evolution of the ecosystem from this nation-state it was 12 years ago to what it is today. And I think in many ways, Atlantic Canada is a microcosm of other ecosystems across the country. So perhaps let me start by bookending this 12-year period. And I'll start with what has happened over the last two or three years. We've had some major successes in Nova Scotia, carbon cure, metamaterial, off pad. These are capital raises and exits at$100,$150,500,$600 million interhive in the run through. In PEI, we've had a biopharma transaction at$1.2 billion, another biopharma at over a billion dollars. We've had tech exits in the$100 to$300 million range. And this is PE. This is the land of lobster potatoes and anti-green gables and great craft beer. Newfoundland's on fire right now. Verifin 2.75 billion U.S. exit. Mycia at a couple hundred million, Kraken, COLAD, and all these successes. And we don't normally think of land of Canada in these terms, but they're the result of what's been done by many over the last 10 to 12 years. So let me now back up to 15 years ago, when was this Mason ecosystem? And there were some pockets of success. There was tech cyber in New Brunswick, there was biosurence and PEI. But it was really very early days. And these companies were, and there was limited private investment capacity for these early stage companies. Jerry Pond had an angel network in New Brunswick, which was successful. And Claudio, as you know, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by NACO a few years ago. I founded Island Capital in 2017, where a pre-seed fund that invests across Atlantic Canada. Other funds in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia started around the same time. And these these funds and age networks were a key part of the fund, a key part of that foundation that fueled the growth over this last 10 to 12 years. And I can assure you, there were no VCs from Silicon Valley or Toronto arriving in Halifax or Fredericton or Charlottetown, writing$250,000,$400,000 checks. Access to capital is this core issue. And capital formation is not just a single check. It's an ecosystem. It's angels, it's funds, it's networks, its diligence capacity, its mentoring. When any piece of that continuous missing, the whole system's closed in. And of course, speed from the idea to product to market is absolutely, absolutely critical. I mean, you don't build an ecosystem with matching funds alone. It requires organizations, people on the ground who turn interest into investment. And there are many, there are many initiatives and programs that support the maturation of an ecosystem. Research in the US would say it takes 25 years to fully mature as you move from ideation to startup to growth. So you have to have developed, there's an entrepreneur development. There's a development of the company, the enterprise itself, from idea to MVP to product to market. And then they see all the infrastructure in the ecosystem that surrounds it. And early stage investors, we've been, they've been key players beyond writing checks. And some would say the connective tissue, given their involvement in mentoring, judging pitch competitions, serving on boards, working with universities, influencing government policies and programs, and also writing checks, of course. So that's how, as you mentioned, Chloe, that's how early stage works. It's hyper-local and its relationship to early stage companies in Atlantic Canada and in Canada. When we lose a company to free location, we don't lose it at Series B. We lose it at the early stage when they get a check from a U.S. investor or from a U.S. accelerator. It's proximity on the ground that matters, interacting with founders, companies, ecosystem on a daily basis. The other thing that's interesting is as angel investors are network onto themselves. So I have many fellow angels across the region who I can call on for an opinion or a place, ask them to help one of our companies with a specific issue or expertise, or to screen a pipeline company for it. I just want to make one last point. And how that puts capital into the market. At Island Capital, one of the metrics we track is leverage in our investment. In fund one, it was about eight to one. In fund two, it's over six to one in the early days. So for every$1 million we invest, the companies with or after us attract over$6 to$8 million in capital. And that will grow. So this$750 colour capital will mobilize private capital in local markets in a big way. And that's what helps ignite, as has been mentioned, company growth that provides opportunities for series A and B down the road. The make of white paper is well done, close to the team. It's well received. It's being really widely discussed, being referred to as quote unquote, a generational opportunity that's been created in what's been created in the region over the last 10 or 15 years, to build on what's been created in the last 10 or 15 years. So it's an exciting time, which is absolutely critical for the Atlantic team ecosystem as well as across the country. So thanks for the opportunity, Kamalia.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

Thanks, Alex. Hans, I'd like to take you to the West Coast. You've watched BC across multiple cycles now, through boom, through the correction, and in this moment. From where you're sitting, it would be great to hear about what you see as the relationship between the early stages of funding, pre-seed and seed, and what comes later.

