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Canadian Unemployment Grows in ‘Labour-Constrained Economy’

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 19:42:34 GMT

Canada’s unemployment rate has trended higher once again this month, according to the latest iteration of Statistics Canada’s November labour force survey .

The survey reported that Canada’s jobless rate rose to 5.8 per cent in November - up from 5.7 per cent in October - which is being credited to the Bank of Canada's steep interest rate hikes and their detrimental effect on the economy.

While employment increased in manufacturing (+28,000; +1.6%) and construction (+16,000, +1.0%), declines occurred across retail (-27,000; -0.9%), finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing (-18,000; -1.3%).

However, Canada’s economy added a modest 25,000 jobs last month, falling short of the pace of population growth. Due to this, economists maintain the Bank of Canada will continue to hold its key interest rate steady.

Unsurprisingly, the people of LinkedIn have some choice thoughts about Canada’s “labour-constrained economy”.

David-Alexandre Brassard , chief economist at Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada), said: “The interest rates are starting to bite like we expected them to, resulting in a stunted economy. The labour market holding strong illustrates that we are in a labour-constrained economy.”

“Wage pressures by themselves should not be enough to maintain inflation in unsustainable territory. On the contrary, higher interest rates seem to be sufficiently constraining and we can expect the Bank of Canada to hold their ground with no changes to the rate in next week’s announcement,” he continued.

On the plus side, hourly wages rose 4.8% (+$1.57 to $34.28) on a year-over-year basis due to staff asking for more money to combat inflation.

On the topic, Charles St-Arnaud , chief economist at Credit Union Central Alberta, remarked: “The Bank of Canada will take comfort in seeing slower momentum in wage gains, but wages continue to grow at levels that are disconnected from productivity gains.

“The rise in the unemployment rate suggests that some slack is gradually building up in the labour market, which should help ease some of the upside pressures on wages.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Workers Call for Pay Transparency

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 19:06:47 GMT

More than half of workers believe that disclosing worker compensation details on job postings will lead to better equality in pay, according to the latest iteration of LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index .

The index - which is based on a survey of 3,302 members in Canada between June and September 2023 - found that 52% of people asked felt that people sharing their pay information (including salary and bonus) would improve workplace equality, compared to 48% in 2022.

This number varies between different generations, with younger Canadians more likely to express support for pay transparency (73%), followed by 69% of Millennials, 46% of Gen X and 44% of Baby Boomers.

However, 37% of those surveyed remarked that they felt anxious about sharing their pay information - a 2% rise from the year prior.

Likewise, just under half (49%) said they felt well compensated for the work they do while 74% expressed that the pay gap between CEOs and employees had become too wide.

The people of LinkedIn have come out in their dozens to give their two cents on the topic, with Adrienne Tom , executive resume writer for executives, saying: “ I'm all for salary transparency, so long as the number is clear and legit. Some postings list salary ranges so wide that the actual salary number isn't entirely clear, leaving job seekers confused.”

“If you have a manager who is not advocating for the pay gap, you are working for the wrong manager,” remarked career strategist Sweta Regmi , while noting that women in Ontario earn an average of $0.87 for every dollar earned by men.

On the topic, she added: “Salary ranges with job postings can help close the gender pay gap while allowing companies to find qualified candidates more quickly.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Quick Fix of ‘Envy Offices’

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:04:13 GMT

Is an ‘envy office’ the best way to position your business?

Well, according to WSJ, offices that "combine the comforts of a living room and the glamour of a vacation” are becoming a post-pandemic trend in a bid to lure employees back into some semblance of an office lifestyle.

These offices are reportedly embellished with “Instagrammable” aesthetics which intend to cater to Gen-Z talent; however, the concept doesn’t seem to have been well received by LinkedIn-based users.

However, in an ever-changing working world not everyone considers this to be an ideal investment of time or money.

Brad Kay , founder of Chief Brand Advisory , remarked: “Aesthetically-driven solutions alone will NOT bring people back to the office.

“Offices need to transform into sanctuaries of creativity and camaraderie, reflecting the warmth and welcome of a beloved gathering place. They need to foster an atmosphere where everyone feels a sense of belonging.”

On the topic, Brad continued: “The magic lies in designing spaces that are not only comfortable, beautiful, welcoming, and accessible; that not only foster a sense of belonging and provide social spaces and features; and that not only enhance productivity but also promote wellness and fulfillment — but in harmonizing all three elements.”

According to a global survey by The Times which evaluated the working environments of around 14,000 workers, almost 40% of employers redesigned their offices during the pandemic.

Tamara Sanderson , cofounder of Remote Works, said via LinkedIn: “What if we put more time into designing a #remotework culture that works than putting more money into offices to ‘lure’ young people back to the office?”

She added: “Why does all this Instagramable beauty need to be sequestered to a single 50-person company rather than being a place that can be shared by the public? We need more beautiful, third-spaces - the library, the park, the coffee shop, the pub—where we can mix with people other than our coworkers.”

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Does Your Startup's ‘Authenticity’ Matter?

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 22:43:56 GMT

Here’s hoping your business’ origin story hasn’t been embellished too much - Merriam-Webster has chosen “authentic” as its word of the year for 2023.

The word - which according to the Oxford Dictionary means “of undisputed origin; genuine” - is being celebrated by the publisher in light of what Merriam-Webster has referred to as a “crisis of authenticity” .

Merriam-Webster’s choice was celebrated by

Dylan H , founder of REACH , who said via LinkedIn: “Now, as we navigate an era where AI blurs the lines between real and virtual, maintaining authenticity becomes both a challenge and an opportunity for creators.”

On the topic, he continued: “In my own journey with REACH, I've seen how authenticity builds a community that's resilient and supportive.

“Whether it's bringing members to red carpet events or fostering a platform where young creatives can learn and grow, the core has always been about genuine, impactful experiences.”

However, not everyone resonates with Merriam-Webster‘s word for the year 2023.

Reid Litman , global consulting director at Ogilvy , explained: “‘Authenticity’ has lost all meaning - it's become a Gen Z buzz word for those not exactly sure what they want to say.”

The Ogilvy global consulting director elaborated: “Gen Z craves brands that act more like ever-evolving characters with a POV and publicly facing leaders than it does brands that cling to PowerPoint brand guidelines.”

Likewise Brendan Gahan , former chief innovation officer at Mekanism , said: “Not a fan of Merriam-Webster's selection of ‘authentic’ as its word of the year.”

“It certainly reflects today's challenges with AI and misinformation. But, in the creator landscape, this term's usage is often overused. So much so, its become a platitude largely devoid of meaning.” he added.

Instead, Brendan suggests the word is related to ‘one's personality or character’, rendering ‘authentic’ as a vague umbrella-term which doesn’t embody a successful founders’ “spectrum of traits, with authenticity being just one facet.”

Other words of distinction from 2023 include “deepfake,” “dystopian,” “indict,” “coronation” and “X”, in light of Elon Musk’s ill-fated Twitter rebrand.

The word follows “gaslighting” , which was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2022.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

American Techies Are Moving to Canada

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 21:56:28 GMT

Tech layoffs across the US are motivating techies to move to the Great White North, with more than 6,000 H-1B skilled worker visa holders arriving in Canada as of October this year, according to CNBC .

This comes after the Canadian government launched a pilot program on 16 July which allowed 10,000 American H-1B visa holders to apply for a three-year open work permit in Canada. The program reached capacity the following day.

According to the American H-1B program, any skilled workers using this visa have 60 days to find a new employer or transfer visa status if they lose their job. Otherwise, they face being deported from Canada.

Canada’s tech sector has quickly gained momentum in recent years, growing 15.7% since 2020 compared to just 11.4% in America.

On the topic, Evan Sohn , chief executive officer at Aura by Bain & Company, celebrated Canada's strategic response to America’s tech layoffs, which have seen companies including Amazon and Microsoft getting rid of techies in their masses.

“The Canadian government's approach underscores its position as a top destination for international talent, reflecting its competitive edge on the global stage,” Evan said via LinkedIn.

“This shift raises important questions about the U.S.'s ability to retain top global talent and the future dynamics of the North American tech industry.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Has Calgary Solved its ‘Ghost Town’ Problem?

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 20:57:42 GMT

Downtown offices are the most vacant they’ve been in a decade… and Calgary is the emptiest of them all.

According to commercial real estate firm CBRE, the national downtown office vacancy rate currently stands at around 18.9 per cent , with areas including Edmonton and the Waterloo Region in Ontario experiencing some of the highest vacancy rates.

Calgary’s vacancy rate has been slowly rising since the 2014 oil price crash (source: CBC ), but has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic which began affecting CowTown in March 2020.

As a result, a number of downtown office buildings are being converted into homes, hotels and university spaces, with the latest developments - conversion of buildings into two residential projects and one hotel - announced last week.

Pierre Bertrand, principal of Bertrand Management Consulting, expressed via LinkedIn that he hopes these new residences “get rid of the ‘ghost town’ syndrome that besets downtown cores at night and weekends when all the office workers go home”.

However, not everyone is as optimistic about the new developments. “So goes your downtown, so goes your city. This is troubling for cities across Canada.” wrote Jason Aebig, CEO of the Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce.

Likewise change management practitioner Jag Badhan warned that the new housing was “not a good thing for our economy”.

“This is impacting employment and survival of small companies including mom and pop stores,” he continued.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Are Your Employees Suffering from Brain Fog?

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 23:21:52 GMT

It looks like the latest impediment to staff en masse has crept upon us as a result of the coronavirus pandemic: introducing brain fog.

According to estimates from the US Census Bureau, the number of adults with a disability rose from less than 15 million before the pandemic to about 16.5 million in September 2023, a number of which are experiencing “serious difficulty” thinking in a condition that has been linked to long Covid.

This particular infliction - defined by Healthline as “a symptom that [...] can cause confusion, memory issues, and a lack of focus” - has reportedly caused adults between their 20s and 40s to struggle with attention and conversation. People older than this age bracket, however, are more likely to experience memory deficits.

Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO at Thrive Global, has reiterated that brain fog can be caused by a range of different factors outside of Covid-19.

Via LinkedIn, she explained: “Even if that’s true, we should remember there are many factors that contribute to cognitive fog, from burnout and a lack of sleep to the gut-brain connection and the role of inflammatory foods in our diet.”

Indeed, Healthline notes six common causes of brain fog: stress, lack of sleep, hormonal changes, diet, medications and medical conditions.

But it seems not everyone is satisfied with the American government’s connection between the coronavirus pandemic and brain fog.

Sarah Hatter, senior director of community and events at PartnerHero, maintains that “we do not want to acknowledge that the consecutive traumas of a global pandemic, recession and mass layoffs, inflation, ridiculous political upheavals, and two active wars have changed how our brains work.”

On the topic, she elaborated: “We are all changed because of it, and that means the way we manage people has to change.”

On the plus side, there are a series of ways in which brain fog can be managed , including improving your diet, solving brain puzzles and exercising. In relation to the working world, however, brain fog can be combated through avoiding caffeine (yes, even your morning coffee), managing stress and sleeping 8-9 hours a night.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Resurgence of Return Employees

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 18:43:01 GMT

Return employees are making up just over 2% of recent hires across Canada, according to data from LinkedIn’s Canada's Workforce Report.

The analysis - which ranked occupations that had at least 10,000 hires on average since 2015, and ranked them by their average returning hire rates from 2015 to 2023 (while removing student positions, internships and volunteer positions as these could be false positives) - found that the share of new hires who had previously worked at their employer reached 2.1% in 2023, compared to roughly 1.7% over the past eight years.

LinkedIn’s report suggested that this increase in returning workers may be due to a skilled workers shortage in certain industries, including the tech sector.

While some people maintain the idea of returning to a former employer as ‘taboo’, Natasha Andrews , safety business partner at Tacora Resources Inc., thinks otherwise.

“I see no reason for it’s taboo in the first place,” Natasha said via LinkedIn. “It’s easy for people to misunderstand motives or to think there’s negative attached with the employee or employer when someone leaves. When often, career moves are a result of timing and life circumstances.”

Likewise Sweta Regmi , CEO at Teachndo , credited this increase to staff being offered better salaries and job roles as a result of their newfound external experiences.

“They left due to salary and no promotion opportunity as internal staff,” Sweta said, “loyalty was punished”.

“Once they were external and got experience they applied as an external after years, and they got in again. Their title and salary fell on the upper band,” she concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Unemployment on the Rise… Again

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 21:27:36 GMT

Canada’s unemployment rate is on the rise once again, this time reaching a 21-month high of 5.7% according to Statistics Canada. leading many to hint at an “economic slowdown” for the Great White North.

This marks the fourth month of an increase in unemployment in the past six months, with the rate expected to reach 6% by the end of 2023.

Tu Nguyen , economist RSM Canada shared via LinkedIn that “the impact of high interest rates on businesses and households is undeniable.”

On the topic, she continued: “Those currently unemployed and those just entering the workforce –youths, for instance, are finding it more challenging to find work as labour demand eases. Even though companies are not going through mass layoffs, hiring freezes are becoming the norm.”

The Bank of Canada will get one more jobs report before its next interest rate decision next month on 6 December, with experts predicting the central bank will not add a further rate hike.

This viewpoint is maintained by Charles St-Arnaud, chief economist at Credit Union Central Alberta, who explained: “The softening of the labour market, with weak job gains, slower wage growth and a rising unemployment rate, suggests that some slack is being created in the economy. This will be welcomed by the Bank of Canada, and we believe it means that another rate hike is very unlikely.”

However Stephen Tapp, PhD , chief economist at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, claims this further rise in unemployment is “certainly not a cause for alarm yet”, though signals the strain of an increase in immigrants to Canada’s labour supply.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Google Unveils New AI Tech for Health-Care Workers

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 17:11:12 GMT

Google has unveiled new artificial intelligence-powered search capabilities which are set to help health-care workers pull accurate clinical information from medical records.

The new search tool - which will be available through Google Cloud - will span across clinical notes, scanned documents and electronic health records, all of which can be pulled from by medical professionals with an ambition to save a significant amount of time and energy for health-care workers.

Cris Ross, Mayo Clinic's chief information officer, told CNBC : "We are curious, we're enthusiastic, we're also careful.

"And we're not going to put anything into patient care until it's really ready to be in patient care,” he continued.

Google’s new technology will also enable doctors to quickly determine whether a patient will be eligible for any trials, alongside accurately cataloging which medications a patient has been prescribed during a specific period of time.

Speaking of the technology, Kapil Parakh, senior medical lead at Google , explained: “Searching for information in an electronic health record may not seem like a big deal - we can search our computers, cloud drives and even our phones more easily than electronic health records. As a clinician I’ve experienced this frustration myself and at scale this contributes to clinician burnout.”

Kapil also mentioned the potential of technology such as this if it were available when ‘patient zero’ contracted Ebola in Liberia and traveled to the US as “this information was not easy for the doctors to find or act upon”.

“A crucial opportunity was missed,” he continued, “[and] for all of these reasons and more, I’m excited about the new capabilities coming to electronic medical records.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

September Jobs Triple Expectations

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 22:17:25 GMT

Canada added 63,800 net jobs last month (more than tripling expectations) with unemployment holding steady at 5.5 per cent for the third consecutive month, according to a report by Statistics Canada.

Analysts polled by Reuters predicted a net gain of 20,000 jobs in August, alongside a slight climb for the unemployment rate (up to 5.6% from 5.5% the previous month).

Average hourly wage for permanent employees has also creeped upwards to 5.3%, compared to 5.2% annual rise in August.

Tu Nguyen , economist at RSM Canada, has credited the lack of change in unemployment amid new jobs to two different factors - population growth and a slowdown in hiring.

On the topic, Tu elaborated via LinkedIn: “The rise in job numbers is offset by the number of people entering the workforce, primarily via immigration. This is reflected in the rise in part time employment as newcomers might not find full time work right away.

“But while employers have slowed down on hiring, they are also holding onto their talent, and there have been no widespread layoffs,” she added.

To keep the unemployment rate constant, approximately 50,000 additional jobs per month are needed given the immigration-driven population growth.

However, it seems this growth in jobs has the potential to lead to another rate hike towards the end of the year, says Derek Holt, vice president of capital markets economics at Scotiabank.

"Wages are just going off the charts," Holt said. "With wage numbers like this and the fact that we haven't had a soft patch on core inflation measures in Canada like they've had in the US, I would think we're still in hike mode in October,” he concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Hiring Tips from Canada's Top Startups

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 21:45:24 GMT

A handful of companies listed among Canada's 2023 LinkedIn Top Startups list have revealed what's unique about their hiring process, including this year’s number-one startup Calgary’s Neo Financial .

Alongside a focus on hiring underrepresented groups, businesses such as AltaML expressed a focus on human-led, “empathic” recruitment in bringing in talent which fits the company’s working environment.

This trait has also been celebrated by Float, which creates an interviewing panel of at least four team members in order to assess different criteria from a range of different perspectives.

On the other hand Zac Engler, director of talent acquisition at Sanctuary AI, hailed a move away from technology as a key element of the company’s talent acquisition strategy. Speaking to Riva Gold , Canadian senior news editor for LinkedIn News, he said: “Although we love our robots, when it comes to hiring we still prefer a human touch.”

Digital mortgage platform nesto focused on creating a “fun, diverse and highly qualified team” as part of its hiring process, while Neo Financial celebrated the brand’s ability to reach out to prospective employees if a more suitable job than the one initially applied for becomes available.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Canadian Businesses Sign AI Code of Conduct

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 18:25:25 GMT

Canadian technology companies including BlackBerry , OpenText and Coveo have signed Canada’s new voluntary code of conduct for generative AI, but not everyone is keen to support the voluntary code.

Taking influence from the voluntary code introduced across the US in July - which included signatures from companies including Google and Amazon - Global Affairs Canada’s trade commissioner for investment financial services and artificial intelligence Mark Pepin remarked that the code identifies measures that organizations are encouraged to apply when developing and managing general-purpose generative AI systems.

Mark also noted that the Canadian government has “already taken significant measures” to ensure “AI technology evolves responsibly and safely”, such as the proposed Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), which was introduced as part of Bill C-27 in June 2022.

“This code is a critical bridge between now and when that legislation would be coming into force,” he continued. “As we embark on this journey, let's embrace these principles and work collaboratively, with organizations like CIFAR, AMII, Mila, and Vector, to ensure the responsible development and management of AI systems, making Canada a global leader in AI safety and innovation.”

However, Shopify’s CEO Tobias Lütke took to X (formerly Twitter) to express his concerns regarding the future of AI in Canada, saying: “Canadian government is announcing a code of conduct on AI today, another case of EFRAID,” a reference to ‘Existential Fatalistic Risk from AI Delusion’ disease.

“I won’t support it,” he added. “We don’t need more referees in Canada. We need more builders. Let other countries regulate while we take the more courageous path and say ‘come build here’.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

AI Could Add $210 Billion to Canada’s Economy

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 17:43:32 GMT

Artificial intelligence has the potential to give the Canadian economy a $210 billion boost, the equivalent of 8% of Gross Value Added (GVA), according to a Google report.

The report - which comprised a third-party poll and a sample of Canadian businesses - found that generative AI could save the average Canadian worker 100 hours a year.

Sam Sebastian, vice president and Canada country manager of Google Cloud, said of the report: “Canada is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this opportunity, but we have to go after it.

“We have to be bold, we have to be responsible, but I think it’s a huge opportunity for this country.”

Speaking during an AI press roundtable event Tuesday, Sam suggested Toronto has the largest concentration of AI startups in the world, while Montreal has the largest concentration of AI researchers in the world.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

YYC’s Neo Financial Named Top Canadian Startup

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 19:26:39 GMT

Calgary-based fintech company Neo Financial has topped this year’s LinkedIn Top Startups list in Canada.

The list - which ranks 15 of Canada’s emerging companies based on employee growth, jobseeker interest, member engagement within the company and its employees; and how well these startups pulled talent from LinkedIn’s Top Companies list - found Neo Financial to be its coveted number-one spot followed by corporate card company Float and software development company Cohere .

Fellow Calgary-based companies on the list include health care company PurposeMed in eighth place and cleantech organization Summit Nanotech , which ranked 12th according to LinkedIn.

Speaking of his company’s number-one ranking, Neo Financial’s co-founder Kris Read said via LinkedIn: “Very proud of our growth, but also our culture of ownership + teamwork that continues to attract Canada's best and most ambitious talent.”

According to LinkedIn, “the list highlights companies that have continued to trailblaze their way through economic challenges and drops in venture capital funding this year.”

To be eligible, companies must be fully independent, privately held, have 50 or more full-time employees, be 5 years old or younger and be headquartered in the country on whose list they appear.Startups who have laid off 20% or more of their workforce based on corporate announcements or public, reliable sources between July 1, 2022 and the list launch, are not eligible. These decisions are made by the LinkedIn News team based on company statements and/or reputable news outlets.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Grant Lawrence Joins Accelerate Okanagan

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 20:59:30 GMT

Valhalla Private Capital’s Vancouver and Kelowna chapter president Grant Lawrence has been named as an investor-in-residence with Accelerate Okanagan .

Grant has been an active angel investor since 2015 and in 2017 Grant joined Valhalla Angels and took responsibility for managing their BC chapters in Kelowna and Vancouver, which includes continuous interaction with founders (mentoring, advisory positions) and community involvement (panelist, judge, guest lecturer…). Grant is also a co-founder of Valhalla Private Capital. He enjoys the rush of helping founders navigate through a variety of challenges

Grant is Board Partner at Startup Studio where they help innovation companies drive business development and sales, and help with their capital raises; and he is VP Investor Relations at UpCapital , which helps founders go-public. He also has 20+ years in the B2B environment where he has built and ran sales teams and created and ran indirect sales channels (VARs, VADs, Sis, OEMs….) on an international basis. He has worked with some of the world’s largest organizations, helping them solve critical business issues.

He is joined by fellow investor-in-residence Brodie Desimone. Executives-in-residence include Sheldon Gardiner, Crystal Henrickson, Robin Jones, Andrew Klingel, Michele Leeners, Sandra Oldfield, Isaac Oslund, Rocky Ozaki, Alison Ruks, Gary Smith, Larry Smith, Ty Summach and Corey Wagner.

Accelerate Okanagan ’s ambition is to give entrepreneurs the mentorship, connections, and community they need to build technology-driven ventures.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Vancouver Forum 10 October

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 20:33:31 GMT

Save the date, Valhalla Private Capital is hosting a Vancouver forum on 10 October.

Talking place at BDO’s Vancouver location and hosted by Valhalla Private Capital’s Vancouver and Kelowna chapter president Grant Lawrence, the event will see up to four companies pitch to our angel investor group.

Valhalla does the heavy lifting with a diligent deal screen process to ensure you are exposed to only the best companies and opportunities.

It is an opportunity for you to connect with other angels, leaders in the community and startup founders that will create meaningful connections for years to come.

Go in on deals with other angels and de-risk situations with collecting investing.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Coca-Cola’s Futuristic AI Flavor

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:46:02 GMT

Coca-Cola’s latest limited edition has been co-created using artificial intelligence , hinting at a strange new future for the world of soft drinks.

Boasting pink and blue coloring and a pixelated logo, the “futuristic flavored” Coca-Cola Y3000 used artificial intelligence to determine its flavor and packaging.

It comes alongside an AI-powered experience - Y3000 AI Cam - which gives consumers a quirky glimpse into what the year 3000 could look like.

This comes as part of the Coca-Cola Creations line designed to appeal to younger consumers.

Speaking of the product, Christopher Doering , senior editor and reporter at Food Dive, explained: “As Coca-Cola looks to draw consumers into its brands for the long haul, bringing AI into the mix is a logical choice. The use of AI for Coca-Cola Y3000, along with intrigue about its flavor, fosters mystery and excitement that generates buzz among consumers who talk about it online and rush out to try the item.

“AI also may increase the likelihood of a product succeeding in the marketplace if there is more accurate insight into developing it, saving CPG companies significant time and money while simultaneously boosting sales.”

Coca-Cola Y3000 comes in zero and full sugar varieties, and is now available in the United States and Canada.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

E@UBC Unveils Pitch Event Presenting Ventures

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:15:21 GMT

Entrepreneurship@UBC has announced the 10 presenting ventures in its inaugural regional ecosystem startup pitch event, as part of Entrepreneurship Immersion Week 2023 .

According to Entrepreneurship@UBC, the goal of this ecosystem startup pitch event is to “create awareness and demonstrate the tremendous impact BC entrepreneurs are having on Canada and the world at large”.

The evaluation committee is comprised of Valhalla Private Capital’s Kelowna and Vancouver chapter president Grant Lawrence, Irene Dorsman of Angel Forum ™ Vancouver and Aaron Stuart of WUTIF Capital (VCC) Inc. and VANTEC Angel Network .

VodaSafe

AquaEye is an advanced underwater scanner, using the latest in ultrasound and artificial intelligence technologies to identify human bodies underwater.

AquaEye sends a sonar pulse out to 50 meters or 165 feet and listens for the return echo. AquaEye then decides which echoes match the echoes from a human body and indicates the location of the missing persons on the screen.

Massive Canada

Massive Canada offers mass timber solutions for our sustainable future. Our mission is to make mass timber mainstream. High-quality products that stand the test of time.

Intellectulogy Solutions Inc.

IntellectuLogy Solutions Inc. is a research and development company with a focus on Materials Science and Nanotechnology. It is a private company and our main areas of business include innovative product development to address market needs.

Joni

When 1 in 3 Canadians with periods under the age of 25 are not able to afford period products and a box of tampons costs up to $30 in some remote communities, the industry needs a new approach.

With joni, someone living in a remote community in Canada will pay the same price for organic period care as someone living in an urban centre making sustainable period care accessible to everyone who needs it.

GoChip

GoChip makes hardware and software to revolutionize animal identification and provide effective tools for animal tracking, disease mitigation, and digital licensing. Every animal has a story and GoChip technology tells that story. Because healthy animals make healthy communities.

Ensuring the health of large animal, populations has historically been a challenge. The paper-based, labor-intensive tools and systems have proved inadequate for disease mitigation and animal management. GoChip’s hardware and digital ID platform effectively monitor animal populations to improve the health and well-being of communities around the world.

Hydragas Energy Limited

Hydragas Energy Limited is a cleantech developer based on innovative technology enabling bio-methane extraction from water bodies.

Asepha

With more and more patients to serve and a system that can’t scale, the mission to deliver exceptional care has its limitations. Asepha uses artificial intelligence to break this barrier for you.

Eigen

Eigen is a leading provider of PCI-validated P2PE managed payment solutions for the retail, restaurant and hospitality industries in North America.

D2Type

D2Type is an integrative digital platform to empower people with prediabetes or Type 2 Diabetes to prevent, delay and reverse diabetes, improve health and lessen care costs for organizations.

Brave

A privacy-first, free browser that loads 3x faster — without slowing your computer down.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Canada’s Job Market is on the Rise

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 18:16:11 GMT

Canada’s three-month unemployment slump seems to be coming to an end with more than twice as many positions - net 39,900 jobs - as anticipated joining the market according to data gathered by Statistics Canada.

The data found that Statistics Canada said full-time positions in Canada’s labour market grew by 32,200 jobs while part-time jobs posted a more modest rise of 7,800 positions, beating expectations for a gain of 20,000 positions with wages rising to 5.2% - up from 5% in July.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate remained at 5.5% in the wake of three straight monthly increases, signaling the jobs market is looser than it was last year.

As a result, job growth will need to pick up to keep pace with strong population growth.

On the topic, Tu Nguyen , economist and ESG Director at RSM Canada, commented: “Immigration has played a vital part in keeping the economy buoyant as job growth was led by population growth. Immigration injected workers in the economy to mitigate the talent shortage and help the economy grow.”

Tu predicts that in coming months Canada can expect moderate job growth “as businesses find it hard to borrow money amid a high interest rate environment”.

“Nevertheless, the economy looks to be on solid ground and employers will hold on to the workers they have,” she concluded.

This comes just days after The Bank of Canada announced it would be holding its overnight lending rate at a 22-year high of 5% - the highest level in 22 years.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Bank of Canada Holds Interest Rate at 5%

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 18:26:07 GMT

The Bank of Canada is holding its overnight lending rate at a 22-year high of 5% - the highest level in 22 years - following a Statistics Canada report which showed signs of a weakening economy.

In their rate announcement , the bank said: “With recent evidence that excess demand in the economy is easing, and given the lagged effects of monetary policy, governing council decided to hold the policy interest rate at five per cent and continue to normalize the Bank’s balance sheet.

“However, governing council remains concerned about the persistence of underlying inflationary pressures, and is prepared to increase the policy interest rate further if needed.”

However, the bank has kept the door open to further hikes and “will continue to assess the dynamics of core inflation and the outlook for CPI inflation”.

‘Unlikely to Hike Again’

Speaking of the announcement, macroeconomist Brett House commented via LinkedIn: “If individuals and businesses think inflation is going to stay high, then the perceived cost of borrowing will be too low, and high posted rates won’t have the dampening effect on demand and prices that the bank is trying to engineer.”

As Brett notes, economic decisions on borrowing are driven by the real interest rate, which is calculated by taking headline posted borrowing rates and subtracting from them the expected rate of inflation.

“This is why the Bank can’t say it’s done hiking, even though Canada’s underlying fundamentals imply that the Bank’s job is done,” Brett continued. “It will have to keep talking tough in its remaining 2023 rate decisions in October and December to push down all of our inflation expectations. But given the slowdown in Canada’s economy, it’s unlikely to hike again.”

Statistics Canada report found that Canada's economy shrank at a 0.2% annualised pace in the second quarter, marking the first outright negative major datapoint for Canada this year.

As a result of this, British Columbia Premier David Eby called on Bank of Canada to pause rate hikes as it's "hurting" people.

In a written letter to governor Tiff Macklen, Eby said: “People in BC are already hurting. In your role as governor, I urge you to consider the full human impact of rate increases and not further increase rates at this time.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Canadian Economy Faces ‘Flatline’

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 02:03:41 GMT

Canada's economy shrank at a 0.2% annualised pace in the second quarter, according to a Statistics Canada report (source: The Globe and Mail ).

The report found that GDP growth for Q2 came in at -0.2% - below the average economist’s forecast of 1.2% - marking the first outright negative major datapoint for Canada this year.

This downturn was largely due to forest fires which led to multiple mine closures across Quebec in June alongside iron ore mining in Newfoundland and Labrador and activity in natural gas and crude oil extraction in Alberta the month prior.

Mining and quarrying (except oil and gas) also fell 5.7% in June, while agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting sectors fell 3.5% in the second quarter (the sector's second consecutive quarterly decline).

On the topic, data analyst Justin Vung commented via LinkedIn: ”Canada's GDP per capita was higher in the 2nd quarter of 2018 than it was in the 2nd quarter of 2023. Five years with no economic growth.

“Bad government policies that are more concerned with redistributing wealth instead of improving productivity and growing wealth has led to a lost decade in Canada,” he concluded.

‘People in BC are already hurting’

With an interest rate decision coming up next Wednesday, British Columbia Premier David Eby is calling on Bank of Canada to pause rate hikes as it's "hurting" people.

In a written letter to governor Tiff Macklen, Eby said: “People in BC are already hurting. In your role as Governor, I urge you to consider the full human impact of rate increases and not further increase rates at this time.

“On the ground in our province,” he continued, “interest rate hikes are causing more and more people to report they could not afford to cover an unexpected $500 expense and who are moving from financial security into financial insecurity.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Most Interesting Investment Year in a Decade?

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 16:00:00 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson, chairman at Valhalla Private Capital, has commented on what has been a “challenging couple of years for both angels and founders” in light of a LinkedIn post by Boston Harbor Angels president Ziad Henry Moukheiber .

Ziad’s opinion- which was shared via Boston Harbor Angels’ LinkedIn account last week - declared: "The upcoming angel investment year is most likely to be one of the most challenging but also interesting year in a decade."

On the topic, the account elaborated: “Startup founders are facing funding challenges and valuation pressures while exits are slow coming in an industry that is changing and evolving.

This is a time to listen, to the market,” it continued, “to the investment community and to customers. Founders need to be creative in finding solutions to their challenges.

“Investors are looking for new types of deals and startups,” the post concluded.

This sentiment was echoed by Randy, who remarked that “investing is down 50% this year”. However, the Valhalla Private Capital chairman also hailed venture debt as a “massive boost” to the company’s offering.

Valhalla Private Capital is one of Canada's most active early-stage investment firms, facilitating over $75m from its network of 120 investors into an estimated 270 early-stage entrepreneurs.

With more than two decades of investing experience, Valhalla Private Capital has garnered the expertise of its founders to train entrepreneurs, investors, and regional ecosystems across Western Canada and further afield.

The Valhalla approach aims to establish a return on investments which contribute to a sustainable, local community of investors. To date, more than 1,100 entrepreneurs have participated in our programs, helping them raise upwards of $500m in capital.

Valhalla Private Capital has won a multitude of awards as a result of its programs - including Startup Canada’s ‘ Entrepreneur Support Award ’ for the Prairies in 2019 - and is home to the National Angel Capital Organization's ‘ Angel Investor of the Year ’ for both 2018 and 2019, Randy Stewart Thompson . Canadian governments, universities, and ecosystem partners have also utilized our network and expertise to unlock capital in their respective regions.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Canadian Businesses Opt for Eco-Friendly Rental Spaces

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 23:31:27 GMT

Canadian entrepreneurs are hellbent on renting spaces which intend to reach sustainability goals, according to a survey carried out by Deloitte.

The survey - which detailed the priorities of 100 Canadian commercial real estate executives - found that 58% of tenants found net-zero goals to be a priority, compared to only 30% of landlords.

On the topic Marco Macagnano , Canadian digital real estate leader at Deloitte , hailed the survey’s findings as “a significant business opportunity to reconcile the needs and expectations of real estate owners and occupiers today”.

However, not everyone is as optimistic about the survey’s findings.

Financial journalist Jameson Berkow took to LinkedIn to comment: “As if being an office landlord in the work-from-home era wasn't hard enough (nearly a fifth of downtown Toronto's skyscrapers are still sitting empty), a new poll suggests tenants are set to demand even more concessions in the (increasingly likely) event of recession.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Grant Lawrence Joins Entrepreneurship@UBC’s Pitch Event Panel

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 22:53:07 GMT

Valhalla Private Capital’s Kelowna and Vancouver chapter president Grant Lawrence is set to sit as a panelist in Entrepreneurship@UBC’s regional ecosystem startup pitch event , as part of Entrepreneurship Immersion Week 2023 .

Taking place on 27 September, the event will feature 10 companies from across British Columbia, all of which are “creating transformative solutions in climate, human health and social impact” and have “proven market traction and are ready to scale”, according to Entrepreneurship@UBC’s website.

The objective of the Showcase is to create awareness and connections for the companies across the province and demonstrate the tremendous impact BC entrepreneurs are having on Canada and the world at large.

Finalists are yet to be announced and will have the opportunity to pitch live and in-person at UBC Robson Square.

