David Abbey is a serial entrepreneur, founding his first business back in 2003.  After his exit in 2006 David enjoyed some time abroad while shifting into the world of tech startups, earning an enviable reputation for creating strategic partnerships, fostering growth within companies, and identifying opportunities to improve businesses.

David first dreamed up Penny, an AI-powered virtual assistant, while witnessing his wife’s challenges running a successful direct sales business.  Never one to sit still with an idea, in 2018 David cofounded Penny AI with Chris Noble, together building a tool to help millions of direct sales consultants grow their business.

In 2000, Dave Wessinger co-founded PointClickCare with his brother Mike.  Together they pioneered healthcare’s digital transformation and drove improved outcomes for seniors and care teams through technology. Today, PointClickCare boasts one of Canada’s most admired corporate cultures with over 1,500 employees who currently serve over 26,000 care providers, establishing PointClickCare as the largest cloud-based healthcare platform in North America.

Dave has earned recognition for the foresight and innovation that helps thousands reimagine the way technology can be used to communicate, collaborate, and improve care across the healthcare continuum. 

Andrew Graham is co-founder and CEO of Borrowell, a financial technology company that helps consumers make great decisions about credit. Borrowell was the first company in Canada to offer credit scores for free and has grown to be one of the country’s largest fintech companies, with over 2 million users. Borrowell has won numerous awards, including being named one of the top 100 fintech companies in the world. 

Earlier in his career, Andrew held senior roles in corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions. Andrew holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MA in economics from the University of Edinburgh. He is a frequent speaker on topics including innovation and fintech. Andrew served as the board chair of The Canadian Club of Toronto and co-founded Toronto Homecoming, a social enterprise.

Dan Burgar is a cheerleader and innovator who has helped Vancouver become a global powerhouse in VR/AR/Metaverse. Dan is the co-founder and CEO of the Frontier Collective, a coalition of leaders in tech, culture, and community driving forward the development and support of Web3, the metaverse, VR/AR, climate tech, AI, and eSports.

Furthermore, Dan  serves as the president of the Vancouver VR/AR Association, an organization with a mission to make Vancouver/BC a world leading hub for growing and scaling VR/AR companies 

Nominated as one of 2021's LinkedIn Top Voices: Technology & Innovation, BIV’s Top Forty Under 40, and named as a BC500 leader, Dan has written for and offered tech insights to publications including TechCrunch, Betakit, VR Scout, DailyHive, and BC Business. Dan has curated events and spoken at venues around the globe including Web Summit, SXSW, and the TED Conference. Dan also advises and mentors many fast-growing startups and entrepreneurs with an emphasis on diversity.

Marcus New is the Managing Partner & Chief Entrepreneur of InvestX Capital. InvestX investments have included; SpaceX, Airbnb, Lyft, Impossible Foods, Pinterest, Spotify, Palantir, Dropbox, Docusign, Kraken and other global category leaders. Furthermore, through Marcus’s family office, he has led more than 150 private placements into early-stage private and public companies. 

Prior to InvestX, Marcus was the Founder and Chairman (and previously the CEO) of Stockhouse Publishing – one of North America’s leading online financial communities and a global hub for accredited investors. Before launching Stockhouse, Marcus built Stockgroup Media, an online information company whose client base consisted of the top Canadian brokerage firms, global institutional sales desks, and hedge funds.

Marcus is an active participant in the entrepreneurial community, having served as the past President of the Vancouver Chapter and Canadian Conference Chair for the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO).

Founder & CEO of Terramera, Karn Manhas is an entrepreneur with more than 15 years of leadership experience in government, community, and business development. Karn is responsible for the vision and strategic direction of Terramera, which develops high-performance, plant-based alternatives to synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilizers, including products for agriculture, professional and consumer applications. 

Prior to Terramera, Karn was elected as the youngest member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in British Columbia in 2001. He's a member of YPO, and was named one of Business in Vancouver’s top Forty Under 40.

Karn holds a Juris Doctor in Law from the University of British Columbia and a B.Sc. in Biology (Genetics) and Biotechnology from McGill University.

Jay Giraud is an automotive tech entrepreneur focused on launching companies that redefine mobility. Jay has built successful products and companies by marrying disruptive solutions with disruptive business models as the founder, inventor, and CEO of three automotive tech startups. These include his current company, Damon, with a mission to cause a paradigm shift for safer, smarter motorcycling. Mojio, a Scalable, secure and hardware-agnostic platform and SaaS provider to build and scale connected mobility services. And Rapid Electric Vehicles (REV) an early-mover cleantech vehicle technology company with a ready-for-market solution to help meet the challenge of becoming carbon neutral.  On top of this, Jay spent a good portion of the 90’s living out all of our dreams as a competitive snowboarder.

Evgeny (Ev) Tchebotarev began photography in 2002 and since then he has spent the entirety of his professional career dedicated to the betterment of visual creativity. In 2021, He co-founded Sloika in order to build a new NFT experience for photographers. In early 2004, before Facebook and photo-sharing sites, Ev created 500 px, a community for millions of photographers to meet and share photos and information. Between his two startups, Evgeny was Skylum Software’s Chief Growth Officer expanding Skylum’s business in Asia and allowing Ev to work and travel all over the continent. Ev is an active photographer and has been honoured to judge many world-class photo contests, including Red Bull Illume, Photo Life, and the Sony World Photography Awards. Originally from Moscow, Ev has earned a BA in Commerce and Finance from Ryerson University in Toronto, graduating with honours in 2007.

Tanis Jorge is a serial tech entrepreneur and a leading advisor on entrepreneurship and building successful cofounder partnerships.

Throughout her career in startups, spanning the last 20 years, Tanis has cofounded, scaled, and successfully exited multiple data-driven businesses with the same partner.  

Her successes culminated with her most recent venture, Trulioo, which she co-founded in 2011. Between 2011 and 2015, Tanis served as Chief Operations Officer of Trulioo, working to lay the groundwork and building the foundation for the trusted, innovative, and disruptive company it has become today. In 2021, Trulioo reached unicorn status (US $1.65B valuation), solidifying its place as the world’s leading identity verification company and Jorge’s track record for founding successful businesses.

Today, Tanis is one of the go-to voices and experts on the cofounder relationship, drawing on her experience co-founding and successfully scaling four technology businesses. Advising fast-growing start-ups and leading venture capitalists, her work focuses on how cofounders can function in an open, productive, and symbiotic way to ensure continued and long-term business success.

Marlon Thompson is an angel investor, startup founder and experienced advocate for diversity in business. Thompson founded Future Capital in 2020 to change the landscape of startup investing across North America.

In addition to his role as CEO at Future Capital, Thompson serves as a member of the Board of Directors for QueerTech - a Montreal-based non-profit organisation that aims to queer the tech ecosytem, and as a Venture Partner for LOI Venture.

Prior to launching Future Capital - Marlon developed and led diversity initiatives that support founders and investors for the likes of League of Innovators, and Highline Beta. In addition to his work on diversifying the tech and VC industries, Marlon is a current community representative for the Rainbow Foundation of Hope and has served as a refugee sponsor in partnership with Rainbow Refugee Foundation & the National Film Board of Canada.