MIF Lunch & Learn 19: Finding dilutive funding
Before finding customers, many startup and spinoff businesses need to find funding. In addition to government grants and tax-credits, companies can also raise money by dilutive funding. Such an investment should provide critical funding to the company and raise its value, but dilutes the ownership of existing shareholders. For early-stage ventures from university research, how can you find investors willing to take a risk on a newly founded business? And how much ownership should you give away? The MIF is assembling a panel of experts who discuss this topic, as well as answer questions from the audience. Our panelists for this event are Samir Mounir and Marc Guilbert.
Samir is an innovation expert and serial entrepreneur with extensive venture capital and investment experience in the innovation and technology sectors. He has held various senior management positions, including Vice President of VantagePoint Capital Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm managing a fund of over US$4.5 billion. With a focus on life science technologies, he is currently the Senior Director of Market Development for Technology, Health & Innovation for Desjardins.
Marc leads Hard Climate's ambitious project to build Cananda’s first venture studio dedicated to hard industrial climate tech. It is his core belief that the path to a net-zero economy must include business model innovation to accelerate the promotion of early-stage technologies to becoming impactful industrial solutions. To assist him in making his vision a reality, Marc has 20 years of experience in various sectors of finance. Previously an early-stage entrepreneur and executive, he also held finance and strategy roles in a large Canadian public company and, prior to this, was an FX derivatives trader for multinational banks.
