Episode Overview
“View the entrepreneur as the planter of the seed…The role of venture capital is the water and it is creating the fuel for growth.” John Ruffolo is very selective in picking which seeds to water. One of the most important questions he asks entrepreneurs is “How did you get to this idea?” He believes the best performing companies in his portfolio all started with an entrepreneur that had a passionate story. On this edition of the Startup Canada Podcast, Rivers Corbett interviews the man Bloomberg Business dubbed the “saviour to Canada’s startups” for offering direct investment when it was sparse following the last recession. John Ruffolo is the Chief Executive Officer of OMERS Ventures and the Executive Managing director of OMERS Strategic Investments. Hear why David Goldberg’s two and a half hour pitch for SurveyMonkey was among Ruffolo’s most memorable; how FOMO (or fear of missing out) is contributing to a tech bubble; and why Ruffolo thinks the government shouldn’t put taxpayer dollars towards private business.
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