AfternoonT - Stories from Successful Canadian Founders

Mike Potter of Rewind

Mike Potter is the co-founder and CEO of Rewind, a leading cloud data backup provider trusted by over 30,000 businesses to protect their data on platforms such as BigCommerce, Shopify and QuickBooks. A veteran entrepreneur,  Mike has over 25 years of experience building solutions for the software, cloud and data analytics space, including tenures at Adobe and Mozilla. He earned his MBA from the University of Ottawa and his B.Eng in Mechanical Engineering from McMaster University. Mike currently resides in Ottawa, Canada. 

Bertrand Nepveu of Vrvana

Bertrand Nepveu has spent his entire career working in the field of computer vision. From a very young age, he knew that he wanted to be an entrepreneur like his grandfather and change the world. Hardcore gamer since Donkey Kong on the Coleco Vision, he became obsessed with virtual reality when he tried the PowerGlove on the NES. Bertrand founded Vrvana in 2005 in order to fulfill his dream of improving the gaming experience by bringing the user inside the game. In 2017 he sold the company and technology to Apple. Bertrand now spends his time as an advisor and investor.

Kirk Simpson of Wave

Kirk Simpson is the co-founder and CEO of Toronto-based Wave. He’s a serial entrepreneur, having started multiple businesses prior. Kirk has led Wave to become an internationally disruptive fintech company, building a team of more than 200 people before being acquired for $537 million. Kirk is an advisor for the Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman, an active angel investor, and has been a mentor for the Next36. He believes in paying it forward and loves to empower up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

Tobyn Sowden of Redbrick

Tobyn Sowden is the CEO of Redbrick, the parent organization to a growing portfolio of companies. Redbrick has been ranked the 5th Fastest-Growing Company in Canada and 2nd in software, by PROFIT 500. Tobyn is responsible for defining Redbrick’s overall business strategy, including new product development and future business growth. His extensive professional and personal experiences have given him valuable expertise in building, launching, and growing award-winning companies, and delivering excellent operational management and technology products.

Andrew Reid of Rival Technologies & Vision Critical

Andrew Reid is the founder of Rival Technologies, Co-founder of Rival Group Inc. and Group CEO. He also founded Vision Critical, a cloud-based customer-intelligence platform provider. An industry visionary, Andrew has long been an evangelist for change and a passionate advocate for creating a workplace culture people want to be a part of.

Matt Smith of Thinkific & Later

Matt Smith is a technology entrepreneur who has founded multiple technology startups, including Thinkific and Later, both highly successful SaaS companies that help businesses succeed online. Thinkific is an online course platform that enables entrepreneurs to create, market, sell, and deliver their own online courses. In 2020, Thinkific’s 50,000 active course creators earned hundreds of millions of dollars in direct course sales. Later has helped over 4 million people from global brands to small businesses with their digital marketing. Matt is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at Thinkific, where he is responsible for setting the long-term direction of the company and shaping the path to get there.

Alison Taylor of Jane App

Alison Taylor is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Jane, an online platform for healthcare practitioners that delivers a unified approach to online booking, charting, scheduling, video services, and payments. Now, Jane helps thousands of practitioners across the world with the business side of their practice, so they can focus on what they do best — helping their clients. Alison’s company has gotten here by pushing the envelope and challenging tech industry norms. Jane doesn’t have a sales team, in fact, Alison calls herself the antithesis of sales, and lets the product speak for itself.

Philippe Beaudoin of Waverly (Season 3)

Philippe Beaudoin is a venture scientist constantly looking for ideas that can improve society. In 2020, he co-founded Waverly where he and his team are building a discovery engine for our increasingly diverse social and content landscapes. Before that, in 2016, Philippe co-founded Element AI, a world leader in enterprise AI.

Kim Kaplan of Snack

Kim Kaplan is the CEO of Snack, a video dating app that combines the matching algorithms of dating apps with the ability to share your life in real-time. Snack aims to disrupt the dating industry, being a video-first app that caters to Gen Z.

Maria Pacella of Pender Ventures

Maria Pacella is the Senior VP and Managing Partner at Pender Ventures, and has over 20 years of investing and operational experience in emerging growth companies, with a focus on technology businesses. She spent 11 years with one of Canada’s largest venture capital firms where she invested in multiple early-stage ventures and served on a variety of boards in the areas of enterprise software and health-tech.