Grant will be joined by fellow panelists Irene Dorsman of Angel Forum ™ Vancouver and Aaron Stuart of WUTIF Capital (VCC) Inc. and VANTEC Angel Network .

This marks Entrepreneurship@UBC’s first regional ecosystem startup pitch event of 2023.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Canadian Workers Are Learning AI

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 15:53:52 GMT

Canadian businesses are shifting their focus into the world of artificial intelligence, according to LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index .

The index - which surveyed 3,332 professionals in Canada between 11 March and 2 June 2023 - found that nearly half of those surveyed (42%) showed an interest in learning tech skills tied to AI and machine learning, cloud computing, data analysis, blockchain and Web3 , creator economy or virtual reality/augmented reality (for example building experiences in the Metaverse ) in 2023.

Likewise, more than a third (35%) of millennials and 29% of Gen Z’s expressed an interest in learning AI and machine learning skills this year.

Two fifths (38%) of millennials and Gen Z members said they were interested in picking up data analysis skills, compared to a quarter (25%) of the wider workforce.

On the other hand, 42% of Baby Boomers surveyed said they doubt whether AI will have much impact on their jobs, but only time will tell…

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Dawn of the $900K AI Job

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 16:14:09 GMT

Amid Hollywood’s infamous writers' and actors' strike, companies including Netflix and Walmart are spending big bucks on the prospect of employees with artificial intelligence experience (source: WSJ ).

Namely, Netflix has posted an AI product management position with a staggering $900,000 salary, highlighting the streaming services commitment to the role of machine learning moving forward.

Unsurprisingly, this jaw-dropping job posting - alongside others at Netflix including AI-focused engineering managers and research scientists, many of which have $400,000 base salaries - has sent the internet into a wider discussion about the role of artificial intelligence and its impact on creatives.

Eva Platini-Hernandez , vice president of business development at WHP Global , said via LinkedIn: “Netflix has responsibilities on dual fronts. As AI transforms industries, their investments reflect a commitment to innovation. It's about staying competitive and embracing a tech-driven future.

“However”, she continued, “ amidst this AI excitement, the need for fairness cannot be overshadowed. While AI researchers command princely salaries, creators' concerns deserve attention. Let's channel our energy into creating an equitable future, where the value of all contributors is recognized and rewarded.”

On the other hand Camille Renshaw , CEO and Cofounder of B+E , maintained “You won’t lose your job to AI… you will lose your job to someone who knows how to leverage AI to do your job better”; while Dr. Mansoor Samavatian , director of technology at HCLTech added: “Overpaying for AI talents and setting unrealistic expectations isn't just unsustainable - it risks deflating the momentum we've built in this innovative sector.

“ Instead, let's prioritize a balanced approach: invest in training new talents, maintain fair compensation, and create a nurturing environment for growth. This way, we keep the AI community thriving and grounded.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Happy 20th Anniversary Members and Alumni

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 15:31:03 GMT

Happy 20th Members and Alumni!

So after 20 years it feels like the appropriate time to send out a “wow, it's been 20 years” letter to all current and past investors we could find. I wanted to take a moment to remember where we came from and talk about where we see ourselves going, and at the very least say hello and thank you for being part of our family and community.

The number of startups you have supported has been staggering. More than $74m of capital to more than 300 companies. The development of XX funds and special purpose vehicles totaling an additional XXX under management. At our height, geographic coverage in six cities at one time, with chapters in Red Deer and Medicine Hat at one point in our history, and (just before COVID) more than 150 investors, 14 partners and employees creating a “cradle to exit” experience for more than 1,200 companies a year in 29 countries.

You were part of it, and many of you still are. This year the numbers are down for sure. We are seeing a massive shift away from “the event” being the center of gravity for Valhalla and the members. We are seeing deal flow numbers are still extremely high, but in terms of our actual investments by numbers of investments, we haven’t seen this low in a decade. We are on track to sign 12-14 deals this year, compared to upwards of 20 deals in 2020. So far we have funded SprayWerx , Mach32 , Asset Market , Aryton Energy and three more have been funded - and we will send you out announcements on Delphi and the contracts they’ve signed as well as the next round on deals you have seen in the last six months.

Do You Remember That Deal?

We’ve had some challenges with our presenters for sure. We are still the only group that invested in an Axe Murderer, I hope… We lost money on sure things like Baby Gourmet , while Innovative Trauma Care and Genesis Technical Systems hold on after so many years. Our first funded deal was called WaytoGolf and the investor is now an MLA in the Alberta government. We saw Synondon as our first ever deal and it went on to be publicly traded.

But there were a lot of “purple shirts”. When Terry Booth got his first exit and wore the new purple shirt it became a tradition in Calgary that spread to other chapters. You Vancouver types probably haven’t caught this one yet, but to be fair, you probably already have enough purple in the closet. I think that will change with Beatdapp , the first investment of the Vancouver chapter, and showing the value of Valhalla “showing deals first.”

But we miss some by showing them early. Clio only received $20,000 back in 2008 and fellow Edmonton company Jobber pulled out of the forum after passing deal screening, claiming they raised the money in the week between screening and presenting. Further, one of our family offices in Calgary has the distinction of going into two deals that no else did - and then get two exits.

Where are They Now?

Our members and staff have gone on to start companies like IrisCX, Parvus, or funds like Sprout VC, Weave VC, and ecosystem events like Startup TNT . Some of them have taken jobs in the ecosystem such as Accelerate Fund , Google, and Neo Financial . The first ever deal manager is now the head of M&A for Deloitte in Edmonton, and Evelyn has just left us after three amazing years in Saskatchewan to follow her passion in Impact and Social investing.

We would love to hear from you now! Send us a quick email that tells us where you are and what your favourite VentureAlberta/VA Angels/Valhalla PC memory or deal has been. Contact Emmet at emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com and let us know if we can repost it, put it on our website or just cherish it internally.

Enough About Yesterday, Tell Me About Tomorrow

So there is no point telling you all 2022/23 has been rosy, and I admit to wondering whether two decades of Valhalla Private Capital would ever be possible. But we truly love this space and we have been told multiple times how much value we add in the Western Canada ecosystem, not to mention the 29 countries working for the World Bank , IDB or a National government. We need to up the game in fund management and reporting and that definitely has come home to roost in our largest fund OKR Financial . We have some amazing results in the VA Angels Fund I, but it needs to be reported. We are expecting our capital back in VA Asean Fund, and UnoRondo still has three companies that are growing. This needs to be managed and reported. We are looking at two hires that will report on our investments full-time. Within our VIP group, a number of investors had Valhalla act as an LP in Harvest Ventures , where we have seen 40% of our capital returned in one deal in just under two years.

So here is what you’ll see in the third quarter: we’re working out whether we do more frequent deal events but less forums. More socials, but quarterly regional gatherings.

The event isn’t a thing:

Pre Covid, the second week of the month was sacred, and everyone would be at the Terminal Club, BDO at the Landmark Campus, The Ranchmen's Club or the Glenora to network, meet, talk about the industry and do deals. There are so many events, so many people working from home, and frankly, the Dragons Den format seems to be a struggling one, so we will meet less regularly but more quality. Watch this space…

We keep taking phone call after phone call:

I personally have never had the capacity to keep up with inbound requests from the ecosystem who want to meet you all! I continue to look at ways to be better at managing that traffic, but we continue to meet fascinating founders, companies, international guests and co investors that we will continue to make available to you. And it will be people and opportunities you won't see anywhere else.

We have rights to a private bank:

I’m supposed to call it International Financial Services. Our joint venture with Axiom FS means that our members can have bank accounts in other countries, easier and more cost effective wire services, and trust accounts to do “one off” transactions with. Details to follow…

Access to Valley VCs who want us to be an LP:

In the fall we will show you funds you will be able to invest in that you won't see anywhere else. Instead of just our VIP group, we will make this available to everybody. Currently we are making a determination on the Top five opportunities. It’s a difficult task.

Proprietary Deal Flow remains the secret sauce:

We have four associations that want us to create investor readiness/Basecamp offerings for them. That is how you saw Beatdapp, Dyne , Wyvern , Callia Flowers before any other investor. We will keep doing this.

Shifting our Human Resources:

We won't have chapter presidents anymore because, well, see point one. We will provide our members the back office as if they are running a corporate fund office. Less BD (we don’t need more), more quality assurance. This is called learning tough lessons

We throw great parties:

Yep, we think this is important... and quite frankly I enjoy them.

Knowledge leaders and Base Camp:

I was thinking about the tone of this letter.. professional or informal. You can tell which one I chose, but Valhalla Private Capital has done well because we have deep domain knowledge on the cradle through the exit. Important guest speakers, access to research, courses on how to be better angels, and less event advertising on socials/more knowledge is part of the shift

Network Expansion where Canada is the Destination:

We visited 29 companies, got rave reviews, engaged new investors; all while running an Angel group, Funds/SPVs/ and an M&A shop, conducting Basecamps and acting as a GP in multiple Funds. We tried to boil the ocean. Now, we see the benefit of everyone coming to our region where some of the most interesting cities and destinations in the world (according to The Economist anyway) are our backyard. Valhalla membership will be global and we are planning to get to 500 members across our network.

Important International Connections come to Canada:

We’ll bring the world and our network to you. We have some amazing members (especially in Vancouver) who just make our network even more amazing.

Lesson learned from Founders - The Lead up is fantastic, the follow up sucks:

Since 2003, through the Josh Lerner Harvard study we participated in during 2011, all the way to last month we heard “ We love your process and support to get to the forum, the follow up from members and staff is horrible.” We believe that less focus on events, eliminating pay to pitch and curating opportunities for our companies is a better way to go.

We would love your feedback on this new direction, and see if there’s anything else we should explore. We hope as a member you’re excited, and as an alumni you might want to come back. COVID’s not a thing right now, come hang out with us.

Finally, I’m going to do this monthly. If you're interested in getting this letter please click on the link and we’ll add you as the new Valhalla takes off. We’d love to see you back and part of this.

Thanks for being a friend along the road. It's been my honour to have been part of the journey for twenty years.

rst

WeWork’s Working Model Isn’t Working

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 18:42:19 GMT

WeWork has expressed “substantial doubt” about the flexible space provider’s future, citing the company’s existence as a “going concern” (source: TechCrunch ).

Announcing the company’s earnings on in a regulatory filing on Tuesday (8 August) - a net loss of $397 million for the second quarter on revenue of $877 million - WeWork interim CEO David Tolley said: “Excess supply in commercial real estate, increasing competition in flexible space and macroeconomic volatility drove higher member churn and softer demand than we anticipated, resulting in a slight decline in memberships.”

WeWork’s revenue was up 4% year-over-year, however David noted the company’s future hinges on “successful execution of management’s plan to improve liquidity and profitability over the next 12 months.”

This is set to involve cutting rent and tenancy costs, increasing new sales, controlling expenses and seeking additional capital.

While the company has been on the brink of liquidity since 2019 (source: Financial Times ), David maintains “now is the perfect market for a company like WeWork given our scale, given our size, and given that the market is really moving our way”.

Speaking to Yahoo! Finance, he continued: “I think it’s not only a short-term scramble for space, with WeWork, I think there’s a structural shift going on, and we’re very well-positioned for it.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Alberta’s Renewable Energy Problem

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 17:27:49 GMT

With the Alberta government placing a six-month pause on approving new wind and solar power projects, the province is struggling to find somewhere to store its renewable energy (source: Global News ). However, it it seems Battery energy storage systems (BESS) may be the answer (source: The Globe and Mail ).

With an estimated 20 per cent boost in output efficiency, the use of these storage systems could hedge Alberta’s footprint as Canada's main fossil fuel producer .

Justin Rangooni, executive director at Energy Storage Canada, explained via LinkedIn that - similar to Ontario and Nova Scotia, as well as wider Canada - the significance of energy storage is on the rise.

“-Energy storage is increasingly recognized not only as essential for transitioning to a more decarbonized electricity system but also for guaranteeing its reliability and resiliency in the years ahead,” Justin said.

On the topic, he expressed excitement to “connect with the province’s premier Danielle Smith and Nathan Neudorf [minister of affordability and utilities], to delve into the ongoing importance of energy storage on Alberta's electricity grid.”

According to Danielle Smith, the federal government has been preventing development of backup generation for renewable energy such as natural gas.

“So I’ve told them, how can I bring on additional wind and solar if I’m not able to secure the reliability of my power grid by being able to bring on natural gas peaker plants? That’s the heart of the problem,” she said.

“No one is proposing any new natural gas plants because the federal government has created so much uncertainty in the market.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Will Google and Universal Release AI Music?

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 16:50:37 GMT

Following the transformative (and quite strange) impact of voice filters across TikTok and other video-focused platforms, Google and Universal Music are in talks for a potential deal which would allow the pair to license artists' melodies and voices for AI-generated songs (source: Financial Times ).

While typically these ‘deepfakes’ are made without consent from the artists involved - for example a version of Harry Styles covering ‘Ceilings’ by Lizzy McAlpine found viral acclaim in recent months - this deal would permit fans to create their own songs, provided they pay copyright owners.

Artists will also have a chance to opt in or out of their voice being used through the deal.

Speaking of this development, Accenture ’s management consulting principal Aidan Mallamo took to Linkedin: “As regulators and government legislation continues to evolve, content creators are taking initiative in developing deals that would pay copyright holders for the right to create music, while artists would have the choice to opt in.

I think the concept of ‘op-in’ will be the key doctrine as society moves forward,” he added

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Canadian Unemployment Continues to Rise

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 04:09:37 GMT

It looks like the Canadian unemployment rise is beginning to plateau, with an estimated loss of 6,400 jobs nationwide in July. (source: Reuters via Statistics Canada).

This marks the third month of stable employment loss in a row at 5.5%, trumping initial predictions from analysts for the economy to add about 21,100 jobs .

Most of these job losses took place across construction and transportation; but on a brighter note, the health care and educational sectors saw the largest increases at 25,000 and 19,000 new roles, respectively.

Speaking of Canada’s unemployment rate, deputy chief North America economist at Capital Economics Stephen Brown said: “The small fall in employment and rise in the unemployment rate in July show that the labour market continues to loosen, suggesting that the unexpected jump in wage growth last month is unlikely to be sustained.

“With the Bank of Canada implying that the data need to surprise to the upside to warrant another interest rate hike, the softer labour market data support our view that the Bank is unlikely to follow through with current market pricing by raising rates further."

Alberta, on the other hand, has seen the healthiest growth in employment rates of all the provinces, adding roughly 12,000 jobs across the province.

And to end on an optimistic note, average hourly wages grew five per cent after similar increases in May and June, marking a positive turn in compensation for workers (source: CBC ).

Chief economist at Deloitte Canada Dawn Desjardins told CBC: "We're not looking at a terrible labour market by any stretch.

"Over time you would anticipate that that would lead to slower wage growth, which of course is sort of what the central bank is looking for easing up in those inflation pressures."

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

North American Banks Pave Way for AI Boom

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 23:51:16 GMT

North American banks are putting their money on the ever-adapting value of AI, according to a report by banking data provider Evident.

The report - which surveyed banks which employ 650 AI researchers in total - found that North American banks published 80% of all bank AI research and made 60% of all bank AI-related investments in 2022.

Further, these banks filed 99% of all the AI-related bank patents in 2021, tipping North America as ahead of the curve in terms of artificial intelligence.

Companies taking the helm of this movement include J.P. Morgan Chase (leading in AI research) Capital One (AI patents) and Wells Fargo (AI investments), alongside Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank, Goldman Sachs and First Citizens.

According to Axios, these results indicate that “banks and smaller fintech competitors that don't have a centralized AI innovation strategy are falling behind their big bank competitors”.

On the topic, Best Practice AI co-founder and partner Tim Gordon took to LinkedIn, remarking: “For such a structurally important industry, it is striking how concentrated the leadership is: the top 5 banks, by category, published 67% of the AI research, filed 94% of the patents and made 51% of the AI investments. These are all North American banks.

“There is a real gap in the market for a European ‘AI Champion’ bank to emerge - with stronger potential in France and Spain than the UK.”

LinkedIn has hinted at a huge potential payoff for banks quick to invest in AI, referencing a 2020 report by McKinsey which estimated that AI technologies could hold up to $1 trillion in value for the global banking sector.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

No Place Like Home for Kelownians

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 22:50:21 GMT

Kelownians, it seems you are more likely to apply for fully remote positions than the rest of your Canadian counterparts.

According to a study by LinkedIn's Economic Graph research team - based on an analysis of more than 12 million remote job applications on LinkedIn from May 2022 to May 2023 - the ‘keenest’ locations to apply for fully remote positions are Kelowna (49.4%) and Victoria (45.6%), with Regina (38.2%) landing in seventh spot followed by Calgary (36.4%).

Speaking of her experience as former-Torontonian-come-Kelowna resident working in tech entrepreneurship and venture capital, Jessica Weisz explained: “What we were optimizing for was sunshine. I had never been to Kelowna – I knew nothing about it.

“We came and saw the place that we could rent… You could see the mountains and the lake, it had a pool and it was massive and it was the same as rent for our little small loft in Toronto.”

On the other hand, Toronto was found as the top metro area for hybrid work with 31.7% of applicants opting for a blend of office and remote working in their job searches. This is in keeping with the recently-shifted working methods of companies including TD Bank and The Royal Bank of Canada , both of which have adopted a hybrid working schedule to accommodate the productivity habits of their staff.

Vancouver landed sixth spot (27%) - testament to the working preferences of 3D artist and Victoria resident Justin Bennett, who has been able to maintain two YVR-based jobs from home.

“After COVID, a lot of remote opportunities in my industry have opened up, which has made relocation not necessary,” he began.

“You are close enough [to Vancouver] that when there are social gatherings or networking opportunities, you’re not that far away."

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

20 Years of Valhalla Private Capital

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 23:51:13 GMT

To celebrate our twentieth anniversary Valhalla Private Capital has shared some highlights and messages from members and alumni alike.

Rod Brown , co-founder Valhalla Private Capital

Having devoted my entire working life to entrepreneurship and investing in early stage ventures, becoming a founding partner in Valhalla Private Capital was a natural fit.

Building off R Stewart (Randy) Thompson 's angel foundation and our Teams unique experiences, I have been able to accelerate my personal and professional goals in a much bigger way than if I continued on my own.

Every angel understands the importance of returns but this is ultimately driven by the need to also give back while building a better future. In giving back we seed the future, which is incredibly rewarding both personally and professionally and tends to lead to healthy returns.

Since inception, the core of Valhalla Private Capital has been all about giving by providing education, access to capital and unique opportunities that are pillars to continued innovation and economic health in our diverse communities.

Over the past 20 years we have been very fortunate to be surrounded by smart people that have a similar beliefs and motivations."

Grant Lawrence , Vancouver and Kelowna chapter president, co-founder Valhalla Private Capital

My initiation into the realm of Angel investing occurred eight years ago when I was introduced to the Valhalla Forums in Kelowna. Little did I know that this encounter would open the floodgates to an entirely new world of possibilities. Having primarily focused on the startup side of the equation throughout my career, I found myself exhilarated by the prospect of exploring the investment landscape and leveraging my operational knowledge to assist founders and guide my investments. With more than fifteen investments under my belt, I have experienced the thrill of witnessing one company go public, the disappointment of witnessing another's demise, and seeing the positive ongoing growth of the remaining investments.

Shortly after joining as a member, Valhalla approached me to take charge of the Kelowna chapter and help the expansion into Vancouver, ultimately becoming an integral part of their team.

Engaging with exceptional investors and visionary founders is an absolute pleasure, and being able to give back, in my own modest way, is truly fulfilling.

Mykaela Horrigan , executive assistant Valhalla Private Capital

Valhalla has introduced me to an ecosystem I likely wouldn’t of heard of otherwise. The community is full of like-minded, yet unique, individuals and companies that continuously prove you haven’t seen everything quite yet!

I’m excited to be involved in my capacity and have had a pleasure meeting everyone I have so far!

Zinat Damji , Alliance Trust Company, Calgary, Canada

We came as a Lunch Sponsor the Basecamp in March and ended up attending your full two-day session! We enjoyed it so much, we even gave up my much cherished Saturday.

Thank you, R Stewart (Randy) Thompson , Marco Donadeo ! Most gracious and extremely knowledgeable.

Chaneel I. Park

I learned the foundation of angel investment and venture capital from Valhalla Private Capital this year. I only wish I knew them earlier.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Importance of Brand Recognition

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 22:58:35 GMT

With ambitions to create "the everything app" - comprising Twitter , YouTube , PayPal , TikTok , Amazon and more - #ElonMusk 's X hopes to "easily" become a $1 trillion company, according to the Tesla tycoons biographer Walter Isaacson.

On the other hand, some marketing experts claim X has "wiped out 15 years of brand value from #Twitter and is now essentially starting from scratch" (source: LinkedIn News ).

On this topic, our chairman Randy Stewart Thompson has discussed his perception of Valhalla as a “traditional brand in the ecosystem”, and why that works to the company’s benefit.

A self-proclaimed “old dog”, Randy Thompson the rules are “different” in today’s hyperlocal startup ecosystem .

“You’ve got to get caught up so quick, and I do worry about that,” Randy began. “Valhalla’s been here for 20 years in the ecosystem. It's a long time, right? Especially in startups - everybody loves the new cool brand.”

However, Randy maintains that although “cool new brands” crop up every few years, they quickly learn that “they can't sustain themselves” in the marketplace.

“We feel like a traditional brand in the ecosystem, so it's hard to figure out how to stay young and cool; but I'm learning that maybe we don't have to. Maybe it’s just the fact that we just create solid brands, solid trust, great relationships and great experiences.”

To date, more than 1,100 entrepreneurs have participated in Valhalla’s programs, helping them raise upwards of $500m in capital; while international initiatives across more than 25 developing countries mobilized $3m in investments across Valhalla’s networks and unlocked an additional $9m of local capital for entrepreneurs.

“We've been doing really well for the length of time, and we don't have to have a gimmick or a playbook that's gonna give us really cute colours on the street,” Randy concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Evergreen Benefits of Calgary’s ‘Stampede City’

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 18:47:39 GMT

The second largest Calgary Stampede on record has come to a close, and its benefits are already beginning to show for local businesses.

This year’s total attendance is predicted to be about 150,000 passes shortshort of the all-time record of $1.4 million set with 2012's centennial edition of the event (source: CTV News ).

However, this year also saw a record-breaking attendance of 164,939 visitors on July 7 which coincided with record-breaking hotel bookings for the city, according to executive director of the Calgary Hotel Association Sol Zia.

Speaking of the event’s economic impact, Sol said: “Arguably, we’re going to see more revenue during the 10 days of Stampede, really 12 nights, than the entire year of 2020.”

Stampede as a ‘Year-Round District’

As Calgary Stampede president and board chair Will Osler told the Calgary Herald : “Each year, Stampede Park transforms into its own city - the third largest in the province - for 10 days”.

These festivities - described by city mayor Jyoti Gondek as as "a year-round district which not only hosts the greatest outdoor show on earth, but also serves as a cultural and economic venue 365 days a year” - brings an estimated 7.7 million visitors each year and contributes $2bn to Calgary’s economy along the way.

Annually, Stampede Park hosts more than 1,200 events across sectors including business, tourism, sporting, hospitality and community, welcoming upwards of four million guests along the way and generating millions of dollars in uncalculated economic value.

For example, The Global Petroleum Show (hosted by Stampede Park every two years), generates an estimated $11bn in oil and gas related sales within the global marketplace (source: Calgary Stampede ).

Likewise, almost one million people attend Calgary Flames home games annually, alongside an additional 2,600,000 visitors who attend the venue for trade shows and other events.

These events create thousands of jobs across Calgary - including more than 2,500 volunteer roles from Stampede itself - contributing more than $540m to the Alberta economy.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Calgary Stampede and the Business Culture of Western Calgary

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 02:21:09 GMT

Dust off your finest belt buckle, The Calgary Stampede is back for another year of rides, rodeos and relatively odd food combinations.

This years champion sponsors for Calgary Stampede include BMO Financial Group , Bell , Lammle’s Western Wear , Cowboys Music Festival , Enmax and The Coca-Cola Company (namesake of the Coca-Cola Stage , which this year will host the likes of Calgary’s Tegan and Sara, Manchester Orchestra, Jimmy Eat World, Vance Joy and Jessie Reyez); while Stockmen’s Club sponsors feature local newspaper Calgary Herald , transportation and logistics leader CN , law firm Bennett Jones and oil and Tim Hortons , alongside The Mike’s Hard Lemonade Company , Wrangler and a cavalcade of local companies.

While the coronavirus pandemic saw big hitters McDonald’s and Calgary Co-op (to name a few) opt out as sponsors of ‘The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth’; the addition of Alberta Boot last year - and their subsequent multi-year commitment to being Stampede’s official boot - was reportedly worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” according to CEO Eytan Broder.

However, this year’s most notable Stampede sponsorship development, The WestJet Group has renewed its two-decade spot as a sponsor for a further five years (source: Livewire Calgary ). Speaking of the deal, WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech explained: “This is a key sponsorship for WestJet.

“We are a company that was brought up in Calgary, we are the home carrier of the west, and Stampede is the most visible symbol of the tradition and the culture of Western Canada.”

As a result, WestJet will continue to be the title sponsor for the Stampede Park chair lift, (or WestJet Skyride), alongside sponsoring the bull riding rodeo events and giving prizes including free flights to Stampede visitors.

On the topic, he continued: “There’s a strategic [element] as well… making sure that international visitors, and those from within Canada, have access to Calgary - easy access to Calgary - helps us generate that annual economic impact that Calgary has come to rely upon.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Calgary Stampede: Welcome to the Economic Rodeo

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 02:46:38 GMT

It’s time to throw on your finest cowboy garb - The Calgary Stampede is back for another year of rootin’ tootin’ tents, talents and (of course) many, many fireworks.

Following a stripped-back iteration of the festivities in 2021 (during the coronavirus pandemic), last year’s festival posted excess revenues of $13.8 million, propelled largely by just short of $13 million in federal government pandemic relief funding and $6 million in provincial grants (source: Calgary Herald ).

The event itself saw more than 1.2 million attendees (the same number of people the US population grew by last year, just for context); and while $8.9 million of the government’s $10 million Major Festivals and Events Support Initiative were invested into last year’s Calgary Stampede, the remainder will be spent on this year’s festivities.

According to Calgary Stampede - a “not-for-profit community organization that preserves and celebrates our western heritage, cultures and community spirit” (according to its website) - park visitors spend an estimated $345m annually in Alberta, the majority of which ($300m) is spent in Calgary businesses such as hotels, restaurants and shops.

Stampede Park itself hosts more than 1,200 events each year across sectors including business, tourism, sporting, hospitality and community, welcoming upwards of four million guests along the way.

These events create thousands of jobs across Calgary - including more than 2,500 volunteer roles from Stampede itself - contributing more than $540m to the Alberta economy.

Calgary Stampede CEO Joel Cowley has also ensured more space is available for attendees in 2023, moving the famous Coca-Cola Stage and Voila’s Dog Bowl to create better roaming-room for all involved.

“We’re really focused on utilizing the entire footprint of Stampede Park,” Cowley said.

On the topic, he continued: “We’ve also been able to increase funding for our volunteer committees, which is really important to us.

“It’s a better (financial) conversation this year.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

‘Godfather of AI’ Fears Future of Superintelligence

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Tue, 02 May 2023 18:11:35 GMT

Geoffrey Hinton - affectionately known as the ‘ Godfather of AI ’ for his work in building a neural network with two students at University of Toronto - parted ways with Google yesterday (Monday 1 May) as he “[wants] to talk about AI safety issues without having to worry about how it interacts with [the company’s] business,” according to MIT Technology Review .

Hinton, who joined Google in 2013, claimed technology such as GPT-4 (a language model created by OpenAI that can generate text that is similar to human speech) is much smarter than originally anticipated by the AI mogul.

“These things are totally different from us,” he said.

“Sometimes I think it’s as if aliens had landed and people haven’t realised because they speak very good English.”

Moving forward, Hinton plans to focus on “more philosophical work” concerning the new generation of large language models such as “quite scary” AI chatbots which may soon be smarter than humans, he told BBC .

Discussing the quickly-evolving role of AI in society, Hinton explained: “Whether you think superintelligence is going to be good or bad depends very much on whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist.

“If you ask people to estimate the risks of bad things happening, like what’s the chance of someone in your family getting really sick or being hit by a car, an optimist might say 5% and a pessimist might say it’s guaranteed to happen. But the mildly depressed person will say the odds are maybe around 40%, and they’re usually right.”

According to anti-misinformation company NewsGuard , AI chatbots pretending to be journalists have been discovered running almost 50 AI-generated “content farms” so far (source: The Guardian ) .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Early Stage VC Groups and Investors Summit in Calgary

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 01:02:36 GMT

Canada’s early-stage investors and founders will meet in Calgary to dive deep into the asset class as an investment strategy and explore how the sector can create more global opportunities for startups and investors alike.

With opening remarks from Teruel Carrasco alongside Valhalla Private Capital chairman Randy Thompson , as well as Alberta Innovates ’ associate vice president of investment and Douglas Holt ; the summit will serve as a day of panel discussions to introduce and address early-stage investing to those who are interested but are concerned with the risk.

Valhalla Private Capital is holding Vantage, Early-Stage Investing 2023 Summit on March 22, 2023.

The day-long meet and panel discussion will include several of Canada's under-the-radar angels, heads of family and private firms, VC and micro-fund GPs and fund managers.

While attendees in some cases may seem like odd bedfellows (as private offices are often in friendly competition for limited partners as well as the most promising startups to invest in) they will come together to unite in an effort to create a conversation around tackling the importance of demystifying early-stage investing, an asset class of growing paramount to Alberta and Canada’s startup ecosystem growth globally.

“Our early-stage investment network needs nurturing and growth to move deal flow,” says Teruel Carrasco, Valhalla Private Capital President, adding that Vantage is one of many initiatives Valhalla has planned in the coming year to help support founders and bring together firms to work in collaboration resulting in exceptional growth and positive returns for all.

“There is an immense opportunity regionally for local and national private firms and individual investors to thrive. Yet, this is an asset class that is foreign to even many seasoned investors and family offices.”

Speakers include some of Canada’s successful angels, many of whom began their own journeys as founders. There will also be prominent guest speakers attending from the UK.

“Furthering the conversation and action around early-stage investing is important to not only the growth that Alberta needs in its startup ecosystem but that Canada needs at this time to compete globally,” says Eric Gordon , CEO for Entuitive Compliance (Toronto), speaker at Vantage.

Gordon is now a successful investor who manages his family office. He began his career as a serial entrepreneur developing intuitive software companies from cradle to exit.

Early-stage dollars not part of the traditional VC model

While headlines indicate massive growth in our startup sector and hundreds of millions invested into Alberta’s tech sector via VC dollars over the past few years, the majority of those dollars are segmented to mega-deals and a handful of companies. It is the smaller deals, startups, and pre-seed asset class of investors who are fueling the next generation of companies, founders and deal flow.

“We have a deliberate strategy to create greater collaboration between the early-stage investment community not only in Alberta, but nationally and further afield,” Carrasco says.

“We also want to address the evolution of private investment from an equity and diversity perspective. This is an important part of making the asset class more welcoming for investors and all founders alike.”

Market gap — Alberta micro-funds, and Canadian early-stage investment

Metiquity Ventures founding partners Jacques LaPointe and Bryan Slauko established the Calgary-based micro-fund to address this market gap.

“We’re on a mission to unlock growth potential for the next generation of Alberta’s technology founders and to give local investors access to the venture asset class,” says LaPointe , former President and co-founder of Calgary-based ATTAbotics . LaPointe led the robotics company through its first equity and grant funding and through significant investment and growth.

As a technology entrepreneur, LaPointe is well aware of the hurdles pre-revenue and early-stage companies in Alberta face when going to raise capital. Metiquity is now lead investor in six portfolio companies, and building on Fund I ($10 million).

“Despite headlines about record venture investment, these founders are regularly overlooked and neglected. They can't access the capital they need to grow when they need it the most. We believe now is the best time to invest locally in our burgeoning ecosystem to truly unlock this potential and generate exceptional returns for investors,” LaPointe adds.

Equity beyond "value of shares"

Danielle Brewin Graham , Co-founder of the Firehood and General Partner of Phoenix Fire , one of Canada’s first female General Partners in Venture Capital focused on early-stage women-led startups, Indigenous representation, as well as BIPOC founders and investors, will speak at Vantage about the importance of funds and initiatives focused on equity of representation. The Firehood has invested upwards of $1 million to women technology founders in the past six months alone and are growing a network of women angels that is over 50 across Canada and increasing monthly.

“The face of investment, and those who will become the next Limited Partners, heads of family offices, and Venture Capitalists, are changing. As are the products and innovations that founders are developing and the businesses they are scaling. North America is a more diverse market and thus, the need for diversity in our investment sector is not just the so-called right thing to do; it’s frankly just good investment thesis,” Graham says, adding that Alberta has become an increasingly important hub for herself and other firms to explore over the past three years as the startup sector gains increasing momentum.

Panel discussion topics include key areas such as:

Introducing the Early-stage asset class
Building Value Together - how early-stage investors can support founders
Elements of a Successful Investment and portfolio
Equity and Diversity - equals solid investment thesis
A conversion with an Investor - from entrepreneur to investor
Doing Business Internationally - scaling a company

Feature Speaker:

Featuring a special afternoon keynote presentation by Peter Lafontaine , Chairman of Rainforest Energy Corp. Peter (Pete) is Board Chairman of Rainforest Energy Corporation, a new multi-billion-dollar clean fuels business proven process, that takes waste from forestry and agriculture (not crops) and produces green (no benzene or sulphur) gasoline. The facilities will be built in rural areas in partnership with indigenous communities. Peter has worked with industry leaders including Apple and Microsoft. He was a Founder, CEO of Zymeta Media Systems. Peter is a strong community contributor using technology and business skills to improve people’s lives.

Vantage will serve as a day of panel discussions, networking and ultimately important ecosystem building.

Valhalla Private Capital ’s ‘Vantage: Early Stage Investing in 2023, from the comfort of Aspen Properties’ The Ampersand on 22 March. Tickets available .

Sponsors include: Aspen Properties , Start Me UP PR Inc. , Metiquity Ventures , Weave VC , Goodlawyer , Alberta IoT , Phoenix Fire Inc , Axiom International Financial Services and Entuitive Compliance

As well as Plug and Play Tech Centre Alberta, Vantage will be one of the first of many collaborations between Valhalla Private Capital and Plug and Play Alberta, who recently partnered to amplify both companies' respective outreach across the North American startup ecosystem, increasing investor recruitment and engagement for both parties while supporting the startup ecosystem to gain traction globally.