SPEAKER_04 18:03

Yeah, thank you, Claudio. Hello, everyone. So first a tiny bit of background, Yale Town actually started as a seed fund focused on British Columbia only back in 2001. Over the years, we've now matured to become a larger, somewhat later stage manager, but we still interact frequently with both companies and individuals at the earlier angel stages. It's an essential part of the deal flow that we look to in order to have a good crop of potential candidates moving forward that we can then select from. And on that point, I think it's now past debate, certainly on the West Coast, that if you look at both deal volume and deal quality coming out of the seed pre-seed stage and getting to the kind of the series A screening point, there is when you adjust for population size and GDP and so forth, a suboptimal level of quality deal. And this has several reasons, but undeniably, one of them is the absence of sufficient angel capital to be able to allow companies at the earlier stages to efficiently and quickly raise capital and then get on with their business. The one thing we see often when we're talking to smaller companies that we're starting to watch, we typically watch companies for a year or two before we invest in them. And one of the recurring themes over the last couple of years has been the proportion of time that CEOs need to spend on fundraising rather than running their business. This has significant implications for their ability to move the business forward and do all of the things required to prosecute the business and advance it. It is very difficult to do. And while it is a rite of passage, you know, if it you can't get away from it, when you have prolonged fundraising cycles and other challenges with just getting to a minimum viable first closing for your financing round and then continuing to have to hit the road because it's taking longer to get to the eventual target amount for the fundraising round. That's a sign that there's a challenge in the ecosystem. And it there are also challenges at the later stage with the venture capitalist series A and B. They each have their unique issues. But I'm here to speak today to the particular observations we have from the later stage about what's going on at the earlier stage. So I think we're certainly going to be interested in seeing the uptake of the implementation of some of the support for the ancient level. So that's our that's our position and our our perspective on this.

SPEAKER_03 21:14

That's great. Thanks, Hans. And one thing I should say is that as Lisa mentioned at the start, we did put forward going into budget 2025 a unified capital strategy. Think about that later stage. And so the focus of this discussion today is the earlier stage, but we're strong advocates for something of significance appropriate to the later stage. And there's a relationship between the two. And so it's very, very important that this$750 million supports the early stage. Hundreds of millions is appropriate to the early stage. Billions, multiples of billions is the appropriate level of ambition for the later stage. Carolyn, I'd like to shift over to you. You've been mobilizing angel capital in the Okanagan for the better part of a decade, eight years in the summit, hundreds of companies reviewed. You're a NACO Academy instructor with our educational certificate program for angel investors that we've just relaunched. Anything you want to add or push back on based on what we've heard?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

I would like to add just, I guess, when you're thinking about it from the angel perspective and a bit of background too, the Okanagan really started to build their Okinawan their angel network in about 2019. So as you said, we're barely into it for a decade. We had a fund, the Atrium Fund close in about 2017, 2018. And since that time, we've activated about 150 angels between the Okanagan Angel Summit and Okanagan women. The Okanagan Angel Summit meets every year. We just met last week. We had 81 applicants reviewed and we went back down to 12. And so we are in a room with angel investors. And during that period, we're starting to hear very concerning information. When you think about the possibilities that Alex is talking about in the in that's occurring in the Maritimes, where there isn't a belief that we can really support at this early stage the bold visions. They're looking at, you know, seed rounds of a million dollars, thinking they look unrealistic right now because of the time it's going to take to close and the number of investors they're going to have to get into that round. And so rather than really promoting the companies that maybe could be making these amazing exits, we're looking more at some companies that are, you know, safer bets. They can get by with, you know, what do less. Canadians need to do less with do more with less capital. Like they just won't have as much opportunity to scale the way that we are seeing companies in the US. I was just looking back because we had a recent exit of a company here that was locally funded. It was the second investment made by the Okanagan Summit Fund by the Okanagan Angel Summit Fund. It sold for 125 million. They raised a Series A only two years ago for$7 million. But I looked when the angel capital went in, they had$3 million worth of angel capital over a number of years and just takes that much angel capital to activate these companies. And we're not seeing that anymore.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

Shaq, Matiquities leading rounds at the pre-seed stage. You've seen similar challenges on the ground and you've responded accordingly. Any comments on that?

