The Hard Part with Evan McCann

Jung Lee is the Head of Corporate Innovation Studio at Pioneer Square Labs . Jung's career has taken her across: Launching digital and mobile payments at Visa Launching Alexa Canada at Amazon Head of Partner Strategic Initiatives at AWS Global Head of Partnerships & Strategy at Wing. Wing is an Alphabet company focused on autonomous drone delivery We discussed Navigating the move from Canada t...

Vincent Xue is the Co-Founder of Ivey Venture Capital Club and has done internships at Headline, Contrary, Global Founders Capital, Front Row Ventures, Portage and Julian Capital. Takeaways Why the early interest in VC compared to other classmates. How he landed his initial internships at top funds and tactics he used. His thoughts on networking and being scrappy. Creating the Ivy Venture Capital...

Christal Wang is the Co-Founder and CEO of Shimmer . Shimmer ADHD Coaching is the #1 coaching service for adults with ADHD, made for and by people with ADHD. You meet with an expert ADHD coach each week to set goals, learn skills, upgrade your routines, and stay accountable to real, sustainable change. Takeaways Chris's consulting background and foundational skills. Shimmer originated from her MBA...

Lindy Drope is a Founding GTM team member at Lindy . Lindy is an AI assistant, designed to manage your daily tasks and act as an executive assistant for busy professionals. Lindy AI agents integrate with your existing tools and have the personalized context necessary to automate the mundane. Lindy is backed by Menlo, Battery, Coatue, Elad Gil, Jack Altman and more. Takeaways Lindy's journey to SF...

Nathan Nasseri is the Founder and CEO of ResVR . ResVR helps production home builders sell more upgrades with their industry-leading visualization platform. Takeaways Nathan's family background in home building inspired the creation of ResVR. The technology for home customization has existed for decades but is underutilized. Upgrades in home building can yield high margins for builders. Streamlini...

Charlie Feng is the Co-Founder of Agora . Agora is the home of onchain governance. Deploy Agora today to run your protocol and community. Agora recently announced their $5M Seed funding from Haun Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, Packy McCormick, Dan Romero and others. Takeaways Launching an AI chatbot startup in 2013 Learnings from scaling Clearbanc/Clearco. The "Clearco Mafia" that...

Liran Belenzon is the Co-Founder and CEO of BenchSci . BenchSci's mission is to exponentially increase the speed and quality of life-saving R&D to improve patients' health. They do this by applying cutting-edge AI to understand how disease biology works at scale throughout the drug discovery pipeline to solve the number one reason why drug discovery projects fail — getting the biology wrong. A...

Inara Lalani is the Co-Founder and CEO of FemTherapeutics . FemTherapeutics is a medical device company developing “Invisalign for Gynaecology”. Leveraging artificial intelligence and 3D Printing, their gynecology platform offers patient-specific intra-vaginal devices for common pelvic health conditions. FemTherapeutics is building the infrastructure to allow expansion into other pelvic health cat...

Marc-André Forget is the Founder and CEO of dcbel . dcbel develops technology and designs products that put people at the center of the modern energy ecosystem. dcbel Home Energy Station perfects the art and science of smart home energy, allowing people to take ownership of their energy supply with one small device. Homeowners can supply their homes and EVs with solar power, use vehicle-to-home ch...

Jonathan Wolkin is the Managing Director of Deloitte Ventures . Deloitte Ventures is Deloitte Canada’s $150M venture capital initiative, which makes minority investments in emerging technology companies. They aim to catalyze the growth of important verticals, such as fintech and worktech, that will move Canadian businesses and citizens toward a thriving future. They support their founders by provi...

David Hariri is the Co-Founder of Ada . Ada is the world’s leading customer service automation company. Built for the digitally transforming enterprise, Ada’s AI-powered customer service automation platform helps companies effortlessly resolve their customer inquiries in any language or channel. Since 2016, Ada has powered over 4 billion automated customer interactions for companies like Meta, Ver...

Nicolas Mulroney is the Co-Founder, Chairman, CEO & President of Bond Bakery Brands . Bond is focused on building a diverse and inclusive workforce that bakes high-quality, delicious breads, pizzas, cakes, cookies, buns and more for retail and food service customers throughout North America. Through their bakery companies, Bond employs more than 600 people across 11 facilities in Canada. We di...

