C100

ICYMI—our ED's New Year's message for C100 members: 2025 will be a year of impact!

Calling all C100 members and partners: Registration is OPEN for our Annual Summit 2025 (check your inboxes!). 🚀 We hope you can attend the incredible sessions, connect with fellow Canadian tech leaders, and learn from exceptional speakers and each other. We've got some special experiences planned to fire up those connections.🔥 Summit takes place from Feb 3 to 5, 2025, at the Four Seasons San Francisco. A big thank you to our speakers - it will be epic! Janet Bannister David Baszucki Martin Basiri Michael Buhr Joanna Griffiths Katherine Homuth Satish Kanwar Anthony Lee Jack Newton Jeff Shiner Curt Sigfstead Sukhinder Singh Cassidy Mike Wessinger Michelle Zatlyn. DM us with any questions! #cdntech

Scaling is an exhilarating—and challenging—journey. Last week, we brought our Growth Cohort together in Manhattan to explore strategies for navigating hyper-growth with a focus on finance and HR. Here are five key insights our cohort took away: 1️⃣ Hiring a CFO Early Matters Growth-stage companies can’t afford to let the rocket burn out. A strong CFO—full-time or fractional—ensures financial health, manages investor relations, and keeps the company on course. The CFO isn’t just a numbers person; they’re a strategic partner who helps prioritize focus and align the top line with growth ambitions. 2️⃣  Why Building and Tracking Organizational Dashboards is Key to Success Scale-ups are often overwhelmed with priorities. Metrics need to align with clear objectives and measurable results. Creating dashboards and iterating financial models ensures that teams focus on the right metrics to scale sustainably. 3️⃣  Mission-Driven Cultures Scale Better Culture isn’t something you consume—it’s something you build. Our speakers shared their approach to scaling culture: framework-driven, values-based, and mission-aligned. Prioritizing storytelling and onboarding is key to ensuring your growth doesn’t outpace your team’s alignment. 4️⃣  Invest Wisely in Resources Throwing people or tools at problems isn’t the answer. Build first and acquire tools only when absolutely necessary. Thoughtful forecasting and aligning OPEX with revenue forecasts keep resources in check while supporting ambitious growth goals. 5️⃣  Investor and Board Harmony Is Essential Aligning growth expectations with your board and investors builds trust. Be transparent about successes and challenges early, and prioritize mutual wins. A collaborative board dynamic can make the difference between friction and flourishing. These learnings are just a glimpse into the rich discussions we had. Thank you to our speakers -- Sloan Gaon Justin Sadrian Jeffrey MacDonald Frank Vella Alison Taylor Trevor Johnston Andrew Flett Anand Radhakrishnan Daniel Miner Piraye Beim -- for sharing your expertise and to our cohort for your active engagement. C100 2024 Growth Cohort companies: 7Gen Arteria AI ContactMonkey e-Zinc Humi MY01 Phoenix (YC W21) Rebelstork Relay RetiSpec Stan and Uride. #C100Growth #ScalingCompanies #Leadership #StartupCulture 

C100 members care deeply about the growth and trajectory of the Canadian tech ecosystem. We are thankful for their presence and input last week when our ED, Michael Buhr, met with Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne and Rana Sarkar, Consul General of Canada to Northern California & Silicon Valley, and their teams. They discussed strengthening the bridge between Canadian expertise in Silicon Valley with the tech entrepreneurs building category-defining companies in Canada. 🇨🇦 The leaders in our Fellows and Growth programs are living proof of the necessity and integrity of this bridge, as they work with SV mentors and apply this lived expertise to the companies they are leading. 🚀 #cdntech #leadership

So many impactful leadership learnings from our Growth Program Leadership Workshop, including: 🚀 Hire for what you need, not what looks good on paper (hire for fit/what your company needs, not pedigree) 🏆 Maintain a high-performance culture (this will change as your company grows, and it deserves scrutiny - culture and leadership are like products needing constant updates) 🏔️ Evolve as a leader alongside your company (leaders must transition from working in the business to working on the business) Thanks to our speakers for sharing their hard-earned lessons (Mike Wessinger, Sloan Gaon, Dan Park, Allen Lau, Rohan Mahimker, Rebecca Kacaba, Joanna Griffiths, and Chris Bryson). Lots more in the blog - 🔗 link in comments. #C100Growth #leadership #Cdntech

🏆 Congratulations to Andre Charoo - C100 Charter Member and former Board Co-Chair - on winning C100's Shawn Price Leadership Award! Along with being one of the first 25 employees at Uber and Hired, Andre runs Maple VC, the only Silicon Valley pre-seed and seed stage fund focused primarily on backing Canadians founders building in the US. While C100 Board Co-Chair (alongside Janet Bannister) he helped steer the organization during a leadership transition and shared his expansion expertise to shape the Fellowship program. We thank you for your steady hand and passionate heart for Canadian tech entrepreneurs! 🇨🇦 We were honoured to have 2x Canadian Olympian Maddy Price OLY 🏅 present the Shawn Price Leadership Award to Andre. Maddy spoke movingly of her father's leadership legacy, of the importance of grit -- whether you're an Olympic runner or building a company -- and why the C100 community is so critical as the connector between Silicon Valley and Canada. We loved having you at our celebration Maddy! #cdntech #leadership #olympics #grit #teamwork Digital Moose Lounge

