Investor Insights - A discussion with accredited Investors

Name: Investor Insights - A discussion with accredited Investors
Uploaded: 2025-12-01T00:29:08.147Z
Duration: 55 min 40 s
Channel: Invest Insight
Description: Investor Insights - A discussion with accredited Investors

Invest Insight

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3 Video Views·Dec 1, 2025 #Finance #PesonalFinance #InvestInsight

#Finance #PesonalFinance #InvestInsight #InvestorInsights #Adiscussion

I might as well keep you occupied a little bit. My name is Peter Dal D'Anco, and I have my cohort, Gilberto Jandro, who's part of our Axion Group Limited Partnership. And what we wanted to do is kind of really start a dialogue about what's happening in Northern Ontario. I've been part of the business community for 50 years now, almost 49 and a half to be exact. And I've watched a lot of things happening to Northern Ontario that most people understand we do mining and forestry, open paper, but what they are not aware of is how vibrant our innovation sector is. And one of the reasons that myself and Gilberto are very, very excited about being part of this podcast is to kind of open up a lot of the discussions about what we are doing in innovation, what we're doing about mentoring, coaching, and funding through angel investments, and to show you what a dynamic environment we have here now. And because of all the attention that Northern Ontario will be getting more and more over the next 5 to 10 to 20 years, I think this is a great starting point. I'd like to personally say that I've watched a confluence of technology over the years because of the business I was in, whether it was selling A-track tapes and VHS and beta machines, those wondrous machines that were around in the late 70s and 80s and went on to become quite a standard in everybody's lives with video stores. So I've watched technology. I've watched the alignment of things happening. And I'm quite excited about being part of this new innovation that's sweeping Northern Ontario, and that's why we're here today. So that's a little bit of a background, and hopefully Gilberto is signed in. Yeah, thanks, Peter. So you made my intro a little easier with your great introduction. I see Gilberto as a meeting guest. Gee, are you there? I am here. Hey! All right, crystal clear. Is this on? Yeah, I see you, I hear you. We will look at an alternative option to Teams for next time. It's fine. Most of the time, startups use Google things, but I'm glad I got in. We are too. Well, welcome. So with that, we'll get started. Peter, thank you for the great introduction. And for those that don't know me, I'm Ian Lane. I'm the Executive Director with the Northern Ontario Angels. And this is a new series that we've done. Peter kind of explained the genesis or the thought around it, and trying to illuminate the motivations for investors to participate in some of the risky and exciting opportunities in Northern Ontario and stimulate the economy, create some new innovative and disruptive technologies. And so really excited for this webinar, and we'll look to do more throughout the year. But this is the first one. So before we get started, I want to acknowledge that we are, on the traditional lands of the First Nations across Northern Ontario, including the First Nation communities within Treaty 9, Robinson-Superior Treaty, Robinson-Huron Treaty, and the Ontario portions of Treaty 5 and Treaty 3. We also acknowledge the rich history of the Cree, Ojibwe, and Métis people who have been here since time immemorial. So a little bit about Northern Ontario Angels. We've been around since 2005, and we are the only accredited angel network in Northern Ontario. We are standing members of Angel Investors Ontario and the National Capital Organization. And we're a non-for-profit governed by a regional board of directors across the region in our eight chapter communities, three staff, and eight part-time consultants, some of which are on the call today. How do you become an angel? How do you become an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur to access our services? You can go onto our website, northernontarioangels.ca, and there is an application portal and attestation form to be an accredited investor. And then there's a pathway for us to look at your company and work with you to see if you are angel ready and a lot of our check sizes are different that are angels right. And they range from 25,000 to 100,000, sometimes more. And we're really lucky to have this presence across the region through our funding agency FedNor, which allows us to be truly a pan-Northern organization. So we have our finger on the pulse of what's happening in the region. Peter and I are in North Bay today. Our home postal code is in Sudbury. Gerberto is in Sault Ste. Marie. We have presence in Thunder Bay, Timmins, Parry Sound, Muskoka, and Kenora in the northwestern part of the province with predominantly Treaty 3 working with and for Indigenous entrepreneurs and investors. So Peter introduced himself. I'm going to jump into Gerberto's introduction, and then we'll have some fun with some dialogue between these really great guys. Oh, I should mention the disclaimer here. Please take a quick scan at that, and I won't bore you with reading it verbatim. But I'll introduce Gerberto, one of our guest speakers. So in 2021, Gerberto launched his own venture capital fund, Radius VC, with a thesis that combines impact and inclusion. Gerberto has been an angel investing in tech startups since 2016 and has often been the earliest check into ventures that include cultivated meat, fin tech, spin tech, space tech, and health tech, all with the potential to transform the world for people, animals, and the planet. He