Mantle Mondays

Founders spend their lives pitching. Investors, customers, recruits, partners. The job is getting people to care. Few people do that better than Lianne Laing.

Lianne is President of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute Foundation, one of Canada’s leading cardiac centres. Before that, she competed for Canada as a gymnast, earned an NCAA scholarship to UMass Amherst, and spent 20 years on Ottawa television, first as a sports anchor and then hosting the morning show. She landed on air at 22, five days after a reporter handed her his business card.

In this episode, Mantle co-founder and CEO Amar Varma sits down with his longtime friend (they met in grade seven) to unpack the storytelling playbook Lianne built on camera and now uses with donors, CEOs, and decision makers.

We cover:

• Why she never makes the ask, and what she does instead
• Why the follow-up question matters more than your list of questions
• Building a personal brand on authenticity when everything online feels fake
• Why the people who show up for you are rarely the ones you expect
• Finding your “tease”: the one line that keeps people around
• A simple exercise for anyone who struggles to speak with confidence

00:00 Intro

01:54 From gymnast to broadcaster to foundation president

03:42 The Heart Institute Foundation and why it’s personal

11:16 Competing for Canada and the NCAA path

14:12 Five days from press release to live TV

17:09 Coachability and learning on live TV

19:37 The advantage of having done hard things

22:29 “I don’t make the ask”

28:45 The follow-up question beats the script

32:42 Building an authentic brand

38:07 Your tribe isn’t who you think it is

44:33 What’s your tease?

47:36 The childhood bedroom exercise

50:59 Growing up in a remarkable cohort

57:01 Tennis, art, and Ottawa’s best-kept secret

In this episode of Mantle Mondays, Amar Varma sits down with Arif Bhanji (co-founder of Lazer Technologies) to share his entrepreneurial journey, insights into AI and product development, and the importance of culture, speed, and founder-led vision in building successful tech companies.

00:00 Introducing Arif Bhanji

04:52 The timing of entering the tech and AI space

08:21 The mindset shift12:05 Building Fiix

20:23 The impact of YC

24:29 Operating at Silicon Valley speed in Canada

30:47 Understanding the role of an FDE and team composition

37:11 Hiring strategies and building a strong team

43:42 Rapid fire & closing

Robert Saunders grew up building iOS apps in high school, worked on Shopify's platform and Shop App teams, then left a comfortable job to bet on a problem he'd just lived through: a slow, confusing, paper-based real estate closing on his first condo.

That bet became Ownright, a digital real estate law firm that handles residential property closings, sales, and refinances across Ontario.

In this episode, Amar Varma talks with Rob about his path from engineer to founder, and the growth journey since:

• The bad condo closing that became the idea for Ownright
• Scaling from one closing a day to 50

• Where Ownright is headed next

Learn more about Ownright: https://ownright.comManage your cap table with Mantle Equity: https://www.withmantle.com/equity

Follow Mantle Mondays for weekly conversations with founders building through the AI shift.

00:00 - Meet Rob Saunders

08:28 - Building Ownright

20:45 - Building inside a regulated industry

36:35 - Scaling in the AI world

44:12 - Support as a founder

47:39 - The future of Ownright

52:50 - Rapid fire & closing

Everyone romanticizes persistence. Almost nobody teaches founders how to pivot.

Last October, Sam Pajot-Phipps and his co-founders (Kirk Simpson and Peter Carrescia of Wave fame) made the call to sunset goConfirm, a peer-to-peer identity verification product used across 600+ communities on Facebook and Reddit. Tens of thousands of people loved it. The metrics looked promising. And they shut it down anyway.

In this episode, Sam breaks down exactly how they knew: the milestones that kept getting hit without compounding, the difference between a wedge and product market fit, and why the most uncomfortable decision is often the right one.

Then we get into what they built next. Courtyard AI is betting that AI assistants are becoming the front door for how customers find businesses, and that small businesses (your local HVAC company, gym, restaurant) are dangerously underserved for that shift. Sam explains how Courtyard builds a living knowledge base that makes small businesses discoverable to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

Follow Mantle Mondays for weekly conversations with founders building through the AI shift.