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Yeah, you know, I think it's it's really a big challenge. It's acute in the West for companies at pre-seed stage, you know, zero to 200K in revenue. So, you know, they're running around chasing, and they don't have a network necessarily. So they're really looking hard for angels and checks, you know, 10K to 50K. They're excited if they find, right? It's really hard at that stage. And so we've seen that over the last decade for sure. And that opportunity, that's an opportunity for us as a fund because we can see many companies. We have no competition. These companies are struggling to find the capital. They have great ideas. We have no shortage of founders that are starving for capital. And there's no shortage of founders that have great expertise. They just haven't been on the journey before. They haven't got the network to raise the capital. So it's created an opportunity for us to come in early, help them not only raise additional capital, but validate their opportunity, bring others into the deals, and help them grow and progress. And we also do a lot of work to help professionalize the structure of the company, make them investable for the next round. Because, you know, we as an investor, you have to see through the stages and know that these companies, Carolyn had said, Alex had said before, you know, there's a whole ecosystem of investment that has to take place to get these companies to different levels of maturity. So, you know, it's a it's a challenge and it's very local, everyone has said, because, you know, companies don't just run down to the valley for a week and raise money because they want to see that there's local support. The investors down in the states, they want to see local support in those companies. It's not easy to raise money elsewhere other than your local neighborhood when you know you've got very little revenue to start, but a great idea.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

Uh to get a pulse for the audience Q ⁇ A. But before I do, Shelly, you've been a pioneer in activating women angel investors as LPs in the 51. Would love to hear your perspective on that activation process. What's involved in mobilizing the private sector at the scale that you have.

SPEAKER_07 26:35

I think it's interesting in the way that when we initially went out to market in March 2019, and we were definitely discouraged by pursuing the women's market, which is funny and interesting. You know, the ecosystem said, you know, women aren't going to write angel checks or become LPs. You're wasting your time. And then we were also questioned on deal flow. So I'll just lay that down as the backdrop. But then what we did was we did the research. So we were like, okay, wait a minute. So women are graduating at a faster rate from post-secondary. The wage gap is closing in younger generations. Women are creating companies at a faster rate than ever before. But this other backdrop that was very interesting was the majority of private wealth in Canada will be held by women by 2030. And then we came up with our name. We also stumbled upon the fact that on average, women make up 51% of the population. So we're not a niche market. So you're exactly right. What we did was we said, okay, women are not investing in this asset class. How can we do it? And I think for our benefit, you know, we weren't from the industry. So we could look at the industry and look at it differently. So we started with the SPVs, then we raised our first fund. We democratized the asset class. Our minimum check was 5,100 per year for three years, as you know, Claudio. We made it simple to understand. We stopped using jargon. We focused on women as the key customer, both as LVs, founders and CEOs. Lo and behold, after fund one, fund two, or SPVs, we were at hundreds of LTs, which, as some would note, does cause the Securities Commission to knock at your door and go, What are you doing? But, you know, we were on side. And so we kept doing that work. But I think, you know, we took a different approach and we said, okay, let's make the tent really big. How do we get hundreds of women looking at the SASA class? And we kept doing that hard work, raising money from women, investing in women. And we took the view that, you know, you could be an investor today or you could be an investor in 10 years. It didn't really matter, come to the 51. And so we're really looking at this as a long game. Additionally, we raised the 51 food and egg tech fund with Allison Sunstrom. That was a whole nother ball game. It was institutional led. But again, the institutions wanted that kind of capital sitting side by side with them. Again, we took a new model to that fund, which I think is really, really interesting. We just keep them voting to the table. So now we've got a wait list of 1,300 women to come into our next fund, which is fantastic. And it's coast to coast. So we have LPs in St. John's and we have LPs in Victoria. So we are national in scale for the capital. And then, like everyone is mentioning, you know, we take that capital, the women that are writing these checks, and we create these local networks to foster local deal flow, local support, and local success. So I think that that's also another part of our model that's really important. And then as you are aware, we created the not-for-profit to do capacity building. So we're building that pipeline. That's why we have 1,300 people on our wait list, just because we're doing the capacity building in the ecosystem, both for the investor and the founder. So again, I think we just took a very interesting view on the asset class. And we said, you know, women at this table is a huge capital and innovation unlock for Canada. And we're just going to stay focused on that. So yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