Media are invited to attend day of, and post and pre-interviews may be possible - please contact us directly below if you are looking for a direct interview or angle... ;)

Other experts and speakers at Vantage, Early-Stage Investing 2023 Summit 2023 include:

Kevin Dahl , director of Alberta for Plug and Play Tech Centre
Bryan Chow , corporate partnership manager Alberta For Plug and Play Tech Centre
James Freeman senior vice president of digital strategy Westgen Technologies who is coming to YYC from London England to attend.
Robert Wesson , chief executive officer at Axiom International Financial Services
Danielle Graham , co-founder of The Firehood
Guillaume Bédard Tangent Design Engineering ’s director of strategic growth
Jean-Philippe Couture , Ingenio Solutions ’ founder and CEO
Rod Brown , co-founder of Valhalla Private Capital
Jacques LaPointe founding partner Metiquity Ventures
Bryan Slauko , founding partner Metiquity Ventures
Marco Donadeo , general partner Weave VC
Eric Gordon , Entuitive Compliance
Arielle Land , senior marketing consultant and sole proprietor, The Audacious
Theresa Tayler , founder and principal Start Me Up PR
Ana Lucia Beltran , founder & CEO of Analucia Beltran Diamonds
Jefferson Roc , CEO and founder of eime
Brett Colvin , CEO and co-founder of Goodlawyer
Terry Rock , President and CEO of Platform Calgary
School of Rock

Ireland’s Role in the Canadian Startup Economy

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 03:31:18 GMT

During a visit to Canada and the United States in November 2021 Robert Troy , Ireland’s Minister for Trade Promotion, joined 30 Irish companies from across Ireland in a bid to boost trade collaboration between the Emerald Isle and North America (source: gov.ie ).

Speaking of his arrival in Canada, Robert remarked: “We are very fortunate to have been able to maintain strong relationships with Canada, both culturally and economically, over many years.

“As we look ahead to a post-pandemic recovery, this trade visit is an important opportunity to strengthen our relationship while also highlighting the many opportunities for both Canadian and Irish businesses.”

With a focus on “supporting early entrants and established Irish companies to expand key business relationships with their North American counterparts”, the trip saw Irish fintech startup Swoop open its first Canadian office in Toronto .

Likewise, Louth-based data collection service XOCEAN expanded their team in Canada with the appointment of a new country manager, while farming solutions leader Keenan announced a new partner network in Québec and forklift company Combilift secured new contracts with GFL Environmental and Aosom in Ontario and QTG in Québec.

Making Waves From Across The Pond

Ireland’s exports to Canada have grown by 26% since the provisional application of The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in 2017 - which lowered customs tariffs and other barriers to trade between the EU and Canada - with Irish companies exporting more than €1.7bn worth of goods to Canada in 2020 alone.

While Canadian businesses in Ireland employ roughly 7,000 people (a 75% increase from pre-CETA 2018), What’s Your Tech notes that more than 500 Irish SME client-entrepreneurs conduct business within Canada, employing an estimated 6,000 people across the country along the way.

Outside of Canada, IDA Ireland's Regional Director in North America Brian Conroy also claimed that 766 US companies employ more than 160,000 people directly in Ireland, with US corporations responsible for upwards of 70% of total inward investment employment in Ireland.

With noted imports including Mairead Lavery , president and CEO of Export Development Canada ) and Joan Sheehan, VP sales at StemCell (source: Daily Hive ); Irish staff and startups remain firmly at the core of the North American startup ecosystem.

Happy Irish Heritage month, from Valhalla Private Capital.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Unveils Speakers for ‘Vantage: Early Stage Investing in 2023’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 02:18:35 GMT

Early-stage investing is fast becoming a point of interest for new investors, established accredited investors and institutional investors.

Valhalla Private Capital ’s ‘Vantage: Early Stage Investing in 2023’ is a one-day summit which brings together accredited investors, family offices, institutional investors and founders to begin an exciting risk-free exploration of the asset class as an investment strategy, from the comfort of Aspen Properties’ The Ampersand on 22 March.

With opening remarks from Teruel Carrasco alongside Valhalla Private Capital chairman Randy Thompson , the summit will serve as a day of panel discussions to introduce and address early stage investing to those who are interested but are concerned with the risk.

‘Vantage: Early Stage Investing in 2023’ comes to an end with a two-hour networking event, located at The Ampersand’s lounge. Tickets are available via Eventbrite .

Find out more about the panelists below:

Analucia Beltran

Founder and designer, Analucia Beltran Diamonds

Analucia Beltran is a jewellery designer, GIA certified diamond expert and TV host with over 15 years of international experience in the luxury goods industry. Born in Lima, Peru now based out of Toronto Canada, Analucia spent 10 years at sea working in the cruise industry where her career in the Diamond world started. She has served as Global Brand Ambassador for several Fine Jewelry Brands, hosting events onboard cruise ships, the Caribbean, Alaska, Europe and appearing on international Home Shopping television as a Guest Host for TV networks in Canada, US and Australia. In 2020, she became the founder and CEO of Analucia Beltran Diamonds "Real Diamonds for Real Women® which is a celebration of all the hard work that women put into their everyday lives. Her brand is one of the fastest growing lab grown diamond brands in the world, having been featured in Her Majesty The Queen: Official Platinum Jubilee Commemorative Album this year in London. Her mission as a company/brand, is to make it possible to own diamonds for everyday glamour that are precious, sustainable and more attainable thanks to technology, with Lab Grown Diamonds.

Brett Colvin

Co-founder and CEO, Goodlawyer

Brett has overseen Goodlawyer from inception to a 20+ person team named Calgary Chamber’s Small Business of the Year for 2022. Brett was a corporate lawyer for 4+ years and experienced firsthand that most business owners can't afford the legal help they need. So, he quit the big firm, teamed up with a developer and a designer, and got to work on building something better. Brett has a Juris Doctor (JD), Law, with Distinction from the University of Alberta (2015).

Bryan Slauko

Co-founder, Metiquity Ventures Fund

Bryan Slauko is a co-founder of Metiquity Ventures Fund I and manages the daily activities of the fund. He brings over 20 years of experience as an investment professional, advisor, entrepreneur and director. For the past 10 years Bryan has combined his expertise in investment analysis, market research, due diligence and early-stage growth equity with experience in business strategy, corporate governance and business building, to help unlock growth opportunities, create value and effectively manage risk for investors, early-stage companies and the communities he works in.

Outside of Metiquity Ventures, Bryan serves as the volunteer Board Chair of two not-for profit organizations, one providing an innovative approach to affordable housing and the other, a growing sports organization. Bryan is a CFA Charterholder and graduate of the Commerce program at Queen’s University.

Danielle Graham

Co-founder, The Firehood; general partner, Phoenix Fire

Danielle Graham is the Co-Founder of The Firehood and General Partner of Phoenix Fire, an angel stage fund and network focused on women in technology. She created Fierce Founders Programs — the first women-focused accelerator and bootcamp series in Canada. Previously, she managed Ontario Centres of Innovation's Market Readiness Fund, Principal at Sandpiper Ventures and Human Capital Consultant at Deloitte. Danielle supports underrepresented founders looking to scale their tech businesses as a member of the angel community network, investment officer and advisor to tech incubators. Masters of Business Administration (M.B.A.) from Wilfrid Laurier University, a Masters of Arts (M.A.) from Dalhousie University and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) from Trinity College, University of Toronto.

Eric Gordon

Founder and CEO, Entuitive Compliance

Eric Hartley Gordon is a serial entrepreneur, speaker, technologist, and early-stage investor. At the age of 18, Eric Started out developing business ventures in the retail fashion industry, then moved on to creating a successful franchising company within the grounds care industry at 30. There has always been one common thread through all Eric’s business ventures, the creation of intuitive software to address gaps in business processes.

At 35 things progressed with the dot.com boom, Eric Invested in several technology startups that developed and deployed online inventory management systems for the automotive retail groups, global recruiting sites, and online job boards. One startup focused solely on Associations that required food recipe sites and another startup that created custom solutions for telecom companies, utility groups, and aviation industries, these software companies awarded Eric 3 successful exits.

In 2016 Eric sold 51% of his latest startup in Workforce Management and Risk Mitigation to Crawford & Company the world's largest publicly traded insurance adjusting company. (NYSE: CRD-A and CRD-B) https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/crd-a - Crawford Compliance Inc. was created. June 2020 Eric Successfully bought back Crawford Compliance and rebranded as Entuitive Compliance.

Today Entuitive Compliance has over 30,000 Workers/Contractors and Companies within the Entuitive Community in Canada alone. Brands like Home Depot, Enercare and REITS trust Entuitive Compliance to background check, credential, and track certifications for all workers/contractors in Canada. Currently, Eric is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer for Entuitive Compliance Inc. www.entuitivecompliance.com and sits on several boards and consortiums in the technology and autonomous automotive sector.

In 2017 Entuitive ( formally ) Crawford Compliance Inc. was awarded the insurance innovator of the year award for Snow Tracker® and in 2018 was runner up for the Tracker Central Management Portal. Eric is an avid sports car enthusiast, pilot, world traveler, and animal lover. He lives in a secluded piece of land north of Toronto that he shares with dogs, ducks, geese, deer and more.

Douglas Holt

Associate vice president of investments, Alberta Innovates

Doug has over 20 years of experience in the fields of financial services, technology and education, managing high functioning teams, designing and implementing corporate strategies. His financial services experience is both buy side and sell side with a focus on credit analysis and structured finance. On the sell side, Doug has helped companies raise over $130mm of equity investment. As a buy-side credit investor in the US high yield bond and loan markets, Doug was part of a small team running a publicly listed ETF on the NYSE which rose from $80mm USD in assets under management to over $1bn. In his current role as the Associate Vice President, Investments for Alberta Innovates, Doug oversees the corporation’s research and innovation investment into Alberta’s post secondary institutions, entrepreneurs and accelerators. Doug earned a B.A. and B.Ed. from the University of Lethbridge in 2000 and a M.B.A. from the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary in 2008.

Guillaume Bédard

President, GHB Ventures

Guillaume Bédard is an entrepreneur, investor and senior business development executive. Mr. Bedard has 25 years of experience in International Business Development in the field of environmental sciences, engineering and technologies. Guillaume Bédard is responsible for Strategic Growth at Tangent Design Engineering Ltd and Tangent Ventures Inc. He has successfully supported many organizations with the development and implementation of business growth initiatives both nationally and internationally. This includes work related to strategic market positioning, client relations with Fortune 500 companies, strategic acquisitions, innovation, start-up as well as successful exit completions. Guillaume Bédard has successfully supported business initiatives in Europe, Africa, Latin America, United States, Canada and China.

Guillaume Bédard is the Board Chair of the Alberta Economic Development Council and Executive Board Member (Chair of Governance committee / Chair Audit committee) of the National Economic Development and Employability Network. Guillaume Bédard served as an industry representative for Canada at the NATO Environmental Round Table. Guillaume Bédard has completed a bachelor’s in international business at Concordia University, attended the MBA program in International Management at Laval University and completed a certificate as part of the Executive MBA Program in Finance at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Jacques LaPointe

Co-founder and director, Metiquity Ventures Fund

Jacques LaPointe is a co-founder and Director of Metiquity Ventures Fund I and the former President and co-founder of Calgary-based ATTAbotics. He led ATTAbotics through its very first equity and grant funding and the significant investment and growth that followed during his three-year tenure. Jacques brings over 25 years of experience in the Alberta technology ecosystem including 13 years in operational roles in industry and 12 years as an investment portfolio manager, angel investor, director and advisor. As a technology entrepreneur, Jacques is experienced in company formation through growth including early-stage business and product development. Jacques has also led or co-led over $43 million of investments into early-stage technology companies.

James Freeman

SVP digital strategy, Westgen Technologies

James is presently SVP Digital Strategy at Westgen Technologies of Calgary. In this role, James oversees the evolution of Westgen’s internal digital assets as well as an IoT strategy to enable Westgen products and services. His career spans 33 years in the Telecommunications, Electric Utility, Oil & Gas and Agrifood industries, and he was previously CTO of Zedi Solutions, an Industrial IoT platform company serving the upstream Oil & Gas industry and sold to Emerson in 2019. James has private company Board experience, is an active angel investor, is a Venture Partner at Weave VC, and is business coach to early-stage companies through the Alberta IoT Association and Foresight Cleantech Accelerator. James holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering and a MBA both from the University of Alberta.

Jefferson Roc

Founder and CEO, eimhe

Jefferson Roc was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and immigrated to Canada at an early age. He grew up in Montreal, Canada and pursued accounting education before being organically pulled into entrepreneurship. He previously ran a distribution company, where he learned the fundamentals of sales and business. During his 15 years of enterprise sales experience, Jefferson was repeatedly recognized with overachievement awards. He combines tribal knowledge and sales-focused methodology to create customer value and is trained to achieve business objectives. His latest venture, EIMHE, is born from his lived experience with mental health challenges that inspired him to imagine a collective way to experience wellness, supercharged by cutting-edge technology such as machine learning. EIMHE is a peer support solution creating its own category, and recognized by many mental health stakeholders. EIMHE is set to become a de facto in corporate wellness. As he’s building EIMHE, Jefferson is also an ambassador for Groupe3737; Canada’s largest Startup incubator focusing on ethnocultural diversity, and he recently became a Startup mentor for BIPOC Foundation and the Alchemist X. He believes in creating contagious success and being part of the solution to the existing funding gap for under-represented groups. Jefferson’s recipe for success is resumed in passion, purpose and profit.

Peter Lafontaine

Community builder, innovator, technology leader, entrepreneur.

Peter (Pete) is Board Chairman of Rainforest Energy Corporation, focused on building a new multi- billion-dollar clean fuels business. The proven process takes waste from forestry and agriculture (not crops) and produces green (no benzene or sulfur) gasoline. The facilities will be built in rural areas in partnership with indigenous communities.

He works with or volunteers to help entrepreneurs grow and expand their businesses or organizations. He is a partner in Peer Guidance a business mentoring team, Business Advisor with Intergen and is a 6 year champion of Rainforest Alberta a movement focused on building a diversified economy by building a strong technical innovation ecosystem in Alberta.

Peter moved to Alberta in 1977 as a fur buyer with the Hudson Bay Company. He took a personal interest in early computers, took programming at UofA and has been bringing technology and business solutions to market ever since. Peter has worked with industry leaders like Apple and Microsoft. He was a Founder, CEO of Zymeta Media Systems. Currently Peter is a strong community contributor using technology and business skills to improve people’s lives.

Think of Peter as a business geek using technology and innovation to create jobs, improve the economy and improve quality of life. His personal moto is: Happy, Healthy, Wealthy in that exact order, that happens to be core to one if his favorite words, prosperity. He believes the journey is the reward. His mission is to build organizations that combine purpose and profitability with strong effective teams.

He is an active member of Data for Good, ECL Choppers for Charity. and an existing UCP Board Member of Calgary-Bow. And a supporter of the Branchout Foundation.

Peter is an active snowboarder, Mountain Biker and Teaches families how to fish and enjoy the outdoors. He is married to his lifelong partner Leila with two amazing daughters, Brandi the Economist and Amber the Architect.

Robert Wesson

CEO, Axiom International Financial Services

Robert Wesson is the chief executive officer of Axiom International Financial Services. Formerly a director at Meridian Currency Ltd, the London-based Axiom CEO has held roles at Global Reach Partners Ltd, Moneycorp and Associated Foreign Exchange.

Terry Rock

President and CEO, Platform Calgary

Terry Rock is President & CEO of Platform Calgary. He is a passionate promoter of Calgary’s potential as one of the world’s most dynamic cities, and has been fortunate to be involved in numerous community building initiatives in his hometown.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Private Capital Partners Alberta IoT in Outreach Initiative

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 23:24:04 GMT

Valhalla Private Capital has launched a collaborative partnership with non-profit association Alberta IoT for the 2023 fiscal year, in an effort to amplify both companies’ respective outreach across the North American startup ecosystem.

The agreement will see Valhalla Private Capital and Alberta IoT co-host events, participate in industry meetings and cross-promote each other via digital platforms to enhance exposure of startup companies to investors.

As a result, Valhalla will participate in the Alberta IoT Start Up Visa Business Evaluation Committee - an initiative which nurtures scaleup companies looking to establish themselves in the Canadian market - while both companies are set to co-host two Valhalla Founder Basecamps this year.

Speaking of the partnership Teruel Carrasco , president at Valhalla Private Capital, said:”Alberta IOT is an amazing organization focused on attracting capital, founders, and bringing a global view to the Alberta Tech Scene. We're honoured to be working with Brenda and her amazing team members and partners,"

"Valhalla, looks forward to rolling out our initiatives with Alberta IOT in the coming days.”

Valhalla Private Capital and Alberta IoT’s first joint investor readiness event, Founder Basecamp, is set to take place on 10-11 March 2023, followed by a live pitch practice session and networking event on 16 March.

Brenda Beckedorf , executive director of Alberta IoT Association, added: “Connecting scale-up businesses to capital has always been a core pillar of Alberta IoT and this partnership signifies our commitment to remain focused on this area.

“We are thrilled to have an increased ability to offer Fast Track participants and Alberta IoT members valuable resources, knowledge and a network to support their investment journey.”

Tech Jobs on the Rise in Canada

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 19:58:54 GMT

In spite of ongoing layoff concerns, Canada’s best job opportunities remain in the tech sector according to this year’s Canada LinkedIn Jobs on the Rise list .

The list - which uses data to compile the nation's 20 fastest-growing job titles over the past five years - found that e-commerce roles such as growth marketing managers, product operations managers, cannabis dispensary technicians, technical program managers and user experience writers ranked as most in-demand for 2023.

This comes in spite of a series of high-profile layoffs in the sector, including the replacement of Vancouver-based company Hootsuite’s CEO Tom Keiser alongside roughly 70 other staff members (source: BetaKit ).

Hootsuite also cut approximately 400 employees - 30 percent of its global workforce - in August, with similar cuts taking place at Microsoft , Clearco and Lightspeed .

Speaking of the list’s findings, LinkedIn news editor Jessy Bains said: “When we hear about layoffs, we often see other tech companies swoop in and hire laid-off employees.

“While we are seeing signs of an economic slowdown, it’s still a historically strong labor market in Canada, with near record low unemployment rates and hiring remaining steady. Shortages [of employees] appear to be broad-based across many industries.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: Refining Your Investment Thesis

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 16:36:35 GMT

Teruel Carrasco - president at Valhalla Private Capital , co-founder of Radar Endeavour Group Inc and CEO of Lending Assist - has outlined the importance of developing an investment thesis when contributing to your local startup ecosystem.

With expertise in improving leadership, team-building, business development and overall strategies within startups and established companies alike, Teruel remarked: “One of the patterns that I've recognized in my years of working with angels is the importance of developing the guideposts and guides as to what constitutes a good investment.”

“That's something that early angel investors struggle with,” he continued, encouraging investors to actively listen for these cues within pitches from startups.

While Teruel noted that the construction of an investment thesis is an “iterative process that takes place over time”, he also maintained that “many early angel investors get intimidated when they hear complex investment thesis from experienced investors or VCs and think that they have to reproduce a model”.

However, he admitted this is an unfair comparison as venture capitalists typically have a team of 20-30 analysts who can give them advice and help them to refine their investment thesis over time.

On the topic, Teruel asked: “Senior angel investors have had hits and misses and kind of refine their thesis over time, so what are those building blocks for a novice?

“Do they need to have it all figured out at the beginning? No, but there are certain things you can look for that start building your investment thesis as you begin your investment journey.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Randy Thompson on The Next Wave of Startups

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 17:25:39 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has opened up about his ambitions for startup ecosystems across North America and further afield moving forward.

Describing Valhalla Private Capital as a “ big banquet tent ” which supports entrepreneurs and investors alike, Randy credited a holistic approach to the startup ecosystem for the company’s success to date.

“We want this to be the safe place where you come and learn what the other side's thinking, and you get a chance to talk to the other side socially without it always being professional,” he said

As a result, Randy’s focus is primarily on “people who are passionate about the ecosystem” in the hopes of creating better opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Randy continued: “For me, the best outcome is 10 years from now, an entrepreneur comes up to me in the street and says, ‘Valhalla helped me get my funding’.

‘Those are the moments I live for - it’s literally about helping people with great ideas to accomplish their dreams.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

2023 and The Year Ahead for Valhalla Private Capital

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 16:51:49 GMT

2023 has finally arrived, signaling a bittersweet farewell to another tumultuous year for entrepreneurs and investors alike. Find out what our team has to say about 2022 and the year ahead below:

Randy Thompson, chairman

2022, I won't miss you but I needed you. As entrepreneurs whether we like it or not there is at least one time in the journey where your expectations, assumptions, repetitive behaviors all get challenged.. and not like Kodak where you get boiled slowly, but like a sports car hitting a brick wall. That was my year.

The other truth about a "recalibration" in your journey is that the recalibration is spiritual.. resetting what you believe and what's important and make sure you and your company stand for those values.

I hope you all have time over the holidays for healthy recalibration. Check your assumptions at the door, explore what is true to you and have an amazing 2023 because you planned for it, and you were ready for it.

Evelyn Cerda, Regina and Saskatoon chapter president

Good bye 2022! This year was certainly a roller coaster. So many of us were waiting to go “back to normal” but that is yet to come.

On one end, some companies experienced difficult times dealing with the current economic circumstances having to reduce staff and even close operations. On the other end, we continued to see good levels of investment and growth with many western Canadian startups rising to the top and gaining exposure.

Teruel Carrasco, president

"The tech community is having a moment! The Canadian tech scene has seen explosive growth with record investments. At the same time, 2022 has experienced unprecedented volatility. A full view spectrum gives cause to be optimistic about the future of tech in Canada.

Good companies will attract capital. The bar is rising and this can only be good news for investors who are exploring the future of tech in Canada. The necessity for ecosystems to develop closer formal and informal relationships will ensure the investment continuum continues to flourish and produce world class scale ups. Valhalla will continue to grow and be a critical bridge between launching and scaling with the capital that supports these initiatives.

2023 will be an interesting year for VC and Angel investing, predicting the year is challenging but one thing is certain; new startups and scaleups will continue to hatch and require capital and we plan to be there to invest and support these new companies."

Rod Brown, co-founder

Globally, the past couple years have seen the fastest pace of change largely led by entrepreneurs working hard to solve rapidly changing problems and the world at large adopting these innovations / solutions much faster as well.

Investors are working to keep pace but have been more selective in deploying capital. Even with the drop off in venture capital activity from 2021, 2022 will still rank as the second highest investment year in history. There remains significant amounts of dry powder ($$$) available to fund innovation and this holds as a strong opportunity for transformational companies to emerge.

True leaders often break out of the pack during tough times and we expect that to happen in 2023. As angel investors, we will continue to play a critical role in leading the economic development and entrepreneurial support while making it possible for transformational companies to accelerate.

Mykaela Horrigan, chief of staff

“While moving towards a more permanent interest for in-person events and networking, we’ve been able to reconnect our angels, entrepreneurs and team members, face-to-face, regularly!

Following the demand for virtual connection, hybrid working-styles, etc, it is great to see how positive changes, such as these, continue to be implemented and improved upon. I look forward to the coming year to see how the level of commitment to being relevant, modern and adaptable, throughout the community, continues.

Marco Donadeo, Alberta chapter president

"2022 has been an interesting year to be a part of the startup community. The entrepreneurs are receiving more community support than ever before, and I am beyond excited to be a part of that movement.

2023 may have a little bit of a different feel with the current economic and sociologic conditions. I anticipate valuations to drop, and slower financings. There will be funded companies, but it will be a much tougher road at the earlier stages."

Feel free to take what you want from there

Ashley de Nooj, general manager

2022 felt like a burr but the stand out moments were definitely being able to see everyone in person again! The past two years have changed the landscape of angel investing and I'm looking forward to seeing what 2023 brings.

Grant Lawrence, Vancouver and Kelowna chapter president

"Phew, what a year so far! Finally Covid-19 is settling down, we are back to in-person meetings, the supply chain is clearing up and things are looking up for founders to create funding relationships and support with investors…

Until we get hit with inflation, the war continues, FTX implodes, Twitter changes, and we may have a recession on our hands.

Helping founders navigate will continue to be a key effort for angel investors well into 2023."

Mark Mitchell, Alberta chapter president

“Canada’s technology ecosystem is on the precipice of extreme growth. 2021 and 2022 have been record years for Canadian tech financings and there are numerous Canada-wide grassroots initiatives that will help propel our industry to new heights through 2023 and beyond. We are so grateful to be part of this ecosystem. Buckle up!”

For 2023, I am looking forward to welcoming a new wave of founders and innovative companies joining the ecosystem; experiencing more balanced investor-founder dynamics with a pragmatic approach from both sides; and, still being part of the amazing tech communities and their momentum.

As for Valhalla, I’m excited to share with everyone some of the projects we’ve been working on and continue to grow our community of Founders, investors and innovators. Here’s to 2023!”

Valhalla Partners DEC in Game Changer Pitch Competition

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 18:17:07 GMT

Valhalla Private Capital has partnered with Decentralised Energy Canada (DEC) on the company's Third Annual Game Changer Pitch Competition alongside Pathways Alliance and GLOBE Series .

Taking place on 8-9 November at Ottawa's Fairmont Chateau Laurier, the competition will feature companies as they pitch their decentralised energy innovations to industry, investors, and strategic partners with the ambition of securing investments and partners along the way.

It is open to Canadian early-stage and growth-stage companies which are developing products and services for the decentralised energy industry.

For context, DEC defines decentralised energy (DE) as “kinetic and/or potential energy (thermal, radiant, chemical, nuclear, and electrical) that is created/stored close to the point(s) of consumption.

“It encompasses onsite energy generation, energy storage, and energy efficiency measures. DE projects vary in size but are designed to meet a specific local load(s).”

Sectors eligible for entry include bioenergy; cogeneration or combined heat and power; controls, analytics, or automation; district energy; earth energy; electric transportation (planes, trains, boats, and automobiles); energy storage; hydrogen or fuel cells; microgrids, mini-grids, or nanogrids; net zero energy innovations for buildings or communities; renewable natural gas; small modular reactors and olar energy.

The deadline to apply is 18 October, and applications can be submitted via the DEC website .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Chairman on The Pitfalls of Following Trends

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 16:09:05 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has discussed his perception of Valhalla as a “traditional brand in the ecosystem”, and why that works to the company’s benefit.

A self-proclaimed “old dog”, Randy believes the rules are “different” in today’s hyperlocal startup ecosystem .

However, Randy maintains that although “cool new brands” crop up every few years, they quickly learn that “they can't sustain themselves” in the marketplace.

On the topic, he continued: “We feel like a traditional brand in the ecosystem, so it's hard to figure out how to stay young and cool; but I'm learning that maybe we don't have to. Maybe it’s just the fact that we just create solid brands, solid trust, great relationships and great experiences.”

“We've been doing really well for the length of time, and we don't have to have a gimmick or a playbook that's gonna give us really cute colours on the street,” Randy concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Vancouver Chapter President to Discuss Technology Company Financing

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 15:07:20 GMT

Grant Lawrence , president of Valhalla Private Capital ’s Kelowna and Vancouver chapters, will feature as an expert in Saas Wealth Insurance ’s upcoming forum: Financing & Mitigating Risk for Your Technology Company.

Taking place on 12 October at 10 AM PST, the event will cover topics such as the startup curve, raising capital and early stage funding.

Grant’s forum will also discuss angel investors and their contributions to the startup ecosystem, with regards to technology startups.

Speaking of the event, Grant said: " Now, during a downturn, founders need a clear picture of what options are available for funding and at each of the different stages of their companies growth.

'This is part of what we will be covering," he concluded.

As part of his ‘Making People Think’ series on the Valhalla Private Capital website , Grant has discussed the hallmarks of a favourite founder , the changing landscape of startup valuation and questions investors should ask founders in a bid to gain further insights into their company.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Chairman on the Bright Side of Oversubscription

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 18:37:16 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has hailed oversubscription in post-pandemic Alberta as a sign of a “healthy ecosystem” for startups.

Discussing the number of angel investment companies in Alberta at Decentralised Energy Canada (DEC)’s 2022 Annual General Meeting and Investor Forum alongside Anouk Kendall , president of DEC; Natasha Kostenuk , CEO of Ayrton Energy ; Dan Erhardt , CEO of Arcus Power Corp and John MacInnes, chair and CEO of Earthware ; Randy said that he has been calling for more venture funds in the province for two decades.

“I remember saying in 2002, 'we need six groups just like mine',” he began.

Randy claimed that an increased number of angel groups is helpful for entrepreneurs who need to adjust their working model , as well as those whose “dog died the night before” or are being affected by other factors such as domestic unrest or a lack of sleep.

On the topic, he continued: “you know what's really cool? Oversubscription.

“I have not seen many deals right now that are not oversubscribed, and oversubscription means that valuations have not gone in the favour of my people - they're going in the favour of entrepreneurs,” Randy concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla President to Speak at Banff Venture Forum

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 18:43:10 GMT

Teruel Carrasco - president at Valhalla Private Capital , co-founder of Radar Endeavour Group Inc and CEO of Lending Assist - is set to speak at this year’s Banff Venture Forum .

Taking place on 25-26 October at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff Venture Forum aims to showcase emerging technology companies to leading private equity and venture capital investors from across North America.

The event also features forum sessions which focus on key issues within the industry, with speakers including Lisya Bahar , founding partner at Catalyst Investments ; Jay Crone , managing director at Deloitte Ventures ; Sumita Banerjee , director, of insights and strategic initiatives at BDC Capital and Dave Smardon, CEO of Bioenterprise.

With more than two decades of experiences since its inception in 1997, last year’s Banff Venture Forum hosted upwards of 40 venture capital firms, 50 presenting companies and 350 delegates.

Speaking of her experience at Banff Venture Forum Breanne Everett , CEO of Orpyx Medical Technologies , said: “The Banff Venture Forum delivered a valuable opportunity to connect with professionals in the investment community, and in a very enjoyable setting.

“Orpyx was thrilled to have been awarded “Best Presenting Company” in the IT stream of companies. This exposure considerably enhanced our corporate visibility by enabling us a speaking opportunity in front of an audience of angels and various funds exploring new potential investments.”

Registration for this year’s Banff Venture Forum - which includes access to all forum sessions, networking breaks and event materials - is available via the BVF website .

Sponsors and partners include BDC, Bioenterprise, FCC, Telus Ventures, Alberta Enterprise, Alberta Innovates, Bennett Jones, Copoint, MNP, NGIF Cleantech Ventures, Stikeman Elliott, Alberta IoT, OKR Financial, Shred Capital, National Research Council Canada, IDEaS, Innovative Solutions Canada, Invest Alberta, The 51 and Aggressor Adventures.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: The 5 H's of Investing

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 15:44:13 GMT

Ziad Moukheiber , president and CEO of Boston Harbor Angels, has outlined the “five H’s” behind his personal investment thesis.

Discussing risk and rewards at Valhalla Private Capital’s member-only “Ask An Expert” event alongside Faz Bashi , chair of the medical device screening committee of Life Science Angels US; and Randy Stewart Thompson, chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club; Ziad encouraged members to “keep an open mind” to prospects outside of their geographical comfort zone.

The Boston Harbor Angels president also emphasized the significance of working with founders who “really believe in what they're doing”, before outlining the five H’s of angel investing.

“You have to be humble, honest, hardworking, hungry, and you have to have a sense of humor,” he concluded.

Randy, on the other hand, remarked that in spite of Ziad’s investment thesis, mid-pandemic North America “is not a good time to be investors” due to a “capital overhang” which has been exacerbated over the last year-and-a-half.

“We are having to be more selective about who we invest in,” he told members, citing that “there's too much capital chasing too few good deals which has made valuations really big”.

However, Faz maintained that there is an opportunity for angel investors to take advantage of today’s economic climate.

On the topic, he explained: “While the venture people are out there doing their venture studio nonsense and excluding everyone in the ecosystem and just benefiting the managing partners, angel investors can be smart too.”

Using former Tesla Motors CEO and co-founder Martin Eberhard - who enlisted Elon Musk as his replacement in 2018 - as an example, the chair of the medical device screening committee of Life Science Angels US remarked that the key to success in this environment is trusting “those of us here who are mature enough and already had the experience that can make [sufficient ROI] happen”.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Dawn of the $10 Million Pre-Revenue SAFE Note

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 20:42:55 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has condemned “the dawn of the $10 million pre revenue SAFE note” as “one of the most dangerous trends” in today’s startup economy.

Discussing simple agreements for equity (SAFEs) at Decentralised Energy Canada (DEC)’s 2022 Annual General Meeting and Investor Forum alongside Anouk Kendall , president of DEC; Natasha Kostenuk , CEO of Ayrton Energy ; Dan Erhardt , CEO of Arcus Power Corp and John MacInnes, chair and CEO of Earthware ; Randy described the practice as “a Dumb and Dumber reverse IOU”.

“I give you the money, you tell me in three years what it's actually going to be worth, and there's no valuation exercise going on because you're pre-revenue and don't actually have any sales,” he continued.

For those of you who would like a more straightforward explanation, Contracts Counsel defines a SAFE note as “a legally binding promise to allow an investor to purchase a specified number of shares for an agreed-upon price at some point in the future”.

Consequently, the $10 million pre revenue SAFE note can lead to entrepreneurs taking more money from investors than necessary; for example, Randy posits that if someone is pitching for $500,000 and is offered a total of $2m from investors “the entrepreneur still gets to only give up 25%”.

“Take that to Roynat or any corporate finance shop and see how you do,” Randy concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Maritimes Series: Finessing Sustainable Tech

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 17:42:40 GMT

Last month, Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) , one of the main programs OKR Financial lends against, announced a new seed funding cohort investing $1.6m between 16 novel companies across British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Alongside Valhalla Private Capital, OKR Financial sat down with two entrepreneurs who have benefitted from SDTC funding - water testing solution Drinkable Water Solutions and sugar-free food company ZeroIN Foods - to gain insights on their respective journeys of each sustainable tech companies, from inception to funding and global impact.

Building on what was first considered a ‘hobby’, Matt Mizzi , CEO of Drinkable Water Solutions , utilized his experience with environmental science to create “the world’s first accurate, affordable, and easy to use handheld water testing device”.

On the topic, Matt began: “I used to read lots of scientific abstracts and came across some cool stuff, which allowed me - and a researcher at the time - to come up with some ideas on how we could create a low maintenance filter medium which also kills bacteria such as e-coli and other pathogens.”

However, cost constraints inspired Matt to adapt his initial working model, eliminating onsite technicians (responsible for water analytics) in favor of a more practical approach.

“Without really realizing it,” Matt continued, “we started pivoting towards the water analytics side and, slowly but surely, got to the point where we have our handheld device where a customer can press a button, wait for three minutes and find out if their water contains any common contaminants”.

However for Dr. Edgar Sosa , founder, and CEO of ZeroIN Foods , inspiration struck when his wife was diagnosed with diabetes, prompting him to find a solution to the “sugar overload problem”.

Opting to avoid the current market solutions – high-intensity sweeteners (such as stevia) and low intensity sweeteners such as sugar alcohols, which tend to have an aftertaste and can potentially lead to health concerns - Edgar endevoured to create “a better solution” for sweet-toothed consumers.

