Led · Seed · Jun 2022

Impro.AI offers an AI-augmented coaching and consulting platform for executives, leaders, and employees that uses coaching algorithms and a client-centered interface to deliver five-minute-per-day micro-coaching and organization-wide insights. Clients pay on a per-employee-per-month basis and Impro claims more than 20 corporate clients across North America and Europe. The company says its micro-coaching helps users adopt new work habits while executives can optimize company performance using platform analytics. Impro launched in 2021, is headquartered in Vancouver, and has 18 employees. The startup reports it is on track to earn over CAD 500,000 in 2022. It plans to use the CAD 2.25M seed proceeds for further R&D of its platform, AI, and methodology, to expand globally, and to launch an in-company Impro mentors service later this year.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2021

Homewise is a Toronto-based proptech startup that helps homebuyers secure mortgages through an online platform that sources tailored options from over 30 banks and lenders across Canada. Its predictive intelligence software scans thousands of mortgage options instantaneously and pairs that output with access to human advisors by phone. The service is free to homebuyers; Homewise’s revenue comes from lenders paying a percentage of the commission. During the COVID-19 pandemic the company reported substantial growth, claiming it tripled revenue year-over-year, quadrupled site applications, and increased pre-approvals ten-fold. Mid last year Homewise secured its Canadian brokerage licence and is now available in every province and territory except Québec, where it operates via an undisclosed partner and hopes to secure a licence. The company is a 14-person team and plans to double headcount, hiring data scientists and mortgage advisors while expanding products, partnerships and brand awareness.

Led · Convertible Note · Aug 2020

Zoom.ai is a Toronto-based startup that offers smart meeting-scheduling software that integrates with Slack, Skype, Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams. Founded in 2016, the company pivoted from a broader automated personal assistant to focus on scheduling and now targets recruiters, salespeople and mid-market and SMB customers. The startup reported a surge in traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming new user registrations, customers, and active users grew five-fold in March and meetings scheduled through its platform grew six-fold since mid-March. Zoom.ai plans to release a new payment processing product to enable bookings where users sell their time, a use case the company has explored as "virtual e-commerce." Financially, the company said it raised C$600,000 in a combination of equity and debt classified as bridge financing to extend its runway, and it hopes to close an additional C$300,000 in the next quarter. The product focus narrowed after a 2019 product-market fit exercise that reduced staff and concentrated the team on scheduling, integrations and faster learning cycles. Zoom.ai, founded in 2016 by Roy Pereira and based in Toronto, builds Ava Zoom, an automated virtual assistant and chat-based productivity tool for enterprises. Ava Zoom automates meeting scheduling, meeting preparedness, introductions, travel logistics, searching files and document generation, acting as an intelligent layer between a company's chat application and its tech stack. The product centralizes corporate data and applies machine learning to surface and stitch together insights through chat. Zoom.ai reports that the assistant saves employees 10+ hours per month and boosts productivity by 14%. The company has partnerships with Microsoft and Google and has received awards including IDC Research’s Top 5 Canadian AI Innovator, OpenText’s Best Enterprise Software, and Best New Startup at the Canadian Innovation Awards. Zoom.ai plans to use recent funding to accelerate product development, grow the team, expand sales into the US and Europe, and emphasize enterprise security. Zoom.ai is a Toronto-based developer of an automated virtual assistant that helps users offload menial administrative and administrative tasks. The company has been incorporating learnings from enterprise customers into its product and pitches to enterprise buyers. Financially, Zoom.ai recently closed a $2.1M seed round and won a C$100,000 grand prize at the OpenText Enterprise World Pitch Contest. The company says the prize extends its runway by about two months, giving it “more buffer room” to hit metrics needed for a Series A. The award also includes one year of free entrance into the OpenText Global Partner Program, which provides training and product knowledge to help achieve business targets. Founder and CEO Roy Pereira characterized the win as validation of Zoom.ai’s vision to enhance employee experience in the modern enterprise. Zoom.ai positions itself as an automated executive assistant for enterprise rather than a consumer chatbot, aiming to save managers time on scheduling, contact lookups, and meeting logistics. The product runs across many messaging platforms (Slack, Telegram, Messenger, Kik, Line, Skype, Hangouts, Cisco Spark, SMS and email) and is available as a free preview. The company emphasizes robust NLP and user-aware memory, training its models to recognize varied phrasings and context across different chat UIs. Zoom.ai has built much of its machine‑learning stack in‑house, recruiting talent (including from the University of Toronto) and enhancing off‑the‑shelf tools to meet its needs. The team says it uses available user data to inform personalization and reduce error rates, and is open to integrating better external ML tools as they become available. At the time of the article the startup was roughly six months old and focused on expanding its domain capabilities while keeping error risk low.