is a limited partner and advisor in both private equity and venture capital funds. He now calls Sault Ste. Marie home and is another great friend to the Meridian Ontario Angels. So, Gerberto, thanks for being here. Peter, thank you for being here. So those that logged in a little bit earlier, you heard Peter and some of his motivations. So, Gerberto, have that espresso. I'm going to kick it off with you. And just give us an overview. How did you get introduced to angel investing? And give us a little overview of your entry into this world. Yeah, sure. Thank you, first of all, for inviting us and having us be part of this. I got introduced to angel investing probably after I was an entrepreneur. So I think that's the first stage is you get introduced to it because you need money and you realize you don't have enough money yourself, so you got to go ask people for money. But being on the other side of being an allocator of money, it was more after we sold to Fairfax. So we sold a company called Pet Health to Fairfax. I was one of the largest shareholders within the company when that took place. And, you know, you have this money and then you start thinking, okay, well, what do I know best to put money into? And it wasn't private, it wasn't public markets or didn't have a foundational education in bonds or any other sort of financial instruments. So for me, it was natural to put that money towards other startups that made sense at the time. And it wasn't necessarily startups that I knew a whole lot about, but it was startups that I thought made sense for the world and also funds. So I invested both in private equity first and then some venture capital style funds. And by learning, watching how those funds operate, being a limited partner, I got to become a little bit more brave with the capital and then invest into companies directly ourselves. So along the way, I met Brandon. He's been a phenomenal partner. We worked in private equity for about 18 months together. I really didn't like private equity, but the returns are consistently good and higher than public markets. So I decided to move towards venture capital instead. And that's been a really exciting way of operating and funding the dreams of some of the most exciting entrepreneurs that I met along the way. Cool. That's a great story. Thank you. Peter, do you want to share a little overview of how you got introduced to this world? Sure. I'm referring to myself as one of the more mature aging sections of the beautiful angel community and entrepreneurship in Northern Ontario. I come from where VCRs first were introduced in 1978 and 79. And very, very quickly, my first angel investment was in 1984, where we got involved with a company that had video stores throughout North America. I became a pretty significant shareholder on that. We took it public on NASDAQ in 1986. So I'm very lucky that I've had time to make a lot of mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes. And thank goodness I've made some good choices too. And they outweighed the mistakes. And I can probably say that one of the reasons I'm still involved with this whole innovation sector in Northern Ontario is because during those years where I was making good choices and bad choices, I happened to have a lot of individuals, especially young people, come into our stores and say, I've got this idea. I've got this new widget that I'd like to sort of form my own company. And can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? And unfortunately, I was very, very little time to commit to helping them. Bottom line, a lot of them left. And I watched this drain, this brain drain of young people, great ideas. And I said to myself way back when in the 90s that if I ever had the opportunity to get involved with some sort of package or location somewhere or an agency, when I sort of get to this lovely ripe old age, that I would love to help people then. So fast forward to 2014, I got hooked up with one of the other very brilliant young men in Northern Ontario by the name of Don Duval, who was the CEO at Norcat. And he and I talked about the fact that there was no such thing as angel investment in Sudbury and very little of it in Northern Ontario. And he believed that one of the ways to really bring innovation, because he had come from Southern Ontario to Northern Ontario to bring mentoring and coaching and funding to innovation, is to have an innovation board. And he was looking for somebody to be its lead EIR, Entrepreneur of Residence. And that's how I signed on. That's when I found out there was Northern Ontario Angels. Nobody ever understood what it was all about in Sudbury. So we launched a chapter in Sudbury. I became a consultant for NOA. So my heart's really tied into two things. Number one, with NOA, we have the ability to really show the world, and I do mean this, show the world, that Northern Ontario is an incredible place for innovation. And I can say this with all the faith in the world, very few people get what we're doing in Northern Ontario. Very few people understand what NOA is doing. Very few people understand what Regional Innovation Centres are doing. They don't understand that the potential for bright ideas exists right here. And it's not just mining or forestry or pulp and paper. It's about healthcare. It's about cleantech. It's about IT. And I've been privileged to really work with some bright, bright young people over the last 10 years. And to be honest with you, what got me involved was the fact that I understand, as Gilberto said very wisely, when you are an entrepreneur and you're looking for money, you run out of the three Fs, right? You run out of your family, you run out of your friends, and you run out of fools. And then you say, let's go find myself an angel investor who believes in my idea. And so what we have here now is kind of a dialogue between Gilberto and I trying to answer some questions about what real angel investing is all about and why it's different from venture capital and bank landing and all the rest of it. So that's my two cents where I started from, which brings me here today. