“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 need also to remember that when you think about women as a whole, there’s significant underrepresentation of women of color, Aboriginal women, LGBTQ women.

These are sisters who I want to include in our fund because by teaching and training and deploying their capital, what we’re going to see are stronger female founders supported. We’re also going to see men thinking about investing in female-led companies.”

–Cathy Bennett

“We are 51 percent of the population. So there’s an opportunity to unlock our capital, our innovation and our spending power. It’s going to be a huge economic force and economic engine inside of Canada to really help drive that transformation and that diversification. And if we think about women today, there’s a wealth transfer going on. So over the next 10 years, women will amass much more wealth and capital that needs to be deployed.”

–Shelley Kuipers

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 sustaining a business in crisis mode.

Originally Recorded on April 30, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.

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 Motryx; Stephany Lapierre, CEO at tealbook; and Jennifer Wagner, President at CarbonCure Technologies.

"I think we're going to get through this, and we'll get through it by government and the private sector working together and doing whatever it takes in order to get our Canadian economy back on track. I hope that you feel the support of the government and that you know that we're behind you 100 percent in this. Let me just say that I'm here, I'm listening, and we know that the work is not over."

"If there's one thing that I think has been a theme it's the importance of adapting and changing your business model in a crisis situation. And we've seen a lot of very small businesses and startups do that very successfully."
–Rachel Bendayan

Originally Recorded on April 30, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.

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 explain what they do, and leaders who have been praised for a lack of a moral compass. Today, I believe that we are looking in the rearview mirror at these realities. The old ways of doing business are fading away.”

“While many businesses, mine included, are relying on a framework to survive and thrive over the next few months, there is something bigger than just business that is happening today. We are all accepting that we’re vulnerable and, through this recognition, I do believe that we’re finding the courage to do things that we’re meant to be doing and the realization that it is okay to ask for help.”

“If we dig deeper than simply building and scaling companies and focus on building and scaling companies right now that the world needs, I think we can all agree that the return on investment is greater for everyone.”
–Amber Mac

Originally Recorded on April 30, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.

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 welcomed an impressive panel of industry insiders and experts well-versed in the intense need to support enterprises led by women and to remove barriers standing in their way. 

In the wake of COVID-19, there’s an urgent need for high-potential entrepreneurs — both male and female, from urban cities and rural communities — to gain rapid access to the resources they need to grow and scale. “If the pipeline of startups shrinks dramatically, there will be a massive ripple effect across the entire Canadian economy. As a nation, we need to harness the power of all entrepreneurs as we invest our way out of the crisis”

Originally Recorded on April 30, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.

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 or have earned the most amount of wealth that women in Canada have ever had before,” says Cathy Bennett, entrepreneur and cofounder at Atlantic Women’s Venture Fund. “And we need to ensure that that’s deployed in the communities, not only in creating female founders, inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs, but also female investors, who are willing to participate and play in the ecosystem to help grow businesses and grow the economy.”

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 Recorded in September 2019. Sign-up to our newsletter for an invitation to future events.

“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 female staff,” said Nicole Leblanc, the Toronto-based Director of Investments at Sidewalk Labs.

Originally Recorded in September 2019. Sign-up to our newsletter for an invitation to future events.

“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 store, and the question is healthcare providers need help from startups to think about what does the ‘X’ service look like in the post-COVID-19 world? What does the Loblaws for endoscopy look like? Or medical imaging, or the operation room, or the emergency department, palliative care, etc. They’re all going to look very different.” —Physician and Co-Founder at HaloHealth

Originally Recorded on April 23, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.

“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 overnight when we consider how COVID-19 took on our practices. We were looking at near zero virtual care use in primary care and moved to virtually widespread adoption in this space in less than two weeks. It’s almost like doctors were waiting for the right moment to introduce these products in their practices, and the right moment was when their practices were required to scale down and non-essential services were rolled back.” –Dr. Darren Larsen, Chief Medical Officer at OntarioMD

Originally Recorded on April 23, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.