NACO Podcast
The NACO Podcast by the National Angel Capital Organization leverages the collective wisdom of 4,000 angel investors that have invested $1.8 billion into 2,000 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
Episodes
43 episodes
Canada's $750M Early-Stage Envelope — What It Means and What Comes Next
This national roundtable presents the findings of Seeding Growth, NACO's landmark white paper on Canada's early-stage capital gaps and the federal government's $750 million early-stage envelope within the $1.75 billion Venture Capital ...
Reinforcing Canada’s Early-Stage Capital Infrastructure: A National Roundtable
Canada’s innovation economy is at an inflection point.In this National Roundtable hosted by Claudio Rojas, CEO of the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO), leaders from across the capital pipeline examine the structural gaps limiti...
Government Should Leverage Angel Investors: Michael King, Finance Professor at the Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria
“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....
Government Funding to Survive the Crisis: Opening Remarks by Claudio Rojas, CEO at NACO
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...
Canadian Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors Must Lead the Way: Ali Ehsassi, Parliamentary Secretary to The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry
“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 ...
Canada's Moment to Shine: Dr. Kamran Khan, CEO and Founder at BlueDot
“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 b...
Massive Tech Companies Grow From a Robust Pipeline of Start-ups: Janet Bannister, Managing Partner at Real Ventures
“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-sta...
Innovating at the Speed of the Crisis: Opening remarks by Claudio Rojas
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 gover...
Unleashing the Full Potential of Our Ecosystem with Cathy Bennett and Shelley Kuipers
“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 nee...
Ecosystem in Crisis: InterGen CEO Sandi Gilbert, The OMX Founder Nicole Verkindt, and The DMZ Executive Director Abdullah Snobar
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 sustaini...
In Conversation with Rachel Bendayan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and Internatio
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 ...
TV Host and Author Amber Mac on the State of the Ecosystem at NACO Roundtable
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 explai...
Activating Capital for All Entrepreneurs: Claudio Rojas, CEO and Amanda Filipe Director at NACO
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 we...
Cathy Bennett on Unleashing a New Wave of Wealth
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 ...
Founding a Movement: Rhiannon Davies, Co-Founder of the Atlantic Women's Venture Fund
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 Re...
Activating Diversity: Nicole LeBlanc on Atlantic Women's Venture Fund
“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 fem...
COVID-19 Has Changed Health Care and There Is No Going Back: Dr. Benjamin Fine, Physician and Co-Founder at HaloHealth
“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 st...
The Horse is Out of the Barn on Virtual Health Care: Dr. Darren Larsen, Chief Medical Officer at OntarioMD
“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 ov...
Claudia Krywiak, President & CEO at Ontario Centres of Excellence
"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 technologie...
Super Angels Launch New Fund: Benton Leong, General Partner at ArchAngel Network of Funds
“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 ...
Working Together Will Make Our Ecosystem Stronger: Victoria Lennox, Founder at Startup Canada
“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 Cana...
State of the Innovation Economy by Douglas Soltys, Editor-in-Chief at BetaKit
“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 Solt...
Bold Government Procurement Policies Will Lead the Recovery: Angela Mondou, CEO of TechNation
“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 p...
Introductory Remarks at Roundtable on Innovations in Health Care
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 ...
Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Dr. Sohail Ghandi, President at Ontario Medical Assocation
“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 increas...