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Gilberto. This is a great start. So I want you guys to just have this dialogue. I'll try and get out of the way. But Peter, what are the mistakes? I want to hear what the mistakes are, what you've learned, how you're transferring that to these people that you're investing in and the appeal of being an angel and having as much, well, I shouldn't say as much, but some mentorships and some leadership within the companies that you've put your personal funds in. Well, from my side, some of the people on this call might know that I did quite a bit of advertising and television and radio for the businesses that I was involved with. And so the mistakes that I made was assuming that I had a product that I was selling and I had 30 seconds to deliver a dialogue that said, oh, this product I'm selling, you need to come and buy. So think about that. The essence of what an entrepreneur is doing with his idea is to say, I've got this idea, so how do I frame a commercial or a pitch deck or a dialogue that says, look at my idea and support me and give me money for it? Well, so to answer your question directly, it always depends on what the value of that statement is. So if you've got an idea, if you want to pitch that idea, you as an entrepreneur have to be so critically aware that it has to have some sort of different value proposition that is so unique, so different from whatever else is out there so that you with confidence can go to that angel and say, look, here's this idea that I don't think anybody has got because I've researched it and I think you should listen to my idea because the value proposition, nobody else is doing that. Now, hold that thought for a second. So you've got a great value proposition, nobody's doing it, but then you've got to answer the second part of that and I think, Gilberto, I'll turn it over to you because you have to convince me that somebody really wants that idea, that people are willing to pay or give you money for that idea over that service. What do you think, Gilberto? Yeah, I mean, I think, so I'll maybe answer it in a different way. I think learning from other people's mistakes is always cheaper. I think that applies for both investing and also building. So if you're an entrepreneur, you're building something, why are you going to go and try and do it by yourself by Googling things? Or even if you do get a lawyer and get an accountant and these folks are supposedly adequately prepared to do what you need to do as a business, why do you trust that they actually know what they're doing and that actually is the right way for you to structure that business and get it going? So I think the resources that you find at places like Techstars, Y Combinator, NOA, and other sort of angel investing places, accelerators and such, are like miles ahead of your local lawyer or local accountant. So I mean, I think you start there. Look at other people who have done it and have been able to find some level of success and be relentless about getting them to provide at least some resources. One of my heroes from a data science perspective is Jeff Jonas. He was the chief science officer for IBM. And I wanted to meet this guy for 10 years and I harassed him on LinkedIn over and over and over again after I started Out of Bets. And eventually he said yes. And he gave me more insight in that 30-ish so meeting that I had while he was on the platform waiting for a training in the UK and I was, you know, woken out of bed because he actually called me back when I gave him my problem. At least from the perspective of data science and context accumulating systems and some of the things that we were working on with Out of Bets in the early days, then I could have gotten from, you know, reading pages and pages and pages of, you know, expert things. So find somebody that will give you the advice, you know, and then try and like suck them into why you're solving the problem and why that matters so much that you will end up inevitably getting their attention and getting some of their resources and some of their network to help you. You know, I think it's a shame that we don't, we make these mistakes in society as a whole, you know, war and climate and all these other things beyond just business. And so, you know, what I would say is, you know, don't learn from the people who are going to come before you. Thanks, Gervais. I'm curious about your entry into the investing world. So you kind of mentioned like some mentors look from other people and that inexpensive part of following other people's mistakes. Did you apply that when you first started out into investing as well? Like, did you find mentor angels that led you away, talked to you through a term sheet, and then you just acquired some knowledge through some of the investments? We'll have to learn how you handle that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think Peter is one of those mentors. You know, I think I got to become a venture partner in a fund called Axion as a result of introduction that was made by the MOA to Peter. You know, and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about Axion and the work that they do in the north. But, you know, I think, yes, absolutely. You know, and there are others too, and there are people that maybe are not as accessible to you. Like, I met Bill Gurley last