Amazing. Thanks, Shelly. A couple of things, I'm going to throw it over to Lisa. A couple of things that I'm hoping we'll have time to get to are syndicates and the role of pulling capital across angels. The other that stands out from each of your contributions is the time to capital, not just for the entrepreneurs, but how that compounds when fund managers are taking a lot of time to mobilize LPs into their funds. And then on that point, if if time permitting, also the administrative burden, the importance of having infrastructure to be able to mobilize private investors. And here I'm thinking about the work that you're doing, Shelly, and the work that you're doing, Caroline. So we're, we'll, we'll, we'll move as swiftly as we can. But first, Lisa, what are we hearing and seeing from the audience? I know that we received hundreds of questions during the registration process and lots of emails that came in before. Is there anything in particular that you can synthesize to keep the conversation flowing?

SPEAKER_06 31:13

Yeah, we've got some questions around clean tech, deep tech, and hard science specifically. Synthesizing those, people are wondering, you know, how can we prevent these capital-intensive sectors from continually being squeezed out at seed?

SPEAKER_02 31:28

Hans, I think that goes to syndicates if you want to jump in on that.

SPEAKER_04 31:34

Yeah, it's a it's an interesting question because capital-intensive investments are typically ones that cannot be lifted singly by angel networks. There are a few examples in in Canada, but they usually had atypically large and protracted multiple rounds of angel investors coming in, which had the attendant effect that I spoke of earlier, which is the development cycle for the company was delayed because of the slower than optimal access to appropriate capital. So I think this goes to really getting the angel networks, or at least the larger of them, up to a scale where they can appropriately begin to attract and partner with the earlier part of the venture spectrum. There are venture players, our firm included, that will invest at the pre-Series A stage in certain companies that have appropriate level of angel backing in order to get to sort of a critical business milestone. And where there is a strong level of appetite from some of those other financial supporters to be there for the next round in case things take a bit longer from a commercial development perspective. So this is really about scale and pocket depth of the angel networks. And in situations where they're kind of a one shot and then they're done, and there's not much contingency planning for situations that may take a bit longer. And that typically makes it more of a challenge for the early part of the later state capital. Because that capital quickly realizes, wait a second, if things take longer or cost more, we're left holding the bag and having to really write an even larger check in circumstances where certain key milestones may have been delayed. So it's really about getting the earlier angel stage level to a more substantial critical mass, where in those capital-intensive ventures, they can play a more meaningful role, not just in the initial angel round, but as part of the transition to the larger institutional capital. So that's, I think, certainly the perspective we've seen. And recognizing that not all capital-intensive deals are even amenable for earlier stage angel funding. Some of them have to go more of the corporate and strategic financing routes due to their genesis. So I'm leaving those out, but that's our general observation at this point.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

On that theme of pooling capital, but shifting from pooling the angel capital at the company level, maybe Alex and Jacques in particular, it would be great to hear your thoughts around the time to raising capital for funds. I know those pain points that a lot of entrepreneurs don't have the same line of sight that we do. The more time it takes for a fund to raise capital, the more time it takes for those funds to then be deployed. And then it has a compounding effect. So Alex, maybe you could jump in first and then Jack around that journey as you got your funds off the ground. You're mute.

SPEAKER_06 35:05

Alex, you're muted.

SPEAKER_05 35:09

Yeah, it does it does take time, particularly when we started in 2017, and there was not any pools of risk capital on that point in time. There was a lot of one-on-one conversations. Every every LP was three at least three conversations. And the second fund was a lot easier, but we spend a lot of time working with our LPs. We meet with them, we report directly to them, we have events with them. So the and now we're now we're cultivating sidecar investments from those from those LPs. But it does take, it does take a lot of time that we could be deploying with limited resources. We should be deploying our time with the companies and helping them scale.

