AfternoonT - Stories from Successful Canadian Founders

Jay Giraud is an automotive tech entrepreneur focused on launching companies that redefine mobility. Jay has built successful products and companies by marrying disruptive solutions with disruptive business models as the founder, inventor, and CEO of three automotive tech startups. These include his current company, Damon, with a mission to cause a paradigm shift for safer, smarter motorcycling. Mojio, a Scalable, secure and hardware-agnostic platform and SaaS provider to build and scale connected mobility services. And Rapid Electric Vehicles (REV) an early-mover cleantech vehicle technology company with a ready-for-market solution to help meet the challenge of becoming carbon neutral.  On top of this, Jay spent a good portion of the 90’s living out all of our dreams as a competitive snowboarder.

Evgeny (Ev) Tchebotarev began photography in 2002 and since then he has spent the entirety of his professional career dedicated to the betterment of visual creativity. In 2021, He co-founded Sloika in order to build a new NFT experience for photographers. In early 2004, before Facebook and photo-sharing sites, Ev created 500 px, a community for millions of photographers to meet and share photos and information. Between his two startups, Evgeny was Skylum Software’s Chief Growth Officer expanding Skylum’s business in Asia and allowing Ev to work and travel all over the continent. Ev is an active photographer and has been honoured to judge many world-class photo contests, including Red Bull Illume, Photo Life, and the Sony World Photography Awards. Originally from Moscow, Ev has earned a BA in Commerce and Finance from Ryerson University in Toronto, graduating with honours in 2007.

Tanis Jorge is a serial tech entrepreneur and a leading advisor on entrepreneurship and building successful cofounder partnerships. Throughout her career in startups, spanning the last 20 years, Tanis has cofounded, scaled, and successfully exited multiple data-driven businesses with the same partner.   Her successes culminated with her most recent venture, Trulioo, which she co-founded in 2011. Between 2011 and 2015, Tanis served as Chief Operations Officer of Trulioo, working to lay the groundwork and building the foundation for the trusted, innovative, and disruptive company it has become today. In 2021, Trulioo reached unicorn status (US $1.65B valuation), solidifying its place as the world’s leading identity verification company and Jorge’s track record for founding successful businesses. Today, Tanis is one of the go-to voices and experts on the cofounder relationship, drawing on her experience co-founding and successfully scaling four technology businesses. Advising fast-growing start-ups and leading venture capitalists, her work focuses on how cofounders can function in an open, productive, and symbiotic way to ensure continued and long-term business success.

Marlon Thompson is an angel investor, startup founder and experienced advocate for diversity in business. Thompson founded Future Capital in 2020 to change the landscape of startup investing across North America. In addition to his role as CEO at Future Capital, Thompson serves as a member of the Board of Directors for QueerTech - a Montreal-based non-profit organisation that aims to queer the tech ecosytem, and as a Venture Partner for LOI Venture. Prior to launching Future Capital - Marlon developed and led diversity initiatives that support founders and investors for the likes of League of Innovators, and Highline Beta. In addition to his work on diversifying the tech and VC industries, Marlon is a current community representative for the Rainbow Foundation of Hope and has served as a refugee sponsor in partnership with Rainbow Refugee Foundation & the National Film Board of Canada.

Chris Albinson is the President & CEO of Communitech, Co-Founder & Managing Director of the BreakawayGrowth Fund, and visionary founder and past chairperson of the C100. Albinson has been an early investor in impactful companies, including Pinterest, Docusign, Newbridge Networks & Juniper Networks. Chris is a mentor and/or advisor for TechStars, Garage Capital, SAAS North, and the Canadian Innovation Exchange. Earlier in his career, Chris was a General Partner at JP Morgan Partners and earned an MBA from the Ivey Business School.

Toufic Boubez is a serial entrepreneur with three successful exits to his name. He was the founding CTO of Saffron Technology with a mission of building cognitive computing systems for Big Data which was acquired by Intel, Metafor Software where he developed next-generation machine learning analytics and anomaly detection for IT Ops and Security that was acquired by Splunk, and Layer 7 Technologies one of the most successful vendors in the API Management/ SOA Governance and Security space that was acquired by Computer Associates (CA)). Prior,Toufic was the Chief Architect for SOA at IBM's Software Group, and the Chief Architect for IBM’s Web Services tools. He holds a BSc and a Masters of Electrical Engineering degrees from McGill University and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Rutgers University. Toufic is currently the CTO and CPO at MacroHealth, helping to create Intelligent Healthcare Markets.

Michelle Zatlyn is co-founder, President, and COO of Cloudflare, the Internet security, performance, and reliability company on a mission to help build a better Internet. Prior to co-founding Cloudflare, Michelle held positions at Google and Toshiba and launched two successful startups. Michelle currently serves on the board of directors for Atlassian and the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders Foundation. Michelle has been named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list and was part of Marie Claire’s 7th Annual New Guard. She holds a B.S. degree, with distinction, from McGill University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was awarded the Dubilier Prize for Entrepreneurship.

William Johnson is the founder and managing editor of the Vancouver Tech Journal. With a focus on business and technology, William’s writing has been featured in outlets including Maclean’s, The Globe & Mail, BCBusiness, and the Daily Hive. In addition, William has been a speaker on communications and innovation at events like the #BCTECHSummit, TechVancouver, Marketing Connect, and BC AMA’s Vision conference. Being an Ontario transplant, William studied political science at Carleton University and public relations at the University of Toronto.

Janet Bannister is the Managing Partner of Real Ventures, Canada’s preeminent early-stage venture capital firm.  In addition to leading Real Ventures and working with her large portfolio of rapidly growing tech companies, Janet is very active in the Canadian tech ecosystem; she is on the Boards of Communitech in Waterloo and Vector Institute in Toronto. In 2004, Janet launched Kijiji.ca and grew it to become one of the most visited websites in Canada.  This year, Janet became the co-chair of the C100… which is the leading global community of Canadian tech leaders, dedicated to supporting, inspiring and connecting the most promising Canadian entrepreneurial leaders, and a group I am very proud to be a member of. Personally, I am very excited to see the direction she will take the C100 through her stewardship.