Jason Liu is a great follow for everything RAG, AI consulting and prompt engineering. Jason was previously at StitchFix and Meta. Follow Jason on Twitter/X here. Takeaways Jason's background is in data science and machine learning, with a focus on recommendation systems. Deep dive into Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). Nuances of AI consulting. Working with companies to implement AI and le...

Jenny He is the Founder & General Partner of Position Ventures . Position Ventures invests in early-stage startups and positions them for success by helping founders nail their positioning and communications strategy. They help you tell your story so you can hire, fundraise, and partner with the best talent in the world. Takeaways Joining Square and meeting Jack Dorsey Her angel investing jour...

Mark Shulgan is the Co-Founder of Intrepid Growth Partners . Intrepid Growth Partners is led by Mark Machin, Mark Shulgan and Ajay Agrawal. Their new fund seeks to invest in fast-growing AI companies primarily in Canada and the UK that have reached $10M in revenue and are on a path to achieving profitability. Takeaways Gaining valuable experience in valuation and underwriting companies during the...

Praveer Melwani is the CFO of Figma . Takeaways Joining Figma as employee 25 (now at ~3000) Scaling with Figma and moving into the CFO role Nuances to the CFO role at Figma Developing and learning from mentors How the CFO role is changing especially in high-growth tech companies Empowering and building a finance team The importance of understanding business drivers and key metrics as someone on th...

Behrouz Hariri is the CEO of Smart Nora . Smart Nora is on a mission to help 3 billion people worldwide breathe, sleep, and live better. Takeaways Working at Jet Cooper and IDEO. The idea for Smart Nora came from a personal problem and evolved into a product that solves a common sleep issue. How they ran a successful Kickstarter campaign. Future of the sleep industry. Balancing utility and aesthet...

Kiva Dickinson is the Founder & Managing Partner of Selva Ventures . Selva Ventures invests in healthier living. They support Seed & Series A stage consumer health & wellness brands that make healthier living more engaging, accessible, habit-forming and fun. Takeaways His background in investment banking at Barclays, private equity at TPG and investing at CircleUp. Why he wanted to sta...

Lukas Tanasiuk is the Founder of The Nice Agency . The Nice Agency focuses on one thing—site speed optimization for Shopify stores. A consistently fast and responsive Shopify site is one of the most high-impact areas you can focus on. Mountains of research show that a slow Shopify site decreases conversion rates, drops AOV, reduces customer LTV and hurts your organic ranking on Google. Lukas's...

Fiorella Schiffino is the CFO at Raven Indigenous Capital Partners . Raven Indigenous Capital Partners is Canada's first Indigenous-led and -owned social finance intermediary. Raven focuses on facilitating the flow of capital through impact investing to support the ongoing revitalization of the Indigenous economy. Raven builds relationships with Indigenous communities and entrepreneurs to driv...

Ronak Trivedi is the Co-Founder & CEO of Pietra . A Pietra membership unlocks access to cost-plus pricing across software, logistics, sourcing, and marketing tools; all while earning cashback every time you spend on your business. Takeaways The journey from the University of Waterloo to founding his own company. Top lessons learned from working with Travis Kalanick at Uber and Cloud Kitchens....

Jacob Klug is the Co-Founder and CEO of Creme Digital . Creme Digital is a leading no-code agency for world-class startups & companies. Takeaways Starting a product studio out of high school. Power of no-code. Impacts of AI on no-code. Launching a recurring model for an agency. Future of internal tools. Good versus great products. Client interactions and support for modern agencies. AI and its...

Pavla Bobosikova is the Co-Founder and CEO of WFHomie (acquired by GoCo ). Takeaways Navigating the M&A process for WFHomie. Tactical advice on raising money and finding investors. Transitioning from founder to being part of a larger company can be challenging. Hiring and firing. Building in Canada versus building in the US. Rewards of mentoring early-stage founders. Take risks and shoot your...

Klaudia McDonald is the Co-Founder & COO of Bobo . Bobo’s mission is to make parenting easier, cheaper & more straightforward than ever before. The Bobo platform provides AI-driven support to recreate the 'village' needed for parenting. It reduces the mental load by offering tailored, stage-specific support, making the prospect of having children more appealing & manageable. Ta...

Mark Mitchell is a General Partner at Weave VC . Takeaways Mark's journey into VC. Living in China for over a decade. Starting with SPVs and launching Weave VC. Co-Founder relationships with Jeff and Marco. Investing in Western Canadian tech. Fundraising as first-time fund managers. Journey of an emerging manager. Recent investments. Chapters 00:00 Mark's Journey into Venture Capital 03:39...