fall, and he's, you know, one of the goats of venture capital. He started investing. His investing career started in the public markets, but he went to venture pretty early on and was one of the earliest partners at Benchmark. You know, and if you go to benchmark.com, you'll see their website doesn't have anything. It's just an address and a phone number because they literally set the benchmark for returns in venture capital over many, many funds. And so, you know, you look for people like that, even if you might have very limited access to them. You know, I think a lot of their learnings and how they discuss, you know, current markets and apply their knowledge to, you know, what's happening with AI and other things is really, really, really important. But also discussing, right? Like Chad, who's an NOA consultant, worked at J.P. Morgan, you know, has also been somebody I've constantly hit. And obviously, the partners at Axion as well, S&A and Deva, and they're all awesome. Melly, you know, but also other investors from, you know, the time I spent in Boston. I spent 10 years in Boston. That's where, you know, I built a company called Autopets with some Brazilians that went through Techstars. You know, the managing director of that program is also an investor, Clem, who's now back to building another startup. But, you know, you just surround yourself with people who can understand, you know, what's going on, you know, to some degree, because it's really hard to have this conversation with your friends, to be honest. You know, none of my friends are venture capitalists. I have people that I met in venture capital that eventually became friends, but, you know, I didn't have that upbringing. I didn't go to, like, Harvard Business School and have a network of people who all want to be venture capitalists, you know. So you have to work hard at building that network and just be able to suck in that information and then synthesize it in your own way and then be also helpful in whatever opportunity you have to help people out. Can I just jump in there, Gilberto? I mean, I think that's a perfect intro into what happens with most people who have this thought, gee, you know what, I wonder what it means or how can I get involved with angel investing? And in Northern Ontario up to about 10 years ago, there really wasn't any concerted effort of how to marshal two pools. Pools, first of all, of startups and ideas, where did they go to find support? And the other pool is people who, like myself, who wanted to give back and say, I'm ready to coach and mentor. And don't forget, we're talking about seed money here. We're talking about seed money. Seed money is different from any other type of money. It's high risk. Being an angel investor is very rewarding if you're patient and can afford to put a certain percentage of your portfolio into high risk. It's not like investing in the stock market. It's not like investing in the GIC. This is something that's extremely high risk and why most experts, and I'm not considering myself the expert, but I've got quite a bit of knowledge and so has Gilberto, is that to go and put one investment in one startup very rarely works, very, very rarely. It's highly likely that you'll lose your money. So the way to do it, of course, and that's what we are providing with NOA is this forum for people who have interest, both as startups and as investors, to go and get matched up and helped by the NOA network. And what we do is sort of help you go through what you should be asking as due diligence, asking some of the things that you should be looking at and the risk factors in terms of being an investor. But again, what we stress is you make, well, the number is around 20 to 25 small investments and hopefully out of that 20 or 25 small investments, one or two will pay off quite handsomely. And what we mean by that being a 30, 40, or 50 times X multiple of the money you've invested. And that makes up for all the other losses. That's why diversification as an angel investor is very important. And again, back to the question, Gilberto, was bringing up, which is, where do you get this information? Now, Northern Ontario, and very few people know this, has a forum to do it. And that forum is NOA. Because really, very honestly, I have to put my two cents in here. We are not by ourselves. NOA is really breaking out to the fact that we are in a competition with the world. So to have, there is no such silo as just Sudbury or North Bay or Sault Ste. Marie or Northern and Southern Ontario. We are a sector, a region that's competing for talent and money from around the world. And the more we can break that down, the better it is for all of us. And hopefully that kind of helps. Gilberto, did I do you well by explaining that part of it? Yeah, sorry for the interruption. That was my son coming home from school. But yeah, I think the mistakes that I've made as a, you know, we can dig a little bit deeper into like, you know, which investments panned out, which ones haven't. I think if you fundamentally go to the term venture, you know, that means risk, right? Like you shouldn't be putting money into a company that you're 100% sure is going to work out if there's no risk, right? I think that's, you know, that would be, you know, a lot more of the public financial markets and, you know, those other instruments. I think any company has risk, even those that are already well established. You look at what's happened with, you know, stock prices with different companies, even a company like Fairfax that acquired the first company I was involved in, you know, and super diverse, their stock price goes up and down. Will they fail? No, probably not. But, you know, they are definitely, you know, still