Why Investors are Betting on Canadian Startups | NRTH Conference

Michael Garrity (0:01)

I think there's never been a better time to either build or to join early stage companies. The cost of entry to build something and build something meaningful at scale has dropped to the lowest level I've ever seen. With AI, with infrastructure at SaaS level prices, there's never been a better time for people, even if you're not technical, to start and create momentum around an organization. If you're in one of these towers, you're seeing how they have enough money to build a tower like that, right? And if you got that much money, there's efficiency to be gained.

Matt Cohen (0:33)

Hey everyone, I'm Matt Cohen, Founder and Managing Partner of Ripple Ventures and the host of the Tank Talks podcast. And today we're coming to you live from downtown Toronto at the Elevate Festival, Mallory-Brendett as North Festival. We're here seeking out what opportunities people are excited about investing in, from AI to Canadian sovereignty to deep tech and robotics. On this episode, we speak with three amazing investors and operators and entrepreneurs to talk about what we're seeing in the Canadian ecosystem, where they're placing their bets, and how we get more foreign investors to pay attention to what's happening here. Let's jump in to this week's episode from the North Festival.

Michael, nice to see you again.

Michael Garrity (1:08)

Yeah, thanks.

Matt Cohen (1:09)

It's great to be here. We're here at the new Elevate called North in downtown Toronto.

Michael Garrity (1:14)

Love it.

Matt Cohen (1:15)

Elbows up. For our listeners who saw you on our podcast, you're Michael Garrity, retired CEO of FinanceIt.

Michael Garrity (1:21)

Yes, indeed. I mean, technically, I'm the executive chair. Yeah, right. Right. That's like when you retire-ish, they give you a fancy title.

Matt Cohen (1:28)

Exactly. But you're also heavily involved in the Canadian ecosystem.

Michael Garrity (1:32)

Yeah.

Matt Cohen (1:32)

Tell us what you've been up to, C100, everything.

Michael Garrity (1:34)

I was lucky enough to be asked to step into Janet Bannister's retired role at the C100. So I'm a co-chair with Mike Wessinger, awesome Canadian that we should be telling an amazing story around.

Elizabeth Yin (1:46)

Point Click Care, founder.

Michael Garrity (1:48)

Incredible organization. So the C100 is focused on really helping Canadian companies stick around by showing them that they don't have to go anywhere to get access to the Valley, to get access to senior executives that know how to run your companies, drive revenue growth. So a lot of what we do is just focus on getting people to stick around by just being a good incubator in the ecosystem.

Matt Cohen (2:12)

And you also do the 48 Hours in the Valley, which is a big event.

Michael Garrity (2:15)

It's a great program. Amazing.

Matt Cohen (2:16)

We have founders that have done it before.

Michael Garrity (2:17)

Yeah, we did it. FinanceIt was one of the very first companies that went through that cohort. So going through there, not really knowing anything, green around the gills, ultimately creating a billion-dollar company.

That was a really influential part of our life.

Matt Cohen (2:32)

So what are we seeing nowadays? Because we were at a dinner we hosted last night. We had some amazing CROs, and a lot of people around the room were saying, if you ask a Canadian CEO, maybe yourself included, why have more people known about FinanceIt? Why haven't people known about Point Click Care? And what the founders would say was like, I was just too busy building my company. I didn't need to go talk to the Globe and Mail or BetaKit. No disrespect to them, but it didn't move the needle on my business. And what we said was, yeah, but the ecosystem needs to know, because we want those founders to stay and build here, to know it's possible.

Michael Garrity (3:02)

So I think both those things are true.

So I think that we are crap at telling our stories. We're crap at bragging about things. And we get really busy just building the business.

So I think that things like your podcast, not to blow smoke, but when we celebrate Canadian entrepreneurs and show the path to the emerging set of entrepreneurs, who I hope knock our socks off with the companies that they're creating in AI, in quantum computing, these folks need to see that, yes, you can build here. You can build companies at scale that are market dominating. You can make yourself a ton of money and stick it in your pockets and the pockets of your founders around you. And you can do all of that in this beautiful city. And we need to be better at telling those stories.