SPEAKER_03 35:48

And then Jack. Yeah, I was hoping that you might be able to hit on it from the perspective as well of being a lead investor, which even after you've raised the capital, there's there's a much more significant burden to actually leading around.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Yeah. So I mean, for us, we, you know, 52 investors took over three and a half years to raise 10 and a half million. Yeah, general funds, so not very theme-oriented and so a little harder to raise, but it shows you the nature of the early stage that it's hard to raise capital for the early stage, let alone as an early stage company. And as a startup fund, you know, you have to really build the trust of those high net worth individuals and family offices, because that's the first step is the trust. Second step is them believing in the competency and the experience that you've had, whether you've had an exit, whether you've done lots of deals, whether you've been involved in the journeys of these companies, right? Like we've seen the movies before of the train wrecks and the good opportunities that have worked out well, right? And then as a lead investor, specific to your question, Claudio, you know, it doesn't just take courage, it takes a lot of good work to look carefully at companies at the early stage to understand the founders, the niche market they're looking at, you know, the diligence necessary to make sure that the opportunity has the ability to scale down the road. Because many of the founders are very strong experts in their space. They're not experts on the journey. And we are an expert on the journey of a startup company. So, you know, we can help them on building out their infrastructure to raise money, to attract investors, how to put the story together, amongst all the other ecosystem supports that, you know, touch on companies along the way. But it is very hard. And so when we come into a deal as a lead investor, we're writing a bigger check than most angels, you know, three to five hundred thousand dollars. And so that creates some weight to attract angel investors. And with a bit of history and track record, that helps to build the competence of our LPs and other investors to participate in the deals. And without that, the you know, the ecosystem just doesn't happen on its own. You need that kind of progress for each deal, for each company to draw in the additional funds. And as we have more senior investors, later stage investors join us in some of our companies, they also see the work that we've done. And we've even, and I'm not talking about us per se, but you need somebody, some groups, angels and otherwise, to do some of the heavy lifting for these companies in the early stage to help get them to the next level.

SPEAKER_05 38:34

And I might just add, Claudia, that the with the credibility that Island Capital and other funds have built over the last number of years, with a greater, larger pool of capital to work with, I guarantee you there'll be a lot more angels wanting to invest with us and with other funds. It will it will just expand, it'll just multiply and be exponentially honestly.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

Trying to think where we go here. Mindful that we have about you know 10, 15 minutes. Carolyn, you're you're one of our instructors with NACO Academy. You've done a lot of educational work, essentially ensuring that as private capital prepares to mobilize into the ecosystem, it's smart capital adding value to the entrepreneurs and being deployed into good ventures. Any commentary around that journey, the educational journey for new investors?

SPEAKER_00 39:29

I think uh when you're working with new investors, it's often surprising the the the journey they have to take because it is such a long journey. It's it's it's a unique asset class in the fact that even just learning the illiquidity of it, like the fact that there won't be any way to get their capital back during the 10-year process that they put their angel capital in. And so we find that the education, we try and go through a lot of different steps because we want to retain angel investors, and retaining angel investors is also very difficult, especially when they see companies that they have supported not receiving more support. It's very easy to lose angel investors. We we've seen so many angel investors who've just been they've they start optimistic about the process, and so they decide to invest their money elsewhere. And so that it's it's something that does take a lot of work, more than you expect, because it is so unfamiliar to so many individuals.

SPEAKER_03 40:23

Shelly, any comments?

SPEAKER_07 40:27

I would just echo everything that's been said on the investor side. There's one thing to consider the asset class itself and the investment. And then I think it's another to consider yourself as an investor in that asset class. And I think every investor goes through that process and goes, okay, let me understand this asset class. My money's locked up for a very long period of time. I have no liquidity, it's very high risk, et cetera, et cetera. And then like, you know, especially in our community, they go through an evaluation of like, well, can I do this? So it's kind of a double whammy in activating capital, I think, for this asset class and for our fund. And so Alex talked about, you know, two or three meetings or calls. Yes, like sometimes where it's like five or seven, we look at it as, you know, and uh it's a bit of a marketing endeavor where you have to, you know, what is it, seven times before you you buy, we definitely go through that process at the 51. So activating the capital is just as much work as deploying the capital. So I would echo what Jacques and Carolyn are saying. You know, this is a tremendous opportunity for Canada, for women, the economy. We need to mobilize this capital, but let's not underscore the work that's necessary to drive this capital activation on this deployment is massive. So I think, you know, what you have proposed, it's really compelling. And I think organizations like ourselves can just mobilize even more capital, which should be the objective that we can invest in these companies. So I just want to reiterate that, you know, while I'm pessimistic some days, I'm very optimistic that we're we're going to break through here.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

