Spring

Toronto here I come! I'm excited to be back in Toronto for meetings and events this week. Included this week will be: Our Investing in Women's Health and Femtech Breakfast tomorrow starting at 8am tomorrow at Centre for Social Innovation (CSI). In collaboration with Femtech Canada (thank you Rachel Bartholomew 🇨🇦 and team!) and Innovation Factory in support of wHealth Ignite, this investor only event will be digging into the opportunities, challenges, trends, and examples to raising the conversation. I'll be joined by Evelyn Pau, PhD of Amplitude Ventures and Chetan Srivastava of TELUS Global Ventures in this thought provoking discussion. https://luma.com/bqsddhv2 Later in the day, Spring is hosting another Founder Impact Mixer! Founders from all sectors are invited to join myself, Tarika, and say Hi to our newest team members Erica and Toheeb and we toast a great start to the fall, and network with founders scaling their ventures and impact. https://luma.com/omuwoelg On Thursday afternoon, I'm excited to join The51's event for a broad based discussion on women's health and femtech. This is further proof of the momentum building for women's health and femtech in Canada. https://luma.com/6m9axebm #impactinvesting #angelinvesting #venturecapital #raisingcapital #fundraising #Toronto #womenshealth #femtech

What a week! The city was alive for the 2nd annual Victoria Tech Week with 3 times as many events as last year!! The Wednesday we were running started at KPMG Canada's downtown office with the PropTech launch hosted by myself and Aaron Nelson, my co-founder at the BC Innovation Coalition: the BCIC Housing Process Tool and Parametric Pro Consulting existing stock assessment tool. Thanks to Deniz Tuncbilek and KPMG for the room! Swans Brewery, Pub & Hotel was also a hit, with the great vibe we've come to love from the space there, circular materials with Trevor Harmon, Shantanu Mehta and Mike Jain. Straight talk about what actually gets specified, funded and scaled. Then the 2nd talk on community energy ownership with Aura Silva, Ravihari Kotagodahetti and Christy Pham. First steps, who needs to be at the table early, and how these projects get financed and delivered. And finally the Green Drinks Victoria Gala at the Union Club, co-hosted with Tony Ronson of Westcom Business Solutions Inc. A huge thank you to everyone who participated, listened, or just had a good time! Another huge thanks to the partners who made it possible: Gold: Parametric Pro Consulting, Nic Green and Aidan Frost. Silver: Razor CFO, Nick French, CPA. Lock-Block Ltd., Prabhash Pokharel, P.Eng.. Friends of the Gala: CRDC MATERIALS NORTH AMERICA, Ross Gibby. Mid-Harbour Environmental Negotiation & Mediation Services Corp., Matthew R.K. Waterman. Spring and Keith Ippel. @VIBE | Vancouver Island Business, and Lautaro Cepeda. Prize partners: Sail Away Vineyards, Jarrett Lobley. SkybreakerOverland, Ryan Koss. Congratulations to Sara Christensen, who won the Naramata getaway, and Dr. Tamara Plush, who won the Skybreaker day trip. Supporter tickets and prize draw proceeds go to the Camp Shawnigan rebuild with Easter Seals BC/Yukon. Thanks also to Marc Stoiber, Tessa Davies and the VIATEC team for #VictoriaTechWeek. One honest lesson: we took on a little too much. Next year it is three things done properly. One great climate tech event, the gala, and something with the BC Innovation Coalition. See you in 2027. #greendrinks #vtw2026 #victoriabc

Yesterday brought to life ‘leaning in’ for me: what it looks like to collaborate to address big opportunities - and complex challenges - together! In a room of angel investors, we dug into stats and stories; the macro and micro potential- of investing in solutions that support women’s health and wellbeing. 🙏 Thank you to Julia Elvidge and Marisa Fosco for sharing your insights, experiences and SheBoot and Capital Angel Network communities. And to Nick Quain , Megan Maltby and Madison Colpitts for generously hosting us at Invest Ottawa. At Spring, as an ecosystem builder and connector of innovators and capital across the country; collaborators like you are so key to being able to activate more capital in support of impactful early stage ventures in Canada. And my takeaways from the conversation ‘Investing in Femtech: Understanding the Opportunity’? 💡 Femtech is a massive, multi-faceted market: Femtech covers any health issue that affects women, girls, non-binary folks, trans people, and those assigned female at birth solely, disproportionately, or differently across all life stages; with solutions spanning products, services, diagnostics, and software. This isn’t just reproductive health. Think autoimmune disease, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease (#1 killer of women; more than all cancers combined) 📈 Decades of underrepresentation and underinvestment, means white space today. Canada didn't mandate women's inclusion in clinical trials until 2016. Take a moment to digest that: women weren't included, let alone studied proportionately, in trials for drugs designed for them. And that's before adding an intersectional lens. As Tarika Vijayaraghavan, Ph.D. noted, the differences in health and wellbeing needs across race and ethnicity are studied even less. That's why so much of this space remains unbuilt, and why there's so much room to grow. 🇨🇦 The economic upside is enormous. Closing Canada's women's health gap could add $37B a year to our GDP by 2040. We're ranked 5th worst in the world on this gap today, again - investment isn’t a nice to have; it a national imperative. 💸 Canadian femtech is growing fast and ready to raise. Canada’s has the 3rd largest ecosystem of femtech ventures. And supported by programs like wHealth Ignite, are building at pace and ready for capital to grow. Making the most of this opportunity, takes every kind of capital, financial, knowledge, networks, credibility, and it takes everyone in the room, men included. Find out more about how you can get involved in our upcoming Invest Together in Femtech - part of wHealth Ignite: a collaboration with Femtech Canada, Innovation Factory, supporting high-potential femtech ventures on their commercialization and fundraising journeys. DM myself or Tarika Vijayaraghavan, Ph.D. for more details! https://lnkd.in/gViep4qQ #impactinvesting #womenshealth #healthtech #femtech #angelinvesting #genderlensinvesting 

