Joining Portag3 Ventures

I’m excited to announce today that I’ve joined Sagard Holdings as a Partner at Portag3 Ventures.

I’ve been thinking about making the transition from operator to investor for some time, and after meeting Paul Desmarais III, Adam Felesky and the Portag3 team and learning of their desire to plant a flag in San Francisco, now seemed like the perfect time. I couldn’t imagine a better place to have fun and make an impact in the next phase of my career.

I’m excited to partner with exceptional founders to help turn their dreams into reality and support them at every stage of their journey. I’ll also be developing new investment strategies to empower exceptional leadership teams with capital, counsel and connections.

Several factors converged to lead me to today. First was my desire to continue strengthening the bridge between my homeland, Canada, and California. Second, to offer hard-learned advice and an operators’ mindset to help entrepreneurs scale their companies into global winners. Above all, it was my yearning to work with people who share my core principles — that you can do well by doing good and that values and reputation matter.

My first visit to San Francisco was supposed to last two months. I accepted a boring consulting assignment at a bank as an excuse to escape a cold Toronto winter before heading to graduate school later in the year. The Bay Area captured my heart: seeing first-hand the products and businesses that positively impacted people’s lives through technology; the intoxicating sense that anything is possible; and yes, falling in love with the woman who would later become my wife and partner in raising two great kids. I postponed school to embark on a new journey. More than 20 years later, I remain inspired and grateful that I get to live here.

Over the years, I’ve maintained close ties to Canada. As the leader of Google’s Canadian operations, an angel investor in several Canadian companies, and a charter member of the C100, I have seen first-hand the vast potential in Canada’s technology ecosystem. I have been delighted to watch Canada claim its rightful place as a global technology leader over the past decade. From its Canadian headquarters, Portag3 Ventures has been in the vanguard of building the next wave of winners in Canada, Europe, Southeast Asia, and is now poised to extend the power of its platform to the United States.

This next stage for me is an intentional choice to help the next generation of entrepreneurs by sharing a mix of zen and experience from my time as a leader at Google, Evernote and other beloved global brands. As an advisor and investor, I gain energy and fulfillment through my interactions with ambitious, insightful founders. I am pinching myself as I think about how I’ll be doing this on a full-time basis.

I know what it means to walk the path founders and CEOs travel. I have compassion for their struggles, mistakes and the rollercoaster of emotions. I understand their hopes and fears. I look forward to working shoulder-to-shoulder with them to build and scale their companies. I’ll do everything in my power to ensure they achieve their most audacious goals and aspire to be their first call.

Trust is the foundation of any successful relationship. Portag3 and the Sagard team have a deep appreciation for this reality. It is deeply embedded in their worldview and part of their mantra. Paul, Adam and the team are trusted partners that embody many of the traits of successful founders — a deep sense of purpose, intellectual curiosity, grit, and an ability to attract talent.

Building an enduring company requires capital, of course — but capital alone is not sufficient. We’ve seen that “growth-at-all-costs” leads to disastrous, unintended consequences. In addition to being compassionate partners with entrepreneurs, companies and investors need to take responsibility for the human, cultural, and societal impact of their decisions. Values matter and the world-class team at Sagard Holdings understand that being good investors and good humans are not mutually exclusive. In that sense, they are quintessentially Canadian.

I owe my professional career to the technology ecosystem; I have this exciting opportunity because of it, not the other way around. I look forward to continuing to give and to help shape its future.

Game On!