“At the beginning,” he remarked, “we created a blend of different ingredients trying to simulate the sweet and the properties of sucrose, and we were successful in our first trials; however it was missing something.”

Through Creative Destruction Lab , Edgar came up with the algorithm behind his “trade secret” - referred to by the ZeroIN Foods founder as “next generation of sweeteners” - which have the same taste of sucrose but are non-digestible.

“That is the ultimate promise: being able to provide the sweet and the quality of sucrose without compromising taste, health, or the environment,” he added.

Checking Every Box

While Edgar claims to have been uncompromising on his mission to create a healthy sugar alternative, Drinkable’s Matt Mizzi admitted to changing his business model to “check every single box needed to get funding”.

However, the flair and borvado of pitching didn’t come naturally to this environmental scientist. Stepping away from the “song and dance” of pitching to investors, Matt believed his penchant for authenticity (alongside a wider social movement towards better water treatment, management and distribution” would speak for itself.

“I very much come from a perspective of transparency - we're working on doing great things to unlock social good, planetary good, climate good and return for investors along the way,” Matt remarked.

“People are ready to see that change, and it's obvious that this is a solution which can help facilitate that.

“We've been focusing on the pursuit of capital, and while we grow all the grants that are available are a great catalyst for us to check the boxes that are needed to get that venture capital funding,” he added.

On the other hand, pitching is only a drop in the water (pun intended) of achieving funding at a pre-seed level, as ZeroIN Foods’ founder Edgar knows all too well.

While he maintains the process “was not difficult”, he admitted that the company “ had to prepare everything and have it all in order - technology, concepts, financials, partners, investors and projections, to name a few”.

It’s a tough competition, meaning you have to be prepared before applying,” he added. “This isn’t something you put together in a day - we have been thinking about this since last year to finesse our application”.

ZeroIN Foods is currently planning to conduct a seed round in early 2023.

The World of Venture Capitalism

Before finishing his environmental science degree, Drinkable Water Solutions founder Matt dipped his toe into the world of venture capitalism alongside head of operations Lee Scully .

In March 2019, the pair took part in a venture capital investment competition issued by Sobey School of Business associated with Arcadia University and won the Canadian nationals, snowballing them towards US Nationals where Matt was the only competing student from a science background.

“It was a lightbulb moment that I wanted to blend business and science together,” Matt recalled.

Following this, he studied venture capital financing for startups before being appointed as senior analyst for Quantum Growth Advisors , who manage fundraising at the series-A level.

Looking back on his experience, Matt recalled: “I learned the intricate art of begging random people for lots of money, as well as how to structure a business as a product for those investors that have a very narrow window of needs.”

Marrying the perspective of his company as a “product” - which he found to be an “advantage” from an investment standpoint - Matt and company were nominated by Nova Scotia’s Volta for SDTC’s seed funding cohort, a process which he found to be “very professional and quick”.

“The money was in our bank accounts, the communication from them was very clear and the nomination process was fairly painless, so SDTC did a really good job,” he concluded.

According to SDTC, the company’s investments function as a “springboard to help companies unlock future investment, customers, and support”, with a specific focus on collaboration and due diligence to help companies unlock future investment.

“As we drill down and better identify the players, gaps, and points of intersection, we get to the heart of what’s needed to overcome obstacles and help companies move forward,” a representative for SDTC said.

With plans to produce its minimum viable product (MVP) by October, Drinkable Water Solutions intends to continue growing its (currently “very optimistic”) team; while ZeroIN Foods is developing a technologically-sustainable prototype which won’t “compromise the environment” in its production process.

Execute, Execute, Execute

Putting his entrepreneurial experience to good use, Edgar encourages founders to build a network of appropriate advisors “as early as possible”, as well as continue the startup journey with a willingness to learn.

“A business is as good as the readiness of whoever is leading the business,” Edgar said, advising his contemporaries to “be ready for when the situation comes”.

Likewise, founders are encouraged to “execute, execute, and execute no matter what”.

In the spirit of avoiding mistakes which are common in the teething process, Edgar remarked: “Without consistent execution, you cannot deliver, you can overpromise, but you will under deliver.

“Mistakes cost a lot, in terms of money and time, and so very well-prepared advisors can save a lot of mistakes,” he concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Near-Certain Roadmap to Investment Success

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 17:56:16 GMT

No secured debt, no operating assets and no guarantee of future cash flows to finance - all bets are off when it comes to investing in a startup.

In essence, startups are selling a vision of what their company could become thanks to your investment. According to a 2017 survey carried out by Statista , 58% of startups have less than US$25,000 at their disposal during the startup phase, while only 40% of startups are destined to become profitable in their lifespan.

However, investors can gauge the profitability of companies by focusing on their potential for investment, which can be found by measuring the level of risk against the size of the opportunity and scale of profit and return on investment, factoring in the time and capital needed to achieve these goals efficiently.

For example, a startup with a sound business idea and a compelling external market environment will theoretically - based on potential for investment - be able to provide a practical solution to a real customer problem.

Sustainability can also give a startup the edge against its competitors, with sustainable investing assets totaling US$30.7 trillion worldwide in 2018 (according to the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance ), a 34% rise from 2016. Likewise, potential for investment may be influenced by the presence of a working beta product, ideally one which has already been copyrighted as intellectual property.

Jan Lederman, director at Valhalla Private Capital, points to a two-pronged approach which focuses on talent and trust as the key assessor of whether an entrepreneur has the bandwidth to execute their vision of the company.

While talent can be seen in a sound business model or a working beta product, working with a team which has domain and business experience may suggest that a startup can de-risk business dimensions and navigate unexpected hurdles along the way.

Alas, there’s a limit to the power of hypotheticals. When looking for your ideal startup, be aware of the potential for personality mismatches along the way, factoring in geography, technology, size and target market, as well your own capabilities as an investor.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: The Hockey Stick Model & Achieving Product Market Fit

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 15:27:30 GMT

Teruel Carrasco - president at Valhalla Private Capital , co-founder of Radar Endeavour Group Inc and CEO of Lending Assist - has explained the logistics of achieving product market fit status as a startup.

The next logical step in the startup process (following the friends and family round, pre-seed and series A), product market fit takes place once a startup has rounded out its team and proven it’s product. Once a startup has rounded out its team and proven it’s product, the next stage is product market fit.

“Product market fit means exactly that,” Teruel began, “the market has said 'checkmark, greenlight, great product'”.

At this point, all that’s left to do is “get the solution out to the masses”, at which point venture capital firms “write larger deals, mainly around accelerating growth” to achieve what is known as “hockey stick growth”.

According to Bobby Martin, author of The Hockey Stick Principles: The Four Key Stages to Entrepreneurial Success , hockey stick growth occurs when revenue shoots up sharply in a curve shaped, like a hockey stick.

However, Forbes writer Mary Ellen Biery noted that some startups which aren’t hi-tech consider hockey stick growth to be “impossible” due to a lack of potential for surging growth.

Teruel also remarked that “the level of due diligence becomes a lot more sophisticated” at this point.

“It's very, very comprehensive,” he said, as at this point venture capital firms will sign off for a period of four to five years with prospects of a liquidity event in the not-too-distant future.

The Business Professor defines a liquidity event as “the merger, acquisition, sale, or purchase of a company”, as well as “the relationship whereby a company purchases the assets and assumes the debts of another company”.

However, Teruel noted that this moves into the “corporate finance” side of the startup journey.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Elon Musk and Twitter’s People Problem

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 16:57:06 GMT

Elon Musk’s effort to walk-back a $44 billion US agreement to acquire Twitter continues with the subpoena of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (source: CBC ).

The Tesla CEO claims Twitter failed to provide adequate information about the number of "spam bot" accounts on the platform; and breached their agreement by firing a significant number of employees, including prominent managers at the social media company.

On the other hand, Twitter has subpoenaed tech investors and entrepreneurs connected to Musk such as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and PayPal ’s founding COO, David Sacks .

Discussing risk and rewards at Valhalla Private Capital’s member-only ‘Ask An Expert’ event last year, Faz Bashi , chair of the medical device screening committee of Life Science Angels US, hailed people as the “connective tissue” of angel investing.

“This is a people business - everything that we do is all about people,” he began.

“If you don't have the network, then I would expect that your advisory board members are there specifically for that reason, because they have a network.”

This viewpoint was also held by Randy Stewart Thompson, chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club, who claimed that “your board tells people everything they need to know about what your plan is”.

“Don't get your cousin to be on your board of directors, that tells me everything I need to know,” he added.

Likewise, Ziad Moukheiber , president and CEO of Boston Harbor Angels, maintained that “the best entrepreneurs are the ones who understand investors”.

Using his family’s experience in ski racing as a focal point, the Boston Harbor Angels president urged members to "look two or three gates ahead, [instead of] the gate that's coming up".

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Five Years Of Valhalla Private Capital

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 17:29:10 GMT

Today (16 August) marks five years since Valhalla Private Capital’s inception.

Founded as Valhalla in 2003 as a single city angel investor group by Randy Stewart Thompson - managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – Valhalla Private Capital has grown to facilitate over $75m from its network of 120 investors into an estimated 270 early-stage entrepreneurs.

The company launched with a five-pillar business model comprising investor and startup programs, angel investing, family of funds, global reach and M&A and advisory services.

These pillars also encouraged collaborations between Valhalla and Old Kent Road Financial, The Seed Global and Vario Ventures - a boutique mergers and acquisition firm focusing on entrepreneurs and specializing in identifying the right next step for small and medium companies and their investors.

Investor and startup programs such as Valhalla’s Basecamp - a two day investment-readiness program for entrepreneurs hoping to scale their business - have seen more than 1,100 participants raise upwards of $500m in capital.

Over the past three years, Valhalla has also managed and implemented four Investment Summit programs in provinces including Saskatchewan and British Columbia, each of which costs more than $100,000 to develop and nurtures local investor communities to facilitate capital for early-stage entrepreneurs in their province.

Discussing the inception of Valhalla Private Capital at the time, chairman Randy Thompson explained: “Valhalla Private Capital is the realization of a vision.

“For too long venture capital has been the domain of large institutional investors. I have a much more democratic view. Valhalla is all about inviting all people who care about their local business climate into the VC realm, giving them the tools and opportunities to participate successfully in both investing or building some great companies.”

Likewise, director Jan Lederman said: “We have very deliberately not used ‘equity’ in our name as we believe investors and early stage entrepreneurs alike need tailored solutions and ownership is just one option.”

In the years following its inception, Valhalla Private Capital has won a cavalcade of awards as a result of its programs - including Startup Canada ’s ‘ Entrepreneur Support Award ’ for the Prairies in 2019 - and is home to the National Angel Capital Organization's ‘ Angel Investor of the Year ’ for both 2018 and 2019, Randy Stewart Thompson . Canadian governments, universities, and ecosystem partners have also utilized our network and expertise to unlock capital in their respective regions.

Happy birthday, Valhalla Private Capital!

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: A Startup Founder’s Blind Spots

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 14:29:07 GMT

Under-communicating strategic direction and priorities is one of the most common mistakes I have seen founders make. Startup founders typically have a set of top priorities or organizational goals they have defined and communicated.

Usually, this communication takes the form of a PowerPoint presentation which is shared in executive staff meetings, and then again in some form of employee communication process such as an all-employee email or company-wide meetings. Some leaders even remind their organizations of these goals in quarterly communication meetings; but in our world of hyper information availability and constant communication, this is not enough to maintain the focus needed to ensure success.

Competing inputs drastically dilute the focus leaders are trying to create. Think about the world we live in today. We are constantly bombarded with email, text messages, Tweets, web-based news and information. Boards, customers, employees and other key stakeholders thrust new projects and pressing requirements on us, and these are just the distractions in the workplace. Add to this our lives and priorities outside of work - the impact of all of these is that our top priorities actually achieve very little mind-share against this other clutter.

Priorities are never as clear as we think. The most effective startup founders recognize this mind-share issue and have decided to dramatically increase their message volume and frequency to overcome the clutter. Think of this as an advertising campaign, just like any other in your business.

A clear and compelling message is a good start, but insufficient. Next, you must define the channels and the frequency required for the message to be understood in order to have the impact you desire. The way some effective leaders address this is by starting almost every discussion with a reminder of these top priorities. Every one-on-one, every staff meeting, every operating review, every employee meeting… you get the point. They say: “Remember our top five priorities are… Now, let’s talk about our agenda today in light of those key areas of focus,” and it works.

You really have to hammer this home way beyond what feels necessary. Priorities are never as clear as we think! Cutting through the clutter is very difficult. But, allowing a continuous dilution of focus on your top goals will lead to continually degrading organizational performance.

Another common blind spot is poorly defined success measures. Vague expectations are dangerous. Communicating top priorities creates the basis for areas of focus for an organization, team or individual. However, without clear definitions of success, management and employees can be aiming for very different levels of performance. This creates significant risk in execution to committed operating plans and strategic projects.

In addition, there is nothing that sucks energy out of a team or individual more than thinking they have met or exceeded key objectives only to be told that the expectations were much different. It is a bit like playing a game thinking you understand the rules, only to have someone explain at the end that winning is defined differently than you expect. That crushes a team. Specific targets and timeframes clarify what achievement levels are expected.

Leaders need to be very precise in defining how they are going to measure success. What indicators are going to be used? What weight will be put on different measures? And what are the specific target levels for each of those measures that are expected? (A personal career note to leaders: never let others define what success looks like for you at the end of the game. Define it VERY clearly at the beginning, then all that is left is keeping score).

Highly visionary leaders struggle with this more than most. They tend to be heavy on pitching big ideas, but very light on communicating priority and specific expectations. The way I suggest dealing with this is by having the visionary leader and the catcher of the visioning walk through the following process:

Start with the big idea - what is the key concept AND how does it relate to the key strategic priorities of the organization?

Next up, solidify and communicate four to six key defining principles, which provide further insight into the key elements or concepts the leader has in mind (but often doesn’t explicitly communicate). Have the vision catcher shape the goal or project. Develop explicit measures and targets that define success.

To prevent drift from the vision, managers need to establish a short feedback loop review, frequently rechecking the trajectory of projects and functions against the original direction.

Only a few days of work should pass before a quick review to check for alignment, through to the achievement of the goal. This allows corrections to be driven in time to save time and money, gain improvement, and ensure proper project execution.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: Selling Your Way to the Next Round

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 14:53:37 GMT

In the latest installment of our ‘Talking Business’ series, , Valhalla Private Capital president Teruel Carrasco has explained the best practice for entrepreneurs hoping to reach the next stage of their investment journey.

With expertise in business development and within both startups and established companies, Teruel remarked that many entrepreneurs “struggle with the very basics of sales and business development” as they endeavor to launch their product or service.

“They spend a good portion of their time raising money, planning their business, looking at the designs of the product/service,” he began, “but they neglect to go out and actually sell their product.”

However, while these entrepreneurs typically hire a sales executive to remedy this, Teruel maintains that a company’s “number one sales person should be the CEO and founder”.

On the topic, he continued: “You need to be the tip of the spear, especially at that angel stage, and not even think about bringing on a sales person until you've actually developed what you're selling and how you're selling.”

“If you aspire to go to that next stage of investment, the best way to do that is through sales - you're going to attract a better quality of investor when you can show product market fit, an MVP and a market that has agreed with your hypothesis,” Teruel concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Alberta Chapter President on The ‘Spidey-Sense’ of Investors

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 17:57:18 GMT

Mark Mitchell , Alberta chapter president at Valhalla Private Capital, principal and director at Red Thread Ventures and managing partner at Weave VC , has claimed that “Spidey-senses” are one of the most important traits for investors within a saturated startup ecosystem.

Discussing “how to invest in early stage companies in Western Canada” with Tyler Chisholm , host and founder of Collisions YYC on episode 168 of the Current & Critical podcast, Mark began: “When I first started [investing] I was hesitant in being super candid, but I was also learning a lot of different mechanics of how to look for signals or pattern matching.

“A lot of investing at an early stage involves recognizing some of those signals and developing the Spidey-sense of ‘okay, I need to dig deeper into this one’”, he continued, “because there's just so many deals.”

With this in mind, Mark claimed that the best approach to addressing companies who fail to meet this pattern recognition - which has been hailed by Valhalla CEO and chairman Randy Stewart Thompson as the company’s “secret tool” - is to give them “actionable” feedback.

“If I'm actually listening to a pitch and I have the opportunity to comment, I will always try my best to give super candid, actionable feedback instead of saying ‘oh, your deal sucks.’”

Coincidentally, this isn’t the first time a Spiderman reference has made its way onto the Valhalla Private Capital blog.

The plot of Spiderman has previously been mentioned in ‘ Harry Potter and the Hero’s Journey narrative in pitching to investors ’, as well as ‘ Ask An Expert: Enter The Metaverse ’, which makes reference to 2018 film Enter The Spider-Verse .

On a previous episode of the Current & Critical podcast, Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman and CEO of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – outlined how not to become Silicon Valley.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Chairman on Albertan Corporate Finance

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 00:57:30 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson - chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club - addressed the issue of “becoming Silicon Valley” on the Current & Critical podcast , by Collisions YYC.

Speaking with host Tyler Chisholm, Randy discussed the deal "food chain" and raising money for growth in Western Canada, describing Alberta as “a place that’s learned to hustle and innovate since the beginning of time.”

Read Randy’s take turning Western Canada into Silicon Valley below:

We have some Albertans that have done extraordinarily well in the Valley model, and we've had some great wins lately, in what I'll call the Canadian model or global model.

We wring our hands as if we're behind, but the reality is I've actually taken our model to 30 countries and I find the questions are all the same - how do we become Silicon Valley? Well, actually, we don't.

Any deals that are screaming hot are leaving. They're leaving Calgary, New Orleans, Belgium and going to San Francisco, and a bunch of us who have played in that Valley game - I'd include myself in that - will invest and oversubscribe that round as it leaves our ecosystem.

Those people will leave and they will participate in [San Francisco’s] ecosystem, but here in Western Canada we have great companies. We can go through the list of Canadian companies that stayed - Skip The Dishes is one that's been pulled out over the last five years, while in the last three years we've had Solium and Benevity .

We have some companies that took 20 years to become billion dollar companies, but everybody did well along the path and we created a group of people that can actually run and operate big companies.

We've created investors that have a win and we've created publicly traded opportunities for other investors. If we were back in the old days of a shopping mall, we would have some really, really good anchor tenants in our shopping mall here in Western Canada.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Alberta Chapter President on The Founder's Role

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 16:39:09 GMT

Mark Mitchell , Alberta chapter president at Valhalla Private Capital, principal and director at Red Thread Ventures and managing partner at Weave VC , has elaborated on the significant role of founders in the investability of a company.

He explained: “Who are the people that have started this thing? What are their backgrounds? Do they have experienced being entrepreneurs before? Do they have customers with it? What's the traction like? How fast can they ramp up? Is there logic behind their scaling model? These initial checks are all based on people.”

“When investing at early stages you're always very biased towards the people,” Mark continued, “the offering is important because people have to pay for it, but if the people are the wrong people, it's not getting anywhere."

Likewise, Mark credited the success of a company to the “balance” of its core team - specifically a “strong, technical co-founder”.

“That shouldn't be an issue,” Mark elaborated, claiming that “if we ever saw a company like that we would probably give them some feedback, and hopefully they're there super early to find that complimentary co-founder to strengthen the offering and make sure that they're not getting too deep into the weeds”.

Grant Lawrence, president of Valhalla Angels Kelowna and co-president of Valhalla Angels Vancouver, has also discussed which personality traits angel investors are looking for in early stage company founders .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Alberta Chapter President on The Inverted Pyramid of Successful Startups

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 17:28:27 GMT

Mark Mitchell , Alberta chapter president at Valhalla Private Capital, principal and director at Red Thread Ventures and managing partner at Weave VC , has claimed that his experience with pattern recognition has uncovered an “inverted pyramid” of founder-focused errors during the pitch process.

Discussing “how to invest in early stage companies in Western Canada” with Tyler Chisholm , host and founder of Collisions YYC on episode 168 of the Current & Critical podcast, Mark claimed that many deals which he passed on previously had “similar characteristics” around the “crispness” of their offering.

Mark explained: “The offering just isn't crisp enough to really understand why they're deserving of raising money at that valuation. It's not really mature enough, and what I mean by that is maybe the story just doesn't make sense - there's still some holes in the narrative or the problem isn't really well defined.

“There's a lot of companies at that foundational layer where there's still things to work on before they can really separate themselves from the pack and raise that first round of capital,” Mark continued, “and as you go up the amount of companies becomes less, so there's an inverted pyramid.”

Likewise, Mark argued that an entrepreneur’s ability to “resonate” with investors during a pitch can be pivotal to their success.

“When you hear the pitch from our perspective,” Mark began, “it's obvious when they need more time to really fill some of those holes.

“The holes are just, ‘what's the real narrative for an investor to get excited about investing now, not in five months when you get customers?’”

Mark continued: “There has to be real evidence that you have to have some kind of traction that separates you from the pack of companies that are all at that stage, because a lot of companies are raising money at very similar valuations.

“Unless you've broken out from the pack you should continue working on really solidifying that case or investment,” he concluded.

On a previous episode of the Current & Critical podcast, Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – outlined how not to become Silicon Valley.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Year-Round Impact of Calgary Stampede on Startups

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 18:17:52 GMT

Calgary Stampede may have be over for another year, but its benefits are only just beginning to show in the local startup ecosystem.

Described by Jyoti Gondek, mayor of the city of Calgary, as "a year-round district which not only hosts the greatest outdoor show on earth, but also serves as a cultural and economic venue 365 days a year”, YYC’s tourism industry brings in an estimated 7.7 million visitors each year, contributing $2bn to Calgary’s economy along the way.

While last year’s Calgary Stampede is projected to generate $500 million in tourism for Alberta (source: CityNews ), it is by no means the city’s only attraction for entrepreneurs and prospective businessowners.

For example, The Global Petroleum Show (hosted by Stampede Park every two years), generates an estimated $11bn in oil and gas related sales within the global marketplace (source: Calgary Stampede ).

Likewise, almost one million people attend Calgary Flames home games annually, alongside an additional 2,600,000 visitors who attend the venue for trade shows and other events.

These events create thousands of jobs across Calgary - including more than 2,500 volunteer roles from Stampede itself - contributing more than $540m to the Alberta economy.

A ‘Strong Comeback’ for Calgary’s Tourism Industry

According to the Calgary Beltline website , Stampede Park brings in more visitors outside of Stampede (between August and June) than during its widely-anticipated July events.

With a focus on creating long-term growth for Alberta's tourism economy, at the end of last month (30 June), Daniel Vandal, minister for PrairiesCan, announced a federal investment of more than $10.1m to support a full-scale Stampede in the hopes of fostering a “strong comeback” for Alberta’s tourism industry in “providing quality jobs across the country, showcasing stunning landscapes and offering exciting experiences” (source: Newswire ).

PrairiesCan is also providing $1,832,500 through the Tourism Relief Fund to support four tourism projects in southern Alberta, with its efforts totaling at $11.98m.

This investment is set to create or maintain more than 1,600 jobs, bringing in upwards of 1.130,000 domestic and international visitors to Alberta in coming years.

On the topic Cindy Ady, CEO of Tourism Calgary, said: "We're grateful for funding that recognizes the importance of the tourism industry and helps as we build back from the impacts of the pandemic.

“It will be an immense help as we grow tourism-related experiences and create an amazing digital library of photos and videos to showcase Calgary and all it has to offer.”

Cindy also hailed the funding as an opportunity to “elevate and expand Chinook Blast - a new anchor festival for the city” which managed to earn $3.3m in local impact for Calgary during its inaugural year 2021, during the coronavirus pandemic.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Stampede and the Return of ‘Corporate Calgary’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:51:06 GMT

Calgary Stampede is set to return to its pre-pandemic glory, with more sponsors than ever before staking their claim on this year’s festivities.

This years champion sponsors for Calgary Stampede include BMO Financial Group , Bell , Lammle’s Western Wear , Cowboys Music Festival and The Coca-Cola Company (namesake of the Coca-Cola Stage , which this year will host the likes of Carly Rae Jepsen, Tash Sultana, Milky Chance and Bahamas); while Stockmen’s Club sponsors feature local newspaper Calgary Herald , transportation and logistics leader CN , law firm Bennett Jones and oil and gas company TC Energy , among other local companies.

This comes after shock departures from fast food behemoth McDonald’s and Calgary Co-op (to name a few) as sponsors during the coronavirus pandemic.

With a total of 80 sponsors this year - a near-record number for the event, with 32 marquee sponsors compared to 33 in 2019 - Stampede spokeswoman Kristen Anderson has declared that “corporate Calgary is back” (source: Calgary Herald ).

Among this year’s new sponsors is Alberta Boot , whose multi-year commitment to being Stampede’s official boot is worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” according to CEO Eytan Broder.

“We’ve decided to really engage with the Stampede at another level and plug in with the community,” Eytan explained.

Likewise, new sponsor Rocky Mountain Equipment hailed Calgary Stampede as a “great organization to hang your hat on”.

Jim Wood, chief sales and operating officer for Rocky Mountain Equipment, continued: “It’s definitely our biggest sponsorship as a company.”

Last month, Cenovus Energy announced it would be moving up the ranks to become a Champion-level sponsor, to the acclaim of Joel Cowley, CEO of Calgary Stampede.

“We are grateful that our partner continues to recognize the importance of the Stampede’s positive impact to the community and our programs,” Cowley remarked.

“We are thrilled to have their support as we welcome our community back in 2022 to The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Calgary Stampede and the YYC Startup Ecosystem

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 21:06:46 GMT

Dust off your cowboy hat and lace up your boots - Calgary Stampede is reclaiming its pre-pandemic prowess, and Calgary’s startup ecosystem has a lot to gain from the festivities’ triumphant return.

Following a stripped-back iteration of the festivities in 2021 (during the coronavirus pandemic), this year’s festival is projected to generate $500 million in tourism for Alberta (source: CityNews ).

Stampede Park itself hosts more than 1,200 events each year across sectors including business, tourism, sporting, hospitality and community, welcoming upwards of four million guests along the way.

These events create thousands of jobs across Calgary - including more than 2,500 volunteer roles from Stampede itself - contributing more than $540m to the Alberta economy.

Stampede itself also houses hundreds of vendors across its “modern retail and entertainment destination” The Market (located in the BMO Center), as well as artisanal hub The Maker's Market and the grounds’ expansive range of outdoor vendors.

An ‘Extra Boost of Business’

The coronavirus pandemic saw the first cancellation of Calgary Stampede in 108 years, with the organization announcing a loss of $26.5m in 2020.

According to the Calgary Herald , $3.1m of these losses were directly related to Stampede’s 10-day rodeo-related festivities, compared to $24m in profits the year prior.

This year Ernie Tsu, president of the Alberta Tourism Association, maintains Calgary Stampede will be a haven for local businesses who may have struggled financially during the pandemic.

Speaking of this year’s festivities, Ernie elaborated: “Our downtown restaurants down in that Stephen Avenue area where companies are only starting to come back, they need that extra boost of business and the Stampede brings that.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: The Art and Science of Persuasive Pitching

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 20:56:23 GMT

I have witnessed hundreds upon hundreds of pitches - and have also pitched to investors and customers - through many years practicing persuasive pitching.

As a startup entrepreneur, you must create a convincing argument that will persuade venture capitalists, business owners, potential clients, or other investors to help make your dream a reality. Before you schedule a meeting with an angel investor, here are a few tips to help you craft the perfect pitch.

A business pitch is a persuasive argument that an entrepreneur uses to convince a person or organization to invest in a business idea. There are many business pitches, from an informal “elevator pitch” (a short sales pitch no longer than 20–30 seconds or the length of a short elevator ride) to an hour-long slide presentation. A business pitch should be clear, concise, persuasive, and attention-grabbing, highlighting your company’s value and the product or service you sell.

There are many opinions on how to best pitch your startup. There are courses, YouTube videos and pitch competitions that are designed to help you practice and become more proficient with pitching your idea. The list is foundational in nature and variations of it can be found all over the internet. Please note a few things, though.

Know your audience. Don’t be defensive, don’t over sell, don’t lecture, or focus just on the product. Be positive, Be a subject matter expert. The investor is assessing your ability to execute on your plan, so be precise. Always and always practice and seek feedback.

Now, here is the list!

10 Tips for Pitching Your Business to Investors

If you’re ready to find potential investors for your business, check out these tips on how to design and present a successful pitch:

Include the correct information
A business pitch can range from 20 seconds to an hour, which is not a lot of time to convince someone to invest in your business, so you have to make each moment count by sharing all of the necessary information.

Here are some essential elements to include in your pitch: your value proposition, which is a statement that explains the specific benefits your product offers, why your target customers should choose your product over the competition, and how your product resolves their pain points.

If you have more time, include additional details such as your target market demographics, competition, competitive advantage, business plan, revenue model, financial projections, sales strategies, team members, exit strategy, and funding needs.
Consider your investors’ needs
When creating your pitch, include information that addresses any possible objections investors might raise. Addressing these concerns early in your pitch presentation will keep potential investors from becoming distracted and shows you've performed your due diligence and considered their needs.
Tell a story
Great business pitches are usually framed as a story - either drawing from your own life experience or working as a hypothetical situation with a fictional person. As you develop your pitch, focus on telling a story that addresses the problem and how your small business solves it.
Include contact information
Even the best investor pitch won’t make a difference if the listener has no way to contact you afterward. Provide your audience with a way to find more information about you and your business idea after your pitch - whether that’s a simple business card, a website URL, or a detailed handout on your business model.
Create pitches for multiple occasions
There are a wide variety of occasions for a business pitch. While some pitches occur during formal office meetings, others can be brief chats over coffee or impromptu conversations at the gym. You’ll want to create different pitch templates tailored to each audience and situation, incorporating the right information for each context.

Have at least three pitches at your disposal: an elevator pitch, a 10-minute pitch, and an hour-long pitch. Create slide decks (also called “pitch decks”) for your longer pitch presentations to help keep viewers’ attention and illustrate your business more clearly.
Practice
A successful pitch is delivered with comfort and confidence, so spend some time practicing your presentation and the tone in which you’ll deliver it. You can write a mini-script or jot down a few themes per slide to guide your presentation.

Practice in the mirror, perform the mock presentation for friends and family, or record it and take notes on areas you want to improve upon after reviewing the footage.
Be confident
You may become nervous when pitching for the first time, but there’s a couple of things to do to help you stay calm.

Slow inhalations and exhalations can help soothe your nerves, and it’s acceptable to refer to your index cards or read directly from the slides if your mind begins to race mid-pitch.

Having these resources to back you up and keep you on track during your meeting can bolster your confidence, which is key to showing investors that you are in control and can be trusted to execute.
Be respectful
During the presentation, questions or concerns may arise that call your business idea into question, and it can be easy to fall into a state of defensiveness, which will not benefit your cause.

They may be overcautious because money is at stake and may poke holes in your idea to see if it is worth their investment and time. The purpose of your presentation is to convince the investor that it’s in their best interest to invest in your business because it can successfully solve a problem and make them money.

Listen carefully to any questions they raise, and be kind and empathetic toward their concerns.
Follow up
After a pitch, it’s good practice to follow up with the investors within 24 hours of the presentation to see if they have any additional questions or concerns and to receive any feedback, they may have to offer you.

A brief email or phone call will help remind them about you and your idea and show them you’re serious, making them more amenable to finally deciding to invest.
Revise
After each pitch meeting, take note of which elements of your presentation worked and which require improvement. Did the investors ask questions that you covered in your pitch? If so, you may need to reword those slides for clarity.

If you notice the same question comes up after each pitch, then add an answer to this question into your presentation. Hone and refine your pitch as you go to make it more and more effective.

A version of this article was published by Troy Media.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Anonymous Angel: More Than Money - Smart Startups Respect Capital

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 18:08:21 GMT

In my time I’ve come across a plethora of articles written about entrepreneurs who think that part of the “startup game” is to find a product that is investable as opposed to creating a company that is sustainable.

This mentality comes from a place where there is a lack of respect for the value of capital - a place where they assume angels and institutional capital providers are begging to give away their dollars. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact the recent trend of accelerators and “mentor capital” (I swap my time for shares) is a direct reflection of how little the capital community wants to part with its dollars.

As an entrepreneur when you are in an accelerator, or an angel wants to “put some time in,” what they are really doing is deciding whether they want to go on a second date. You, of course, should be doing the same. I have come to the conclusion that money is the easiest part of running a good business. If you have something real, have solid customers who pay consistently, and have a clear path to profits and returns, well who wouldn’t want to give you money! It’s why we always joke that the banks only give you money when you don’t need it.

But as a startup you already know the obvious… you don’t have any of the above in place.

So try this little exercise. Ask yourself: “If I had $10 million and 200 people attending a conference who wanted it, why would I give it to any one person at that conference? Hell, why should I give it to anybody? Because if I think about the bigger picture, when I leave the conference I have to validate to my family and friends why instead of supporting starving kids in Africa, I decided to put my money behind supporting a group of GenY university grads who’ve never had a real job but are working to ‘revolutionize’ the way you book transcontinental flights.”

If you respect capital you really shouldn’t want it. It comes with strings and expectations. If I respected capital I shouldn’t give it away. It’s hard to come by and is easily lost. But that’s where the startup magic begins: you and I start to talk, I get excited about your potential, you get excited because I “get it,” we begin a relationship - granted, initiated by the fact that one of us has capital and the other needs it - but ultimately driven forward by the fact we are on the same page and are working for the same results, a fantastically built organization centered around a solid goal and vision.

So what’s the point for this entire discourse? Well at some of the conferences I’ve attended over the past year, I watched a few of companies I’d been working with spurn our relationship in order to go and chase money from Silicon Valley. This was understandable because the Valley money came at a higher valuation than what the local angels were prepared to do, but not smarter. Furthermore, we had agreed to hold off on a capital raise because the companies in question weren’t ready, but the Valley guy disagreed and told them they were moving to slow.

In my opinion, these companies will probably lose in the end, which is too bad.

Why? First, they spurned the local capital they had cultivated for over a year to go for capital with absolutely no guarantees whatsoever. Second, they gave up local mentors who know and understand their history and their vision. Essentially, they’ve bought a lottery ticket. Perhaps they’ll hit it big, but most likely they are part of the rule, not the exception.

Sure, maybe the relationship had come to its inevitable close, and yes they might raise money down south and grow infinitely faster. However, building a great company isn’t measured by how much VC capital you raise in California. Four years from now you have as much chance of being “that guy” on a panel talking about what went wrong.

To summarize the story, these companies could have ramped-up quicker here at home if they chose to. But we agreed that we didn’t have the pieces in place to bring in outside capital yet, unless of course we were willing to give away too much at the earliest rounds. The relationship these groups were now trying to broker with the Valley money was, of course, pushing them to “get money now.” Why? Because the Valley investor would get more of the company too.

