Backstage Pass, by Front Row Ventures

Navigating the Tides of Entrepreneurship: From Maritime Officer to WIND Mobile Billion-Dollar Exit (S2.E4)

Welcome to Season 2, episode 4 of Backstage Pass, the podcast by Front Row Ventures taking you behind the scenes into Canada’s tech ecosystem and its success stories.

We’ll be hosting Canada’s top investors, founders, and tech minds and asking them the questions that matter to you.

Today, we're super excited to have Brice Scheschuk as our guest

Brice is the Managing Partner of Globalive Capital as well as the CEO of Globalive Communications.

He was a co-founder and CFO of WIND Mobile, which was acquired by Shaw in 2015 for $1.6B dollars.

Brice has over twenty-five years of experience building and operating companies.

He obtained his CPA, CA designation at PWC and B.Comm (Hon.) Finance from Dalhousie University.

In addition to ALL of that, Brice also served as a Maritime Surface Officer in the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve.

He now serves on numerous boards and advisory committees and is a frequent speaker on scale-up entrepreneurship and innovation.

Finally, during the pandemic, he co-founded MindFrame Connect, a not-for-profit focused on elevating the craft of mentorship and improving entrepreneurial resiliency.

In this episode, we'll cover all of that and more - We deep dive into Brice's entrepreneurial journey and how he engineered one of Canada's greatest telecom acquisitions.

He also cracks open how to evolve as a leader through self-awareness and the unmatched importance of psychological safety on high-performance teams.

Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Brice

About FRV:

FRV is Canada's first and largest university-focused VC firm. We invest in those leveraging cutting-edge technologies to create and redefine industries.

Welcome to Season 2, episode 3 of Backstage Pass, the podcast by Front Row Ventures taking you behind the scenes into Canada’s tech ecosystem and its success stories.

Today, we’re happy to have Chris Arsenault as our guest.

Chris is the co-founder, President & CEO of Inovia Capital, one of Canada's largest Venture Capital firms with now over $2.2 billion dollars under management.

Chris currently serves as a director on the boards of AppDirect, Groupe Dynamite, Poka, Snapcommerce, LifeHouse; and, until recently, Lightspeed (which IPOed in 2020), and Luxury Retreats (acquired by Airbnb in 2017)

Prior to Inovia, Chris co-founded and launched a number of Software, Mobile and Consumer Internet technology start-up companies, including two spin-offs of telecom giants Microcell and Teleglobe.

His work in the mid-90’s as co-founder and CEO of SIT provided him with the opportunity to play an important part in the initial growth of the Internet.

In this episode, we'll cover all of that and more - We deep dive into Chris' entrepreneurial journey before he became an investor.

And how a guy born on the northeastern tip of Quebec, almost 10 hours from Montreal, went on to build one of Canada's largest VC firms.

Without further a due, here’s, Chris Arsenault.

Welcome to Season 2, episode 2 of Backstage Pass, the podcast by Front Row Ventures taking you behind the scenes into Canada’s tech ecosystem and its success stories.

Today, we’re happy to have Kim Furlong.

Prior to the CVCA, she spent five years in the Canadian government and a decade at Amgen as VP of Federal Government Affairs. She graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor in American History, and from Carleton with a Master of International Trade and Finance.

In this episode, we’ll cover all of that and more. So, without further ado, here’s Kim Furlong.

Welcome to Season 2 of Backstage Pass! On this episode, we're super happy to have Francois Arbour! Francois is an active entrepreneur, mentor, and angel Investor with over 20 years of experience in technology and marketing. He founded and bootstrapped PremiumBeat to an eventual 32M+ sale to Shutterstock. Since the acquisition, he has led over 50+ investments in early-stage start-ups in Canada and globally. He's back in the game as a founder through Designstripe, a new tech startup.

In this episode, we go way beyond the professional, and into the less-talked-about subjects in tech. We'll hear from Francois about mental health, and why it's such an important issue.

Front Row Ventures is excited to take you backstage into Canada’s tech ecosystem and its success stories. We asked Canada’s leading investors, founders, and tech minds to share their experiences. From successful Canadians doing business in Canada to expats working abroad, we deep dive into their journey to success and the stories behind it. Come in close. Brace yourselves for the real stories; because we had the same questions. So we asked them.