Climate Tech Day is tomorrow, Wednesday September 23, as part of Victoria Tech Week!! If you haven't registered yet, everything is on one page @ https://luma.com/slate. Every session is ticketed separately, so come to one or come to all of them hosted by me and my co-host Aaron Nelson Morning, PropTech at KPMG Canada downtown, hosted by the BC Innovation Coalition. Two tool launches: the BCIC Housing Process Tool, Stringline and Parametric Pro Consulting's existing-stock assessment tool. Afternoon panel at Swans Brewery, Pub & Hotel, circular materials. Dr. Rishi Gupta (University of Victoria), Mike Jain ( National Research Council Canada / Conseil national de recherches Canada), Shantanu Mehta (Spring) and Trevor Harmon (Szolyd Concrete Corp) on what it actually takes to get circular materials into real projects. Late afternoon panel, also at Swans, discussing community energy ownership. Ravihari Kotagodahetti, Aura Silva and Christy Pham on the how-to: first steps, who needs to be at the table early, financing and delivery. Evening, the Green Drinks Victoria Gala at the Union Club, co-hosted with Tony Ronson of Westcom Business Solutions Inc. Ten partners are the reason food and welcome drinks are covered: Parametric Pro Consulting (Nic Green, Aidan), Razor CFO (Nick French, CPA), Lock-Block Ltd. ( Prabhash Pokharel, P.Eng.), CRDC MATERIALS NORTH AMERICA (Ross Gibby), Mid-Harbour Environmental Negotiation & Mediation Services Corp. (Matthew R.K. Waterman), Spring (Shantanu), VIBE | Vancouver Island Business (Lautaro Cepeda), Sail Away Vineyards (Jarrett Lobley), SkybreakerOverland (Ryan Koss) and Westcom Business Solutions Inc (Tony Ronson). We're also running a charity prize draw at the gala. Two prizes, each worth about $2,000: a two-night stay for up to eight at Sail Away Vineyards in Naramata, and a full-day backcountry expedition in the Cowichan Valley with Ryan Koss driving. $20 suggested donation per entry, with a free entry route available. Prize details here: https://lnkd.in/gaVe8skY Proceeds and supporter tickets go to Easter Seals BC/Yukon and the Camp Shawnigan rebuild, the camp on Vancouver Island being made fully accessible and year-round. Thanks to Elena Lawson at Easter Seals for working with us on it. And huge thanks to Marc Stoiber, Tessa Davies and the VIATEC team for putting the whole week together. Register: https://luma.com/slate

When you think about vibrant ecosystems, you have to put Montreal near the top of the list. Yesterday, Spring + Spring Impact Capital hosted two events in Montreal at the beautiful Espace CDPQ (wow do we need this in Vancouver!) and both events reinforced the power of this community. Our first event was a women's health / femtech investor discussion with Roxanne Leducduc of FemTech Breakfast Club and Cap Inclusive, where we explored the trends, opportunities, and nuances of femtech investing. The questions were rich and deep, and gave me tremendous optimism for the space and the upcoming Femtech Canada wHealth Ignite Challenge.  Then, last evening, we hosted a founder event on fundraising strategies and it was real! Adrienne Jung of eeva, Sarah De Rose of Blue HF Legal, and I discussed a range of topics, from where to raise to red flags in due diligence, and everything in between. We ending up closing down Espace at the end of the night - the space and the discussions were full! Each time I come to Montreal, I am reminded it is the most collaborative ecosystem in Canada, with brilliant founders and investors in the community working together to scale ventures and impact.  Learn more about the Femtech Investor Challenge: https://lnkd.in/gXBhxfS6 Learn more about fundraising support for founders: https://impactos.is/ And a big node of gratitude to Natalie Youssef, Fabíola da Rocha Borba, and the entire Spring team for making the events a reality. #fundraising #raisingcapital #montreal #femtech #womenshealth #investinginwomen #angelinvesting #impactinvesting #preseed #seed