There are bad accelerators, bad mentors, and they give you bad advice. But that is why you have to spend as much time choosing your investor as they do choosing their deals. If this is a race, it’s a marathon not a sprint, which means your team, including your investment team, is going to be together for a good long chunk of time, long enough that you had better start from a place of respect.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Alberta Chapter Presidents to Mentor at Investor Readiness Workshop

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 16:58:55 GMT

Valhalla Private Capital’s Alberta chapter presidents Marco Donadeo and Mark Mitchell have been announced as mentors at Alberta IoT’s upcoming Investor Readiness Workshop.

Taking place in Calgary’s cSPACE King Edward on 14 July, the half-day event is set to cover “the fundamentals of capital raise”, with topics including deal structuring and valuation, due diligence and pitching.

All attendees will also receive an opportunity to carry out a five-minute pitch in the company of investment and entrepreneurial experts, with direct feedback and questions in light of the workshop’s insights.

Mark and Marco will be joined by John Daugela , CEO of Pure Vertical; Neeraj Gupta , chief strategy officer at Attabotics ; Wilson Acton , managing partner at Tall Grass Ventures ; James Freeman, P.Eng. MBA FRCGS , senior vice president of digital strategy at Westgen Technologies Inc. ; and Hamish Knox , president of Sandler Training Company.

The workshop is followed by a rootin’ tootin’ social to match this month’s cowboy-centric festivities - the Alberta IoT Stampede Stomp.

Tickets are available via Eventbrite , with prices ranging between $52.50-$105.

Sponsors of the event include Avnet Inc., Ingram, Socium Law, CH Financial Ltd., PCL Construction, Rogers Communications Canada Inc., TELUS, MNP LLP, clearmotive marketing, KPMG LLP, Canadian Blockchain Consortium, SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology), Alberta Innovates, Microsoft Canada, Eddy Solutions, mCloud, EY, BottomLine, nVent, Goodlawyer and Delphi Technology Corp.

The event is funded by Alberta Innovates, Prairies Economic Development, OCIF, and Alberta Enterprise Corporation.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Partners Volition’s BC Startup Showcase: Women Under 30

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 16:37:05 GMT

Valhalla Private Capital is proud to be named as a program partner for Volition ’s BC Startup Showcase: Women Under 30.

Taking place on July 28 2022, the event will showcase six entrepreneurial women under 30 from across the province of British Columbia as they present a three-minute startup pitch in front of a panel of investors, industry experts, and a live audience.

Following each pitch, the panel will have five minutes to ask questions and provide strategic feedback, with entrepreneurs potentially earning a cash prize of $500 and rewards from local sponsors.

Fellow partners and sponsors include The Discovery Foundation , Futurpreneur and Segev LLP .

Applications can be submitted by women under 30 until next Friday (July 8), and tickets for the event are available via Eventbrite .

In a previous post by Valhalla Private Capital , Jessica McNaughton , CEO and founder of memoryKPR - the winning company from last year's Valhalla Investment Summit Saskatchewan - discussed the story behind her digital storytelling platform in Violition’s Founder Chats .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Chairman on ‘The Dawn Of Debt’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 18:57:08 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – opened up about “the dawn of debt” and its impacts for entrepreneurs.

Critiquing founders’ use of simple agreements for equity (SAFEs) at Decentralised Energy Canada (DEC)’s 2022 Annual General Meeting and Investor Forum alongside Anouk Kendall , president of DEC; Natasha Kostenuk , CEO of Ayrton Energy ; Dan Erhardt , CEO of Arcus Power Corp and John MacInnes, chair and CEO of Earthware ; Randy said there is currently a “fight for deal flow”, which is a “big change” in the startup ecosystem compared to during the heights of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, when debt joins the “fight”, Randy said that banks can't do debt against what entrepreneurs don't have yet, which is “security” (or “any financial asset that can be traded”, according to Corporate Finance Institute ).

As a result of this, Randy maintains that entrepreneurs should “try to avoid the personal guarantee”, condemning the practice as a “kiss of death”.

“You've got mezzanine debt moving in to get so you can actually get higher rates of interest like your credit card,” Randy continued.

Referring to debt as a “startup credit card” which is “fighting with equity to get into your deal”, Randy added, “tell me it doesn't sound like ‘we should all just start a company tomorrow.'"

However, Randy claimed that inflation and high interest rates “don’t matter” for investors as they are able to move into “alternative markets”.

In these so-called “havens”, Randy remarked that investors are “looking for places where they can get 10-12% returns, or plunk it in equity so it hides for 10 years away from the markets”.

On the topic, he lamented: “Something's wrong with the world because everybody is fleeing into these alternative marketplaces, and historically as inflation goes one way, you always start startups in a downturn.

“It's good time to start [a business], but because the markets in a downturn investors are freaking out, and they do stupid things like invest in startups,” Randy concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla CEO To Speak at DEC’s AGM and Investor Forum

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 03:32:57 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman and CEO of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – is set to speak at Decentralised Energy Canada (DEC)’s 2022 Annual General Meeting and Investor Forum.

Taking place on 31 May, the event will see Randy join Anouk Kendall , president of DEC; Natasha Kostenuk , CEO of Ayrton Energy ; Dan Erhardt , CEO of Arcus Power Corp and John MacInnes, chair and CEO of Earthware as they discuss strategies for successful investment in current markets.

The event is co-hosted by Valhalla Private Capital, OKR Financial and Meta 4 Foods , and tickets are available via Eventbrite .

DEC is a non-profit industry association which connects Canadian decentralised energy companies to business opportunities both nationally and further afield.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Anonymous Angel: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Formal Angel Groups

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 19:10:58 GMT

I have seen a lot of historical debate about the usefulness of the formal angel process, and for every entrepreneur who has had a great experience, you’ll find another that didn’t.

I think this is very similar to the discussion you see on entrepreneurs and their experience with VC’s, and while a lot has been written about how to manage your VC interaction, I’m not sure that the same is true about the formal angel process.

There is a sentiment among some that angel groups they are a waste of time – the thought being if your deal is amazing enough you won’t need to seek out these groups. You’ll notice there is a theme to my writing: if you happen to be the one in 99 who has a VC or a super angel in your back pocket, don’t read any more of my articles. But if you’re an audio hardware play in Dayton, Ohio, I’m talking to you.

Here is a list of what makes formal angel groups good, bad or downright ugly.

Reason For Being

Check out who is behind the group. Was it started by an economic development agency or by some passionate angels? The first scenario is bad, the second is good. Downright ugly equals an investment banker or consulting group.

Seeing who is running the show is usually the first indication of the type of investors that will be in the group, and the group membership will give you a sense of the type of money in the group (smart versus not-so-smart). I find that the good groups list their members, usually because they are both proud of them, but also because they know that they have some real meat in the room.

Fees

I’ve gotten into big fight on this issue on a number of occasions. A Silicon Valley superangel once told me that real angel groups don’t charge fees. I would suggest the opposite is true.

If you are in the Valley, have access to an angel community, or can go to a free tech event run by angels, do it. But being close to the epicenter is a double-edged sword. While there is more free angel activity present, there are also far more entrepreneurs feasting on it. Back in Dayton, OH, a formal gathering of angels in a room is gold. And a few such rooms in various locations is an ecosystem, but this isn’t cheap to build, and if you want the government out of the room, someone has to pay.

The Funding Food Chain

Let’s consider the funding food chain. Where you end up landing as an entrepreneur says a lot about how “the street” sees your deal. Top of the chain: a super angel grabs your deal and puts the funding together. If you are passed-over by this AngelList crowd, you call up the local angel star in your region and ask for a coffee, seeing if they’ll put your deal to a consortium or a meeting for you. If they turn you down, you apply to the formal angel group or investment conference. If you don’t raise there, you hire a broker. If that doesn’t work, you look at crowdfunding.

The further away you are from New York, Boston, or the Valley, the more likely the formal angel group is top of the food chain. In fact when you take the local angel superstar for coffee it is likely they will push you to the local formal angel group.

Each of these has a cost of capital acquisition, including the superangel/accelerator. Sure the accelerator put a room together for you, but as an accelerator client you already gave up equity to be in the program. No matter who you are it costs money to raise money.

There are more, but I think the best advice for this article is to talk about how to manage your angel group experience.

Use it for BD as much as Fundraising
I became the “pitchman” for a couple of my deals. We would actively be looking for customers, distributors, and partners as much as we were looking for investors. On a road show outside of your geographic center this is extremely valuable.
Visit the group first
Interview the group leader and attend as a guest. How many deals has the group done? When was the last deal done? For how much? Do you have a one in four chance or a one in 20 chance of raising capital? Who are your best members? These are all fair questions – exactly the type of questions you would ask to determine a zombie VC from an active VC.
How much does it cost?
I worry about the motivation of groups that charge a percentage, because they may not be looking for good deals as much as the fees. I worry about the free ones because you wonder who is paying the bills and screening the membership? Usual fees are $500 to $2,000, but I would defer to point number two above to see if the fee makes sense for you.
Ask for more than money
These groups are a great source for mentors, board members, customers and partners. You’re a startup, you are supposed to have holes. Ask the angel group to help you fill them.

Finally, a note about Dayton, Ohio. Central Ohio has one of the most active angel communities in the whole of the US. It has created a stable community of early stage funders and startups driven by the formal angel group process. I wish I was building a hardware play in Central Ohio.

Then I wouldn’t need to fight the noise in the Valley.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page.

Valhalla Chairman: ‘If You Can’t Raise Money Right Now, Stop What You’re Doing’

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 19:04:02 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has urged struggling entrepreneurs to rethink their working model to better fit the post-2020 market.

Referring to the pandemic as “The Troubles” at Decentralised Energy Canada (DEC)’s 2022 Annual General Meeting and Investor Forum alongside Anouk Kendall , president of DEC; Natasha Kostenuk , CEO of Ayrton Energy ; Dan Erhardt , CEO of Arcus Power Corp and John MacInnes, chair and CEO of Earthware ; Randy remarked that “the market has gone stupid”.

On the topic, he declared: “As an entrepreneur, I hate to say this: if you cannot raise money right now, stop what you’re doing.

“Go back, check product market fit, do research and development, because there are too many people in the space right now,” he continued.

With a focus on the importance of corporate finance – and a “stupid” amount of venture funds currently raising money in Alberta – Randy joked that there is “billions of dollars for everybody on LinkedIn who has ‘angel investor’ in their title”.

“My mother decided she’s running a venture fund and I think she’s got her first $5 million commitment,” he added.

Randy maintains that the ability to finesse product market fit and other vital aspects of developing a startup can be achieved through Valhalla’s Basecamp – an intensive hands-on bootcamp in which entrepreneurs and angel investors can gain expert insight into the startup ecosystem in a bid to “get ahead” in today’s startup ecosystem.

To date, more than 1,100 entrepreneurs have participated in Valhalla Private Capital’s programs, helping those involved to collectively raise upwards of $500m in capital.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our Contact Page

Valhalla CEO to give Keynote Speech at HIBAS-2022

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 17:27:56 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has been announced as a keynote speaker at Hellenic International Business Angels Summit (HIBAS-2022).

Taking place on 23-24 June in Athens, Greece, the event will see investors come together in a bid to drive change with a focus on sustainability and innovation.

Randy’s keynote is set to address post-COVID trends in angel investing - a topic discussed in several Valhalla Private Capital blog posts including ‘ the performance of Canada’s startup ecosystem in 2021 ’, ‘ Valhalla 2.0 ’ and ‘ Valhalla CEO’s Top Startup Categories for 2022 ’.

Related keynotes include EBAN president Janne Jormalainen as he discusses opportunities and challenges for business angels and investor communities; HeBAN - Hellenic Business Angels Network (Association) president Dimitris Tsingos on the Greek startup ecosystem and investor landscape; and Marcia Dawood , chair of the board at Angel Capital Association (ACA- USA) on “the sustainable transition” - impact investments and how angels can accelerate positive change.

While Peter Jungen, founding president of BAND and emeritus president of EBAN , will address the topic of angel Investors as a part of the innovation and entrepreneurship framework; Simone Brummelhuis , fund director and partner of Borski Fund , will discuss the fundamental role business angels play in the innovation ecosystem.

Likewise, panels throughout the two-day event will address topics such as co-investing with governments, European impact investing for a better world, Greek global champions and implications for the country’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, the business angels' role from startup to exit, tips for mastering deal closing and syndication within BANs

The event is organised by EBAN , Enterprise Greece and HeBAN , and a full list of speakers is available via the HIBAS website .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: Knowing if Your Startup is Actually What the Market Wants

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 08:13:37 GMT

There once was a highly motivated developer who worked at a bank. One day, they figured out a way to automatically round up decimals in banking transactions to the nearest whole number in bank accounts. They reasoned that the difference could be either taken as additional revenue to the bank or paid back to the customer in the form of a savings award. This simple solution awakened the inner entrepreneur in the developer.

They promptly resigned from their well-paid position and set out to become a founder. They gathered a motley crew of fellow developers, built a website, raised a few million dollars in funding and as soon as the ping pong table and espresso machine were installed an unfortunate thing happened - they soon realized that their idea was not new enough. Many well-known financial institutions were already well engaged in developing similar solutions and had spent millions of dollars in doing so. Additionally, they did not regard the young founder as having enough experience to take on the solution.

Soon the founder ran out of capital, laid off their staff, sold their ping-pong table and found themselves back at the bank.

What happened here? It was a simple case of developing a solution then going to look for a problem.

Unpacking the above case (not a real case, although there’s many cautionary tales out there) can almost certainly fill a whole MBA case study but let’s reside in the realm of not knowing your market. Angel investment groups and venture capital firms are constantly receiving pitch proposals from founders who had the light bulb moment sitting in the cubicle or home office. They come up with a new and interesting way to solve a particular problem. They obsess about it. They dream of someday founding the next “unicorn” (A term for a fast growing highly invested in startup). Investors struggle to explain to founders that their idea or new way, although interesting, may not be enough to build a business with. They also struggle to explain to founders that what may appear as a good idea to you may not necessarily be what the market wants or is ready to accept. It could be because it is too innovative. It could be brilliant, but the market is too married to the status quo or that the economics of change (incentive) does not currently exist.

Consider the case of the CRM (customer relationship management) software. The CRM started to hit the market in the early 2000s as the new way to electronically capture relationships between sales teams and their customers. Sales teams were the biggest group to resist CRMs. They did not want to spend their time entering their data or their rolodex of relationships into a piece of software. Many sales teams considered their customer relationships as their secret sauce and did not want to give up the control of their relationships with their customers. Companies did not want to be held hostage by senior sales teams who could easily walk to a competitor with their relationships. The economics of CRMs was not sorted out, the true value of CRMs was not fully vetted. Ultimately, what both groups came to understand was the CRMs enhanced customer relationships. The data collected became known as “customer intelligence” and sales teams learned that the more information they had on the customer, the better they were able to align products and/or services, to the benefit of both groups. But during the process, many early CRM startups failed because the market was not ready for them yet.

The founder who left their banking job can be considered a cautionary tale of not spending enough time developing an idea. They did not spend time listening to the market, researching the economics of their solution, or testing their solution in beta groups. Sometimes that process takes months, if not years. Call it going into stealth mode - the founder developed a solution and looked for a problem to solve, but perhaps did not take the time to understand the market well enough.

The market did not need it yet or that if he would have continued to research the industry they would have discovered a real need that the market was ready for and needed.

Steve Jobs reinvented and disrupted home computing. His folkloric rise often misses his keen read of the market. He knew what the market needed, and the market agreed and history was made.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Alberta Chapter President on the Province’s Startup Ecosystem

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 08:02:06 GMT

Mark Mitchell has discussed the cohesion of wearing “both hats” as both Alberta chapter president at Valhalla Private Capital and principal and director at Red Thread Ventures - an investment and advisory community which aims to support the startup ecosystem in British Columbia and further afield.

Covering “how to invest in early stage companies in Western Canada” with Tyler Chisholm , host and founder of Collisions YYC on episode 168 of the Current & Critical podcast, Mark remarked that while there are “tons of deals”, there may be a shortage of deals which he thinks are “truly investable”.

On the topic, he explained: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

“There's a lot of potential for deals that aren't necessarily investable today, but how do [these companies] gain the polish and refinement they would need to get people excited about parting with their money?”

He continued: “There's more and more of those deals popping up too, so how do we increase the velocity of those investments?”

Investing with ‘Impact’

Addressing the issue of making these investments more refined, Mark hailed “impact” as a significant factor within his investment thesis.

On the topic, he elaborated: “I like to think of the word ‘impact’ in the context of ‘is the problem you're solving a real problem that makes sense? Is it going to be something that people will pay money for? Does it have a true bearing in the world? Is it something that's going to persist if you don't solve it over the next decade or so?’

“Whatever [entrepreneurs are] solving has to be something obvious that really makes sense,” he continued. “If we think about it hard for 10 minutes, we don't get it. It has to be the kind of a real problem that anyone could resonate with.

“You shouldn't have to think too hard about it.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Teruel Carrasco Appointed President of Valhalla Private Capital

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:59:48 GMT

Teruel Carrasco , co-founder of Radar Endeavour Group Inc and CEO of Lending Assist , has been named president of Valhalla Private Capital, where he will be responsible for growing investor relations.

With more than ten years of angel investing experience and qualifications from the Harvard Business School , Stanford University and University of Alberta , Teruel joined the Valhalla Private Capital team as vice president of entrepreneur engagement in July 2021.

The role entailed leading discussions with founders alongside curating monthly deal screenings, preparing founders for our monthly angel investor forum and mentoring founders within the Canadian startup ecosystem.

Speaking of his new role, Teruel said: “I’ve had a long admiration for Valhalla and it’s mission to become the premier investment platform in Canada.”

He continued: “I’m excited to be taking on this new leadership role.

“My experience, including being a member, will allow me to work effectively with the leadership team and our wonderful members!”

With qualifications from the Harvard Business School , Stanford University and University of Alberta , Teruel joined the Valhalla Private Capital team as vice president of entrepreneur engagement in July 2021.

He began his professional career as an analyst at GE Capital in 1999, where he worked for almost five years before becoming a manager at Sun Life Financial Inc .

After shifting to a management position at Dell Inc , Teruel was appointed director of global sales and channel strategy at Omni Technology Solutions in 2008, where he spent three years until landing a short stint as the vice president of business development at Ekota Central .

In 2011, Teruel became a manager of software licensing solutions across te Western Region of Canada for Acrodex before working up the ladder at Long View Systems , first as a senior licensing executive and later as an account manager.

Following his three-year stint at Long View Systems , Teruel landed roles as the senior key account manager at Comparex Canada and business solutions manager at Amtra Solutions , rounding off 2018 as the chief revenue officer at Dealcloser .

Teruel is currently an investor in Copperstone Technologies Ltd and G2V Optics Inc , as well as a strategic advisor at Impirica Inc . He is also the president of Radar IT Systems Inc .

His company Radar Endeavour Group Inc is a boutique growth equity firm that provides capital while taking an active role in funded companies.

Randy Thompson, chairman at Valhalla Private Capital, said: “I'm excited that we are announcing new leadership at Valhalla.

“Teruel is an excellent fit with our culture, and as a former investor member at Valhalla he is a perfect fit to be leading us in our member services and operations."

In Teruel’s ‘Talking Business’ column for Valhalla Private Capital, he has discussed a series of topics including pitching with passion , tipped technologies and industries for 2022 , startup valuation , the investment journey from startup to product market fit status, avoiding “ aspirational ” projections and building a startup team .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: Raising Capital While Working on your Startup

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:58:31 GMT

Being a startup CEO is tough. Work life balance, as nice as it is, is not easy. Many leadership gurus - who invest in or mentor startup founders - often find CEOs struggle with the pace.

One of the biggest challenges faced by startup founders is balancing the continuous need to raise capital while running the business. Raising capital requires pitch preparation, networking, meetings with investors, potential investors, meetings with accountants, lawyers, internal meetings with the leadership team to decide valuations and on and on. What is a startup CEO to do? Let’s first decide on the premise that there is no such thing as balance. Balance is a fallacy. However, all is not lost. CEOs look at raising capital as a siloed event away from running the business - the two activities are not necessarily mutually exclusive and at times should be considered one in the same. Let’s consider it a combined activity and separate at the same time.

While focusing on the running of the business, startup CEOs are consistently monitoring revenue traction, product growth. Investors and potential investors are looking for the same thing. Investors focus on startups CEO’s ability to execute on company goals that are generally centered on revenue growth. CEOs are constantly thinking about the business - they pitch all the time.

Let’s look at “Fintech Startup A”: There was a CEO who was running a SaaS based fintech startup that did not like pitching. This CEO wanted to focus instead on running the business, growing the startup by attracting more customers. As the platform began to achieve product market fit, the CEO suddenly found the need to raise capital as there was a lag between releasing new product features that the market required and the expected new customers which were expected but had not come yet. The CEO found that attending networking events with investors, participating in panels, interviewing venture capital firms, and generally networking with potential investors was not a good use of their time. As a result, when the capital requirements became evident, the CEO was not prepared.

Meanwhile at another startup, let’s call them “Fintech Startup B”, the CEO understood the need to always be networking. They attended every possible investor networking event while keeping tabs on the business. Their healthcare app was gaining traction and investors were happy with the progress of the company and positive reviews it was receiving. They looked at their investors as ambassadors, champions, and door openers. When the time came to raise their seed round, they went back to their carefully cultivated network and were able to quickly fill their investment round. The CEO of Fintech Startup B knew the importance of building a network - they constantly refined and perfected their pitch because they were attending events, they aligned their business development goals with their investment attraction goals, and they were able to achieve growth in both.

The startup CEOs key to success is learning to combine activities that can achieve different but equally important outcomes. CEOs must always be raising capital and always be thinking about the business. Sometimes a CEO may not be actively raising because the capital requirements are met but they should always be thinking of future capital requirements and therefore should be attending any events that put themselves in direct contact with future investors. At the same time, nothing attracts investors more than revenue traction.

Investors or potential investors admire a startup founders’ ability to constantly network as well as lead revenue attraction. Branding and constantly pitching to investors and customers are critical activities. Talking about your business regardless of audience should be a constant activity. Customers have become investors and investors have become customers. There are many failed startups who collapse as a result of insufficient capital, and a portion of the failure can be directly attributed to the inability for founders to understand the importance of combining revenue growth and capital fund raising activities.

Always be raising, always be closing, always be talking about the business.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Making People Think: The ‘Changing Landscape of Valuation’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:56:49 GMT

Grant Lawrence , president of Valhalla Angels Kelowna and co-president of Valhalla Angels Vancouver, has predicted that valuation will involve “tougher decisions and tougher due diligence” moving forward, largely due to a fear of “crashing and burning” amid unrealistic expectations from entrepreneurs.

Speaking of the “changing landscape of valuation”, Grant maintains that companies are presenting higher valuations than expected, with entrepreneurs doubling their valuations in short periods of time in a bid to attract investors.

“ What validates that you're not just claiming your value as 2X?” Grant inquired, signaling that “sophisticated angels - not the novices that say 'oh, there's a shiny bright thing, I'll put some money into it'”, will be putting more effort into protecting their money.

Grant continued: “We're gonna see more people saying: 'I want to be the first money out, at least get my capital back.’”

“If you crash and burn here because you're not meeting expectations and now you have a down round, that's the fear - you're going to have early money at a higher valuation, and then you're going to have a down round because you can't meet the expectations to keep that valuation going,” he concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Celebrates Canadian Innovation Week

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:54:52 GMT

May 16-20 marks Canadian Innovation Week - a five-day celebration of ingenuity across all sectors of the nation’s innovation ecosystem.

Powered by The Rideau Hall Foundation , the week is divided into five categories in a bid to showcase significant elements of innovation.

While Monday (#InnovateToEngage) championed community driven with a focus on inclusion, Tuesday (#InnovateToInspire) highlighted young innovators at the helm of changing the ecosystem and Wednesday (#InnovateToLearn) focused on innovation in the classroom, specifically resources for students and teachers.

Thursday (#InnovateToExcel) marks the Governor General’s Innovation Awards - Canada’s highest honour in innovation - as well as other innovations that have changed the world for the better; and the week closes with a celebration of Canada’s expanding innovation ecosystem.

Canadian Innovation Week comes alongside a series of events throughout the week, including an Energy New Venture Competition at the University of Calgary (led by Platform Calgary ) a Western Canada Youth Showcase hosted by RHF, Young Entrepreneur Leadership Launchpad (YELL) and PowerPlay Young Entrepreneurs , and an Orca Whale Watch Program by BC Air Guards.

All events throughout the week can be found via the Canadian Innovation Space website .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Anonymous Angel: Why Investors are Fatigued and What This Means for Startups

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:52:14 GMT

I’m reading a lot of press lately and there’s a raging debate on whether the angel community is losing money or making tons.

Whichever articles you have read, the purveying wisdom is that the angel community across North America is alive and well. For me, instead of hearing a healthy industry, I hear fatigue. And that is a big problem for you the entrepreneur as you go out to raise your seed, angel, or Series A in 2014.

Here is what media stories and financial data reports should tell you. Media tracks five and 10 year data and publishes it as if it’s new. It’s not. These stories tell me that angels are in deals, not exiting them, and I think that all the financial problems of 2008 through 2010 are not just the issues of the Occupy movement.

Through the combination of very few successful IPOs and companies hunkering down and holding on to their cash (thereby deflating the mergers and acquisitions market), its hard to believe that angels are getting out of any deals in four years. Unless of course you’re one of the few angels in the consumer internet space.

Here are three truths about financial data:

If you’re reading media reports to find out what’s hot, you’ve probably missed the trend by 36 months.
A friend in the venture capital industry once told me, when a bank’s limited partner starts investing in a particular sector, it’s time to flee.
The old adage holds: if your cab driver is giving you stock tips you missed the window of opportunity.

And I’m nervous that this is where we are at with the current energy around angel investing. Money that was there 36 months ago, I don’t think, is still there today.

If I’m right, this will hit you the entrepreneur right where you live - your cash flow on a quarterly basis.

Angels are used to doing either common or preferred stock deals, because they know that structure is required by VC’s in the next round. But if there aren’t exits, and VC’s in the food chain, angels will start to do deals where they get cash flow quarterly, interest on loans, and dividends paid sooner. I have also seen deals that give an entrepreneur the opportunity to buy out the angel at a three to five times rate in three to four years, because the angel simply got into the deal for the cash flow.

This assumes that the entrepreneur has a deal where cash will be flowing, which means angels aren’t looking at raw startups, a troubling sign for entrepreneurs looking to fund an idea or a prototype. But angels can do this because the VC’s are leaving the Series A space.

They are leaving early growth companies for the angels to feed upon. This also makes another important assumption- that angels are actually funding anything.

Angels not investing is not a “first world problem” as I wrote about in my last article. With no VC’s and no angels you are left with an ecosystem of bootstrapping and Aunty Doreen as the only sources for building companies. So as an entrepreneur you had better hope that I am wrong.

To bring the circle around to you, the entrepreneur, when you start to look for money it is important to ask your potential angel the same questions you’d ask a VC:

What’s in your portfolio currently?
How are you doing on exiting that portfolio?
Do you have capital to invest or are you in the “maintenance” cycle of your portfolio management?
How long ago did you do you last deal?

These questions should be asked of formal angel groups as well. You need to know if you are going to pitch a scotch party or are the members actually doing deals? Interestingly, this “fatigue” doesn’t apply to new angels with full wallets.

In my case my last deal is recent. It was a pref share deal, no dividends, and co-investing with VCs. Time to take my own advice - maybe I should ask for a quarterly dividend as well.

I do not doubt any of the recently released stats on angel investing. I also do not doubt the fact that over the past few years’ investors took money out of the public markets and put it into private ones. But that means that right now we are in the management/holding pattern in the harvest cycle, and it makes me wonder how much new cash is really available.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Online Resources for Startups

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:48:42 GMT

Believe it or not, there is a tremendous amount of useful information available on the internet. Valhalla Private Capital has put together a handy list of online resources you may want to track from time to time.

Y Combinator

Alongside a regular blog, Y Combinator has tons of useful resource material, including Paul Graham ’s “ Do Things That Don’t Scale ” and “ How to Raise Money ”.

Sequoia Capital

VC Firm Sequoia Capital is filled with sophisticated and cutting-edge information. The (very short) Guide to Writing a Business Plan - which is essentially a slide deck masquerading as a business plan - is helpful for very early stage startups.

TechCrunch

A startup and technology media site with regular technology information and news.

Techstars

Founded by Brad Feld , Techstars is a handy hub for all things investment and innovation.

FeldThoughts

Brad Feld is always interesting and often on the leading edge of developments.

Ben Horowitz Blog

Ben Horowitz , co-founder of VC firm Andreeson Horowitz , gives a unique insight into his experiences as a venture capitalist.

Fred Wilson’s Blog

The musings of Fred Wilson - a VC in NYC from the managing partner at VC Union Square Ventures .

Both Sides of the Table

Mark Suster ’s blog is one of the better ongoing resources available to startups. The general partner at Santa Monica based VC Upfront Ventures , Mark shares the perspective of both founders and investors.

Steveblank.com

It’s not fancy, but everything you need to know or access can be found at Steve Blank ’s website.

Rocketwatcher.com

April Dunford is serial entrepreneur, engineer and startup sales and marketing guru. Her website has lots of really, seriously good marketing and sales resources.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: Building and expanding your startup team

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:45:44 GMT

The three most common reasons startups fail are having the wrong product, running out of capital and having the wrong team. So, how do you attract, build, and expand your team as a startup? How do you keep them engaged, creative, and focused on tasks? How do you keep them from leaving for greener pastures? How do you structure a team to succeed while the startup grows?

These are the considerations of the founder - the most important decision a founding team makes is who will be the team that executes the vision and mission of the founder. It is important that the team have just as much ownership of the journey as the founders. A well constituted team is critical as there are no grey areas in building and expanding a team at a startup.

Building a recruitment process that includes your “why” is critical to attracting the right talent. Every organization, regardless of size, understands the idea that attracting and retaining talented individuals is critical to the success of an organization. A startup, however, brings up the “criticalness” factor to a whole new level. A wrong hire can and does set back the progress of a startup in a way that can derail to outright kill a startup.

For example, a startup set out to hire a director of sales after identifying the position as a key role to fill in the company. The founders had built a robust SaaS platform in the fintech industry, and the startup had secured a significant capital injection and was ready to expand and grow. They worked to create a founding team that was committed and was full of drive to succeed - they had built a culture where engagement was high, creativity was fostered and employees were encouraged to focus on details and champion outcomes. The team was well-synced. After several rounds of interviews, they settled on a hire.

This hire had been director of sales at several fortune 500 companies and worked as a consultant in the financial services industry. With a stellar reputation in the market, an offer was extended and accepted. Unfortunately, it turns out, the hire was not a fit. They did not understand the unique nature of a startup. They did not appreciate the culture that had been built and in fact wanted to dismantle it and replace it with a more top-down approach. The result was delayed growth. The carefully constructed reputation and sizable sales pipeline evaporated. The investors began to doubt the viability of their investment and within a year the startup shut down. Hire to culture is key, hiring the right fit is critical when contemplating growing your team.

Keep your team from moving to greener pastures. Once growth momentum starts, it becomes critical that your key hires stay. It is often the case that highly talented employees at growing startups get scoped up as they’re lured by higher salaries, job promotion opportunities, and perceived view that things are better on the other side of the hedge. Build a culture that is inclusive, gives them the opportunity to be stakeholders. One of the commonly used tools is “options”, as in stock options. These tools help but what is important is culture. Culture trumps salary. Focus on building a culture that fits your startups and personality (DNA) of your growing team. Know that your culture will evolve but with an important foundation of inclusivity, open communication and empowerment will go a long way in retaining your employees.

In another example, a startup in Cyber Security wanted to build a culture of inclusivity. They knew that hiring and retaining key employees was important for their both short term and long-term success. They made a deliberate attempt to build a culture that empowered their employees to speak up in team meetings, make suggestions and be given the freedom to implement the suggested changes. This alone built a team where employees felt and acted as owners. Their success accelerated where they were able to rapidly grow.

Building process and structure while expanding your team will ensure your growing team is onboarded efficiently and are given the opportunity to “hit the ground running”. An often-overlooked detail - once you’ve begun hiring a new team - is the process in which you integrate them into their roles. Fast growing startups often overlook this process as they’re in hyper growth mode.

Another example was a startup in the robotics industry. They experienced the growing pains of receiving investor capital and new clients. This technology company comprised a small founding team and a few contractors. With the influx of capital and new customers, they needed to hire quickly. They had 20 open roles and began to bring them in as fast as they could. Many of the new hires were experienced software developers who were lured from “bit tech” firms. Upon accepting an offer, they were given a laptop and log-in credentials to the developer portal and were scheduled to attend meetings with the product management team and the leadership team. As exciting as it felt by being thrown into your role quickly, many were unaccustomed to the unstructured nature of their new environment. As talented as the new team was, it took them months to integrate into their roles. Those delays cost money, time and general morale. Having a structured onboarding process (even in a fast-moving startup) can and does go a long way to ensure your team actually hits the ground running.

Building and expanding your team the right way is essential in the short term and long-term success of your company. There are many books written about the right way to do it, but the key is to be deliberate. Think about who you want to hire, the culture they’re coming into and once hired how they onboard correctly to ensure they make an immediate impact.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Vancouver Chapter President Camille Hunt is Off to Pastures New

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:41:03 GMT

After two-and-a-half years at Valhalla Private Capital, Vancouver chapter president Camille Hunt is leaving the Valhalla team to pursue her passions as an entrepreneur.

With qualifications from the University of Otago , Yale University and UBC Sauder School of Business , Camille began her professional career in 2010 as a customer service representative at New Zealand’s Kiwibank , where she worked for two years before joining Australia’s Elite Physiotherapy . Prior to this, she spent several years working in hospitality from barista to line cook.

After moving to Canada, Camille held roles at Vancouver Coastal Health and the Canadian Alliance of Physical Therapists , as well as a startup consultant position at Entrepreneurship @ University of British Columbia , where she has also worked as a volunteer mentor. Other volunteer roles held by Camille include positions at Vancouver General Hospital and Coastal Church .

Camille joined Valhalla Private Capital in January 2020, bringing more than a decade of experience in the innovation and healthcare industries to the table.

Following the birth of her son Julian, Camille launched First Course Foods - a baby food company designed for babies aged six months and above.

Speaking of her shift from angel investor to entrepreneur, Camille explained via Linkedin: “The support from the Vancouver food community has been incredible, and I've been able to connect with some supportive and wise folks who have been generous with their advice.”

We wish Camille all the best in her future endeavors.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Making People Think: Questions To Consider

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 04:31:43 GMT

Grant Lawrence , president of Valhalla Angels Kelowna and co-president of Valhalla Angels Vancouver, has revealed which questions investors should ask founders in a bid to gain further insights into their company.

Read Grant’s insights below:

How do you gather the proof of what you are looking for in a founder or the team? What questions do you ask? And during this lock down how do you interact with the founder(s)? How do you get past the ‘best-behaviour-on-a-date’ façade (if, it is, in fact, a façade).

A few questions to consider, each one can lead to long conversations.

