NACO Academy Podcast
NACO Academy Podcast leverages the collective wisdom of 4,200 angel investors that have invested $1.12 billion into 1500 companies. Join us on a journey into the depths of the innovation economy and bring you the knowledge you need to build, grow and scale at the intersection of innovation, capital and entrepreneurship. Learn more about the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) at www.nacocanada.com
Episodes
45 episodes
Why Canada needs a post-pandemic prosperity strategy
Benjamin Bergen is Executive Director of the Council of Canadian Innovators, a national busine...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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5:48
Season 2 Preview
Season 2 is packed with actionable content and intimate conversations. For pure concentrated knowledge on mobilizing capital and scaling the next massive global success story, we will be interweaving content from a Practical Guide ...
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Season 2
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Episode 0
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2:17
Absolutely Critical to Preserve Diversity of Tech Sector: Laura McGee, CEO and Founder of Diversio
“We crunched data a few weeks ago and the risk that the pandemic poses — in terms of erasing the gains that Canada has made on supporting diverse entrepreneurs — is significant and undeniable. The proportion of women-led business in a ‘do-nothi...
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Season 1
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Episode 43
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12:29
Small Business is 98% of Our Economy: Frances McRae, Assistant Deputy Minister of Small Business and Marketplace Services Innovation, Science and Economic Development
“You’ve heard the government say they are not afraid of adjusting the measures that have rolled out. Getting money out there as quickly as possible was important, but there would be adjustments. I think that’s what you’ve seen the government do...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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26:06
Government Should Leverage Angel Investors: Michael King, Finance Professor at the Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria
“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....
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Season 1
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Episode 41
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8:17
Government Funding to Survive the Crisis: Opening Remarks by Claudio Rojas, CEO at NACO
The combined impact of the health pandemic and economic crisis hit hard and fast. This resulted in initial government relief taking what was described as a “people first” approach, with an emphasis on employees at risk of layoffs, and trying to...
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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6:32
Canadian Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors Must Lead the Way: Ali Ehsassi, Parliamentary Secretary to The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry
“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 ...
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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26:33
Canada's Moment to Shine: Dr. Kamran Khan, CEO and Founder at BlueDot
“History is unfolding right before our eyes. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that this pandemic is maybe one of the most important and significant events in human history. We’ve never had a moment where the entire planet has been crippled b...
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Season 1
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Episode 38
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13:35
Massive Tech Companies Grow From a Robust Pipeline of Start-ups: Janet Bannister, Managing Partner at Real Ventures
“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-sta...
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Season 1
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Episode 37
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11:33
Innovating at the Speed of the Crisis: Opening remarks by Claudio Rojas
Innovating at the speed of the crisis is a concept that speaks to the importance of angel investing in early-stage start-ups and scale-ups, as well as the government’s decisive response to supporting the ecosystem. “We’ve already seen our gover...
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Season 1
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Episode 36
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10:09
Unleashing the Full Potential of Our Ecosystem with Cathy Bennett and Shelley Kuipers
“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 nee...
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Season 1
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Episode 35
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15:35
Ecosystem in Crisis: InterGen CEO Sandi Gilbert, The OMX Founder Nicole Verkindt, and The DMZ Executive Director Abdullah Snobar
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 sustaini...
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Season 1
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Episode 34
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14:18
In Conversation with Rachel Bendayan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and Internatio
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 ...
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Season 1
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Episode 32
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35:54
TV Host and Author Amber Mac on the State of the Ecosystem at NACO Roundtable
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 explai...
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Season 1
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Episode 33
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2:19
Activating Capital for All Entrepreneurs: Claudio Rojas, CEO and Amanda Filipe Director at NACO
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 we...
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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5:39
Cathy Bennett on Unleashing a New Wave of Wealth
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 ...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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2:25
Founding a Movement: Rhiannon Davies, Co-Founder of the Atlantic Women's Venture Fund
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 Re...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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3:20
Activating Diversity: Nicole LeBlanc on Atlantic Women's Venture Fund
“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 fem...
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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2:24
COVID-19 Has Changed Health Care and There Is No Going Back: Dr. Benjamin Fine, Physician and Co-Founder at HaloHealth
“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 st...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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8:43
The Horse is Out of the Barn on Virtual Health Care: Dr. Darren Larsen, Chief Medical Officer at OntarioMD
“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 ov...
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Season 1
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Episode 26
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7:24
Claudia Krywiak, President & CEO at Ontario Centres of Excellence
"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 technologie...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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8:25
Super Angels Launch New Fund: Benton Leong, General Partner at ArchAngel Network of Funds
“We have really bright minds working on how to solve various aspects of this pandemic… we want to make sure these folks are able to bring their solutions to market sooner rather than later. We’re changing the way we work. We’re deploying funds ...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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6:25
Working Together Will Make Our Ecosystem Stronger: Victoria Lennox, Founder at Startup Canada
“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 Cana...
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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7:02
State of the Innovation Economy by Douglas Soltys, Editor-in-Chief at BetaKit
“The main takeaways… are the difficulties people are having in projecting a way out of this and building a plan, and the difficulties in taking care of teams right now, as we are locked in self-isolation in trying circumstances.” — Douglas Solt...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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5:00
Bold Government Procurement Policies Will Lead the Recovery: Angela Mondou, CEO of TechNation
“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 p...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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9:56