The Hard Part with Evan McCann

One of my favourite episodes yet with Gennady Pekhimenko the CEO and Co-Founder of ⁠CentML! Also, his first podcast focused on CentML. Gennady is also an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and a Faculty Member at ⁠Vector Institute⁠. We discussed... -Genesis of CentML - from academia to industry -Commercializing university research -Tailwinds behind AI and market opportunities -Three Pillars of AI - models, data and hardware -Enterprise adoption of AI - trends and insights -The future of AI models - commoditization vs. innovation -Raising $30M+ from Gradient, Radical Ventures, Deloitte Ventures Canada, NVIDIA, Thomson Reuters Ventures and more -Attracting talent - competitive AI job market -The UofT AI talent pool with Geoff Hinton, Raquel Urtasun, Aidan Gomez, Ilya Sutskever and many more -What the federal government should do with the $2.4B in AI funding -Why compute in Canada is critical to our AI success -The role of Vector Institute -Personal growth as a CEO and constantly learning CC - Salim Teja, Jonathan Wolkin, Raquel Urtasun, Aidan Gomez, Vaneezeh Siddiqui, Darian Shirazi, Ilya Sutskever Thank you Akbar Nurlybayev for making this happen!

This was a fantastic chat with Neil Grunberg the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of ⁠Storytime Capital! Storytime Capital is a VC focused on early-stage (Pre-Seed & Seed) investments. They primarily focus on technology solving the Future of Work. Previously Neil was a Co-Founder at AlayaCare (~$300M raised) and was at Workbrain and part of the "Workbrain Mafia". Maybe a Workbrain episode soon? We discussed... -What made Workbrain so special and Neil's experience there. -Genesis story of AlayaCare. -What made AlayaCare's culture so strong and leading with empathy. -Building and maintaining Co-Founder relationships. -Fundraising insights (AlayaCare raised close to $300M) -Checking your ego and Neil's experience working on product, strategy, corp dev, etc. -How a founder's role changes throughout the life of a company. -How to build a strong corp dev function. -Why start a VC firm and what it is like having perspective as an operator, founder and now investor. -Why the future of work thesis. -Major shift in software solutions. CC Stephanie Curcio, Kelsey Hahn, Kaylee Lieffers (Astle), Renae Farough, Tim Lett and Daniel Debow

Amazing chat with Jung Lee the Head of Corporate Innovation Studio at Pioneer Square Labs! Jung's career has taken her across: -Launching digital and mobile payments at Visa -Launching Alexa Canada at Amazon -Head of Partner Strategic Initiatives at Amazon Web Services (AWS) -Global Head of Partnerships & Strategy at Wing. Wing is an Alphabet Inc. company focused on autonomous drone delivery This is a must-listen for any founder tackling partnerships and business development or anyone interested in corporate venture studios. We discussed... -Navigating the move from Canada to the US -Lessons from Amazon and Alphabet - structure and innovation -Launching new technologies in existing companies -Business Development - keys to success -AI in corporates - understanding and application. -Working with corporates as a startup. -Framework for idea validation. -Finding the right corporate partners as a venture studio.

Such a fun and honest conversation with Charlie Feng the Co-Founder of Agora! Agora is the home of onchain governance. Deploy Agora today to run your protocol and community. Agora recently announced their $5M Seed funding from Haun Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, Packy McCormick, Dan Romero and previous guests Boris Wertz and Jenny He. We discussed... -Launching an AI chatbot startup in 2013 -Learnings from scaling Clearbanc/Clearco. -The "Clearco Mafia" that is developing. -Learnings from hyperscaling with capital and headcount. -Why web3 is a great space to be building in right now. -Governance in web3. -Why co-founder conflict is the biggest reason startups die and how to mitigate that. -Charlie's thoughts on raising (Clearco raised ~$860M). -Why Charlie is building in SF and why there are so many Canadians there. Also going forward all episode links will be going to my Dexa page. Dexa is the best way to consume my content by engaging with questions, AI-generated clips and better insights into episodes. Thanks Riley!

Just released episode 213 of The Hard Part with Evan McCann on Monday! The last two-plus years have been so much fun. If you haven't listened to an episode before now is the time. Just today two former podcast guests raised big rounds! Jason Warner at poolside raised $500M from Bain Capital Ventures, NVIDIA, eBay and many more. Daniel Eberhard at KOHO raised $190M CAD in equity and debt. The Hard Part is sharing, IMO, the best Canadian tech stories out there. I have episodes with the founder of Jobber, the leader at Teachers' Venture Growth, a former YC Partner, a leader in the Canadian semiconductor space and lots of early-stage founders upcoming. Please follow me on Spotify, Apple or any listening platform. It helps me a ton.