going to go up and down in price. So I think for me, it was like, when you're investing in a company that's like literally two people, three people in an idea, you know, that takes a certain amount of art that goes beyond just like metrics. There are tons of really good early stage investors who have tried to quantify, you know, like, okay, how come I made a mistake here? How come this one didn't work out? Was it market conditions or was it something that I missed when I was talking to the founder or I didn't ask a question or I didn't understand the market well enough? There's lots of ways to make mistakes. You know, what you want to do is you want to minimize those mistakes by creating your own process that's worked for other people who have come before you, right? So, for example, like how we invest in deep tech, we're looking not just whether or not they have patents, but we look at whether or not those patents can be defended, right? You know, why would we invest in a company that has a lot of patents if none of those patents could ever be defended? Nor does a company have enough money to defend those patents if they ever come up. So, you know, I think what you want to do is look for something that you really like. And I think most angel investors, you know, do make the mistake of writing a few checks and then stopping because they lost their money. This is not the kind of money that you want to invest that you need to be using for your household or for, you know, future expenses or future retirement. This is the kind of money that you invest in order to be, you know, additive to society or additive to your local economy or additive to a sector that you're really passionate about or a sector that you don't see as working really well, you know, and you want these innovations to go and disrupt that sector. You know, I like, you know, the term venture activism more than venture capitalism because, you know, at the end of the day, when you're investing in something as controversial as cultivated meat, you know, where there's definitely people on the right that are saying, you know, you shouldn't make this product. This is a danger to society. It's a danger to farming. It's a danger to et cetera. But then you have other people who see the way that we consume meat today as being very inhumane and very counterproductive and unsustainable that want to fund the innovation that's happening in that sector. And so, you know, that's a lot more, that's going to be a lot more fun and a lot more, you know, it's going to give you way more knowledge, way more network than if you're investing in something just to make money, right? If you're investing in something just to make money, you're probably better off with, you know, leaving that to some professionals that work at a bank or work at some investment management firm and are going to collect fees from you and, you know, put that money to work in a super safe environment, right? But, you know, venture capital, I think should be risky. And, you know, that's what you're looking for. You're looking for the one company that's going to become 40 times your money that will make up for all the other 40 investments that you made that ended up at zero. You know, that's the term. And hopefully if you're lucky, you got two companies that make up for those 40 investments. Now you're 40X your money, right? And so all things being equal, I think what Peter said about diversification is super important. You have to, you can't just do one investment and see how that goes. You know, you have to have a process. And you also probably should invest way less than you think you could afford. You know, I think, you know, one of the mistakes I made when I first checked was a big chunk of money. And it should have been probably 10 times less that chunk of money. But I had really high conviction that that was the right founder, it was the right first investment. I waited a while before my first investment. But, you know, I was pretty sure it was going to work and I invested way more than I should have. And then I was like, wow, started learning more about like putting money away for a rainy day and all these sort of things. And I was like, ah, man, I wish I had that one again. And that investment actually hasn't gone to zero. It's probably like a 1.6. You know, so it's made me money. But it's very unlikely that there will be an exit. You know, that's the other thing you got to consider is like, angel investing has zero liquidity and liquidity is a term for like being able to take the money out and move it around to other asset classes. Or, you know, if you have a Wealthsimple app or some kind of trading app, you know, you know how that works, right? The money in public markets is always somewhat liquid. Sometimes you have events where a stock gets delisted or whatever. But those are pretty rare, especially for investing in bigger, well-known stocks. But, you know, I think angel investing is a lot more personal. And angel investing has a lot more responsibility than just picking a stock up on your app and calling it a day and checking that progress. You know, you're essentially become, you know, by extension, that investor relationship becomes a mentor relationship. It can become a sales relationship. It can become a, you know, fiduciary relationship in some cases if you end up becoming a board member, et cetera. And so you kind of have a responsibility to the founder, even though it's their company to make sure that, you know, you're accelerating their ability to grow as fast as possible. I can sort of jump in there, Gilberto, and if I can sort of insert one thing that we're both hinting around, and that is if you're an investor, there's something called due