I think if I could add, Claudio, you know, the an element of what Shelley said is, you know, the time to raise capital takes a lot of time. That's the same for companies. And it would be so much easier if there was an obvious network of individuals and funds, et cetera, that presented themselves to emerging managers and to companies that they could just go quickly shopping and poll them and raise the money or not, right? But it's not a quick process. And so that also leads into a topic you mentioned about the administrative burden. So that time also creates a burden on funds as well as companies, but also the cost of doing that. Emerging companies, emerging funds, you know, do not have the infrastructure to manage funds, to build the fund, unless they're at scale of, you know, 50 million or more. So I think, you know, the infrastructure costs elements that you've talked about in helping angel communities, emerging funds, that's super important because how do you get an emerging manager that can see around the corner to some interesting aspect of the economy or segment, come to the market to invest in that market without all these burdens ahead of them? To, you know, you have to be basically high net worth individuals to start a fund. It's not easy. You know, you you can't raise management fees off of a$10 million fund. That's an example.

SPEAKER_05 43:36

And I'm I might just add this infrastructure is so important. And we've been we've been quite fortunate here, but it's more than just as been said, it's more than just raising the capital. Then there's the the due diligence and the screening of deals and putting them together, deploying the capital. But all the work that goes on around that in the ecosystem, it's it's meeting with LPs, it's holding, it's holding events, it's it's spending time at the university with the with the graduate students. It's I think we met with in fund two, we had 330 companies in our pipeline. We had partner meetings with 160. Many of those companies are not portfolio companies yet, but we're following them. We're mentoring them. We referred them on to other places. So there's a lot of work that was on in the ecosystem that creates the next wave of founders that we will end up investing in.

SPEAKER_03 44:42

As we're getting into the final minutes, I think one thing, I know one thing that's very important for us as we think about the$750 million envelope at the earlier stage. We are a small country by population. And we're divided by this massive geography at times. And the innovation economy is very much a global competition. And so it's top of mind for us is that it's at the earliest stage where we need one Canada, where we need a strong national network of organizations. So that if you're seeing a great deal, Alex, at ICP in Charlatan, you have that connectivity. Your network has that connectivity to let's say Carolyn or Jacques or Hogs in a very different part of the country. And what we're seeing is regional dynamics. We do see clusters of syndicates within regions. What we we know we need to see much more, much more of our national syndicates. So I'd love to have either of you, or maybe we could go around the room in terms of any contributions that you have related to the regional opportunity we hear to leverage our collective national strength.

SPEAKER_05 45:45

In the face of silent, I was fair to get meant. It's hypocritical. We trade information and and and deal flow back and forth around around all angels' investors in Atlantic Canada. It's why we go to the NACO Global Summit, which is coming up in a month's time, to meet investors from across the country. And I've referred, I've referred deals in Ottawa to one of our colleagues in Ottawa, the same in Toronto. So yes, we have a network across the country. Happy to refer deals or to bring people in from Calgary who may know have an expertise or dex in a particular, in a particular vertical, and invest with us in the Atlantic Candles. We spend a lot of time on the road. We love to travel the country, but we're building our network beyond the region now. And I think that bodes to the comment that you're making.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

Yeah, I would agree. One thing that I would say for sure is that almost every one of our LPs has brought a deal forward. Almost every one of our portfolio companies has brought a deal forward. We see the network effect of our LPs getting involved in our companies, and we do that proactively. And so those kind of collisions are super important. And the network expands. You know, we have a uh Eastern-based venture fund that's in three of our companies. So that creates the network effect. And so sharing is super important. Just keeping it visible is really important to amongst funds and angel investors and LPs.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

I was just going to say with the network effect, it is true though, that we try to make sure that when when we are working on deals, when we've invested in a company, and like even if you think of funds like Women's Equity Lab, we're referring back and forth to each other to make sure that that we know what funds what deals we're working on so that they can get that required capital because they need more than one of us to be investing at the time.

