NACO Podcast

This national roundtable presents the findings of Seeding Growth, NACO's landmark white paper on Canada's early-stage capital gaps and the federal government's $750 million early-stage envelope within the $1.75 billion Venture Capital Strategy announced in Budget 2025. The session follows a nine-month consultation with over 250 senior leaders across Canada's innovation economy, drawing on new research revealing the structural funding gaps pushing founders out of the country — with 68% of Cana...

“To get to the punchline, the government should set up a co-investment fund that matches angel investments dollar for dollar. It should adopt a national tax incentive scheme that already exists in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia. And it should consider replacing the loans that are being made available through its support packages with convertible notes. The Canadian government should leverage angel investments to ensure that early-stage, high-growth companies are going to survi...

“Over the past few months, we’ve been working hand in hand with companies as they retool and rapidly scale up to produce critical equipment such as masks, face shields, ventilators, medical gowns and test kits. This is an excellent opportunity for Canadian innovators. As many of you may have heard, Minister Bains likes to say this often and loudly—our approach to personal protective equipment has been buy, buy, buy, build, build, build.” “We will need Canadian entrepreneurs to lead the way an...

“I use the analogy that you can’t grow a tree without planting a seed. And similarly, there’s no way you can build massive tech companies in Canada without supporting a robust pipeline of young, promising start-ups. Fostering of these early-stage tech companies must be done in Canada by Canadians.” “We need to keep investing in seed and pre-seed ecosystems. I sometimes get concerned when I hear a narrative that says that we should shift our priority from early-stage to later-stage companies....

“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 c...

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 ...

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 urb...

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.

“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 emergen...

"This week’s respected roster of speakers spoke about how we can all do our part — the way we can lean in, support the emergence of new med-tech initiatives and help these small and medium-sized enterprises get their innovations and technologies to market sooner. “It is in precisely these times, as we navigate unchartered waters, that new solutions are needed, that people look to innovation and we all have a role to play". “There’s an opportunity for innovators and for investors and in this...

“Cultivating that strong grassroots ecosystem from the ground up is so important right now… there are a lot of opportunities here to make a stronger ecosystem and it will take us all working together.” — Victoria Lennox, Founder of Startup Canada Originally Recorded on April 23, 2020. Click here to join future roundtables.

“We have billions of dollars across Canada right now earmarked for technology, so doesn’t it make sense that the government becomes the biggest customer as we face this economic slowdown for our tech scale-ups and SMEs? “I believe tech procurement is the biggest lever that the government has as an economic stimulus. They definitely need to take some mission critical actions to help our technologies sector and our SMEs, using crisis as a catalyst for change. This crisis is a window of opportu...

“What’s changed significantly is how I practice medicine — the delivery of virtual care to patients has increased dramatically. It’s taught me it is possible to do phone and video visits with patients you know quite well. We now need to increase the level of virtual care we provide that we were forced into by this pandemic. I think there will be strong demand for the kind of technologies that will help enhance the virtual visit going forward.” “When I look at how this pandemic has treated s...