🚀 Day 2 of the #C100Growth Cohort Workshop was packed with insights on product strategy, thanks to our amazing speakers. We’re deeply appreciative of the time and wisdom shared by these industry leaders, helping our cohort continue their growth journey with actionable advice and fresh perspectives. Key takeaways from the day: 📈 Building a compelling product strategy: A winning strategy isn’t the same as a long-term vision—it’s about focusing on how you will win in the market today. Keep it clear and precise to guide your efforts effectively. 🔄 Interplay of strategy dimensions: When refining your strategy, make sure all aspects fit cohesively. Avoid innovating across every dimension. Instead, innovate where it counts and rely on best practices in areas that don’t require disruption. 🗣️ Customer understanding: Engaging with customers is crucial, but without clear objectives, it’s easy to fall into the garbage in, garbage out trap. Make every conversation count by knowing exactly what you need to learn. 🏗️ Building great teams, processes, and products: Organize around customer needs, not internal convenience. Many startups have faced setbacks from avoiding tough decisions, and alignment issues often lead to product failure. A huge thank you to our speakers David Weiss Stefanie Hutka, PhD Sachin Rekhi for sharing these invaluable insights! 🙏 We’re excited to see how our cohort will apply these learnings as they scale their businesses. C100 2024 Growth Cohort companies: 7Gen Arteria AI ContactMonkey e-Zinc Humi MY01 Phoenix (YC W21) Rebelstork Relay RetiSpec Stan and Uride. #CdnTech #ScalingSuccess #ProductStrategy #CustomerSuccess #Leadership

What a powerful first day at our Growth Cohort Product Workshop in Palo Alto! So much insightful content from our speakers and meaningful discussions with our Growth company leaders and mentors. 🚀 Here's some of what was covered: + This century will be known as the century of AI and every company should know how to use it and how it will impact their business. + A product mindset is having a single-minded focus on creating meaningful value for customers before all else. Common elements include defining your customers (and all stakeholders), beginning with user needs, focusing on needs to drive the solution, getting continuous feedback from users, placing outcomes before output (but managing both), enabling solution free discovery, and aligning your organization with products. + A product culture is a shared mindset that helps teams align on what and how to develop products; it can help speed decision-making and avoid discrepancies. + How to handle the tension between sales and customer requests and staying focused on product vision. + Creating a strong culture will help companies scale effectively and significantly -- and don't be afraid to hire slow and fire fast. Thank you so much to our expert speakers: Shomit Ghose Ann Crady Weiss Thomas Nielsen and Benji Shomair and to our Product Specialists for their guidance and mentorship: Dennis Rohm Marie Goodell Goly A. Mark Grilli, Chris Chen Abbie McBride Samer Hamadeh Yen Lee and Nathan Trueblood. C100 2024 Growth Cohort companies: 7Gen Arteria AI ContactMonkey e-Zinc Humi MY01 Phoenix (YC W21) Rebelstork Relay RetiSpec Stan and Uride. #C100Growth #entrepreneur #cdntech #scale #product

Congratulations to Unified.to and Roy Pereira on closing their $1.1M pre-seed round led by LOI and Developer Capital, with support from Alumni Ventures, Techstars, and more. The Unified.to team is helping software teams 100x their integration launches with its real-time unified API platform, which powers the data for AI assistants, insights, automation, and more. We're glad to have this company in our 2024 Fellows Cohort and can’t wait to see what’s next! 🚀 #C100Fellows

Last week at 48Hrs, it was truly inspiring to hear from our Fellows during the Fellows Intro Showcase. Each founder shared the bold ideas behind the companies they are building, the unique challenges they face, and how they hope to leverage the C100 community for support. Thanks to all the C100 members who came to meet the Fellows later that day at our social night! The conversations were rich, and the energy was high as our members explored how they could lend their expertise and resources to help these promising founders succeed. The Fellows’ journey is just beginning, and we’re excited to see how this incredible network comes together to support them in scaling their companies! Adauris Agentnoon Blanka Bounce Cascade Debt CruxOCM Endor Health Friendlier GoVeyance Hyper Kento Health MarineLabs NiaHealth Numr CXM Optimotive Rhenti Rootd Swap Robotics Taiv TeamLinkt Tengiva Ubenwa Health Unified.to Youthfully Zown #C100Fellows #CanadianEntrepreneurs #CdnTech #ScalingTogether