What are you working on?
Why this, why are you doing this?
What does success look like?
Why would this work now?
What is your unfair advantage?
How do you plan to give it back, a return to the investors?
How do you know [insert name here], and who introduced us?

Of course, digging into each of the answers with further questions around the product, the founder and team members etc can give further insights.

In upcoming installment of the series, Grant intends to discuss the following questions:

What is the evidence you are specifically looking for from these questions?
How closely does this fit with your investment thesis?
Who is doing this evidence gathering?
How are they validating this evidence?

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Navigating The Metaverse

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 04:30:01 GMT

The latest installment of Valhalla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert series saw Aly Madhavji , managing director at Blockchain Founders Fund ; Jeffrey Manner , general partner at Weave VC ; and Dhawal Shah , co-founder of Frontier ; discussed how best for beginners to approach web3 and the metaverse as the digital world continues to evolve.

Speaking with moderator Mark Mitchell , Edmonton Chapter President at Valhalla Private Capital, Aly Madhavji encouraged attendees to spend one dollar on DeFi and explore the ways in which its processes may simplify as technological infrastructure are finessed.

Likewise, Jeffrey Manner urged those interested to “play with different aspects” of blockchain technology in a bid to better understand its inner workings and nuances.

On the topic, he elaborated: “If you want to understand it even more, give some kid a hundred bucks, have them play with it for a day and report back to you on what they did.

“For them this is just natural,” he concluded.

Dhawal Shah also remarked that “trying things out” is the most effective way of learning about blockchain technology in its most recent incarnation.

If you focus yourself on the subject and you start learning,” he said, “I can assure you this is going to be probably one of the most rewarding and enriching learning experiences you would have.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Anonymous Angel: Why All Entrepreneurs Have Founderitis

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 04:26:08 GMT

I don’t know if the disease known as “founderitis” is an angel term or just a broad term across the industry. If you are a venture capitalist who comes from a fund or MBA background, you probably don’t understand it. But most angels have it, and certainly all entrepreneurs pitching for money have it.

It starts with an inherent sense of being put on this earth to do something great; it crept into your DNA at a very early age. This in my opinion is not a bad thing, and I think the disease is actually a good one—but like the Incredible Hulk, the ability to manage the green monster within is the difference between the successful entrepreneur or angel and the poor one.

The good ones can become great visionaries and communicative leaders. They can rally the troops with that inherent delusional quality that lets everyone else know it’s going to be okay, and can cut through the most terrible of personal and corporate storms with a laser focus on why this whole thing was started. They can do this even when inside I—oops, I mean the person with founderitis—doesn’t know what the plan is. Finally, they are always able to say “today is not the day we die!”

The good ones also understand it isn’t just words. Communication is spreadsheets, a plan, quality product development to the point of obsession, and managing customer expectations even when you know the customer might be wrong. Most important, it is the ability to listen and adapt.

This ability to listen and adapt is a key element in your pitch as to whether the green monster is under control or not. That and a plan that is well thought out and documented.

Seriously, angels do listen to your pitch for “founderitis” signals. In fact, we watch for this affliction over a number of other business factors. Why? Because you are pitching to a group of individuals who have ( usually ) managed their green monster and they can easily identify it in others.

A lot of times as the entrepreneur you don’t get the chance to ask why the angel or institutional money isn’t investing in you, let alone ask for a second meeting, even when you have all of the above. Here’s todays angel tip: most of the time the answer is “I don’t know, I just don’t want to work with that person.”

In the last number of years I have seen angels leave the community, mainly because they did four to six deals and ended up feeling screwed. So they went back to doing their own deals instead of someone else’s. Yes, this could be a form of founderitis, absolutely, but I would contend that it was simply the case of a bad experience with giving early entrepreneurs money.

Here are three types of bad experiences angles can have. You need to know that these types of experiences are already in an investor’s head before you pitch. What’s probably even harder to digest is that other entrepreneurs put these obstacles in an investor’s brain long before you showed up with the next big new idea.

My First Deal

When I saw the pitch, I went “Wow, if we do this and this and this we are going to be amazing.” I knew who I wanted to talk to, the customers I already knew, and where I wanted to go first.

Problem: it wasn’t my company or my plan. The entrepreneur was looking at me as a cheque book, not the new CEO.

Lesson: I have to negotiate my level of involvement, and be comfortable in my understood role before investing. If they just want my cheque book, I have to be able to live with that or walk away.

The Idea is So Big

I got into a deal wherein I was sure that the founder was un-coachable and didn’t have the monster under control—but the “thing” was a home run, with a board of other people who thought like I did. Maybe all of us and an awesome product can overcome the founder.

Problem: Same as above. Not my company. By the time the legal bills showed up, the founder was off to the Islands with an emptied bank account because “the board” wouldn’t let him execute the “plan,” chalking up to years of wasted energy and time.

Lesson: Laser focus and dogged determination can carry into legal battles and a disregard for corporate governance is as detrimental as it is healthy. Also called “you can’t win a fight with a pig”.

It Was All Me

This time the founder for a very successful venture I backed a number of years ago has forgotten about the involvement of both time and money that I invested. Instead this founder now seems to think that that nobody was there to help them when it counted, and none of this would have happened without them because no one else cared. They have now found someone new (with a bigger cheque book) to latch onto, someone that believes in them (ugh). FYI, it is rare that angels and VCs get thanked at awards dinners; keep score next time you are at one.

Problem: This has led me to make investments that lead to anti-dilution clauses, options that have longer windows even after I’m not involved, and onerous VC-like terms in all of my deals.

Lesson: No one really does have the green monster truly under control.

So think about your green monster the next time you’re pitching an investor. You might surprise yourself with the outcome if you can control it.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: I’ve Been Funded… What Now?

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 04:23:05 GMT

Yipee! Your startup has been funded.

You suddenly have sufficient capital to put in motion the plans your pitch deck promised your new investors. Term sheets negotiated, first wired funds received, shares issued. So, now what?

The world of startups is filled with cautionary tales of startups which can’t seem to navigate the new world of fiscal prudence and the dispensing of capital in a way that will drive the right outcomes. A startup founder must now become a manager and understand their fiduciary duty to a number of groups, including investors, the team, board of directors, customers etc.

Listed below are a few things you should consider as you jot down your list of “Must dos” now that your startup has capital. This isn’t a complete list but consider it a good start!

Deliver On Your Promise
When you pitched your investors, you told them what you planned to do with the money you were raising. Now is the time to think about your very first steps. Document them and take action.
Plan and Plan some more!
Create an operational plan with key deliverables starting with a 30, 60, and 90-day plan that includes all aspects of what you’re going to do with the newly deposited capital.
Get Your Team on The Same Page
Congratulations, you’ve got capital. Your team is undoubtedly excited and likely thinking about the neat things you can purchase for the office or cool conferences you can attend. Be transparent about what the new funding round means not only for the company but your team as well. Make sure your team is aligned with your goals.
Create a Budget
Setting up a budget may not sound like much fun, but it’s crucial. Make sure the keeper of the finances, whether an accountant, CFO, or vice president of finance, is well versed in budgeting. Update your financial model. Align your KPIs (key performance indicators) with new performance metrics based on use of funds.
Develop a Communication Plan for your Investors
Your investors will want to know what you’re doing with their money. Develop a communication plan that consistently shares your concerns, successes, and worries with your investors, as well as your board of directors, advisory board, and mentors. This will, inadvertently, also bring a new sense of accountability to your team.
Plan Your Next Round
Raising capital is not fun, but it is necessary. Now that you’ve figured out how to approach investors and have developed a list of contacts, start sending signals about your upcoming round. Think about the capital requirements you’ll require and begin early conversations to get the ball rolling.
Start Hiring (in Phases)
Your startup is now past the time when you have to beg for help: you can now start recruiting. Unfortunately, if you don’t hire correctly, recruiting, one of your most important initiatives, can really go wrong. Work with your advisor; don’t just take anyone; be selective; don’t hire your friends, family or those you owe a favour to. Develop a robust hiring strategy . Take yourself out of the process if necessary but keep an eye on it.
Culture and more Culture!
This whole list is important, but culture should be near the top. When strapped for cash, most startups naturally develop a healthy culture in order to retain their early employees. But with the new infusion of capital, the pressures to perform will increase, expectations will rise, and nerves will be tested. Do not forget your why and with whom you’re doing this. Remember, be positive and have fun!

It was hard to get capital for your startup, but you’re there now, and the journey is just beginning. If you plan correctly and seek help when you need it, you stand a good chance of achieving all of your dreams.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Partners Uniting The Prairies (UP22)

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 04:19:41 GMT

Members of the Valhalla Private Capital team are excited to be attending this year’s Uniting The Prairies event UP22 - a two-day event which brings together top Prairie-based startups, global investors and tech leaders in a bid to further evolve the Prairie tech community, partnered by Valhalla Private Capital.

Taking place in Saskatoon on 4-5 May, the in-person event pairs selected startups with relevant investors and mentors to establish meetings and private networking experiences.

The event will be attended by Teruel Carrasco , president of VPC; and chapter presidents Evelyn Cerda , Mark Mitchell and Marco Donadeo .

Speakers at this year’s event include Jason Atkins , founder and CEO of 360 Insights ; Jordan Boesch , co-founder and CEO of 7Shifts ; Katherine Regnier , founder and CEO of Coconut Software and Midia Shikh Hassan , strategy manager at Riipen .

Speaking of her experience at a previous version of the event, Serese Selanders , founder and CEO of SolusGuard , said: "Networking with investors and mentors is critical to the success of a startup. Uniting the Prairies is a way to ensure impactful and meaningful networking can still take place, even in a pandemic."

Likewise Anthony Nagendraraj , founder and CEO of Spontivly , explained: "Uniting the Prairies is the perfect event for any founder who is looking to make new connections, get feedback, and connect with fellow founders, mentors, and investors in the Prairie tech ecosystem."

General tickets are available from $99 via United The Prairies’ website (now sold out).

Event partners include CoLabs , Cultivator , Harvest , Platform Calgary , Startup Edmonton , Startup TNT , TechMB , amii , Creative Destruction Lab , Foresight and North Forge .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Chairman: Hemlock or Arsenic?

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 04:11:23 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has maintained that “the formal angel group isn’t dead” as Canadian companies weigh up their options against public government funding.

With regards to public funding, Randy notes that while Canada’s public sector can give tax credits for efforts such as developing software, places such as Silicon Valley aren’t given government funding to create startups.

“In the United States, it's life or death.” Randy began. “You figure out how to get cash in the door to pay for food and pay for rent - what will you do to get that? How important is it for you to have a startup? How important is it for you to have a job?

“I always call it hemlock or arsenic - there's no such thing as a good decision. It's just a form of poison, which one do you want to drink? If you decide to live in Canada, and you build out of the public sector model, you're waiting for your next grant, you're waiting for your next cheque. You're doing all these things and that time to market for that company can be yours.”

Randy claims that the need to “break the chain” of dependence on public funding as “the core” of Valhalla Private Capital’s DNA. Through adopting a unique approach to traditional impact investors , Valhalla Private Capital works with entrepreneurs and investors alike to develop the most successful deal structures for both parties.

Randy continued: “The government isn't stifling innovation, per se, but they have this metric that they need you to meet within the grant, so you really want to be working on something over here but your grant is making work over there.”

“And so, when we chose not to do that, it was more important for us to be working where we thought we needed to work, where the metric is.

Due to this “life or death” approach to creating a startup without public funding, Randy maintains startups are more innovative in finding money to pay for their company, as well as essentials such as food and rent.

“We need people that are heavy-duty and serious about developing their company no matter what the cost is. Those were the people we want to hang out with,” Randy concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Anonymous Angel: How Startup Investors Keep Secrets

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 04:09:25 GMT

There is a place in the entrepreneur/investor dance where both parties are equally guilty of sins against the other. It’s called corporate governance.

On one side investors use the language of corporate governance and cap tables against unsuspecting entrepreneurs, very much in the same way your standard IT geek in a large corporation uses jargon to bluff his way through a support call. On the other side of the equation entrepreneurs assume that it’s okay to be ignorant of all of this useless jargon and terminology, because “I just wanted you to fund my code.” Besides, it’s nothing that $20,000 and a lawyer can’t fix.

The truth about this battle of egos is that sometimes an investor is bluffing to cover a lack of knowledge. More candidly though, this battle is usually played because the investor wants to make sure to show the unsuspecting victim her overwhelming superiority. They do this by talking about “participating pref A’s” and “sub debs” as if the language was as common as a dinner discussion over peas and carrots.

I find both approaches to the relationship equally offensive.

I believe that investors have a role in educating a first time entrepreneur about how a cap table, dilution, financial modeling, and debt and equity work. They should not try to use all of this against the entrepreneur in order to secure a favorable deal. In fact, I would say that the difference between the investor who helps an entrepreneur through his first deal structuring as opposed to using their naiveté to secure a better deal is the difference between a shark and a business partner.

On the other hand, the entrepreneur who doesn’t do his homework, doesn’t have a “deal modeling advisor,” or doesn’t use a lawyer probably deserves to get screwed.

There are so many online resources out there that will help to ensure that you the entrepreneur can work out a cap table so you understand dilution. Additionally, there are numerous accelerators that will walk you through deal modeling from start to finish so that you’ll even know what your exit looks like in advance. In fact, a good entrepreneur is expected to bring a deal and a deal structure to the investor community they are looking for support from.

What most entrepreneurs don’t realize is that by failing to complete a deal structure, a cap table, and an exit model in advance, they greatly extend their due diligence period and ultimately hold up the cheque writing, sometimes for months. This is the difference between getting a cheque in the first four to eight weeks after your presentation versus six months later.

Most times during due diligence it is this section that causes the most delay, because it’s also the part of the binder entrepreneurs generally know the least about. And given that there are always two sides to every story this isn’t really fair, as it’s the part that an investor knows the best.

Oh yeah, and on top of the work and the delay, it will also probably cost you 3% to 5% of your company if the investor has to do this work for you.

Also, let me clarify something: I don’t advocate that either side use a lawyer to get this done. Two reasons why: it’s expensive and at the end of the process you still won’t understand it. I have found over the years that asking your lawyer’s opinion as opposed to telling them what then to do is the worst way to ensure a large legal bill.

On the angel side of the equation, truthfully most of us didn’t know about alternative deal structures when we started investing. After a few investments doing Class A common deals we began to understand that one size doesn’t fit all. We learn that there is a deal structure to fit every size and appetite.

In fact, the deal structure we choose is normally a reflection of the exit we expect. I’ve never truly understood why this reality has to be some sort of secret we don’t share with the entrepreneur.

The above, of course, talks more to the outcomes and the relationship we have with our portfolio than with corporate governance. I either need to be the Deal Genius, baffling my fellow team members with my knowledge of the secret language, or just one of the people on a team adding my skills to make a successful company. I’d rather not be the secret black box.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Making People Think: The Hallmarks of a Favorite Founder

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 04:07:04 GMT

With reference to angel investor Jason Calacanis , Valhalla Angel group members Ziad Moukheiber ( Boston Harbor Angels ) and New York Times bestselling author Adam Grant , Grant Lawrence , president of Valhalla Angels Kelowna and co-president of Valhalla Angels Vancouver, has lifted the lid on which personality traits angel investors are looking for in early stage company founders.

Find out what Grant has to say below:

Trying to measure and gauge how founders will act and react to their winding journey, with the inevitable hurdles they are embarking on is one of the key challenges when making an investment decision, especially in pre-revenue or early revenue start up companies. You are placing a portion - in some cases, a big portion - of your investment on the founder.

Over the years I’ve observed investors looking for founders that exhibit certain traits, and after listening to many investors here is a list of personality traits angel investors are looking for in early stage company founders (note - this is a summary list, and not everyone mentioned every trait):

Humour (self deprecating)
Honesty
Hungry to succeed
Love to solve the problem, not the product
Want to delight customers
Hardworking
Coachable
Humble / vulnerable
A strong origin story (see the Hero’s Journey narrative in pitching to investors )
Delusional, with skill
Staying power / stamina
Driven to win
Making money is not the key driver, but is still very important
Great at hiring better people than themselves

The list goes on. Of course, everyone will have a slightly different list and use similar words.

In an upcoming post I will look into how you identify these traits and prove them out, but for now - which traits do you look for in a founder and why?

In a previous blog post Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital , managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – outlined how best for entrepreneurs to gain the attention of investors when hoping to pitch their startup.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Jeffrey Manner on The Stablecoin Movement

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 04:03:44 GMT

Jeffrey Manner , general partner at Weave VC , explained the stablecoin movement during the latest installment of Valhalla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert series, which discussed Web3, the metaverse and its impacts on investors and startups alike.

Speaking with Mark Mitchell , Edmonton Chapter President at Valhalla Private Capital, Aly Madhavji , managing director at Blockchain Founders Fund ; Dhawal Shah , co-founder of Frontier ; Jeffrey hailed crypto and web3 as “a foundational technology that will talk to every business in one way or another in the next decade”.

Described as “cryptocurrencies without the volatility” by Ethereum , Stablecoin aims to offer price stability through an external reference, such as the US dollar or the price of a commodity, for example gold.

Propelled by its use case for traders, Jeff explained: “If you have an account with an average centralized exchange, and you trade to US dollars but those USD are held with the exchange, there's a lack of security there.

So as a big trader,” he continued, “you'd actually want to pull your stable coins off into your own wallet, and that's how the proliferation of the original stable coin started.”

As a result of the stablecoin movement in tandem with DeFi , Jeffrey claims those who use the cryptocurrency “might be able to earn a yield far above what the traditional finance market is able to offer today”.

‘Ask An Expert’ contributor Aly Madhavji , also explained the perks and pitfalls of NFTs during the event.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Angel 101 Returns 4 June

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:58:23 GMT

Valhalla Angel 101 returns on 4 June, providing prospective angel investors with an opportunity to learn the perks and pitfalls of investing from seasoned veterans of the medium.

In Valhalla’s hands-on Angel 101 seminar, experienced investors from Valhalla Private Capital provide workbooks, templates and checklists to explore the steps required to become a successful angel investor.

The eight-hour seminar addresses topics including theory, the startup funding ecosystem, building an investment thesis, the Silicon Valley model and best-in-class angel investment practices, alongside the startup funding ecosystem and what makes a startup investment-worthy.

Valhalla has conducted angel investor training in Canada and in over 12 countries worldwide - including South East Asia, Latin America, and The Caribbean - since 2012 with great success.

Speaking of his experience with Valhalla Angel 101, Mark Montemurro explained: “As an ‘intermediate experienced’ angel investor, the Angel 101 training provided by Valhalla Angels was very helpful.

“The information and stories shared over the two days helped to validate some of my own experience but also provided useful market context plus new tactics to guide me in evaluating start-ups,” Mark concluded.

Valhalla Private Capital is a firm of entrepreneurs who became investors. We like to share our experiences, have fun, and bring others into the fold.

In order to achieve this, Valhalla actively works with local business organizations, angel groups, seed funds, and early-stage VC Funds to educate these potential investors and introduce them to the local entrepreneurs building the future.

Tickets for Valhalla Angel 101 are available via Eventbrite , and are priced at $160.15.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: Becoming More Than ‘Aspirational’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:57:22 GMT

In the most recent installment of our ‘Talking Business’ series Teruel Carrasco - president of Valhalla Private Capital , co-founder of Radar Endeavour Group Inc and CEO of Lending Assist - has explained how to avoid the pitfalls of sharing “aspirational” projections with an investor during a pitch.

With expertise in business development and overall strategies within startups and established companies alike, Teruel remarked that many founders focus on creating “very fancy charts and and forecasts” for their pitch.

However, although these infographics tend to “look great”, it soon becomes clear that these figures are nothing more than “aspirational” and are not likely to be achieved as intended.

This is largely because “doesn’t understand the pathway: required to reach these milestones.

“This is something which founders need to contemplate and get coaching/mentoring on so that they can properly prepare when they go in front of an investor and make the case for their startup,” Teruel said.

For this reason, Teruel points to Valhalla Private Capital’s Basecamp - an intensive hands-on bootcamp in which entrepreneurs can gain expert insight into the startup ecosystem in a bid to “get ahead” in today’s startup ecosystem.

To date, more than 1,100 entrepreneurs have participated in Valhalla Private Capital’s programs, helping those involved to collectively raise upwards of $500m in capital.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla’s Virtual Founder BaseCamp Kicks Off 11-12 June 2022

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:55:43 GMT

Tickets are currently available for Valhalla Private Capital’s virtual Founder BaseCamp, which is set to take place on 11-12 June 2022.

Comprising two eight-hour sessions, Valhalla’s Founder BaseCamp is a two day investment-readiness program for entrepreneurs hoping to scale their business in coming months.

While session one covers topics including how to build a capital strategy, valuation for early stage companies, negotiations and due diligence; session two explores customer discovery, getting to product market fit, pitching and the impact of market context on valuation.

The Founder BaseCamp culminates at a practice pitch session (scheduled for the following week on 2 April) during which attendees can put their insights to the test and receive immediate feedback from experienced investors.

Speaking of his experience at Founder BaseCamp, Roger Noujeim , CEO of Quini , explained: "Valhalla Founder BaseCamp is a rare opportunity to truly understand the investor mindset and learn critical skills to shorten the path to success.

“An absolute must attend for any tech company founder and senior team member,” he concluded.

Early-bird tickets are currently available at $1,059.29 via Eventbrite .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Anonymous Angel: Are Angels Making Money?

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:53:28 GMT

The powerhouses of the VC/angel blog community have all written about angel and venture capitalist returns and how they impact startup communities locally. Being a sheep, I too feel this is a big issue.

I’ve been part of the investing space for a long time now, measured in decades not months, and there are times in my local community where both the angel and institutional pool are completely dry. My big question is, does this reflect a lack of willingness on the part of the investment community to play? Or does it reflect a lack of investors?

Truthfully, it can be both. And while there is a lot that can be said about investors not wanting to participate in tech because something else has their attention for the time being, the reality is that a lot of the blame rests squarely on the local entrepreneurial community for losing that money in the first place.

I remember in one particular community which I am deeply familiar with, that, during the end of the bubble period of 2000 and 2001, some of my colleagues had a real sense of exuberance for two companies. So much so that over $17 million of investor dollars was sitting in two companies. Imagine what $17 million would have done for the local tech community during that time if it had been spread across ten companies instead of two?

Let’s go through the analysis of what could have happened if they had spread the ‘winnings’ across ten companies:

It would have mirrored a portfolio approach mitigating risk across the stack.
It would have enabled more investors to follow that $17 million in those 10 deals.
It would have leveraged and brought new money, i.e. first time investors into the pool.

In other words the money could have been invested as a portfolio, mitigating risk; it could have been leveraged into an investment number higher than the original amount; and finally exits on that $17 million would have launched this community – generating between $40 to 60 million of investment capital that could have been reinvested.

Unfortunately, the opposite happened.

This community went “zero-for-two” on the entire pool. The investment community was without startup capital and the two companies chalked it up to changes in the tech landscape.

Interesting how many companies tie their demise to tragedies such as 9/11 or market chaos, but never because they were crap to start with (but I digress). Whether the companies were horrid opportunities, or whether “market conditions” impacted the outcome is irrelevant, what is relevant is that from this whole debacle a large metropolitan area went without startup capital for a huge period of time.

How did it get better? Some companies from the pre dot-com vintage exited. Investors made money in other sectors and decided to give tech a whirl again, and new investors decided to give angel investing a try.

Now this area has a vibrant startup community. One that is focused on quality deal flow. They have accelerators and incubators, and active angels and VCs.

In my case, some exits have allowed me to reinvest, and like most entrepreneurs, I’m enjoying being part of building things, which includes the community I live, work and play in. It really isn’t as much about the money. They see it as giving back to the community. However, don’t assume that this mantra is for all angels, some invest seriously to make a living.

Yes, the angels maybe should have done more homework – so should you! Do you want to be known as the entrepreneur who fooled a bunch of angels and maybe some VCs and in the process made sure your other startup colleagues didn’t receive the capital they needed because you squandered the local resources?

There is only so much to go around, and the story I recounted above ensured a generation of great companies went without. Don’t be the reason angels and venture capitalists lose money – not for their sake, but for your fellow entrepreneurs and the next generation of great ideas in your community.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: How Not To Be A Deer In Headlights

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:51:12 GMT

Teruel Carrasco - president of Valhalla Private Capital , co-founder of Radar Endeavour Group Inc and CEO of Lending Assist - has discussed the standard investment journey of a startup, from its inception to achieving product market fit status in the latest installment of Valhalla’s ‘Talking Business’ series.

With expertise in business development and within startups and established companies alike, Teruel claims that some companies “skip through so many steps” on a mission to go public.

While this approach is “aspirational” - “good on you”, Teruel remarked - there is an established development strategy for startups which has been curated to reach product market fit as economically as possible.

Friends & Family

Typically the “first step” of founders, Teruel claims that angel investors look favourably on this round as it shows that “friends and family are willing to bet on you”.

Pre-Seed

Generally carried out via an angel (individual investor), angel group, or a micro fund, Teruel remarked that a pre-seed round’s definition “is embedded in the name”.

“It's seeding the startup,” Teruel said, “it's getting the startup to develop and accelerate their product.”

At this point, a startup usually has a minimum viable product, minimum sales and “in some cases, they're pre revenue”.

As a result of this, these startups tend to be in search of what Teruel refers to as “rocket ships fuel capital” of $250,000-$500,000 (less than $1m) so that they can get their product to market, better known as early stage investing.

Series A

After a startup has created traction in the market and has their first handful of customers, they typically go to a Series A and speak to a venture capitalist.

However, the amount of money startups look for at this stage is defined by industry. For example, an app which provides software as a service would typically start looking at anywhere between $2-5m dollars in ARR (annual revenue) with amazing traction.

On the topic, Teruel comments: “If within the last two years you've gone from zero to $1m, you're at $2m and you're headed to $10m, venture capital companies love to have you at that juncture and have conversations with you.”

Product Market Fit

Product market fit has been discussed at length by Teruel in a previous blog post, with reference to the hockey stick model and the prospect of a liquidity event.

“When I describe this process to a founder I get ‘deer in headlights’ looks.” Teruel explained.

“Nobody's ever laid it out that way to these startups, but they need to look out for these key guideposts of growth as they grow their enterprise,” Teruel concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Dhawal Shah on the Role of DeFi in Ukrainian Aid

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:48:17 GMT

Dhawal Shah , co-founder of Frontier , elaborated on the role of DeFi (decentralized finance) on the future of the financial world - and specifically conflict in Ukraine - during the latest installment of Valhalla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert series, which discussed Web3, the metaverse and its impacts on investors and startups alike.

Speaking with Mark Mitchell , Edmonton Chapter President at Valhalla Private Capital, Aly Madhavji , managing director at Blockchain Founders Fund ; and Jeffrey Manner , general partner at Weave VC ; Dhawal attempted to dispel the “hype, skepticism and confusion” surrounding the DeFi ecosystem.

While this ecosystem had a “simple but very strong” use case by the end of 2019 - with a +137.23% annual increase in Total Value Locked in 2019 alone, according to DeFi Rate - Dhawal maintains its purpose today is “not just restricted to a few finance-related apps”.

“At least 15 countries around the world are trading in cryptocurrencies for their various day to day commodities,” Dhawal explained before remarking upon the “biggest fundraising movement in the world”, which took place via DeFi to support the people of Ukraine amid rising tensions with Russia.

“They launched a crowdfunding campaign and they've already garnered $20 million by just running a simple campaign,” he continued.

At the time of writing, the campaign has reached $22million worth of digital assets, according to The New York Times .

Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of Russian protest band Pussy Riot - which is working with crypto collective UkraineDAO - told the outlet: “Blockchain allows us to scale our efforts in a way that wasn’t possible for us before.

“The old ways of raising money sometimes are really slow and just clumsy,” they concluded.

This viewpoint is maintained by Dhawal, who hailed the “permissionless and transparent” nature of DeFi, while Jeffrey Manner remarked that it is “necessary” to rethink traditional financial systems “in a fully decentralized way”.

‘Ask An Expert’ contributor Aly Madhavji , also explained “ the essence of NFTs ” during the event.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Anonymous Angel on Startup Financing: There’s More Than One Way to Skin a Cat

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:45:19 GMT

I must admit to having a chip on my shoulder about investment conferences. The ones where you pay to watch venture capitalists and angels market themselves on panel after panel, espousing about “the way” things are done, as if there is only one “way.”

And then to add salt to the pot, they talk about their myriad of web-centric deal flow that “so-and-so did with such-and-such in a seed round,” and everyone on Angel List and the like is piling into. This type of deal flow is seen by said angel or VC as a badge because it shows how focused they are.

My favourite statement in this scenario is when they tell you they only look at one in 100 deals. So my question is this: if they only do one in 100 deals and only with their internet buddies, why do we give them so much airtime? Why are there regularly over 500 entrepreneurs at any given investment conference that won’t be using these angels and VCs or their methodology?

The truth is, I think entrepreneurs go to these conferences because they have read too much marketing shit. Furthermore, when an entrepreneur hasn’t had any previous experience in deal structure or doesn’t know how to best structure a deal for their particular industry or exit size, they assume there is only one way to do things.

This generally occurs because they don’t spend the time to find out about the 99 alternative financing mechanisms that are out there. Instead, they get advice, or read what came through to them in a Google alert, and assume that their only way to get financing is as follows: go to accelerator; get lead super angel to invest; go to angel list for more investment money; get VC money; move to Silicon Valley.

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid. It’s okay to finance your company in other ways than through the stereotypical angel and VC route, and it’s even okay not to use an angel or VC at all.

We could write a book on the plethora of ways to raise money. They all do start in the same place. You, the founder, need to be the source of the initial risk capital. You need to put “skin in the game.”

After the founders, debt is better than any equity, unless you know—actually know , not just hope!—you need to scale quickly. If you pay your interest, the bank leaves you alone. It’s dumb money, so fix that by utilizing boards or advisory boards.

(PS: There’s a lot of debate around right now about whether an advisory board is useful. I would contest it is, however VC’s tend to hate advisory boards. They think money trumps the ability to intelligently build companies.)

Second, money is hard to come by. So if you need growth equity and you are one of the 99 doing med devices, food and beverage, electronics, clean tech, ICT hardware, etc., assume you will need 24 to 36 months in research and development.

You are too slow for a VC and angels, because they can’t make any money off you. Work part time, use grant money, use friends and family money (say 20 friends at $5,000 each) to get to the place where professional investors can become involved. Borrow from the friends, give them preferred shares and protect them at all costs. They are the only ones that gave you the time of day when the chips were down. At the end you may have to pay them out of your own exit proceeds—that’s called integrity.

Third, customers trump banks and private investors. This goes back to the saying, “you are a company, not a startup.” When you are focused on revenues and not fundraising you don’t have to listen to anybody. And good customers and revenues means that when you do need rocket fuel, you will probably be looking at competing term sheets. And if your product is that good, you can probably collect 20% deposits.

If you need angels, maybe you should look at a lot instead of a few. It seems the trend is towards small angel placements ($10,000 to $75,000) with the expectation that you will need to tap them more than once as you hit milestones. Nice part about this strategy is that angels and VC’s have been known to run out of money, so having an arsenal instead of a single nuclear weapon seems like good risk mitigation.

However, once you do this, you have given up the VC route. They hate large parties, especially if they have to clean up your cap table.

So here is my advice to an event planner looking to make money. Plan an investor conference where the first stream is looking at the myriad of financing structures and models and the other stream is “standard investing models used in Industry X.”

The afternoon is filled with panelists looking at alternative financing case studies and a list of who does that type of funding in North America, you know, the 99 stuff. And if you need to, you can add another panel from another angel or VC saying the same things that were said at the panel last year.

Because no matter how many times you hear it, they still aren’t doing your deal.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Aly Madhavji on ‘The Essence of NFTs’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:42:56 GMT

Aly Madhavji , managing director at Blockchain Founders Fund (BFF), explained the perks and pitfalls of NFTs during the latest installment of Valhalla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert series, which discussed Web3, the metaverse and its impacts on investors and startups alike.

Speaking with Mark Mitchel l , Edmonton Chapter President at Valhalla Private Capital, Dhawal Shah , co-founder of Frontier ; and Jeffrey Manner, general partner at Weave VC ; Ali discussed the manner in which NFTs “made having a internet based decentralized currency possible” through bringing together four decades of crypto-based research

“Even though it was outlined as being a currency originally, it's really slowly moved into a value type asset that is backed by energy,” Ali remarked.

Hailing NFTs as “the first way to be able to track ownership of anything in a digital world”, the BFF managing director compared a lack of digital ownership to being unable to track ownership of property.

On the topic, he elaborated: “If [someone said] 'we might not be able to track ownership rights of your home', you'd find it archaic.

“It hinders growth from every aspect. In 20 years,” Aly continued, “we're gonna look back and say 'how did we not think that everything needed to be tracked in it in a digital world?'”

While digital ownership is considered “ essence of NFTs” by Aly, he also warned that those interested should “be careful in terms of what [they’re] getting involved in”.

These issues include identifying who owns underlying IPs, images and likeness of celebrities and other cultural points of interest.

“You've got challenges of major corporations selling NFT's that don't essentially include rights, all the way to companies taking photos of something very unique or rare, and the precedents of how that actually relates to ownership.

“But it's the future. We have to be able to track digital ownership,” Aly concluded.

‘Ask An Expert’ contributor Dhawal also discussed the role of DeFi in supporting Ukraine during the event.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: Is Your Pitch Compelling?

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:39:14 GMT

Teruel Carrasco - president of Valhalla Private Capital , co-founder of Radar Endeavour Group Inc and CEO of Lending Assist - has delved into the importance of data when pitching a business to investors.

“What I find to be successful pitches is ones where there's a story, but most importantly it's when they talk about the business versus a pitch that just is centered around the product,” Teruel began.

With expertise in business development and overall strategies within startups alongside established companies, Teruel maintains that many startups fall for the folly of “creating a solution and then going to look for a problem”.

On the topic, he continued: “Investors want to know that they're basing their investment decisions on many factors including the ability for the founder to execute on the promises and statements that they make.”

This can be achieved by reinforcing the potential success of a market solution through focusing on data and research which establishes a gap in the industry.

Teruel claims that including this data-led research can make for “a much more compelling pitch” than one which is “just centered around how great the solution is”.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

One Year On: Valhalla Investment Summit in Saskatchewan

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:35:34 GMT

Friday 18 March marked one year since the Valhalla Investment Summit in Saskatchewan.

Organized by Startup TNT in the company’s first Sask-based summit, the five-hour event saw Valhalla Private Capital work with early-stage tech startups to improve their access to capital, creating relationships between all parties involved along the way.

The deal screening process offered Saskatewan-based startups an opportunity to receive upwards of $100,000 in seed funding, as well as insights into how best to negotiate deal terms and manage the due diligence process.

Alongside a keynote from Paul Allen - founder of Ancestry and CEO of AI and machine-learning company Soar , who later took part in a fireside chat with Alicia Soulier , founder and CEO of Salon Scale - Startup TNT’s summit saw five of an initial 20 early-stage companies ‘pitch’ to 20-30 investors, who functioned as a holding company to create an investment estimated at $100K in funding.

