Meet our Investor Mentors
Alex McIsaac
Partner, Global Founders Capital
As a Partner at GFC, Alex is responsible for growing the Canadian investment practice. GFC is a seed and lifecycle investor with over $3Bn capital worldwide and 250+ portfolio companies.
Anu Nigam
Managing Partner, Enjoy The Work
Ever since Anu joined his first startup in 1996, He enjoys working with small, driven teams, helping to transform cutting edge technologies into real businesses. His first two startups revolutionized fiber-optic telecommunications, resulting in two acquisitions among the top 10 largest VC-backed M&A deals of all time. After the .com crash, he shifted his sights to consumer internet and started one of the world’s first social networks, hi5.com, which grew to 60M MAU. Later in his career he followed the explosion of smart phones to found an app discover site that organically attracted 15M installs.
Devan Batavia
General Partner, Enjoy The Work
For the last 10+ years, Devan has built and led go-to-market teams for 3 organizations, Jive which went public in 2011, Origami Logic was acquired by Intuit, and TripActions, still a public company valued at over $5B at last check. Building startups has fed his ambitions for years, and he joined Enjoy The Work so that he could impact not just one startup, but rather a portfolio of them across the globe.
Jonathan Lowenhar
Founder & Managing Partner, Enjoy The Work
Jonathan loves working with entrepreneurs - whether as an operator, advisor or board member his passion has been to help early companies to launch, young businesses to grow and maturing enterprises to reach scale. Over the last 15 years he's successfully managed a $1B business segment for a large public company, led the turnaround of a distressed $100M+ revenue business, launched and sold a venture-backed startup and led the rapid growth of a fintech enterprise software business.
Lesley Ross
General Partner, Enjoy The Work
Lesley has worked in tech for 14 years as an operator in growth and analytics roles. She founded Quantified Ardor in 2016 to support growing startups around the world on data-driven decision-making. She has also spent the last 7 years as a startup advisor (including as a mentor for Google For Startups since 2016) while holding multiple COO positions for startups at various stages.
Leslie Fine
General Partner, Enjoy The Work
Leslie’s career as a startup founder and product leader began after she earned a PhD in Game Theory and Behavioral Economics from Caltech. In 2008, she founded her first startup, Crowdcast, and successfully exited the company in 2012. Following Crowdcast, she helped lead three more startups: Spigit (SVP Product), tenXer (Head of Product), and Swerve (Founder, CEO). Afterfour startup experiences,Leslie ventured into the enterprise world and joined Salesforce (VP Product), where she helped ship the company’s first AI product.
Michelle McBane
Managing Director, StandUp Ventures
Michelle McBane is passionate about working with amazing technology entrepreneurs. As the Managing Director of StandUp Ventures, she leads investments in early-stage technology companies led or co-led by women founders. Michelle is a skilled business professional with over 25 years of combined operational and venture capital experience. Her background includes 20 years of venture capital investing in early-stage companies as well as sales and marketing roles in both engineering and scientific industries. Notable investments include Maple, Figure1, Sampler, Nudge Rewards, tealbook, Bridgit, Coconut Sofware and Profound Medical. Past exits include Cytochroma (acquired by OPKO), Forbius (acquired by BMS), Rubikloud (acquired by Kinaxis), Rank (acquired by Arctic Wolf) and Locationary (acquired by Apple). Prior to StandUp, Michelle was a venture investor with MaRS IAF, VG Partners and Primaxis Technology Ventures.
She is active in the technology community and volunteers with several organizations in the community including the Biomedical Zone at Ryerson, a volunteer with the Next 36, Techstars and CIX and an instructor in the entrepreneurship department at Ryerson University.
Madison Wright
Associate, Real Adventures
Madison is an Associate at Real Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm based out of Toronto and Montreal. At Real Ventures, Madison is focused on supporting incredible Canadian entrepreneurs as they build world-class companies. Prior to joining Real, Madison worked in management consulting, helping to build out the firm's technology & innovation Consulting practice.
Matthew Leibowitz
Co-Founder, Plaza Ventures
Matthew is the Co-Founder of Plaza Ventures, where he focuses on deal flow, board management, ecosystem development, corporate partnerships, and investor relations. Matthew is a career VC, having overseen dozens of growth-tech finance investments and co-created multiple funds including Canada’s first dedicated Direct Secondary Fund and Quayside Venture Partners a partnership with Alphabet and Sidewalk Labs dedicated to investing in impactful Urban Tech companies.
He sits on the board of numerous companies including Stackadapt, Dejero and MMB Networks, accelerators, and charities. Matthew is a Board Member of the Canadian Venture Capital Association, a member of the MaRS IAF Investment Committee, Co-Chair of the CIX Top 20 Awards Committee and Mentor at Techstars Toronto Accelerator and Creative Destruction Lab. Matthew is also an Advisor at NEXT Canada, where he mentors young entrepreneurs building their own ventures. He is a frequent public speaker and guest lecturer on tech start-ups and Venture Capital, as well as an active angel investor. Matthew obtained his Honors Bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto, a Master of Science from the University of New South Wales, and a Master of Laws from the University of Oxford.
Ned Renzi
General Partner, Enjoy The Work
Ned has spent the first part of his career developing equipment and working with Special Ops in the DoD. In his next phase, Ned started and ran Birchmere Ventures where they achieved $15B in exits. Investor in @Cvent, @Ironclad, @Sleeper, @Modsy, and @PaperLearning. Throughout Ned's career, his highest highs have come from coaching founders. Ned's passion lie in helping others achieve success. Through Enjoy The Work, he is able to fulfill this passion by taking founder mentorship to a deeper level than one could in the VC world.
Rick Hartwig
General Partner, Enjoy The Work
Dynamic, results-driven leadership, marketing and communications consultant with 20+ years of experience in technology. Track record of leading both small and large companies to develop differentiated strategies and positioning. Experienced leader in mobile software and cloud/SaaS solutions. Successful in building awareness delivering effective marketing strategies, compelling positioning and effective channel/sales enablement. Highly regarded public spokesperson. Skilled at developing and leading high performance global organizations, recruiting and motivating great people.
Sanjana Basu
Investor, Radical Ventures
Sanjana Basu is an Investor at Radical Ventures. Radical Ventures is a $325 Million Series A fund investing in bold entrepreneurs developing and applying artificial intelligence to invent the future. Sanjana enjoys supporting founders who are on a mission to use deeply disruptive technology to address the many opportunities that lie ahead of us. Prior to Radical, Sanjana worked at the venture and incubation arm of the Tata Group, the $100B Indian conglomerate based out of Mumbai, India. Before, she was an Investment Banker at Barclays. She completed her MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore and her undergraduate in Economics & International Relations from Tufts University in Boston, US.
Yanush Cherkis
General Partner, Enjoy The Work
Yanush had a few careers in various industries, but independent of his functional roles, the most important skill Yanush mastered is the ability to ask good questions. He has developed that skill over a 20 year career that has spanned banking, entrepreneurship, personal coaching and startup advising. Yanush has helped start 6 businesses, including co-founding a software company that was built from start-up to a profitable multi-million-dollar global operation to a successful M&A exit. Yanush has his CPA license, multiple academic degrees and a professional coaching certification but above all else his greatest passions are coaching and mentoring his fellow entrepreneurs, and volunteering at his kids’ schools.