diligence. And in due diligence, what do we mean by that? And that means that it's your money, and you better do all the work necessary to investigate what you're putting your money into. That's called due diligence. That means understanding what the team is. Have they had experience? Have they done it before? Have they got knowledge in this sector? In other words, if it's medtech, are they a physician? Do they have medical degrees? And do they have a real honest understanding of who they're selling to and what the market says? Like, somebody can have, like I said before, great ideas, but will somebody actually pay you money for that idea? So, I mean, Google, when they first started off, they went around with this sheet and trying to convince these investors that search engine and this new thing called internet was going to be a big thing. But they got turned down quite a few times before somebody wrote the first $100,000 check and the investment and the due diligence they did was in the individual and in the actual sector they were playing in. So here's something I have to sort of tell you, that if you're going to do due diligence, it's up to you. But if you don't want to do the due diligence, then you get yourself associated with a pool of capital. And so I've been fortunate enough to help put together in Northern Ontario over the last 10 years that I've been doing this is that for the first probably six or seven years, it was always meeting with one investor, trying to match that investor with a startup, and it took a lot of time. And I'm saying, boy, there's got to be a better way to pool all these people who have interests with all of these startups that want to pitch their idea. And that's how we decided, well, let's see if we can put a pool of capital together. And what came out of it was that we formed a consortium with the Archangel Network of Funds, and that's how we launched the Axion North Initiative. So Axion is a venture capital of about $6 million consisting of two reasons, two specific issues that they invest in. They invest in IP and technology coming out of schools, and they invest in Northern Ontario ideas of tech and IP, and specifically for people who want to stay here in Northern Ontario or want to move to Northern Ontario. So the Axion North Initiative is a pool of capital of limited partners that work with those two issues. So instead of you doing all the due diligence yourself, you can put your money into a capital, a pool of capital like Axion Fund, like other venture capital companies that Jill Greta was talking about. Jill Greta and I are both with Axion, and that is another opportunity for Northern investors to get involved without doing too much due diligence on your side, and you let the fund do the due diligence. So there's never existed anything like that before until we got involved and really helped put this together. So now we have avenues, and in the coaching side of it, now we have quite a few coaches, especially because NOA has got consultants in most parts of Northern Ontario now and really bright individuals that will help do some of the consulting, coaching, and some of the initial work with the pitch decks to help startups pitch to other investors and get aligned with other groups. Awesome. Thanks, Peter. I think the due diligence part is really important, and I like how, Gertal, you explained it a little bit. I don't know. I've been speaking to Peter over the last little while where angel investing, where does it begin, and then differentiate itself from philanthropy, but I think that's for another time because ultimately you're investing in your communities, right? Whether it's naming rights on a hospital or a school, you're creating a centre that is going to make your community better, and angel investing, you're essentially creating jobs in your community for current and future generations. So, Gertal, Peter, thank you. I like how you really mapped that out, and we'll keep going here. When most people registered, they entered a question into their registration, and so we had one that came in around angels and investors are constantly being approached by entrepreneurs, founders, looking for financing. How can an entrepreneur stand out amongst the masses and make meaningful connections with angel investors who have relevant experience and interest in the entrepreneur's field? Gilberto, you want to handle this, or do you want me to start? So, I went to COP28, the climate event in the UAE, and nobody had business cards. Somebody asked me to connect on LinkedIn, and I pulled out my phone, and he said, oh, no, I sent you a connection. And I was like, okay, well, just scan the QR code. He's like, no, no, I already sent it to you. I found your name, and I sent it to you. So, I'm looking for his thing, and there were 1,400 requests. He's like, wow, you have a lot of invitations to connect. You know, and I was just like, wow, there could be a unicorn in one of those. Unicorn is a term for a company that's valued for over a billion. I was like, wow, I should really go through these. But with LinkedIn and just in social networks in general, I have this role where I don't connect with somebody unless I met them at least once. And that meeting could be virtual or even just like an exchange through a Slack channel that I'm part of or whatever, and then I'll connect afterwards. But yeah, I mean, standing out is hard. Well, don't do what I just described. Don't just reach out to somebody on LinkedIn and expect they're going to read those invitations and actually connect with you. Standing out is, first, I think there's a difference in angel investing and institutional VCs. If it's a professional VC, like, don't waste their time. Like, don't go talking to a