These entrepreneurs (comprising ArticShelf , Board Checkup , memoryKPR , Omnee and Skill Shark ) were not only invited to introduce their company to a large pool of investors and enablers, but also learned what it takes to scale their startups and gain confidence in both pitching and communicating their company’s values.

The Valhalla Investment Summit in Saskatchewan was won by memoryKPR - an experience which was hailed by founder and CEO Jessica McNaughton as “an incredible experience”.

Discussing her triumph during an installment of Volition’s Founder Chats series in October last year, Jessica elaborated: “ “Winning the summit really helped with the conversations with the rest of the investors, not just because I had all of my stuff in order – I needed to do that for the competition – but also having your first investor takes a little bit of the edge off.”

More information about Jessica McNaughton’s conversation with Volition can be found on the Valhalla Private Capital blog .

Bringing Something Different to the Table

Other features of the event included a panel on “The Founder’s Journey” featuring Catherine Metrycki (founder and CEO of Calia ), Dustin Coupal (co-founder of 54e Dev Studios ) and Mark Wolff ( CEO of MyComply ), followed by a fireside chat on alternative exits with Joe Gill (partner at McKercher LLP ) and Valhalla Private Capital co-founder Rod Brown .

A reverse-pitch between funders and founders from Bluesky Equities, Broad Street Bulls, Golden Opportunities, OKR Financial, Rhino Ventures, Wiegers Holdings also took place during the event, which culminated in a live announcement of the summit’s winner.

Watch last year’s Valhalla Investment Summit in Saskatchewan via the YouTube link below.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Avoiding the ‘Mark Zuckerberg Metaverse’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:28:17 GMT

The latest installment of Valhalla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert series saw Aly Madhavji , managing director at Blockchain Founders Fund ; Jeffrey Manner , general partner at Weave VC ; and Dhawal Shah , co-founder of Frontier discuss the potential of a “Mark Zuckerberg metaverse ” as the digital world continues to evolve.

Speaking with moderator Mark Mitchell , Edmonton Chapter President at Valhalla Private Capital, Aly described the existence of a dystopian metaverse at the hands of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as “a very realistic future that isn't as exciting and bright as we imagined it to be today”.

He claimed that the user-friendly experience of web3 and cryptocurrency is something which is “fought for every day by people building protocols, fighting for decentralization and trying to create better systems”.

However, Aly remarked that CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) may be “the very first sort of dystopian angle that proliferates in a world where our government or central bank has complete oversight and control over our monetary system”.

According to Kristalina Georgieva , managing director at IMF , an estimated 100 countries are exploring CBDCs at one level or another, including the Bahamas, Sweden and China - a country whose use of crypto was openly questioned by Aly during the discussion.

“Their motives for pushing this forward are not the empowerment motives that crypto has been [built] on,” he remarked, noting that “things can change quickly sometimes” in terms of a country’s trust in its government.

‘Potential To Be Misused’

Likewise, Dhawal Shaw admitted that cryptocurrencies and blockchain have the “potential to be misused” to “launder funds off criminal proceeds”, if placed in the wrong hands.

“Unfortunately there's not much that can be done [to remedy this],” Dhawal remarked, likening the downfalls of blockchain to that of the internet “and every other technological innovation” to date.

On the topic, he said that at least 18-20 startups have been fined by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) for failing to maintain records or “facilitating activities which would be otherwise regulated”.

“That's where identity is one of the most important aspects [of blockchain],” Dhawal concluded.

An Identity Crisis

Jeffrey Manner, on the other hand, agreed that blockchain users risk “exposing” themselves through current protocols which do little to anonymise financial records.

Using email addresses - which Jeffrey remarked are an “incredible thing that we take for granted” as an example - the Weave VC general partner hailed crypto as “the rebirth of [web1] ethos”.

He elaborated: “Email is an incredible web1 protocol where you can email anybody in the world and no one can really shut it down.

“The crypto-native way of identifying yourself is a wallet address - it's fully decentralized, kind of like an email address, and this has a ton of advantages.

“The disadvantage,” he added, “is sometimes you want to prove that you own something but you don't want to share your entire history of every financial transaction you've ever made.”

As a result, Jeffrey claimed a “bridge factor” should be implemented in order to protect users from exposing their personal information - a factor which he remarked is currently being worked on by “a lot of very smart people” through privacy-focused protocols in the ecosystem.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: The Inevitable Question of Startup Valuation

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:26:57 GMT

Teruel Carrasco - president of Valhalla Private Capital , co-founder of Radar Endeavour Group Inc and CEO of Lending Assist - has discussed the intricacies of valuing a startup at pre-seed stage.

“There’s a lot of valuation inflation going on, and it's distorting early stage founders' ability to properly value their company,” Teruel began.

With expertise in improving leadership, team-building, business development and overall strategies within startups and established companies alike, Teruel approaches the “inevitable question” of valuation through a range of factors including “ intellectual property, sales, people involved and opportunity”.

“The numbers I hear are all over the place, but there are methodologies to properly state the number,” Teruel said.

Valhalla’s vice president of entrepreneur engagement noted that while some startups are quick to boast $10m valuations, these figures can be industry specific.

On the topic, he explained: “A $10m valuation in a science based company is different than a $10m valuation of a cloud-based app or a cannabis growth company.”

“When putting together a SaaS-based app, for example, the capital requirements to go to market are less than a pharmaceutical company as they don’t need to go through years of rigorous regulatory work such as FDA approvals, testing and trials.”

Through contrasting the “vastly different” capital requirements of pharmaceutical companies to the “less capital intensive” requirements of a Saas-based app, Teruel maintains that a $10m valuation on the latter would typically indicate that the company is “making several million dollars in revenue already”, alongside “a good website and a staff of around 10 people”.

“They're growing, and good things are happening within the company,” Teruel continued.

“A $10m valuation of a pharmaceutical company, however, can still be five or six scientists that are still working through the regulatory hurdles for launch,” he concluded.

Teruel also discusses some best practices for pitching to investors within North America’s startup ecosystem.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

This year’s Tipped Technologies and Industries

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:23:22 GMT

Valhalla Private Capitals’ Grant Lawrence and Teruel Carrasco have unveiled which industries and technologies they believe will be trending upward in the not-too-distant future.

Following suit from Valhalla Private Capital chairman Randy Stewart Thompson - who previously claimed medical tech was “going to become big” in 2022 - Grant Lawrence , president of Valhalla Angels Kelowna and co-president of Valhalla Angels Vancouver, remarked that infrastructures focusing on mental and physical health (propelled by the coronavirus pandemic) will “gain traction” in coming months.

On the other hand Teruel A. Carrasco, president at Valhalla Private Capital, has tipped Web3 [link] as a hot topic for 2022 alongside SaaS (software as a service), which Forbes Technology Council member Ryan Neu noted “ can become highly leveraged investments when done correctly ”.

Read Grant and Teruel’s comments in full below:

Teruel Carrasco, president of Valhalla Private Capital

I see a number of well established categories but a few emerging ones as well. Web3 related technologies are fast emerging from a highly niche/specialized investment category to now entering the mainstream category that is attracting a number of VC and Angel investors to make big bets.

The others include SaaS based enterprise solutions so B to B. SaaS based opportunities continue to be attractive with low barriers to investment and angel investors tend to understand. Capital requirements are generally lower with high upside and quick liquidity events relative to other categories like pharma (deep tech).

Alongside the metaverse, Web3 was discussed at Valhalla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert event yesterday (1 March), which was moderated by Mark Mitchell , Edmonton Chapter President at Valhalla Private Capital and featured Blockchain Founders Fund managing director Aly Madhavji , Frontier co-founder Dhawl Shah and Jeffrey Manner, general partner at Weave VC .

Grant Lawrence , president of Valhalla Angels Kelowna and co-president of Valhalla Angels Vancouver

I will talk briefly about a few areas that I see continuing to grow and gain traction. Health, both mental health and physical health where drivers are all the related COVID issues and a need to reduce costs and provide better health outcomes; this includes subscription based health, miniaturization of medical devices to cover multiple tasks with machine learning and artificial intelligence playing more important roles (a modern day tricorder and of course new molecules being created for medicine.

Another area is driving better efficiencies and safety in the traditional industries <is it safe to call these blue collar industries such as construction (residential, commercial and industrial) and I believe we will also see a push for green, carbon neutral mining and the associated supporting software and hardware tech.

Hybrid solutions will gain further traction as we attempt to get back to F2F (fact-to-face) meetings where some people opt to connect remotely over video. And the metaverse (consumer) and omniverse (enterprise, business) will move forward with starts and stops as the hardware becomes more user friendly and the software stack more integrated. In particular, the omniverse holds the great promise of testing tangible products and process (think manufacturing) before actually physically putting anything place. You get to play and test what you want to build in the digital world, creating a digital twin where physics can hold ‘true’ to matching the real world. This will save huge amounts of time and effort.

As the world electrifies the need for creating the energy and then storing it will affect everything we do.

Grid-level storage and consumption points (charging stations, home and office lighting, heating/cooling etc) will be growing in popularity. This is a huge undertaking and is a trillion-dollar opportunity.

Earlier this year, presidents of Valhalla Private Capital’s Edmonton and Kelowna chapters claimed they would be bracing for “ substantial growth ” in 2022.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Aly Madhavj on Web3

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:04:09 GMT

Aly Madhavji is an internationally acclaimed author and the managing director at Blockchain Founders Fund (BFF) which invests in and venture builds top-tier startups.

However earlier this year (25 January), BFF announced the launch of a $75m venture capital fund to support high-quality pre-seed or seed-stage projects in the cryptocurrency, metaverse and Web3 space.

On the topic, Aly told Blockchain News : "We're very excited by the enthusiasm and support from key industry leaders to back entrepreneurs that will shape the Web3 ecosystem.”

According to Fintech & Finance News, the first investments from BFF II have been made into companies including FXDX , GRID , RD Land , Rebelbots , Health Hero , The Apocalyptics , FuseFi , Cross the Ages , and Dogami .

The metaverse and Web3 are set to be discussed at Valhalla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert event on 1 March.

Moderated by Mark Mitchell , Edmonton Chapter President at Valhalla Private Capital, the virtual event will feature Blockchain Founders Fund managing director Aly Madhavji , Frontier co-founder Dhawal Shah and Jeffrey Manner , general partner at Weave VC .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: What’s Web3 and The Metaverse and Why You Should Care

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:02:35 GMT

The latest instalment of Valhalla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert series (taking place on 1 March) is set to cover Web3, the metaverse and its impacts on investors and startups alike.

Moderated by Mark Mitchell , Edmonton Chapter President at Valhalla Private Capital, the virtual event - titled ‘ What’s Web3 and The Metaverse and Why You Should Care ’ - will feature Blockchain Founders Fund managing director Aly Madhavji , Frontier co-founder Dhawl Shah and Jeffrey Manner, general partner at Weave VC .

Aly Madhavji

Aly Madhavji is an internationally acclaimed author, publishing three books and a monthly columnist for the leading blockchain magazine. He is the managing director at Blockchain Founders Fund (BFF) which invests in and venture builds top-tier startups. He is a limited partner of Loyal VC and Draper Goren Holm . He is a senior blockchain fellow at INSEAD and was recognized as a “Blockchain 100” global leader by Lattice80. Aly serves as a board member of CryptoStar Corp , Mechanical Technology Incorporated and has served on various advisory boards including the University of Toronto ’s Governing Council, which manages a $2.5B budget. He is a mentor with Chinaccelerator , an elite accelerator program operated by the venture fund SOSV with $855M+ AUM and the Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX).

Aly holds a Master of Global Affairs as a Schwarzman Scholar from Tsinghua University (清华大学), a Master of Business Administration from INSEAD (Singapore and France), and a Bachelor of Commerce with Distinction from the University of Toronto.

Dhawl Shah

Dhawl Shah is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Frontier , A Web3 DeFi Wallet, subsequently, he has been a speaker at several events and has managed more than 70 early-stage investments in the Web3, DeFi, Metaverse, and GameFi. He is based out of the Greater Toronto Region.

Jeffrey Manner is a general partner at Weave VC . He is the current head of BD & Partnerships - Metabox Labs, and has previously held roles at Galaxy Digital, First Coin Capital and Consensus Core. He has more than seven years of blockchain, crypto and Web3 experience, alongside a MSc in economics.

Valhalla Private Capital members and other interested parties can join the event via Eventbrite .

Previous ‘Ask An Expert’ events hosted by Valhalla Private Capital explored the ag tech industry and risk and rewards .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Dhawal Shah on DeFi - ‘The Most Effective Use Case for Blockchain’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 03:00:05 GMT

Dhawal Shah , co-founder of Web3 DeFi Wallet Frontier , has explained the nuances and benefits of DeFi decentralised finance) and GameFi on managing early-stage investments.

In an article written by Dhawal for Coin Crunch , the Frontier co-founder - who has managed more than 70 early-stage investments across Web3, DeFi, Metaverse, and GameFi - hailed decentralised finance as “the most effective use case for blockchain”.

On the topic, he elaborated: “In the traditional finance world or Centralised Finance (CeFi), you are able to save capital, deposit and withdraw, invest, lend and borrow, send and r eceive payments, maintain multiple accounts and so on.”

However, DeFi differs from its centralised counterpart as it “requires no regulator or intermediary” (such as a bank, which provides a service fee for its contributions), which Dhawl claims makes “financial services more accessible, more efficient, less expensive and globally linked”.

The metaverse and Web3 (including DeFi) are set to be discussed at Valh alla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert event on 1 March.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Enter The Metaverse

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:56:19 GMT

In 2018, Enter The Spider Verse saw Brooklyn teenager Miles Morales develop powers to become the one and only Spider-Man.

However, Miles soon realizes he’s not the only Spiderman as six other iterations of the character enter his world, establishing the “Spider Verse”.

Alongside winning an Academy Award Best Animated Featur e, the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film, Enter The Spider Verse is also a great comparator to the digitally-minded metaverse.

As Bernard Marr & Co explains, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is currently endeavouring to create his own metaverse - a social platform "that you're inside of, rather than just looking at."

One of the ways this is set to be achieved is through virtual reality - which Facebook has invested heavily since acquiring headset manufacturer Oculus in 2014 - theoretically creating virtual spaces for users to interact however they please.

Operating outside of the norms of interactions via social media (Wordle, for example), New York Times proposes that the metaverse is on its to becoming a “fully realized digital world that exists beyond the analog one in which we live.”

Speaking to CNET Zuckerberg elaborated: “We want to get as many people as possible to be able to experience virtual reality and be able to jump into the metaverse and to have these social experiences within that.”

Another example of a so-called Metaverse is interactive game Fortnite, which evolved from a Battle Royale-style game to incorporate dance parties, voice chatting and virtually-hosted performances.

On the topic Matthew Weissinger, the vice president of marketing at Epic (which owns Fortnite), remarked: “We’re building this thing called the metaverse — a social place.”

In what Forbes has described as “the beginning stages of an innovative revolution”, Web3 [link] and the metaverse are expected to work hand-in-hand in order to change the way people work, play and interact with each other, with a specific focus on virtual reality.

The metaverse and Web3 are set to be discussed at Valh alla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert event on 1 March.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: The Dawn of Web3

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:41:38 GMT

First came Web1, marking the first iteration of the world wide web.

Next came Web2, sparking the dawn of user-generated content which allowed virtual communities to be established via social platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tinder and (most recently) TikTok.

However, it appears we have reached the next step in the internet’s evolution - Web3.

According to Wired , Web3 can be defined as “a decentralized online ecosystem based on the blockchain.

“Platforms and apps built on Web3 won’t be owned by a central gatekeeper,” Wired continues, “but rather by users, who will earn their ownership stake by helping to develop and maintain those services.”

Originally coined as “Web 3.0” by Polkadot founder and Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood (now founder and president of Web3 Foundation , known as the “father of Web3”) in 2014, Web3 is an attempt to finesse the regulatory pitfalls of its predecessor, Web2.

On the topic of Web3’s “less trust, more truth” approach, Wood explained: “Cryptography, at its basic level, allows me to talk to my friend but for the communication channel to be public or go through a third party with me still having a good level of expectation, credible expectation, that it will be a private conversation.

“It will be as private as if we were in a field and chatting to each other and could see there was nobody around.”

Framing Web3 as a “larger sociopolitical movement” which steps away from “arbitrary authorities” such as standard regulatory bodies, the software would remove censorship from social platforms such as Twitter as (according to Etherium ) “control is decentralized”.

While Etherium also notes that there are currently limitations to Web3 - including cost, accessibility and scalability; leading Web3 to be deemed a “work in progress” by Forbes - the concept of using blockchain to store data online also means that transactions can take place between two people without the need for a third party such as a service provider or government.

It is set to tie in with the “metaverse” - a concept which will be discussed alongside Web3 at Valhalla Private Capital’s Ask An Expert event on 1 March.

Moderated by Mark Mitchell , CEO at Valhalla Private Capital, the virtual event will feature Blockchain Founders Fund managing director Aly Madhavji , Frontier co-founder Dhawl Shah and Jeffrey Manner, general partner at Weave VC .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Disruption and Dragon’s Den Investing

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:37:57 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has looked back at the impact of “dragon’s den investing” on his decade-spanning career as an investor.

“I was thinking about 32 year old me, ” Randy began, “that’s when it all started”.

Randy’s first venture into business was Alberta Supernet - one of Alberta’s first internet service providers which was sold to Cyberion , a subsidiary of NorSat , in 1996.

After leaving the company, however, Randy revolutionized Alberta’s working model for investing through his “Dragon’s Den approach”, which he had adopted four years before the TV show’s Canadian inception in 2006, for which he was a judge for the first two seasons.

“I like to say I had a face for radio,” Randy continued, “but the reason they asked us to do [the show] was that there were only four groups in the country that were putting entrepreneurs in a room with investors.

“There weren't a ton of us, and so it made sense,” he added.

More than 15 years since its small-screen debut, Dragon’s Den has been running for 16 seasons and earned two Canadian Screen Awards for Best Reality/Competition Series, alongside two Gemini Awards for Best Reality Program or Series.

On the topic, Randy remarked: “You're 32,with this fresh idea that nobody's doing of putting investors and entrepreneurs together.

A self-proclaimed “old dog”, Randy maintains that his experiences as an angel investor are more valuable than trying to make Valhalla appear “disruptive and hip” in the startup ecosystem.

“The core of what we're doing is still cool, but it's really hard to figure out how to reinvent that and get comfortable with it,” Randy said.

“I used to think we had to be disruptive and hip, but I don't think that's where we're going - we're moving towards street confidence and trust as a traditional brand.”

Randy has also discussed how best to avoid the pitfalls of “ soul crushing ” and nurture North America’s startup ecosystem, with reference to the methods of The Apprentice’s Lord Alan Sugar.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Key To Proprietary Deal Flow

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:36:18 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has outlined why he predicts proprietary deal flow will be “ the only way to get ahead in the game for the next five years ”.

Elaborating on his view of Valhalla Private Capital as a “ banquet ” at which entrepreneurs and investors alike can work together to nurture North America’s startup ecosystem, Randy said: “We have to have a good feast at the tent, we want you to come to us first before we go talk to everyone else, and I know full well that all of my brethren and sisters in the industry are doing exactly the same thing I am.”

Randy maintains that this proprietary deal flow will be achieved through Valhalla’s Basecamp - an intensive hands-on bootcamp in which entrepreneurs and angel investors can gain expert insight into the startup ecosystem in a bid to “get ahead” in today’s startup ecosystem.

To date, more than 1,100 entrepreneurs have participated in Valhalla Private Capital’s programs, helping those involved to collectively raise upwards of $500m in capital.

On the topic, he continued: “Valhalla is the place where startups and entrepreneurs want to go first, discover their next steps and know they are looked after.”

Randy has also discussed how best to avoid the pitfalls of “ soul crushing ” and nurture North America’s startup ecosystem, with reference to the methods of The Apprentice’s Lord Alan Sugar.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Standing Out from the Crowd

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:32:33 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has outlined how best for entrepreneurs to gain the attention of investors when hoping to pitch their startup.

With an estimated 400 applications to pitch through Valhalla every month, Randy admits “there's a good chance you're not going to get our attention” without going the extra mile to stand out from the crowd.

“You don't just put a resume in for a job and hope somebody calls you because you said you’re a nice person and you work really well with people - the other 399 said exactly what you did, so what's your reach out strategy?”

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Randy claims gaining the attention of investors is “hard” for entrepreneurs as there is “no relationship building” outside of the virtual norms of Zoom meetings and drab emails.

He continued: “There's no hanging out and having a beer, so you have to distinguish yourself from the crowd in order to be one of the people in that pile that we want to reach out to.

“Really creative entrepreneurs figure out a way to actually work through that,” Randy concluded.

TechRound encourages startups to stay informed, focus on innovative strength and customer service, and find strategic partners in a bid to stand out from competitors in 2022.

Randy also maintains that the relationship between “artificial intelligence and HR” will be an important one moving forward - in spite of being an admittedly “weird space” - and will be a startup category which he will be keeping an eye out for in 2022 .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Talking Business: Pitching With Passion

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:30:36 GMT

Teruel Carrasco - president Valhalla Private Capital, co-founder of Radar Endeavour Group Inc and CEO of Lending Assist - has outlined some best practices for pitching to investors within North America’s startup ecosystem.

With current investments including Copperstone Technologies Ltd , Radar IT Systems Inc and G2V Optics Inc , Teruel works with startups and established companies alike to improve leadership, team-building, business development and overall strategies.

However, Teruel maintains that a focus on emotional connection can be a defining characteristic when pitching to investors.

“Whether you like it or not, there is an emotional connection that is taking place when you're pitching,” Teruel began. “You can have the best numbers in the world, you can have the best organized slide deck in the world, but they are signaling for that passion and that connection.”

This emotional connection, Teruel remarked, can be nurtured through a shift in vernacular - moving away from the jargon of fellow industry professionals to better explain the intricacies of an entrepreneur's company to parties who may not be experts on the topic.

On the topic, he continued: “I'm always telling the startups to think about their audience.

“You're speaking to 40-50 accredited investors who may or may not have knowledge of your industry, and so how are you going to create that interest and bring that passion forward when they don't understand the context of why your startup is great?”

Teruel concluded: “Those are the things I'm always coaching for, among other things, when I'm speaking to entrepreneurs as they prepare to go in front of an investor.”

Likewise, Valhalla Private Capital chairman Randy Stewart Thompson has also opened up about how best to avoid “ crushing souls ” within startups.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Chapter Presidents Gear Up for ‘Substantial Growth’ in 2022

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:10:42 GMT

Presidents of Valhalla Private Capital’s Edmonton and Kelowna chapters are bracing for “substantial growth” in 2022.

While Edmonton chapter president Marco Donadeo maintains Calgary’s startup ecosystem is set to “take off” - in keeping with chairman Randy Stewart Thompson ’s remarks of “ really solid opportunities ” in the region - Kelowna chapter president Grant Lawrence says a decrease in government financial support for entrepreneurs will lead to better deals for Valhalla members.

Marco Donadeo, Edmonton Chapter President

My predictions are that our chapter and ecosystem will continue to grow substantially in 2022. It has shown through the building of both entrepreneurial and investor infrastructure being placed in Calgary.

This ecosystem is about to take off, companies are being incentivized to look for capital here, as the money is opening up to the entrepreneurs with more ease.

This will result in more startup's coming through our network, increasing better deal access. Our chapter will respond with an appropriate amount of investment!

Grant Lawrence, Kelowna Chapter President

We are going to see a continued growing interest in the startup asset class this year and the terms of these investments will continue to move towards convertible notes and hybrid-SAFEs and we will also see an increase in the number of micro-funds focused on this space.

With the government slowing down the financial support (salary support etc.) there will be a wave of startups that were wisely using this support going to the market to raise capital so I expect there to be a further uptick in quality deals for Valhalla members.

Mark Mitchell, Edmonton Chapter President

The Alberta technology economy is poised for substantial growth through 2022.

More companies are entering or "starting up" in the province and more capital is being dedicated towards the venture ecosystem.

The Valhalla Angels Alberta chapter expects this to substantially increase the amount of deals done and capital deployed through our network in 2022.

Camille Hunt, Vancouver Chapter President

If i had to make any predictions for Vancouver they would involve web3, crypto and NFTs - this is where we are going to see a lot of new hype, resulting in investment.

In addition, healthtech will also be a point of interest in 2022, especially with Vancouver’s depth of good companies who have made it, including Abcellera .

Evelyn Cerda, Regina Chapter President

In 2022, we will continue to see a good number of new startups coming into the pipeline.

Most likely, Sasktchewan will see a larger number of companies raising investment rounds - a combination of new startups and companies that managed to postpone fund raising in 2020 and 2021.

There seems to be a more positive outlook for investment this year, and I think that at the end of 2022, our province will continue to see an increase in venture capital (from the +$200M in 2021, as per CVCA Q3 report ).

Although a large amount will still be allocated to scaling companies, Saskatchewan's startup ecosystem has been garnering attention from outside investors, and this will be a valuable strategy for our ecosystem's growth.

However, I do see our local angels and early-stage investors playing a more active role this year as we grow our confidence in investing in new technologies and first time founders; and I suspect that mechanisms such as the STSI ( Saskatchewan Technology Startup Investment ) tax credit and the new self-certified investor exemption will help incentivize higher levels of involvement.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Chairman on the Performance of Canada’s Startup Ecosystem in 2021

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:08:17 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has discussed the performance of Valhalla’s chapters during the past year.

Randy remarked that both Calgary and Edmonton had “thrived in hyperlocal ” consumer habits during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, “which is interesting”.

While Vancouver took “a little bit of a backseat” due to a change in regional support from Seattle and San Francisco - as opposed to Calgary’s relationship with Houston and Dallas, which Randy maintains is less dependent - Randy claimed that he saw “real focus and real attention spent on good companies being built in The Prairies”.

Likewise, Randy celebrated “really solid opportunities” for investors across Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina in Calgary, as well as BC’s success as signposted by November’s Valhalla Investment Summit BC , powered by Volition .

Over the past four years, Valhalla has managed and implemented four Investment Summit programs in provinces including Saskatchewan and British Columbia, each of which costs more than $100,000 to develop and nurture local investor communities to facilitate capital for early-stage entrepreneurs in their province.

Nurturing North American Startups in 2022

According to kwfinder.com , last year saw 18,100 searches on Google per month for “how to start a business” in the UK alone, indicating a strong uptick on the number of people starting businesses in the depths of the pandemic. However, figures from the Bureau of Labor indicate that two of every ten businesses fail within their first year of operations, while Startup Genome notes that 34% of startup failures stem from a lack of product market fit.

Product market fit is one of many topics addressed within Valhalla Private Capital’s Basecamp - an intensive hands-on bootcamp in which entrepreneurs can gain expert insight into the startup ecosystem in a bid to “get ahead” in today’s startup ecosystem.

To date, more than 1,100 entrepreneurs have participated in Valhalla Private Capital’s programs, helping those involved to collectively raise upwards of $500m in capital.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Year Ahead and ‘Valhalla 2.0’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:06:49 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has discussed a need for “Valhalla 2.0” as the coronavirus pandemic continues to affect North America’s startup ecosystem.

“Pre-pandemic I was flying all over the world, and feeling like a jetsetter, a global citizen,” Randy began.

In fact, since 2014 Valhalla Private Capital has been invited by international donors, universities, business networks and governments across more than 25 developing countries - including a partnership with African Development Bank and contributions to Vietnam’s Swiss Entrepreneurship Program and US Department of State's Tigers@Mekong Program across Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand - to share our insights into investing and raising capital. As a result of these efforts, Valhalla’s networks mobilized $3m in investments and unlocked an additional $9m of local capital for entrepreneurs.

At the same time, Valhalla has managed and implemented four Investment Summit programs in the past four years in provinces including Saskatchewan and British Columbia. Each program costs more than $100,000 to develop and nurtures local investor communities to facilitate capital for early-stage entrepreneurs in their province.

Taking note of the “hyperlocal” nature of both the startup ecosystem and wider society - “it's now your house, your community, your grocer”, the Valhalla CEO remarked - Randy maintains businesses will have to readjust in order to counteract the fall of globalisation.

“We're built wrong - now it's time for Valhalla 2.0.”

We need to get to a place where we're meeting people,” Randy continued, “Valhalla 2.0 isn’t getting on a plane and going to Bogot á .”

Instead, Randy believes that in the next six months hybrid events will continue to be a saving grace for startups - a startup category Randy claims he will be keeping an eye out for in 2022 .

Evolving his metaphor of Valhalla Private Capital as a banquet tent , Randy said: “The tent analogy is really good: you can't put one peg up, you literally have to have everybody on a tent peg and it's ‘123 go’.

“If four or five of the people aren't ready with their tent peg, it's not going up.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Valhalla Approach to Crushing Souls

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:04:03 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has opened up about how best to nurture North America’s startup ecosystem.

Discussing the risk of being seen as a “soul crusher” by entrepreneurs, Randy explained: “If you bring me a really horrible idea, my job is not to be the soul crusher - my job is actually to say ‘I'm not interested, but if I could put you on these steps for the next 90 days…’”

This is achieved through Valhalla’s Basecamp - an intensive hands-on bootcamp in which entrepreneurs and angel investors can gain expert insight into the startup ecosystem in a bid to “ get ahead ” in today’s startup ecosystem.

As a result of this approach - which has been finessed through years of pattern recognition (which Randy claims is the company’s “ secret tool ” - the Valhalla Private Capital CEO maintains that he can help entrepreneurs to gauge whether their business idea “should even be worked on” before they take more serious steps towards their business, such as quitting other jobs in pursuit of startup success.

Randy concluded: “There's a way to be the soul crusher but still give people the move forward, and that goes to what's super important in 2022.”

This viewpoint is maintained by Alan Sugar - British business mogul, chairman of Amshold Group (which owns Amscreen and Amsprop ), founder of Amstrad (which he sold to Sky for £125 million in 2007) and longstanding host of The Apprentice, which is gearing up to release its 16th season to date.

Remarking on his successes, Sugar famously explained: “A good leader is not necessarily the most popular person in their business, but the best ones are liked because they are respected for their clarity and vision.”

Although he is commonly perceived as an intimidating presence on The Apprentice - in which business heads compete for a chance to work with him - Sugar’s efforts earned him a seat on the Business Council for Britain, as well as a knighthood for his services to business.

Randy has also discussed his top startup categories for 2022 .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Reintroducing Valhalla Private Capital

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:02:36 GMT

Valhalla Private Capital : mobilizing Canadian mid-market lessons to developing countries across the globe.

Valhalla Private Capital is one of Canada's most active early-stage investment firms, facilitating over $75m from its network of 120 investors into an estimated 270 early-stage entrepreneurs.

With almost two decades of investing experience, Valhalla Private Capital has garnered the expertise of its founders to train entrepreneurs, investors, and regional ecosystems across Western Canada and further afield.

Adopting a unique approach to traditional impact investors , Valhalla Private Capital works with entrepreneurs and investors alike to develop the most successful deal structures for both parties. Based on the company’s commitment to support developing markets in establishing Canadian investment communities, Valhalla Private Capital functions as a catalyst investor and such will only invest when local investors co-invest.

A departure from the working models of consulting organization and development firms, Valhalla Private Capital’s decade-spanning experience in program management and international development aims to unlock capital from new investors to support growing entrepreneurs, alongside government and international donors.

These capabilities have been adopted to manage and track multi-million dollar programs, including the establishment of a single community hub for coaching and angel investing, created in collaboration with TEC Edmonton.

Since 2014, we have been invited by international donors, universities, business networks and governments across more than 25 developing countries to share our insights into investing and raising capital. As a result of these recent efforts, Valhalla’s networks mobilized $3m in investments and unlocked an additional $9m of local capital for entrepreneurs.

Working on behalf of African Development Bank , Valhalla Private Capital designed and delivered training for new investment fund managers across Africa in a bid to better understand how to raise funding, develop a strategy, train staff and yield win-win investments.

Over the past three years, Valhalla has managed and implemented four Investment Summit programs in provinces including Saskatchewan and British Columbia. Each program costs more than $100,000 to develop and nurtures local investor communities to facilitate capital for early-stage entrepreneurs in their province.

During this time, Valhalla Private Capital has also been catalyzing early-stage financing in Vietnam through building up the country’s investment community capacity, providing advice to local ecosystem organizations, and coaching entrepreneurs. We have also helped to increase capital in the region by advising on structuring investment to meet the needs of local SMEs and Vietnamese financial systems' regulations.

Valhalla has facilitated an estimated USD$10m worth of funding in Vietnam in the past two years via the Swiss Entrepreneurship Program , which aims to strengthen emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems in countries including Albania, Serbia and Peru. Through the initiative, Valhalla has coached more than 100 entrepreneurs in preparing their ventures to receive outside financing. The company has also mentored three Vietnamese investment groups to raise and structure investment funds.

Alongside providing critical support to the US Department of State's Tigers@Mekong Program by training and coaching entrepreneurs and investors across Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand; Valhalla Private Capital was also responsible for the development of an active early-stage investment fund (Uno Rondo Growth Capital), which invests directly in Latin America-based startup companies.

The fund's goal is to blend debt and equity investments (65:35) to be a fit-for-purpose investment vehicle, reflecting the current state of early-stage investment within Latin America. During this program, seven individual projects were connected with an average contract value of $25,000 for a total of $175,000.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Chairman's Top Startup Categories for 2022

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 02:00:50 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has revealed some of the startup categories he will be keeping an eye out for in 2022.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Randy maintains that medical tech which can support the Covid-19 self-testing process is “going to become big” in coming months.

This perspective was also recently supported by Deloitte , whose annual Tech Trends Report hailed technological advances which championed the “continued resiliency needed with COVID-19”.

With roughly 400 applications to pitch through Valhalla every month, Randy also believes the relationship between “artificial intelligence and HR” will be an important one moving forward, in spite of being an admittedly “weird space”.

Another point of interest for the Valhalla CEO is “the hybrid event space”, which he remarks has “got even worse” since the pandemic began.

On the topic, Randy elaborated: “If your boss sends you to a virtual trade show right now, you just want to slit your throat, right? Nobody's in the breakout rooms, nobody's in the conferences.

“The hybrid event space just fucking sucks, and so I think whoever creates an amazing hybrid event platform is going to kill it. That's a killer,” Randy concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Chairman on ‘The Only Way to Get Ahead in the Next Five Years’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:57:02 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has hailed that proprietary deal flow as “the only way to get ahead in the game for the next five years”.

“There's so much money on the street,” Randy began,” brand and reputation is one thing, but at the end of the day even that's not counting anymore - there's just so much good deal flow and so many investors that there's almost a race of 20 investors into the same deal.

“You see the same investors all over the place, but the rest of the deal flow isn't being talked to at all, and so trying to talk to that deal flow - letting them know why they're not getting pursued and how to get pursued - that's helpful for them.

