How to finance your business: options beyond traditional banks and VC

Speakers from the BDC, The Funding Portal and the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) will discuss:

“How to finance your business: options beyond traditional banks and venture capital”

SPEAKER PANEL:

Yuri Navarro, Executive Director,

National Angel Capital Organization (NACO)

NACO is a non-profit organization that created and promotes a vibrant Angel community in Canada. NACO’s members are a diverse group of individual investors, Angel groups and other industry partners that provide support to early-stage companies.

Yuri is the Executive Director of NACO. In his role, Yuri brings his unique mixture of public and private sector experience to help expand NACO’s role as the leading organization representing Canadian Angel Investors with industry and government.

Prior to his current role, Yuri served as Policy Advisor and Chief of Staff to the Minister of Economic Development and Trade, focusing primarily on developing opportunities to benefit Ontario’s Economy, and overseeing the government’s strategy for supporting Small and Medium Enterprises. As a Policy Advisor to the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, Yuri was also instrumental in developing the provincial strategy on energy conservation and smart grid under the Green Energy and Green Economy Act of 2008.

In 2009, Yuri founded NAVY Global Consulting where he has worked with technology clients, mainly operating in the energy sector, to commercialize their innovative solutions and bring products to market. As an advisor to Ryerson’s Centre for Urban Energy, Yuri supported efforts to set up the CUE’s business accelerator program and help energy sector entrepreneurs to commercialize their urban energy innovations.

Yuri is a graduate of Ryerson University’s Commerce program and George Brown College’s Financial Planning program and holds a number of designations with the Canadian Securities Institute.

Marc Kaipio, MBA

The Funding Portal

The Funding Portal is a comprehensive service that improves access to both government funding and capital markets for key industry sectors in Canada. The portal aggregates information on more than 7,000 sources of funding, providing unique data and analytics products as well as access to partners and services that greatly improve funding outcomes.

Marc began his capital markets career in 2001 as an Associate in Corporate & Investment Banking at Scotia Capital. Since then he has held corporate finance, institutional sales, institutional trading, research, and investment management positions at investment banking, merchant banking, and hedge fund companies.

Marc graduated with First Class Standing from the Honours Bachelor of Commerce program at Lakehead University and from the Master in Business Administration program at the Richard Ivey School of Business at The University of Western Ontario.

Marc has served with the Canadian Forces for many years. His experience includes service with the United Nations in Southeast Europe from 1992–1993.

Elfrida Pereira, MBA

Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)

BDC is Canada’s business development bank and the only financial institution dedicated exclusively to entrepreneurs. For the past 70 years, BDC’s mission has been to support entrepreneurs through financing and consulting solutions.

Elfrida's passion lies in developing and launching disruptive ideas. As a former consultant to tech startups and corporate entrepreneur, she has a track record of bringing innovative products to market.

She was recently recruited by BDC to address the funding gap that exists for technology companies and connect the tech community in GTA west area.

She holds an Honors Bachelors in Psychology from McMaster and MBA from Wilfred Laurier University.

A networking session will follow the presentation.

We hope to see everyone on January 29th!