L-R: Darren Meister, Scott Vanderwel, Nicole Verkindt, Shahrzad Rafati
Early-stage investment remains an uphill battle when it comes to establishing firms in Canada.
“It feels so much easier to raise early-stage capital in the U.S. than here,” said Nicole Verkindt, HBA '07, during Ivey’s The Future We See Symposium.
Kicking off the afternoon portion of the day, Ivey welcomed three innovative leaders to discuss Canadian competitiveness, entrepreneurship, and innovation, and to share insights on the support required for businesses to thrive within and beyond Canada's borders.
In addition to Verkindt, who is CEO of Buggy, Canada’s leading rapid retail logistics company, the panel included Shahrzad Rafati, Founder, Chairperson, and CEO of BBTV; and Scott Vanderwel, HBA '98, Chief Executive Officer of PointsBet Canada.
Moderated by Ivey’s Darren Meister, Associate Dean of Faculty Development, questions for panellists sparked discussions on today’s critical issues and their implications for the CEOs' businesses, Canada's standing as a place for conducting business, and the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on their firms. Here are some key takeaways:
How are critical issues coming up in your organizations?
Having co-chaired the Business Council of Canada’s report on Canadian competitiveness in 2019, Verkindt shared that, for Canada to be recognized as innovative and having a prosperous economy, the solution is to incentivize more investment in early-stage companies.
“The only place where you can [raise early-stage capital] in Canada is from angel investors,” said Verkindt. “I wish there were tax credits for angel investors or things like flow-through shares, which have been a huge success in Canada’s mining sector and put us on the map globally as a financial centre for mining. Why can't we do something like that for early-stage tech companies?”
Rafati has driven BBTV to become a pioneer in defining and advancing the media-tech space, with a mission to help content creators become more successful. The creator economy is a $104-billion market, and Canada represents $1.1 billion of that market share, says Rafati. To grow Canada’s market share and ensure greater innovation across the country, Rafati stresses that Canadians need to pay attention to technological innovations – more specifically, AI.
Vanderwel helped launch PointsBet in August 2021, shortly after Canada legalized and regulated single-game sports betting, and shared some challenges from that journey.
“A lot of what’s characterized our journey has been to find a balance among being entrepreneurial, being a fresh startup, and working with a new industry that’s forming rules of engagement in its regulatory framework,” he said.
For Vanderwel, this framework is a standout with respect to Canada’s place in the world.
“If you look at the framework with shared governance put in place for safe and responsible gaming, it's arguably one of the best in the world,” he said. “And part of how they've done that is to take the best bits of the European frameworks, and some of the best aspects of the U.S. frameworks, and applied a very Canadian sensibility … I believe Canada has a natural predisposition for finding the middle ground.”
What’s Canada like as a place to grow a business?
Verkindt said one of Canada’s assets is the high amount of immigration.
“I've noticed in the last 10 years, the percentage of young entrepreneurs who have just arrived in Canada and are starting companies is so high,” she said.
On the other hand, she said one of the disadvantages of building a business in Canada is the large reduction of foreign investment due to regulatory requirements and prolonged approvals.
Vanderwel and Rafati also cited the challenge of access to capital. Rafati also expressed her pride in being a female, person of colour, immigrant business owner in Canada.
“Canada has provided me with so much opportunity, and the diversity we have in our country needs to be celebrated,” she said. “Programs like Global Talent Stream have attracted many incredible immigrants to Canada.”
How do you see the future of AI affecting your business?
An ongoing theme throughout the day’s sessions and keynotes was around how AI is changing the face of organizations.
“AI is not a ‘nice-to-have,’” said Rafati. “Everybody needs to integrate AI into their business.”
Rafati expressed excitement about witnessing how businesses will utilize AI to generate content in 2024. BBTV already uses AI to automatically edit content, and is now shifting towards utilizing AI to assist with analytics and insights to better understand its audience.
“We want to see what’s really resonating with our audiences so that we can inform our partners of what they should be producing, how they should be producing, and how we can monetize content more effectively,” she said.
AI is already heavily implemented into PointsBet, with 75 per cent of all its bets happening after a game has started. For people to make well-informed bets, there is an extensive list of processes and data analytics that needs to occur in real-time, all of which is impossible to do if humans are touching that process, says Vanderwel.
“All of this happens through an AI-generated technology that moves the odds based on the optimal dynamics,” he said.
The panellists agreed that Canadian businesses need to be at the forefront of AI.
“I think we're going to see AI in everything we do as a consumer, and we're not even going to really notice it,” said Verkindt, adding that at Buggy, they’re embedding AI into personalized menus and predictions. “It's so great to hear about these venture capital funds that are investing significantly in this space because AI is not going away. We need to embrace it and invest in it. AI is just way too important to not be talking about.”
