Well.ca – A More healthy way of life, Simply One Click on Away.

I’ve constructed three corporations throughout three completely different expertise waves. The factor I maintain relearning is how little of the result is in regards to the expertise.

I began at BlackBerry as a younger engineer and wrote BrickBreaker on the facet. It ended up on greater than fifteen million gadgets — I used to be solely 19 or 20 years outdated. That was the primary lesson in how inconsistently worth will get attributed inside a giant firm.

I based Well.ca out of Guelph and grew it into one of many largest e-commerce companies within the nation. McKesson acquired us in 2017. The deal labored due to years of working choices made lengthy earlier than any banker was within the room. Customer belief. Category place. A workforce that may very well be handed the keys with out the wheels coming off.

I based Tulip whereas I used to be nonetheless operating Well.ca, as a result of I may see what cellular was about to do to retail and no person else was constructing for it. Mulberry, Coach, Kate Spade, Michael Kors, Salvatore Ferragamo. We raised over 100 million in enterprise capital throughout the 2 corporations and discovered, the costly approach, what enterprise gross sales really take.

I’m co-founder of Transformer Lab now. Open-source platform for AI mannequin growth. This is a unique world, however it’s the identical sample beneath. Great merchandise lose offers. Trust, timing and folks resolve greater than the tech does. The founders who internalize that early construct corporations with extra choices when the second arrives.

Toronto in 2026 is in a wierd place. More capital than it has ever had. More AI-native competitors than most founders have priced in. More acquirer exercise than the headlines replicate. The choices founders make within the subsequent eighteen months will quietly decide what the following decade of this ecosystem appears like.

As Chair of @TechExit.io Toronto 2026, I’m working with this steering committee to construct a program for the Toronto founders who’re inside that call proper now. Less narrative. More of what really strikes the result.

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