Overview
Experts are ready. Founders wanted.
The Expert x Founder Strategy Sessions: Fundraising brings Founders together with venture capitalists, angel investors, and executive leaders for focused 1:1 conversations about the fundraising challenges you’re facing in your business.
Founders will be matched with Experts based on their selections in the registration form, giving you the opportunity to get insight and feedback relevant to your business.
Founders can also opt in to a live pitch feedback session for the opportunity to pitch their startup and receive immediate feedback from the Experts.
How It Works
When you register, identify the top 8 Experts you’re most interested in meeting based on your fundraising challenges. See the descriptions below to learn more about each Expert.
We’ll use your selections to create a personalized agenda of 1:1 conversations. You’ll be notified of your scheduled Expert meetings before the event.
Throughout the event, you’ll move between your scheduled 1:1 Expert conversations and opportunities to network with other founders.
While we aim to match you with your top Expert choices, we cannot guarantee a discussion with every Expert you select.
Deadline to register is Monday November 2nd at 9:00 AM so we have time to create your personalized agenda.
Who Should Attend
This session is for founders in the SR ecosystem who are navigating fundraising decisions, including those who want to:
- Prepare for a future fundraise
- Understand what investors consider when evaluating opportunities
- Explore venture capital, angel investment, non-dilutive funding, or other sources of capital
- Learn about investment readiness
- Gain direct feedback from people working across the funding ecosystem
Key Takeaways
You’ll walk away with:
- Direct 1:1 access to experts without cold outreach
- Insight and feedback specific to your fundraising challenges
- Exposure to different funding perspectives
- Opportunities to build relationships with experts you may want to continue the conversation with
Who You’ll Meet
Evelyn Pau
Principal, Amplitude Ventures
Evelyn Pau invests in Seed to Series A healthcare companies, focused in precision medicine at the intersection of biology and AI, creates new companies through Pre-Amp venture studio, and leads diligence on new deals.
Daphne McLarty
Principal, Antler
Principal at Antler, a global venture capital fund that invests at inception. Daphne works with founders at the earliest stage, helping them find their first signs of traction, understand their commercial path and potential to scale, articulate what makes their business defensible, and connect with the right people in Canada’s early-stage startup network.
Neha Khera
Managing Partner, Innovobot Resonance Ventures (IRV)
Neha Khera backs early stage deep tech startups emerging from top academic institutions, drawing on over a decade of venture capital experience scaling high impact companies across North America.
Albert Chen
Partner, Two Small Fish Ventures
Albert Chen is a Partner at Two Small Fish Ventures, a Toronto-based seed stage VC firm investing globally in deep tech and the next frontier of computing. His expertise spans technical innovation, product development, and operational leadership across entrepreneurial startups and frontier technologies. Most notably, he served as CTO of Forcen, a robotics and edge AI company, and also held roles at Metergy (smart energy), Excelitas (photonics), and North (smart glasses, acquired by Google).
Jessica Galli
Principal, Intrepid Growth Partners, Intrepid Growth Partners
Jessica Galli is a Principal at Intrepid Growth Partners, focused on investing in AI-driven businesses, with particular expertise in healthcare. She brings experience in healthcare growth equity and investment banking from her previous roles at General Atlantic and J.P. Morgan.
Brett Liu
Investment Lead, Sixty Degree Capital
Brett Liu is a venture capital principal at Sixty Degree Capital, a leading VC firm that invests in North American early to growth stage companies in the software innovation and digital infrastructure sectors. He has over a decade of investment experience in the technology innovation and investment space, and holds the prestigious Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) credential.
Tyler Handley
Founder and Investor, Olauto
Tyler Handley is a Canadian entrepreneur best known for co-founding Inkbox, a temporary tattoo technology and brand that redefined self-expression. Under Tyler’s leadership, Inkbox was one of the fastest-growing companies in Canada, culminating in its acquisition by BIC for $90M (CAD) in 2022. He is now redefining the Car Freshener category with Olauto, and is an active investor and advisor in numerous startups.
Beyond his entrepreneurial endeavors, Tyler has many passions and hobbies, including music production, astronomy, fashion, and design.
Adrianna Czornyj
Partner, Partner, Venture Capital – Women in Tech Venture Fund and Thrive Venture Fund, BDC
Adrianna Czornyj is a Partner at BDC’s Thrive Venture Fund, which makes direct investments in women-led technology businesses from pre-seed to Series A/B. She brings over 20 years of investing, private equity and M&A expertise, most recently as a Partner at Persistence Capital Partners, a healthcare-focused PE firm, and earlier in Deloitte’s M&A Transaction Services practice and holds the CPA.CA, CBV, and ICD.D designations.
Luke J. Sheen
Executive Director, Halo Health
Luke J. Sheen is the Founding Executive Director of HaloHealth, a Venture Partner at Spring Impact Capital and the former Director at Redesign Health Canada. To give back to the community, Luke serves as an appointed mentor at Plug and Play Tech Center – Health, mentor at the University of Toronto, Temerty Faculty of Medicine – Health Innovation Hub (H2i), advisor at W21C SPARK, and expert advisor at University of Calgary – Innovate Calgary. Expertise: healthcare startup advisory and investment financing.
Andrew Opala
General Partner, Preference Capital
Andrew Opala is a mentor, advisor and investor drawing on the lived experience of sixteen co-founded companies in the tech space with 4 multi-million-dollar exits. He is also a disciple of Steve Blank’s Lean Startup.
Bobby Del Rio
Partner, Advisor, Media, Tech & Production, NewChic Capital Family Office
Bobby Del Rio is a Partner and Advisor, Media Tech & Production at NewChic Capital Family Office, with expertise spanning media, technology, production, entrepreneurship and investment. He is also an experienced television host, writer and producer, bringing an operator’s perspective to evaluating ideas, positioning ventures and helping founders communicate their value.
Julio Dibwe Mupemba
Entrepreneur, Consultant and Investor, Toumaï Capital
Julio Dibwe Mupemba helps founders and companies become investment-ready by putting the right structures and operations in place.
Sepehr Sisakht
Co-Founder & CTO, GrantOps
Sepehr Sisakht co-founded Shyftbase, an agentic supply chain solution serving enterprise supply chain groups and retailers such as Metro Supply Chain, Best Buy, and Costco. He’s brought his experience to GrantOps, where we automate the process, helping founders translate business data into a defensible claim or application by directly connecting to the tools they use, instead of trying to reconstruct a year of engineering work from memory after the fact.
Johann Marquez
Co-Founder & CPO, GrantOps
Johann Marquez leads product and growth at GrantOps, drawing on his time on Shopify Capital’s team building automated capital offers for merchants. He’s now applying that same lens to grants and tax credits for Canadian innovators, helping founders think about non-dilutive funding as infrastructure, showing them how to turn eligible R&D spend into cash on a predictable cycle.
Teresa D’Alessandro
Veqtor Partners
More Experts to be announced.
Event Details
Date: November 10, 2026
Time: 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Location: Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus
Register
Spots are limited to maintain the quality of 1:1 conversations.
Deadline to register is Monday November 2nd at 9:00 AM.
Register to secure your place.