Iain Klugman was the President and CEO of Communitech for the past 17 years. He grew Communitech into one of North America’s leading tech hubs and into a central node in Ontario’s start-up support system. To this day, Communitech has supported the growth of thousands of technology companies.

Last year, he announced that he would be stepping down from his role while assuming a new role: Executive Advisor to the CEO. Prior to Communitech, Iain was the CEO of a provincial crown corporation, Executive Director of Communications at CBC, and Director of Global Branding and Advertising for Nortel. He’s held various public-sector positions, and even fought forest fires for 7 years!

Iain is one of the most influential people in Canada’s start-up ecosystem. Stay tuned.

Leah Lawrence is the CEO of Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC). The SDTC is Canada's premier ecosystem builder, established by the Government of Canada to invest in clean technology companies across various sectors and stages (from seed to scale-up). Across its funds, the SDTC has deployed over C$1.28B to its 450 portfolio companies. She's been in the cleantech industry for over 20 years.

On this episode of Backstage Pass, Leah answers our biggest questions about cleantech. How did the movement start? From where do cleantech entrepreneurs get their ideas? How does investing in cleantech differ from investing in tech? And how will things change in the future?

This week on Backstage Pass, we spoke to Jean-François Pariseau. JF is the founding partner of Amplitude Ventures, one of Canada’s most successful healthcare VC firms. Prior to Amplitude, JF led BDC’s Healthcare team for 17 years, and started 2 companies out of university. In this episode, JF talks about his various investing experiences, insights on the healthcare industry, and successful exits (most recently the 1.3B acquisition of Clementia Pharma).

Front Row Ventures is excited to take you backstage into Canada’s tech ecosystem and its success stories. We asked Canada’s leading investors, founders, and tech minds to share their experiences. From successful Canadians doing business in Canada to expats working abroad, we deep dive into their journey to success and the stories behind it. Come in close. Brace yourselves for the real stories; because we had the same questions. So we asked them.

Have you ever wondered what makes Silicon Valley such a successful ecosystem? Or why there's so much big data buzz?

Chris was the founder of DataHero (acquired by Cloudability), and employee #1 at AsterData (acquired by Teradata for USD$263m). In this episode, we had the opportunity to talk to Chris about his experiences at the forefront of technology—from the inception of big data to Motorola’s attempt at designing the iPhone. Chris also discusses the drivers behind Silicon Valley's success, and how he plans to narrow the expertise gap between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world, starting with Canada, through Commonwealth Ventures.

Front Row Ventures is excited to take you backstage into Canada’s tech ecosystem and its success stories. We asked Canada’s leading investors, founders, and tech minds to share their experiences. From successful Canadians doing business in Canada to expats working abroad, we deep dive into their journey to success and the stories behind it. Come in close. Brace yourselves for the real stories; because we had the same questions. So we asked them.

Janet is the Managing Partner of Real Ventures, Canada’s most active seed VC firm. Prior to Real Ventures, Janet founded Kijiji Canada, was an early-stage executive at eBay, and a management consultant at McKinsey and Company. In this episode, we had the opportunity to talk to Janet about her various experiences from growing Kijiji to become the largest classifieds sites in Canada and one of the most visited sites in the country to building a full-stack VC firm at Real Ventures.

Front Row Ventures is excited to take you backstage into Canada’s tech ecosystem and its success stories. We asked Canada’s leading investors, founders, and tech minds to share their experiences. From successful Canadians doing business in Canada to expats working abroad, we deep dive into their journey to success and the stories behind it. Come in close. Brace yourselves for the real stories; because we had the same questions. So we asked them.

Matt Chessco is a full-time artist with over 2 million followers on various social platforms. He built his product and his brand by revolutionizing pop art and optimizing it for virtual platforms. Prior to becoming an artist, he was a mechanical engineer and an Investment Associate at Front Row Ventures. In this episode, we explore Matt's career transition from engineer to artist, and his process for creating viral online art.

Front Row Ventures is excited to take you backstage into Canada’s tech ecosystem and its success stories. We asked Canada’s leading investors, founders, and tech minds to share their experiences. From successful Canadians doing business in Canada to expats working abroad, we deep dive into their journey to success and the stories behind it. Come in close. Brace yourselves for the real stories; because we had the same questions. So we asked them.