Awesome conversation with Liran Belenzon the Co-Founder and CEO of BenchSci! BenchSci's mission is to exponentially increase the speed and quality of life-saving R&D to improve patients' health. They do this by applying cutting-edge AI to understand how disease biology works at scale throughout the drug discovery pipeline to solve the number one reason why drug discovery projects fail — getting the biology wrong. ASCEND, their disease biology GenAI platform, understands the entire history of biomedical experiments to create a scalable AI assistant for preclinical organizations. We discussed... -The genesis story of BenchSci. -Thoughts on commercialization and how to do it well. -How Liran has scaled with the company as a leader and founder. -Step changes in headcount. -How BenchSci navigates in-person, remote and hybrid work. -Liran's contrarian thoughts on raising money and how he has raised $200M+. -Why you should only do investor updates for investors and not potential investors. -How AI has changed over the last 8+ years of BenchSci's journey. -Building a network as an immigrant founder. -Scaling product offerings. -Working and selling into big pharma and research teams. -Hiring for BenchSci's unique intersection of AI and bio.

Figma is one of the most exciting companies in the world! So it was a ton of fun to chat with Praveer Melwani the CFO. Praveer joined as employee 25 and has scaled with the company over the last few years. If you're curious about Figma, finance in a high-growth company or the future of the CFO role check out this episode. We discussed a ton of interesting topics including... -Joining Figma as employee 25 (now at ~1500) -Scaling with Figma and moving into the CFO role -Nuances to the CFO role at Figma -Developing and learning from mentors -How the CFO role is changing especially in high-growth tech companies -Empowering and building a finance team -The importance of understanding business drivers and key metrics as someone on the finance team -How the finance team works with product and other teams, meetings, cadence and more -What makes Figma such a special company and product -Tools the Figma finance team uses -Timing on building and hiring a finance team at a startup Mentioned - Mark Goldberg from Index Ventures and Dylan Field

This is a must-listen episode for any CPG founder, investor or fan! Kiva Dickinson⁠ is the Founder & Managing Partner of ⁠Selva Ventures. Selva Ventures invests in healthier living. They support Seed & Series A stage consumer health & wellness brands that make healthier living more engaging, accessible, habit-forming and fun. We discussed... -His background in investment banking at Barclays, private equity at TPG and investing at CircleUp. -Why he wanted to start his own firm in the CPG space. -Debunking the myth that CPG doesn't work for VCs. -Why investing in CPG requires a better batting average compared to technology investments. -Why Kiva looks for products with strong gross margins and repeat purchase metrics. -What is the sweet spot and inflection point for Selva to invest. -Spaces in CPG that Selva and Kiva are excited about. -Kiva's thoughts on celebrity brands. -Hiring investors in the CPG space. -"DTC is a channel, not a business" and how to run a strong retail strategy. -Why LA is one of the best geographies for CPG businesses and investors. Selva is an investor in Mid-Day Squares. Jake Karls 🇨🇦 .

A very fun conversation with Fiorella Schiffino, the CFO at Raven Indigenous Capital Partners⁠! Raven Indigenous Capital Partners is Canada's first Indigenous-led and -owned social finance intermediary. Raven focuses on facilitating the flow of capital through impact investing to support the ongoing revitalization of the Indigenous economy. Raven builds relationships with Indigenous communities and entrepreneurs to drive sustainable change. We discussed... -Moving from PwC to Inovia Capital and the VC space. -Diving into the finance side of venture including financial operations of the fund, cash management, compliance and reporting. -The move to Raven. -Assisting portcos with establishing governance and financial infrastructure. -Guidance on hiring CFOs or bookkeepers and implementing accounting systems. -Fund construction and reserves for follow-on investments. -Raven's thesis and mission in supporting Indigenous and Native American entrepreneurs. -When should founders think about hiring for finance roles.

Ronak Trivedi⁠ is an incredible founder. Such a fun convo! Ronak is the Co-Founder & CEO of ⁠Pietra. A Pietra membership unlocks access to cost-plus pricing across software, logistics, sourcing, and marketing tools; all while earning cashback every time you spend on your business. We discussed... -The journey from the University of Waterloo to founding his own company. Top lessons learned from working with Travis Kalanick at Uber and CloudKitchens. -The major pivot Pietra made and how to do pivots well. -The future of e-commerce. -Thoughts on competition and competitors building a similar product. -Building infrastructure, logistics and other challenging pieces of e-commerce. -Pietra's membership model. -Connecting global factories with a global network of founders and new businesses. -How Pietra works with factories and digitizes them. -Raising money and how Pietra raised from Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, TQ Ventures, M13 and others.