As a result, Randy claimed that “You have to create your own deal flow” in order to “get ahead” in today’s startup ecosystem.

“If everyone's already in the deal, and you're just getting a thin sliver of it,” Randy concluded.

Randy also discussed the “ secret tool ” behind Valhalla’s success to date.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Private Capital’s ‘Secret Tool’

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:53:59 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has revealed the “secret tool” behind Valhalla’s success to date.

Reminiscing about the “early days” of Valhalla, Randy recalled: “Jan [Lederman, director of Valhalla Private Capital] would call me up and say, ‘Hey, we're doing a weekend camp in rural Manitoba’.

“I would get on a plane or I would drive to meet 20 startups, and I just loved it. There was no place I wouldn't drive or I wouldn't fly, no time that was too late at night.”

Randy maintains that his passion for pitches, stories and the startup ecosystem - paired with a knack for “pattern recognition” amid pitching startups - are Valhalla’s secret to success.

“You can teach yourself what is a good deal, but you can't teach yourself to want to get up in the morning and drive to rural Manitoba. You can't train that part,” he concluded.

Today, Valhalla Private Capital is one of Canada's most active early-stage investment firms, facilitating over $75m from its network of 120 investors into an estimated 270 early-stage entrepreneurs.

Randy also recently recounted the creative process behind Valhalla Private Capital’s Viking-inspired name .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

A Seat At The Banquet

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:50:09 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has opened up about the creative process at the heart of Valhalla Private Capital’s seafaring, Scandinavian name.

First launched as part of The VentureAlberta Forum - of which Randy acted as CEO - VA Angels was formed in 2003 before rebranding to Valhalla Private Capital in 2017.

“Valhalla is the viking heaven, but it was also the sense of the big banquet tent,” Randy began.

With a shared focus on entrepreneurs and investors, Randy claims “the big banquet tent” allows all parties involved to work together in a bid to nurture Alberta’s startup ecosystem.

On the topic, he continued: “At Valhalla, we've always felt that our investors are super important to us, and we'll do anything we can to make sure they get good exits; but our entrepreneurs are also super important to us, and we want to make make sure they understand what their expectations should be.

“Everybody at the party is important. That's the big tent.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ten Questions to Address In Your Pitch

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:48:41 GMT

Crafting an effective investment pitch is about much more than a fancy presentation - it’s about showcasing your business in a language investors understand.

It’s also about highlighting why you will be successful in your business, not just because you are passionate (although it does help) but by demonstrating that you understand the critical success factors driving your business and have taken steps to address them, reducing the risk of failure along the way. That is the beating heart of what investors are looking for.

Businesses which peak the interest of risk capital investors must have the bandwidth for fast, significant growth in order to drive the kind of three-to-five year returns that the investor will need to earn to compensate for the risk being taken.

For this reason, risk capital investors are looking for some very specific information in investment pitches, and - given that they may see upwards of 100 business plans per month - they want this information to be delivered as briefly and concisely as possible.

Here are 10 questions to ask to peak the interest of risk capital investors:

1. Who are you and what is your business?

Provide a short one-liner about your business so listeners will have a frame of reference for both yourself and your concept.

2. What is the market opportunity?

Is there a problem in the marketplace where potential customers are crying out for a solution? Do customers want your product, or do they need it?

3. What is the size of the opportunity?

Are you solving a problem for hundreds, thousands, or millions of potential customers?

4. What is your solution?

Go into a little more detail about how your solution will solve the market pain. Why is your solution unique? Do you have some validation that the market will accept it?

5. Who are your competitors?

There are always competitors and a current solution to displace - who are they and what is their solution? Why is your solution different, or better, than what’s already out there?

6. Who, specifically, is your customer and how do you find them repeatedly?

Market access typically is the biggest challenge facing startups - who is your target market, and how are you going to access this market? Is your sales strategy efficient and scalable?

7. What is your business model?

How are you going to make money, and how much are you going to make? What is the dynamic between the size of the market, market share and profit margins? Is your business model scalable? That is, do the marginal costs shrink as volumes increase?

8. What are the timelines and capital requirements?

How much money do you require to get to first revenues, positive cash flow, and profitability?

9. Who is the management team?

Is there deep domain expertise on the team? Does the team have the capacity to execute the commercialization plan? Are there gaps in the team? Can the gaps be backfilled? Is the founder the key shareholder? Is the founder or management team coachable?

10. Is there a potential exit opportunity?

Is this a business that will be of interest to a strategic partner? If so, what attributes are the strategics looking for and can the business satisfy them?

The True Nature of your Business Opportunity

Of course, many different types of businesses and business models can be successful, even though they may not all meet the profile of a high growth potential business suitable for risk capital investment.

These questions will assist you (and potential investors) in understanding the true nature of your business opportunity. At worst, it’ll be a handy tool in assessing whether the business is worth your effort, which could save you a ton of time, money and heartache.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

VPC Director on the ‘Unwritten Sexism’ of Angel Investing

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:43:59 GMT

Jan Lederman , director of Valhalla Private Capital and expert coach at WeRaise - an initiative which supports women-led companies in attracting and raising capital - has opened up about the issue of disparity within angel investing.

Discussing WeRaise’s Valhalla-implemented program, which has supported businesses in scaling, growing their profits and raising investments, Jan detailed the “unwritten sexism” of investing in North America.

“I'm a feminist at heart, direct from my early high school university days in the 1970s - which in North America was a very active time for women's rights - and the law played a really large role on that,” Jan began.

“Family law, reproductive rights and equality law were all at the root of those early struggles. I was involved in it a lot in my university days and my life partner has been involved in it throughout her career.”

Valhalla’s director hailed the opportunity to work with female founders as part of the World Bank's WeRaise program - which supports 12 female Pakistani entrepreneurs as they endeavor to raise outside capital - as an opportunity to “go back to [her] roots”.

However, while Jan remarked her efforts in working with female founders across the globe usually take place “on [her] own time”, she celebrated the “tremendous consistencies” in those receiving coaching support in spite of “a constant barrage of questions” from investors.

According to data from the Angel Capital Association , women make up just a fifth (22%) of America’s angel investors.

On the topic, Jan continued: “Female founders have a more difficult time raising capital, and investors - whether they're female or male - tend to ask female founders different kinds of questions about their businesses.

“They ask questions that tend to be more passive and negative. We find in North America, there's less overt sexism and more unwritten sexism, but those are there for sure.”

Jan condemned the issue of sexism in raising capital as an “assault” on the ego of those involved, due to juggling work, family commitments and a “constant barrage of questions” from investors.

Shazia Khan , co-founder of Pakistan-based tech company EcoEnergy (which benefitted from WeRaise’s program), said that the business had to put policies in place to facilitate the issues faced by middle and lower-class women in the workplace.

There's so many more challenges I feel that exist for Pakistani women,” Shazia began, “even for us to hire and retain women has been a challenge.”

“We were missing out on a lot of very talented staff just because they can't make it into the office without being harassed or groped.”

As a result, EcoEnergy allowed people to work from home so they no longer had to go to their workplace.

Watch the full discussion via WeRaise’s Facebook page .

Valhalla Private Capital has taken steps to champion female investors and entrepreneurs across North America and further afield. You can read more about them on our blog post: The Valhalla Approach to Gender Equality in Angel Investing .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Eco-Energy’s Shazia Khan on the Benefits of World Bank’s WeRaise Program

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:42:08 GMT

Shazia Khan , co-founder of Pakistan-based tech non-profit EcoEnergy , has praised her experiences with WeRaise’s Valhalla-implemented program which supports businesses to scale, grow their profits and raise investments.

Discussing her experience of the program with Jan Lederman , director of Valhalla Private Capital and expert coach at WeRaise , Shazia detailed her journey from EcoEnergy’s inception in 2012, to optimizing her core business and landing one the few deals closed by women led companies across Pakistan in 2021.

Read Shazia’s experiences below:

When we came into the program we had a stable core business. Our business is one that revolves around solar energy installations across Pakistan. We had just added on an additional service - which was an operations and maintenance contract that we provide to our customers and to anybody who has solar - but we were looking to build out this new platform, which for us was a digital platform to connect customers to solar suppliers, installers and financiers.

We wanted to raise a Series A that would support the development and the scale of this new digital platform, but we realized over the course of the WeRaise program that if we could optimize our (really good) core business we would have enough money to invest in building out the platform at a slower pace. The consequence of not raising that big Series A round would be that we wouldn't be deluding ourselves - we could go a little bit more slowly and the growth could be a little bit more organic.

What do you actually need?

The most work that we did was around our story - the strength of what we've built and figuring out the way to talk about that - and to objectively identify what our future potential streams of revenue will be. When we started we had this new deck for this new model, but it didn't include anything that we've already built. We have a company that we've built over the course of five years, we've penetrated the market at a steady clip, we've dominated many markets (including the off-grid pay-as-you-go-solar sector), so we just felt like the new one really wasn't very inclusive of what we already had done and achieved. Valuing what we had and figuring out how to optimize that was the key insight that we had.

If the WeRaise program had been different and the coaches had been different - maybe like a bunch of VCs saying “go after the big money” - we maybe would have just succumbed to the temptation, which we were starting to do. Jan had a very measured approach of “what do you actually need? What have you already built? What do you need to continue to build and how much money do you really need to get there?” That was greatly influential for me.

How do you withstand this pressure, particularly over the last couple of years, when you see all this money flooding into Pakistan?

Well, I'm not interested in raising a bunch of money and then the company breaking down after a year because we don't know how to absorb that funding. I'm more interested in building something, as I've done in the past, that can stand the test of time and knows how to innovate. We've done that actually quite successfully. We've reached additional market segments every year and we've been increasing the revenue that we've been able to generate quarter on quarter.

I started a long time ago, and at the time that I started there wasn't any money and it was a very hard sell. There wasn't anybody in Pakistan that had any money. All of the money that I raised in my seed round - about two-and-a-half-million dollars in quasi equity and $3 million debt facility - all of that was raised from outside Pakistan, and it was very difficult to raise because in 2017 nobody was interested in investing in Pakistan and there was nobody in Pakistan, who is investing in the startup space. All of a sudden money started flowing in, people saw this great opportunity in Pakistan and Jan really enabled me to stand my ground.

Even though all this money is rushing in and there's this river of excitement, money and funding where it's never been available, and I could have been taken away by that wave. I'm really grateful to Jan and for the program for explaining that just because money is available doesn't mean that the terms that will be offered out will be the most favorable to you as a founder, and it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be best for you, or your company or the growth of your company.

You're much more likely to die from drowning, than you are from starvation

I heard this a couple of years ago: “You're much more likely to die from drowning, than you are from starvation,” and I really think that's true for a lot of companies. You take the money because it's on the table, and then you're under a lot of pressure from people who may or may not be invested in your growth as a company - you're one of a number of companies in the portfolio, and they put you under immediate pressure to turn that money around. Their company might not have not been yet in the place for 10x return or they might pull their support out and might have a different exit strategy or not be as patient as you need them to be.

I really liked the opportunity to work in peer groups with the other companies. If I could save someone some pain and some heartache by sharing my experience with them, I would be happy to do that. At the same time, I saw opportunities for cross collaboration, and many of those companies actually became our customers too.

It was a really good program and I think it'd be beneficial for any female entrepreneur. Valhalla Private Capital was really invested in our success and the whole WeRaise team worked really hard. We felt very supported throughout and we really got a lot of value out of the program. We did achieve our goal to raise our round of funding and we're happy about that.

Watch the full discussion via WeRaise’s Facebook page .

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

The Valhalla Approach to Gender Equality in Angel Investing

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:37:03 GMT

According to data from the Angel Capital Association , women make up just a fifth (22%) of America’s angel investors, with this figure dropping to just 14% of angel investors in the UK and 5% in France.

Likewise, a 2020 report carried out by Women in VC - the world's largest community for female investors - found that only 4.9% of the US’ venture capitalist partners are female (with Latinx and black female investors each making up 0.2% of this figure, respectively); while Crunchbase data from the same year found that only 2.3% of funding went to women-led startups, a drop from to 2.8% the year prior.

Gender disparity has also had a wider impact on the mental health of female angel investors. A 2019 study by the Canadian Mental Health Association revealed that female entrepreneurs with startups in the growth or early stages (alongside those with fewer employees or less revenue) are more likely to report mental health issues than their male counterparts.

However, Valhalla Private Capital welcomes every opportunity to highlight our unapologetically Canadian approach to unlocking capital for female entrepreneurs through global affairs, instead of working through other donor organizations.

Since Valhalla’s inception in 2014, we have taken steps to champion female investors and entrepreneurs across North America and further afield.

As well as training and advising the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs - one of Canada's most prominent programs which prepares female founders for financing - Valhalla Private Capital has mentored 600 women-led businesses on their investment readiness process, assisting female founders in raising an estimated USD$1.5m along the way. An estimated 36% of the approximately 1,100 entrepreneurs who have attended Valhalla fundraising workshops are female founders.

We continue to coach female entrepreneurs on growth strategies, as part of Vietnam’s Women's Initiative for Startups and Entrepreneurship , and in Pakistan we are currently offering coaching support as part of the World Bank's WeRaise program , which supports 12 female Pakistani entrepreneurs as they endeavour to raise outside capital.

Lastly, Valhalla Private Capital has made a formal commitment to Beyond the Billion - an organization dedicated to unlocking capital to women entrepreneurs - to provide $20 million in funding to female founders.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Championing Ag Tech’s ‘Curious’ Founders

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:30:56 GMT

Alison Sunstrum , founder and CEO of CNSRV-X , discussed her methods of evaluating management within the ag tech industry.

Speaking to moderator Marty Seymour , director of industry and Stakeholder Relations at Farm Credit Canada and “cowboy at heart” as part of Valhalla Private Capital’s “Ask An Expert” series, Alison revealed her preference for “curious” founders.

“I want ethical founders that are coachable because if they will not take input from others on board - even if it's not from me - they're not going to be a founder that can build a great team,” she said.

As the founder and CEO of CNSRV-X - a Canadian company researching, researching and applying emerging tech in agriculture - Alison claimed that focus on science and technology has informed her approach to working with founders, leading her to conduct background checks on every investment.

On the topic, she continued: “I want to see a founder that understands that raising funds doesn't mean just grabbing money from angels - it's a long journey.

“I want to see your milestones, I want to see your growth path, and I want you to understand that you're moving towards an exit.

Alison added: “If you're taking my money, you're moving towards an exit within a given time and you know how your objectives meet your financing path.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Ag Tech’s Hottest Topics For Investors

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:29:45 GMT

Remi Schmalz , director of North American Business Development at TELUS Agriculture , has hailed broadacre ag tech as “the hottest thing that's going on” for investors in the sector.

Speaking to moderator Marty Seymour , director of industry and Stakeholder Relations at Farm Credit Canada and “cowboy at heart” as part of Valhalla Private Capital’s “Ask An Expert” series, Remi described ag tech as a “very broad” umbrella of technological niches, including different farming systems, softwares, IoT, sensors and marketplace content.

The self-proclaimed “expert” in broadcare crop farms explained: “The world is certainly very focused on carbon emissions and ESG-related efforts, and broadacre agriculture is one of the components of that.

“Right now, if someone looks up ‘broadacre ag tech companies’, almost every company would have some sort of flavor around the topic on their website,” he continued.

On the other hand, Alison Sunstrum , founder and CEO of CNSRV-X - a Canadian company which researches and applies emerging tech in agriculture - cited food processing as the “biggest opportunity” in Canada’s ag tech industry.

With a focus on robotics, packaging and waste repurposing, Alison remarked that new innovations in food are bridging gaps within the ag tech world. This is achieved through endorsing a "one health approach" within the sector, in which "healthy animals, plus healthy plants, equal healthy humans".

However, while Alison warned that ag tech outside of crop farming is becoming difficult to invest in as an angel, the Conserve X founder deemed livestock “an area to invest in, particularly if you can figure out what regenerative agriculture is”.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: Risk Management in Ag Tech

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:28:38 GMT

Alison Sunstrum , founder and CEO of CNSRV-X , has outlined the best practices of de-management within the ag tech industry.

Speaking to moderator Marty Seymour , director of industry and Stakeholder Relations at Farm Credit Canada as part of Valhalla Private Capital’s “Ask An Expert” series, Alison maintained that “ farmers are different than other folks” in their approach to working with angels.

“If you're an angel, you like risk. There's just no doubt about that,” she began, warning that people who work in agriculture have different profit drivers than in other sectors.

She continued: “Farmers are preserving their land for the next generation, so the way they look at things might be a little bit different.

“I've never seen more passionate, mission driven entrepreneurs than those in agriculture,” Alison added, emphasizing the efforts of those who work across alternative products including alternative proteins and meats.

The founder of CNSRV-X - a company which researches and applies emerging tech in agriculture - also remarked that long investment cycles in agriculture (driven by the biological factors of breeding) can “scare” an average angel and deter them from investing.

“If you invest in livestock you have a quicker turnaround on the end product, but it takes you at least two years to shift your breeding program (if not longer), so you might only have about 15 times in your whole operation to shift,” she concluded.

Likewise Remi Schmalz , director of North American Business Development at TELUS Agriculture , acknowledged that “things don't happen super fast in agriculture”, which has prompted an emphasis on trust between entrepreneurs and angel investors.

On the topic, he explained: “If you're [meeting with a farmer], you're not doing that over the internet, more than likely - it's a face to face meeting on a farm.

“It's going to take time to build that relationship because you have a significant impact,” he continued, comparing the fine-tuning of “manufacturing widgets every second” to the risk of growing one crop a year.

This risk, Remi elaborated, is compounded by factors such as weather and soil which are “uncontrollable by humans and volatile”.

“The largest living organism on earth is the soil, and I can tell you that we know very little about it,” he added, encouraging Valhalla Private Capital’s attendees to seek out “deep domain knowledge” if they are interested in ag tech.

Attendees were also urged to evaluate previous farm customers, references and a prototype of products before investing in the space.

Remi concluded: “Farmers in general are willing to try things.

“They're very entrepreneurial, they've created a lot of technology that's used on the farm. but they're also pretty upfront about whether these things are working or not.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

St(art)up Success, as told by History’s Greatest Painters

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:26:38 GMT

According to Valhalla Private Capital’s director Jan Lederman, passive culture is often a catalyst for companies heading downhill. Unmade decisions pile up, opportunities are lost and lessons are not learned along the way.

Sound familiar? You’re in luck - Valhalla has repurposed advice from history’s late great painters in a bid to counteract the pitfalls of passive culture in your startup.

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together”
- Vincent Van Gogh

Known today as one of history’s most prolific painters, Vincent Van Gogh only sold a single piece of art in his lifetime. However, a century after his death, Van Gogh’s most expensive painting Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold for $148.6 million in 1990.

With this in mind, Jan encourages entrepreneurs to celebrate small wins as they can lead to bigger victories down the line, alongside major tipping points when critical mass is reached.

“We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents”
- Bob Ross

Since perfection is “unattainable”, there’s no point in striving for a level of success that cannot be achieved,

The champion of happy accidents, Bob Ross was “immediately” enamoured after he attended his first painting class at 18. However, since Ross was enlisted in the Air Force it would be nearly two decades later that he would achieve commercial success with The Joy of Painting, which premiered in 1983 on PBS.

This wabi-sabi approach to life was reflected in his work, as Ross once pondered: “Ever make mistakes in life? Let’s make them birds. Yeah, they’re birds now.”

“Action is the foundational key to all success”
– Pablo Picasso

In spite of having more works of art stolen than any other artist, Pablo Picasso produced upwards of 150,000 different works during his 91-year lifetime, alongside more than 300 poems and a string of surrealist plays.

As success can come in dribs and drabs, Jan remarks that it is more effective to focus on small-term success rather than the big picture.

“I think that little by little I'll be able to solve my problems and survive”
- Frida Kahlo

Feminist and LGBTQIA+ figurehead Frida Khalo created 143 p aintings including 55 self-portraits. However, her experiences with the Mexican Communist Party informed works including Moses and Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States. Informed by her experiences as a self-proclaimed “painter” and “bitch”, Frida explained: “Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.”

Jan Lederman, director at Valhalla Private Captial, maintains that actions can produce energy which can be built on to create more momentum for companies when they need it most, thus contracting the debilitating effects of choice paralysis within your startup.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Fundraising, Entrepreneurship and Mental Health

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:23:02 GMT

Being an entrepreneur is hard, and raising money from investors makes it harder. The experience creates certain expectations about how quickly you’ll grow, which may be a cause for demotivation if these are not met.

In fact, most founders say fundraising is the most painful thing they’ve ever done. According to data from the US Census Bureau , 77% of entrepreneurs use an estimated $10,000 of their own money as startup capital at the very beginning of their startup journey, while two fifths (41%) were funded by a loan or line of credit.

According to Jan Lederman, director at Valhalla Private Capital, entrepreneurs should expect to do upwards of 50 pitches in their search for funding. However, regardless of success, the transition from startup to business is not a linear path and the high risk factor can take a toll on your mental health. This is an understated issue among entrepreneurs as founders want to appear as successful without expanding on the pitfalls they encountered along the way.

A 2019 study by the Canadian Mental Health Association revealed that mental health issues affected nearly half (46%) of participants’ ability to work, while more than a fifth (21%) of entrepreneurs felt satisfied with their mental health less than once a week.

For this reason, it is important to have a community of like-minded entrepreneurs - including mentors and advisors - which you can network with to make the experience a little less daunting.

If you are struggling with your mental health, the Canadian Mental Health Association is a nationwide organization that promotes mental health and supports people recovering from mental illness.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Bigger Than Peanuts: The Homer Simpson Guide to Financing your Startup

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:21:48 GMT

In a 1993 episode of The Simpsons , Matt Groening ’s lovable knucklehead Homer is annoyed to find $20 in his couch instead of a lost peanut, which he had lost seconds before. However, he soon realizes that his unexpected find “can buy many peanuts” as “money can be exchanged for goods and services”.

Although Homer Simpson is not often celebrated for his decision-making skills throughout The Simpsons ’ 32-year lifespan - due to stealing money from his son to buy back incriminating photos and framing his wife for a DUI - Homer’s search for couch peanuts teaches a valuable lesson within the art of finance.

In order to succeed, a company will use its operating assets in a business model that produces goods for customers in exchange for cash, which in turn generates retained earnings for shareholders. Long story short - money can be exchanged for goods and services.

A company can then leverage its assets to raise debt capital (to continue the metaphor, borrow money for more peanuts), or issue new shares to raise equity capital.

On the topic, Valhalla’s director Jan Lederman elaborates: “If you’re a mature operating company that’s been around for a while, you will have a history of cash flows and accumulated retained earnings, and you can make choices about how to optimize your capital between retained earnings, debt and equity and everything in between, to give you the lowest weighted average cost of capital (WACC).”

If you’re considering watching The Simpsons for any more business tips , a study by mobile network GiffGaff found that Homer Simpson has reportedly spent $333bn in the first 29 seasons of the show (from 1989 to 2017). If only he was interested in something bigger than peanuts.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Mastering the Elevator Pitch in Ten Floors or Less

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:20:07 GMT

Not infrequently, the most meaningful and opportunities arise unexpectedly, at a cocktail reception or in the mythical 30-second elevator ride. And you know how really difficult it is to deliver an effective 30-second pitch, right? It takes much, much more work to hone a truly effective 30-second pitch than it does for a 10-minute pitch - although make no mistake, both require work.

In any case, Valhalla guarantees you will have better results if you consider the elements of what makes an effective 10-minute pitch in advance, eventually reducing that to a five-minute, two-minute or 30-second pitch. Deciding what to leave out is hard and the stakes are high - you need to be short and concise but retain sufficient nuggets to entice your listener.

Ultimately, the objective of any pitch is to advance the conversation to the next level. The progression might be something like a 30-second pitch, to a two-minute pitch, to a scheduled 10-minute pitch, to a deal negotiation.

Pitching is a seduction of sorts, where the objective always is just to get to the next stage. Honing your various pitches is like A/B testing, which means you have to go through lots of samples and trials, and that means a lot of pitching. Startups who have raised money on average will make about 40 investment pitches before they are successful. There are a number of reasons for that, but honing the pitch is an important one.

The process begins with delivering an elevator pitch and providing an executive summary to explain what your company is about. Ideally, this is a distillation in one or two sentences of the key aspects of your business. Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start can show you how you can really make it hum, as can his aptly named 2019 sequel, The Art of the Start 2.0 .

Investors will consider the information (and how you deliver it) to determine if they will continue the process with you. Using their investment criteria, and based on the matching process, they will either decline the opportunity or invite you to make a presentation.

You only have thirty seconds, so make your elevator pitch short, sweet and memorable for all the right reasons. This can be achieved by sticking to the who, what and why of your business, steering clear of jargon for good measure. For example: “Mint.com is the free , easy way to manage your money online.”

Quick, easy and over before the elevator dings.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Pitch perfect: The knack of talking to investors

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:13:11 GMT

“Pitching is so much more than just looking or sounding cool on stage,” Viking Entrepreneur Haukur Gudjonnson declared to his followers in a lengthy Facebook post. In spite of some prior reservations, Gudjonnson hailed pitching as “a process of fine tuning your business strategy and the act of being able to convince people on the value of your vision”.

But if pitching really is “the new business plan” as the Viking Entrepreneur suggests, then “sounding cool on stage” just isn’t going to cut it. Think of a pitch as a one-sided conversation - albeit a prepared conversation covering key points that investors want to hear. A great way of presenting your business plan is through following the foundations outlined in Joseph Campbell’s “ a hero’s journey ” narrative (as used in Star Wars, Harry Potter and just about every other fantasy storyline in existence).

It is also wise to steer clear of dense texts in your presentation - keep it concise, free of technical details and most importantly avoid reading the presentation verbatim.

Valhalla Private Capital suggests treating your pitch as a muscle. Just like going for a run or lifting a weight, repetition plays a key role in improving your craft as a presenter which, in turn, is a foundational skill for a startup.

Although stakes are high, there are a few handy tips to help you sail through a pitch. For one, avoid “tricks” such as videos and animations as they almost always fail when they are needed most. However, if you have a penchant for risk and your multimedia assets refuse to work when they are needed most, keep a backup plan so as not to be left stumbling in front of potential investors.

Herein lies another tidbit - remember to breathe, relax and allow your viewers to assimilate what you are saying. After all, you are raising money for your business venture. This is an exciting time for any entrepreneur, so let your enthusiasm shine through.

Even a one-sided conversation must come to an end, at which point investors will have the floor to ask questions about your business. It’s important to keep this in mind as you prepare your pitch, and anticipate potential topics before they crop up as questions.

Personability gives you leverage to discuss what other resources you need in addition to capital, as investors have a wealth of experience and connections which could take your business venture to the next level. That being said, listen to the advice you receive as investors are looking to work with someone coachable.

Nobody expects you to know it all, as Gudjonnson’s concludes: “Mentors aren’t wasting their time to listen to you just so they can enjoy taking shots at your business, they are doing it because they want to help you [to] develop a strong business model and a great sales pitch.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Harry Potter and the Hero’s Journey narrative in pitching to investors

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:07:45 GMT

From Beowulf to Bilbo Baggins, the hero’s journey is one of the most celebrated frameworks in storytelling. Coined by Joseph Campbell in 1949, the narrative follows a bright-eyed protagonist as they venture from home in search of adventure, before achieving victory (against all odds) and returning home, forever changed for the better.

While the hero’s journey worked out well for Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Spiderman, Dorothy and even Toto to some extent, this narrative framework also plays an important role for startups. Take Facebook, for example: Mark Zuckerberg and peers were students when they began the inner workings of what would become the world’s biggest social platform.

“I saw The Social Network recently and really enjoyed it”, Jan Lederman, director of Valhalla Private Capital, wrote in her Quick Guide For Business Startups. “It’s a good story, well told (and well-acted),” she continues.

“Unfortunately, there aren’t that many Facebook-type success stories out there.

While Lederman does not advise using Facebook as a model for your typical business start-up due to having “no business plan, no shareholder agreement and no IP protection, or at least nothing that was visible in the movie,” Zuckerberg’s rise to entrepreneurial stardom is a prime example of the potential power of storytelling in business.

A pitch is an exercise in telling the journey of your company, so take the time to refine your story and don’t be afraid to play up to the pleasures and pitfalls of your experiences as a company. What’s the origin story of your business? What challenges did you face along the way, and how did you navigate rocky terrain to stand out amid your competitors?

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

memoryKPR founder Jessica McNaughton on Volition’s Founder Chats

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:05:41 GMT

Jessica McNaughton, CEO and founder of memoryKPR - the winning company from last year's Valhalla Investment Summit Saskatchewan - has discussed the story behind her digital storytelling platform in Violition’s Founder Chats .

The 30-minute podcast, which was shared on Violition’s Instagram account, explores McNaughton’s shift from corporate ‘intrapreneurship’ to launching MemoryKPR (pronounced “Memory Keeper”) last year.

Looking back on her experience of the Valhalla Investment Summit Saskatchewan in an interview with Volition , the MemoryKPR founder hailed the event as “an incredible experience” which she was “definitely not expecting to win”.

“I had already competed earlier in the year in the Okanagan Valhalla Summit as it was a remote event, and I got to the semi-finals there,” McNaughton said.

“I was pretty pumped to get to the finals in Saskatchewan, but I thought I was a little early to win something like this.”

She continued: “Winning the summit really helped with the conversations with the rest of the investors, not just because I had all of my stuff in order - I needed to do that for the competition - but also having your first investor takes a little bit of the edge off.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Are you a Super Angel, or a Control Freak?

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:03:43 GMT

Angel funding is the largest source of capital for innovation-driven startups; however, there are a range of personal factors behind how investors invest their money. Did you enter the market for fun, or simply to learn more about the space? Are you interested in giving back to the community, or is your attention peaked by the potential for big capital gains?

If you’re unsure of your motivations, Valhalla has divided investment factors into six (fictional) characters: the “Super Angel”, for one, prefers to take the whole round; while the “Big Dog” needs to be seen as a mentor to his contemporaries. This hands-on approach can also be seen in the “Control Freak”, who prefers a hands-on approach to the business, while the “Grandparent” couples a caring and supporting approach with periods of downtime as they don’t want to “own” the problems. The gung-ho “Sprinkle and Sprout” developer invests small amounts into many deals, as opposed to the “Yield” investor, who proceeds with caution on their search for economic security.

Funny as they may appear, these business avatars have been informed by professional experience, according to a report from the American Capital Association (ACA). The report - which assessed the personal and professional history of 1,659 angel investors - found that 55% of participants were previously founders or CEOs of another startup. These investors were proven to make more investments and write larger cheques on average than their less entrepreneurial counterparts.

The ACA’s report also found that three fifths (60%) of angels with an entrepreneurial background take an advisory role and 52% of them take a board seat (reminiscent of the “big dog” and “control freak”), compared to 38% and 26% of angels without an entrepreneurial background, respectively.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Assembling the airplane: The Toolbox of a High-Functioning Board

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 01:02:06 GMT

Is the relationship between your board and management on the rocks? Though both work towards the common goal of success - or “ default mortality ”, as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman describes it - normal role confusion and tension can be a death sentence for startups.

“I use the metaphor that a startup is like throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down,” Hoffman told Elad Gil, Twitter’s vice president of corporate strategy, in Gil’s startup-focused book High Growth Handbook . Describing the formation of a board as an exercise in “asset preservation”, Hoffman continued: “You have to gamble your assets very strongly in order to create something that has ongoing and persistent value.”

Jan Lederman, director of Valhalla Private Capital, hails a high functioning board as a potential force multiplier for a startup. This is achieved through a collective understanding of the underlying business, as well as a constant eye on strategy, execution and financial metrics across all board members.

Maintained by a working relationship with their collaborators, a high functioning board treats their assignment as important relative to other time commitments. Cohesion and communication are key here - each member’s ambition should be to serve the interests of the company, not personal financial motives. Likewise, a high functioning board asks questions to address potential problems before they arise - a skill developed through deep understanding of the market - it also respects the decisions made by the group (board) and remains impartial to group thinking, for good measure. This allows the company to scale more effectively, avoiding common pitfalls along the way.

Corporate governance, brought to the table by either a CEO or Board Chair, also plays a key role in the efficiency of a board. With this in mind, Lederman claims that “if a founder/CEO is not experienced in governance, then they probably should not be the Board Chair in its early days”.

This is seconded by Hoffman, who maintains: “What’s really adding to the company and adding to the CEO? It’s not just management of the assets, it’s also helping the amplification. And helping the amplification is helping the CEO, and the exec team, play the game the right way.”

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Ask An Expert: The 5 H's of Investing

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 00:59:54 GMT

Ziad Moukheiber , president and CEO of Boston Harbor Angels, has outlined the “five H’s” behind his personal investment thesis.

Discussing risk and rewards at Valhalla Private Capital’s member-only “Ask An Expert” event alongside Faz Bashi , chair of the medical device screening committee of Life Science Angels US; and Randy Stewart Thompson, chairman and CEO of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club; Ziad encouraged members to “keep an open mind” to prospects outside of their geographical comfort zone.

The Boston Harbor Angels president also emphasized the significance of working with founders who “really believe in what they're doing”, before outlining the five H’s of angel investing.

“You have to be humble, honest, hardworking, hungry, and you have to have a sense of humor,” he concluded.

“We are having to be more selective about who we invest in,” he told members, citing that “there's too much capital chasing too few good deals which has made valuations really big”.

However, Faz maintained that there is an opportunity for angel investors to take advantage of today’s economic climate.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .

Valhalla Chairman on the Fundamentals of Corporate Finance

emcgonagle@valhallaprivatecap.com (Emmet McGonagle) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 00:53:25 GMT

Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – has warned entrepreneurs to learn the nuances of corporate finance before selling their startup.

Speaking of his experience of selling an internet company in 1996 at Decentralised Energy Canada (DEC)’s 2022 Annual General Meeting and Investor Forum alongside Anouk Kendall , president of DEC; Natasha Kostenuk , CEO of Ayrton Energy ; Dan Erhardt , CEO of Arcus Power Corp and John MacInnes, chair and CEO of Earthware , Randy claimed he had “a really massive chip on [his] shoulder” as a result of the exit.

"I built the company, sold it, and nobody feels sorry for you,” he remarked. “The whole process of building is so fun, but the process of exit is so effing shitty.

Referring to the “trench warfare” of exiting his business, Randy continued: “If you know anything about the internet, 1996 was not the year to sell an internet company.

“We had all the pieces to be massively successful, sell in 1999 and move to California, but we effed it up.”

In retrospect, Randy claimed his lack of knowledge in “key components of raising money” was his company’s downfall, citing a lack of board of directors, accountants and operations as his Achilles’ heel.

“It wasn't about whether a young punk could sell, it was about whether we could actually run a company,” Randy added.

“Fundamentals came into the business startup business at the end, and I wish I knew it at the beginning.

As a result, Randy warned that “no entrepreneur should ever walk into a room like I did”.

“There's this cool thing called Google, there's these things called podcasts, and there's no excuse for not understanding anymore,” he concluded.

Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .