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At Best Startup Canada we track over 100,000 Canadian startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top British Columbia based CEO’ operating in the Financial Services space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.ca.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Sean Merat
Co-Founder and CEO of Owl.co
Sean Merat is serving as CEO at Owl since Aug 2017. He is also serving as Director of Marketing at Lavia Design since Lavia Design. Prior to this he was the co-founder and VP of Marketing for Imperus Technologies from July 2010 till May 2012.
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About Lavia, Owl.co: Owl is an insurance claims monitoring platform that detects non-eligible claims through evidence and facts with an audit trail.
Damir Hot
CEO & Founder of Canalyst
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About Canalyst: Canalyst is the leading destination for public company data and analysis.
Ian Crosby
Co-Founder & CEO of Bench
Co-Founder and CEO at Bench.
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About Bench: Bench is a fintech company that provides online bookkeeping services for small businesses.
Catherine Dahl
CEO of Beanworks
Catherine is passionate about business process improvement and leads with a vision of making accounting easier and more enjoyable while increasing efficiency and reducing costs. As a CMA professional, she knows first-hand the challenges with financial management and is dedicated to driving change through innovation. Catherine is a co-founder.
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About Beanworks: Beanworks is an accounts payable automation solution that helps companies eliminate paperwork and reduce invoice processing costs.
Alexis Shahriar Assadi
Director and Chief Executive Officer of Pacific Income Capital Corporation
Alexis Shahriar Assadi is an entrepreneur and private lender. He operates a group of companies that lend funds to real estate projects and businesses across Canada.
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About Assadi Private Capital Inc., Pacific Income Capital Corporation: Pacific Income Capital Corporation is the general partner of Pacific Income Limited Partnership.
Alex Wick
Founder/CEO of Cascadia Carbon
Alex Wick is a forester, data scientist and visionary, working at the intersection of climate change, carbon, cryptography, and coding. Living a conscious, low-carbon lifestyle since 2009.
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About Cascadia Carbon, Woodstock Chai: Building CODEX: A carbon-neutral blockchain cryptocurrency for carbon offset generation and storage
David Marshall Feller
Founder & CEO of Mogo
David Feller founded Mogo in 2003 and currently serves as the Company’s Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our Board of Directors. Mr. Feller is a pioneer in online lending and a passionate advocate of helping all consumers improve their financial health regardless of their financial position.Mr. Feller is a former member of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization (YEO) of Canada and is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Mr. Feller’s experience leading the business over the past 12 years, along with his responsibilities for the strategic direction, product innovation and management of Mogo’s day-to-day operations, bring broad industry and specific institutional knowledge and experience to the Board of Directors.
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About Mogo: Mogo is a consumer finance company that helps in managing and controlling finances.
Janice Taylor
CEO and Co-Founder of Earbutter
Janice Taylor is a social entrepreneur, mother, inspirational speaker, author, and online safety advocate. After a long journey from her roots in Saskatchewan, Janice has emerged as a pioneer in solving the growing epidemic in Social Media. She has a Bachelor of Psychology, Honours Thesis Option and spent many years studying the impacts of addiction on the human spirit. It was from her research focused on self-esteem and self-efficacy among women that she sought to create a solution to the issue of social media addiction and how it was affecting women, children, and families. From this 9 year journey in the wild wild west of technology startups, she has created a solution that will awaken families with love. Her credo of compassion, community, and caring drives the vision of her company Mazu, a healthy, positive engagement platform for families, founded in love. Mazu gives children and parents a place to communicate and connect, creating the “digital family village” – the antidote to social media, that will awaken families with love.
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About Earbutter: Earbutter creates an innovative funding model in the music industry.
Dejan Mirkovic
CEO, Co-founder & Board Member of Goose Insurance Services
Dejan is no stranger to leading a flock into unknown territory. As the founder of Cityfone™ Telecommunications (Canada’s first independent mobile virtual network operator), Dejan successfully launched their wireless brands, leading Rogers Wireless. Most recently, he was VP of Corporate Development at airG™ Wireless, a global mobile-first social entertainment platform serving over 100 million consumers worldwide. As a co-founder and board member of Square One Insurance Services, Dejan has easily migrated all his boundless industry expertise and insight to Goose. And like all of our flock, Dejan loves to travel. He’s been to 40 countries across 4 continents. His favourite spot to date is the Australian Gold Coast for its stellar beaches, climate and sumptuous seafood.
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About Goose Insurance Services, Square One Insurance: Mobile First B2C Insurance Platform
Matthew Unger
CEO & Founder of iComply Investor Services Inc.
Matthew Unger is Founder & CEO of iComply.
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About iComply Investor Services Inc.: iComply Investor Services (iComply) is an award-winning software company focused on reducing regulatory friction in financial markets.
Peter Fahlman
Co-founder, CEO & President of E-xact Transactions
Peter Fahlman With over 20 years of experience in the computer industry, with an emphasis on networking, Mr. Fahlman devotes 100% of his time to the company and has served it in this capacity since its beginnings.
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About E-xact Transactions: E-xact Transactions E-xact has provided fast, secure, and innovative online transaction solutions for over 15 years.
Marcus New
CEO, Chief Entrepreneur and Founder of InvestX Capital
Marcus New is the CEO, Chief Entrepreneur, and Founder of InvestX Capital.
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About InvestX Capital, Stockhouse: InvestX is the private equity marketplace for registered dealers to provide access to retail accredited investors.
Chris Brossard
Chief Executive Officer of CMLS Financial
Together with the President, Chris Brossard is responsible for overseeing the overall strategic direction of CMLS. He is responsible for the company’s residential mortgage business and shares in the oversight of corporate functions. Mr. Brossard has more than 20 years of experience in real estate and private equity. Prior to joining CMLS in 2003, Mr. Brossard held several senior executive positions and has been a principal in private equity, real estate and real estate finance firms. Mr. Brossard holds a Canadian Chartered Accountant designation and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Simon Fraser University.
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About CMLS Financial: CMLS Financial provides independently owned mortgage services.
Davyde Wachell
Founder & CEO of Responsive
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About Responsive: The enterprise hybrid wealth management solution for service excellence and actionable insights.
Hamed Arbabi
CEO & Founder of VoPay
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About VoPay: VoPay is a leader in payment innovation, digitizing online bank account payments with speed and transparency.
Christopher Morris
President & CEO of GrowthWorks Capital
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About GrowthWorks Capital: GrowthWorks Capital is a Vancouver-based venture capital firm focused on the management of regionally-based venture capital funds.
Min Kuang
Founding Partner & Chief Executive Officer of Roadman Investments
Min Kuang is the Founding Partner and Chief Executive Officer of Urban Select Capital Partners Corp.. Ms. Kuang has over 20 years’ experience in managing public companies, mergers and acquisitions, business development, and investment management. Ms. Kuang is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Asia Select Asset Management Inc. in Canada and the Chief Executive Officer of Asia Select Investment Fund Inc., a private equity firm established in April 2007, where she is responsible for equity investments, mergers and acquisition transactions, and taking companies public. From 2001 to 2007, Ms. Kuang founded Orient Ventures Ltd., a Vancouver-based investment and financial advisory firm which is engaged in mergers and acquisition transactions in China and Canada. She has been involved in a wide range of technology M&A, joint ventures, and other strategic alliance transactions for media , consumer, resource, medical device, and healthcare companies in China and, Canada. Ms. Kuang received an M.B.A. from Lawrence Technology University in Michigan and a B.A. degree from China.
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About Roadman Investments: Roadman Investments is an investment issuer that focuses on investing growth capital in private and public companies.
Jake Tyler
CEO / Co-founder of Finn AI
Jake Tyler is Co-founder and CEO at Finn.ai, an award-winning AI powered personal banking and financial management assistant. Finn can regularly be found featured in the likes of USA Today, American Banker and Bloomberg, or on stage at Money20/20, Finovate and VivaTech Paris. Originally from Australia, he has worked and lived in five countries in the last decade. Prior to founding Finn, Jake was a Director at Brook Intelligence, as well as an M&A Strategy Consultant at PMSI Consulting (London). MBA at IE Business School.
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About Finn AI: Finn AI provides AI-powered conversational banking technology for personal banking and finance.
Sean Chan
CEO & Chairman of EquitySoft Investments
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About EquitySoft Investments: Canada’s only private wealth management entity specialized in machine-learning sentiment-scoring trading algorithms.
Drew Gamble
CEO & Co-Founder of Fetch Auto
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About Fetch Auto: Fetch Auto is a platform where Canadians can buy, sell and finance private sale vehicles.
Keith Ippel
Co-Founder and CEO of Spring Activator
Co-Founder at Spring University.
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About Spring Activator: Spring Activator is an incubator and accelerator changing the world through entrepreneurship
Geoffrey Routledge
Co-Founder & CEO of Liquuid
Geoffrey is a proven technology leader in both startups and Fortune 500 companies. He excels in fostering customer-driven product innovation, and creating inspired, loyal teams. Geoffrey co-founded PayByPhone, a globally successful mobile payment platform acquired by Volkswagen Financial Services in 2016.
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About Liquuid: Liquuid Home Ownership is reshaping home ownership and investment, one slice at a time
DH Kim
CEO of Finhaven
DH leverages his extensive experience in finance to disrupt the capital markets with blockchain technology. Finhaven Technology is leading the industry with the development of a blockchain-powered securities issuance platform and exchange
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About Finhaven: Finhaven is building an investment banking platform supporting the issuance, investment, and trading of digital securities.
Nelson Lin
Founder & CEO of FintruX Network
Nelson pioneered online credit adjudication for the asset-based finance and leasing industry in Canada as mentioned in the book ‘Unstoppable’ published 2014 by Beth Parker and endorsed by the Canadian Finance and Leasing Association (CFLA). He has over thirty years of experience delivering numerous custom enterprise applications to global organizations such as J.P. Morgan, AT&T Capital, etc
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About FintruX Network, Robocoder Corporation: Smart Business and Financial Solutions Built On The Blockchain.
Vicki Li
Co-Founder & CEO of LETT
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About LETT: LETT is a rental marketplace connecting relocators to their perfect neighborhoods around the world based on lifestyle and relocation needs.
Timothy Vipond
Chief Executive Officer of Corporate Finance Institute
Tim is an internet entrepreneur, financial analyst, and ex-investment banker. He is currently CEO of the Corporate Finance Institute®. Since 2005, Tim has been an active participant in capital markets across a wide range of industries and transactions including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and capital raising totaling more than $3 billion in value.
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About Corporate Finance Institute: Corporate Finance Institute provides online training and education for finance and investment professionals.
Gurjeet Matharu
CEO of Nava Ventures
Experienced Full Stack Engineer with a demonstrated history of working in the Financial Services and Defence industries. Skilled in Kubernetes, Cloud, Python, Java and supporting the production of ML and scientific workflows and products. Strong engineering professional with a Bachelor of Applied Science (B.A.Sc.) focused in Systems Engineering from Simon Fraser University.
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About Nava Ventures: Nava Ventures is a SaaS company that offers an ecosystem of socially responsible fintech products.
Joe Hawes
CEO of Healthfirst financial
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About Healthfirst financial: HealthFirst Financial, a national patient financing leader.
Amin Vassefi
CEO of Signum Alpha Systems Inc.
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About Signum Alpha Systems Inc.: Signum Alpha develops financial software and investment related services.
Ajay Hans
Founder & CEO of Mobetize
Ajay Hans is the Founder and CEO at Mobetize.
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About Mobetize: Mobetize is collaborating and empowering leading financial institutions and telecom companies to revolutionize how financial services.
Lifa Nati
CEO and Publisher of Cheapsense.com
Domain name investments, consulting and branding. We help startups pick memorable well researched domain names. We believe in the power of the name that sticks, never to be forgotten.
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About Cheapsense.com: Domain investment Tips, Consulting and Branding
Nichola Lytle
Founder & CEO of EduFunder
Nichola Lytle is the Founder of Edufunder.com.
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About EduFunder: EduFunder is a crowdfunding platform that fast tracks extra money for bright and aspiring students. Sponsor a student today!
Nichola Lytle
Founder & CEO of EduFunder
Nichola Lytle is the Founder of Edufunder.com.
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About EduFunder: EduFunder is a crowdfunding platform that fast tracks extra money for bright and aspiring students. Sponsor a student today!
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