SPEAKER_05 47:31

I mean, I think six of our LPs are from Calgary, you know.

SPEAKER_07 47:34

So and I would echo the same, you know, that collaboration is needed. But Claudio, you've heard me talk about this before, and I'll bring it up again. I think a consistent policy framework for unlocking this capital across Canada. So in the provinces and nationally, like could we just have a consistent framework that says, you know, here's the tax credit or the investment tax credit to activate private capital into these funds and into these companies. And I think the syndicate work that we're doing and this national collaboration work that we're doing. If we had, you know, the same policies in PEI and then and Alberta and MBC, I think that that would drive a tremendous benefit of unlocking even more capital and even more collaboration between all of us.

SPEAKER_03 48:24

So I agree. Great point. I'm gonna throw it over to you, Hans, in a minute for the last word. One thing just to give perspective on our policy work, the immediate focus coming out of budget 2025 and going into budget 2025 is matching funds and infrastructure support. And the reason why that's important is that it's a necessary precursor to ensure that when there is a national investment tax credit, which we will be focusing on as we move to the next budget, budget 2026 later this year, it's important that we have the infrastructure in place, the matching funds in place, so that when the private capital is being deployed, it's smart money being deployed into good deals so that we get that flywheel effect. And so if you get these in the right order, you get massive economic upside. And the research across the globe, and we've consulted with many of the world's top scholars in these areas. That that's the right way to get the flywheel effect. And so that's why the$750 million envelope is so critical, because you you will not have success with an investment tax credit in the absence of the infrastructure, in the absence of the access points, particularly in a country of our geographic size. And hands, over to you for the last word.

SPEAKER_04 49:34

Yes, I think having been in the venture industry for 25 years now and in a jurisdiction where there were some tax credits available via what used to be the labor-sponsored funds in British Columbia, there there are examples of capital misallocation when the credits flow too inconsiderately and often are misused and they drive up valuations. So I think it's it's good to see NACO spending some thoughtful time on ways in which the tax credits can be used so that they enable without distorting the flow of private capital. And that's very important because companies are misfunded early. They end up being misfits later on. But what is important is that there be additional provisions that allow capital to flow naturally and to unlock some of the angel capital that is sitting on the sidelines or could perhaps be mobilized. And as part of that, you know, tax credits, if appropriately and reasonably deployed, can be an important component of that in order to incentivize the early risk capital, which is an essential and vital part of the ecosystem.

SPEAKER_01 50:56

Claudio, we haven't talked about AI. I'm sorry. Sorry, I interrupt you. But law first goal without AI. You can't tell a cell. No, I just mean it's early. It's early, right? That's where early investors are playing. So AI is a super early component of our ecosystem. And uh sorry to cut it.

SPEAKER_03 51:17

Agreed. That's a great point. In this era of AI and quantum, if if we're not making those investments at the earliest stage, we lose these companies before the young start. That's an exceptional point. Good. On that, thank you, Alex, Hans, Carolyn, Jack, Shelly, and Lisa for an exceptional conversation. It went by way too quickly. We will have to have a follow-up roundtable on the AI and quantum opportunity. To everyone that joined us, what you've heard today, it's the continuation of a process. It takes time to develop and deploy this strategy. And so this is the continuation of a process, not the end of one. And we hope that you'll be a part of it each step of the way. And that process continues in Ottawa. On May 5th through 7th, as Alex mentioned, we're hosting NACO Summit 2026. And this year we'll be unlike anything we've done before. The stakes are high. We'll be hosting policy roundtables that will directly shape the deployment framework for the$750 million envelope. The investors, the fund managers, the policymakers, the entrepreneurs, all of you, the full end-to-end pipeline will be in the room. If you're already registered, we look forward to seeing you there. If you're not, we'll be sending a follow up email after this session with an invitation for you to join us. I hope you'll be there. It will be a historic moment for our innovation economy, for your organizations, for your companies, and for this country. We look forward to seeing you in Ottawa and to building what comes next. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been great to have you as part of this discussion. Thank you, everyone.