Twenty years ago, Raj was in a room with Steve Jobs and a group of nervous AT&T executives. Jobs ended the tension by offering to hand them a billion dollars in cash on the spot. Raj watched that and spent the next two decades building companies of his own.

He co-founded Localytics in 2008, two weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed, bootstrapped it through the financial crisis, scaled it past $25 million in revenue, raised $60 million, and eventually sold it. Then built a second company acquired by Snapchat. Then spent a year at AWS as GM of Generative AI watching Fortune 500 companies build AI demos that never shipped.

Now he's building again.

In this episode, Raj traces the full arc. What it was like to work directly with Jobs multiple times a week before the iPhone launched. What that experience modeled about founder conviction. And how he carried it through every wave of tech that followed, mobile, analytics, cloud, and now AI.

The new company is coming. This is the story of everything that led here.

Follow Mantle Mondays for weekly conversations with founders building at the edge.

Your current insurance policy has a gap in it. Your AI system is probably sitting right in it.

Karthik Ramakrishnan, CEO of Armilla AI, has spent 15 years at the frontier of machine learning. From building prediction platforms for the New York Times and Kobo, to working alongside AI godfather Yoshua Bengio at Element AI, he's seen the full arc. Now he's solving the problem enterprises won't say out loud: they're terrified of deploying AI because nobody can tell them what happens when it goes wrong.

In this episode, Karthik breaks down exactly where the coverage gaps live. Why 50+ US insurers have quietly added AI exclusions to general liability policies. Why your cyber insurance won't trigger when your own AI causes a privacy breach. And what the Air Canada chatbot lawsuit means for every company deploying AI today.

He also gets into the practical side. How one fintech startup used a warranty on their AI model to win banks that competitors couldn't. Why a perfect demo is no longer enough to close enterprise deals. And what Y Combinator pushed him to do that changed everything for Armilla.

Most founders obsess over growth. But Rebecca Skvorc, CFO at ODAIA, says the real question is whether your company has the foundation to survive it.

In this episode of Mantle Mondays, Rebecca joins Amar Varma to unpack what founders need to understand before the curve starts pointing up: ARR vs. CARR, net and gross revenue retention, cap table complexity, smart resource allocation, remote culture, and why finance should be treated as a strategic partner from day one.

Colin Hennigar of SickKids Foundation and the Upside Foundation joins Mantle Mondays to explain how founders can turn startup equity into lasting impact and why legacy should start long before the exit.

Donate to SickKids Foundation: www.sickkidsfoundation.com

Learn about the Upside Foundation: www.upsidefoundation.ca

Manage your cap table on Mantle: www.withmantle.com

Raising venture capital in 2026 looks nothing like it did three years ago. Seed-strapped companies are hitting $6M ARR in six months. Pre-ChatGPT portfolios are re-platforming from scratch.

Matt Cohen, Founder and Managing Partner of Ripple Ventures, has backed 55+ companies through 13 exits since launching the firm. He joins Amar Varma on Mantle Mondays to break down what's actually getting funded right now — and what isn't.

00:00 Introduction to Venture Capital and Founder's Journey

05:54 The Evolution of Ripple Ventures and Investment Philosophy

12:09 The Importance of Long-Term Commitment in Venture Capital

17:37 The Role of Founders in Shaping the Future of Technology

23:41 Success Stories and Lessons Learned from Portfolio Companies

31:12 Navigating AI and Infrastructure in Tech

39:32 The Role of Relationships in Venture Capital

44:2 Personal Insights and Community Engagement

What does it actually take to manage wealth well after an exit?In this episode of Mantle Mondays, Chris Canavan, the General Manager for post-exit founders, breaks down how founders should think about managing post-exit wealth — from preparing your personal finances before liquidity to handling the operational, emotional, and strategic complexity that shows up after the deal closes.