The Founder Games
We hosted our second Founder Summit in Vancouver, gathering 20 founders and senior leaders from across North America. The morning featured sales coach Ryan Williams leading a practical workshop, but the sizzle emerged once the founders turned to each other. Again and again, the request we hear most from our portfolio is simple: connections with other founders.
The summit delivered exactly that—an open exchange of lessons on growth strategies, financing hacks, and operational playbooks, with insights flowing as freely across sectors as they did across dinner tables. We had founders sharing best practices on everything from Model Context Protocol (MCP) implementations to accelerated depreciation on single tenant leases.
A highlight for visitors was the bike ride around Stanley Park, which also included our partners from Deloitte Ventures, Dentons and RBCx.
The following week, Sam from our team joined Climate Week in New York. The conversations there had a different tone: fewer mentions of emissions or sustainability, more emphasis on AI, energy security and onshoring. But the central parallel was striking.
Our founder summit and New York Climate Week reminded us that behind the new language and shifting narratives, the goal remains the same: building durable businesses that make things people need, that move us toward a livable, sustainable planet and that make real economic sense for the end customer.
That combination—mission and market discipline—has always been the true edge of our founders. And in a noisy market, it’s also their most valuable resource.
