For anyone exploring the path - this is how I did it.
I started in Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo wanting to be a founder or an intrapreneur at a big tech company. That was the plan - learn to build, launch something, figure out the rest later. Waterloo’s startup culture is legendary now, but when I was there, it was still finding itself. The ambition was present, a few people were launching things out of dorm rooms, and Velocity had a presence on campus - but the ecosystem hadn’t yet become the machine it is today. If anything, watching it form in real time made it more interesting. You could feel something building, even if you couldn’t fully name it.
Then I made the hardest decision of my university years: I left Waterloo and transferred to the University of Toronto’s business program.
It wasn’t a career move - it was a personal one. Life had other plans, and I needed to be closer to home. But once I was at UofT, I leaned all the way in. And being in Toronto put me at the centre of Canada’s startup and venture ecosystem.
UofT gave me a different lens. Finance, strategy, how businesses actually scale. And it gave me the space to ask the question that changed everything: what can I do with a business degree that keeps me close to startups and tech?
The answer was venture capital. The more I learned about it, the more it felt like the right fit for someone who wanted to be a founder but kept gravitating toward the questions underneath the pitch. You sit across from founders at the earliest stages. You learn how they think. You see what works and what spectacularly doesn’t. You build pattern recognition that compounds over years. And you get to help people build things that matter.
I used UofT’s co-op program as my way in. I didn’t have any connections, an IB or consulting background. I sent a bunch of cold emails and showed up to events where I knew nobody.
My first internship was at BDC Capital, on their Seed Fund. BDC is everywhere in Canada - which meant I got a wide-angle view of the ecosystem from day one. I learned how to read a pitch, how to think about markets, how deal flow actually moves. The learning curve was vertical. I loved every minute of it.
The second fund happened the way the best things in VC happen: through networking. I met the Principal at GreenSky Ventures at an ecosystem event, we had a good conversation, and I followed up. When they were hiring, I reached out.
From GreenSky, I moved to Panache Ventures - one of the most active pre-seed and seed funds in Canada. At Panache, I’ve worked across hundreds of deals, met founders from coast to coast, and helped build a portfolio that spans nearly every sector. It’s the kind of seat where you learn something new every single week.
Through all three funds, I’ve stayed at early stage. That was intentional. Early stage is where the work is the messiest and the most rewarding. You’re betting on people before there’s a dashboard full of metrics to hide behind. The companies are raw. The founders are figuring it out in real time. And the impact you can have - a warm intro, a framework for thinking about pricing, a tough question that reshapes their whole strategy - is outsized compared to any other stage.
If you’re thinking about breaking into VC, here’s what I’d actually tell you: roles are rare, and the bar to get noticed is higher than most people expect. Having a generically strong resume isn’t enough. You need a point of view - a specific market you’ve been following closely, a thesis you can actually defend. Better yet, go source deals. Find interesting companies and bring them to a fund before anyone asked you to. Join a scout program if you can get access to one. Become someone the ecosystem knows - go to the events, be helpful, build genuine relationships with founders and investors over time. The people who break in aren’t always the most credentialed. They’re usually the most visible, and the most useful, before they ever had a reason to be.
I didn’t have a connection to the industry. I just kept showing up, kept learning, and kept reaching out to people doing work I admired. Some of those conversations went absolutely nowhere. A few changed my entire career.