fund like Synthesis, which is a biotech fund, if your company is doing something in manufacturing of solar panels, right? Like, be sector appropriate. Do your homework beforehand. Don't be generic. There's nothing that VCs will hate more than generic. Even the generic VCs. I mean, you look at some of the best funds in firms out there, even Anderson Howards has a specific fund for biotech. And they're a general fund. They invest in multiple sectors. So I think you got to be definitely specific and then try to connect with that person in some way that makes a lot of sense, whether it's professional or maybe you're doing something that's helping disrupt the space of pet adoption and you've seen that they've donated to some animal shelter or something. That will make sense, right? We did a lot of that with other pets when we were raising money for that company. So yeah, I mean, we're all human. And even if that person is like the head of some big fund or head of a bank or the mayor of the city you're in, they still have their own human needs. And if you're doing something that's important that they're aligned with, then it makes sense to at least offer the opportunity to connect and be as personal as you can. I think that's how you stand out and be also concise. So try to be both. I'd like to sort of really add to that. Very good suggestions. I'd like to sort of narrow it down. We're lucky we're in Northern Ontario. Anybody who's listening here, you're very fortunate that there are processes now in Northern Ontario where if you have an idea, how do you get in front of investors? And so now we've got right here, the Northern Ontario Angel Group. Every city has a consultant or just go on the website. They have discovery documents. They'll lead you through how to fill in your discovery document, which is that is a document that gives you the idea why it's different. It tells you what to fill in. And at least that starts the process. In individual cities here in Northern Ontario, there's regional innovation centers. There's one in North Bay, there's Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, and in some ways the most active one. And why are the most active? I guess we started it really off back in 2014. So we probably get three or four innovation, what we call discovery documents, at least every month. And we are very fortunate that some of these have done extremely well. And so in these discovery documents, you have to list all the different reasons why your idea, let's go back to what I said before, why your idea is different. What's the value proposition? What is your market? What specifically are you addressing? What is your competitive advantage? So I'm very, very big on this competitive advantage of what you're trying to put down. So spend some time researching how to do a proper discovery document, how to fill them in. And anybody in Northern Ontario has got these two different areas. And as a matter of fact, I can even pitch a little of my Axion hat. You can even fill in a discovery document for the Axion Fund. But they all get fed, whether they come from the NOAA, whether they come from the NorCat Innovation Sector or from ION here in North Bay, they can fill this in and then sooner or later they could get to the Axion Fund to do their pitch because we have a pitch every single month. We feature five individuals that have got startup ideas from across the country. And we've had four or five very successful pitches to the Axion Fund in health tech and in IT that we've been very successful in funding them. And it's not, now we wait for the time, right? Angel investing, what's the average? Gilberto, eight to 10 years kind of investment. You have to wait for some sort of feedback. And so you have to be patient, money, high risk money, but we're keeping our hopes open over the next two or three years, we'll have some exits. Hope that answers your question. I think just to go back on your point about like time horizon, right? So yes, eight to 10 years is what you see with funds. They're structured around that term because that's where most of liquidity will happen, right? Like liquidity meaning like I put in $100,000 into your company, your company sold between now and 10 years from now, right? And so that's why funds pick that timeline and that seems to be like the most common. Sometimes you see eight years for sectors that are supposedly more liquid, and then there's the whole like crypto definition of liquidity, which is a whole nother ball of wax. But I think- That's a nice webinar. Yeah, I'm gonna stay away from the crypto. But I think what's happened too with private companies is like, I don't know if you guys have tracked, like there's been less and less IPOs partially because there's been more and more venture capital. And so, if you're an operator and somebody says, hey, we love what you're building at Uber, we want you to do an IPO and have to do all these sort of regulatory things that you currently don't have to do because you're a private company, and be subjected to all these analyst calls from all these shareholders and stuff and publish all your sneaky things, not company secrets, but at least your financials, which could lead towards investigating company secrets. Like, why would you go public, right? Like, if you're the founder, you want to stay private as long as you can. And I think, you know, for founders that are here, one of the problems we have is we see companies as like our offspring. And even though like I often do say like Luca's my most important startup, my son. You know, and I want to make sure he's got a well-balanced, you know, sort of trajectory of growth. I don't think we should treat our companies as our babies. I think the founder journey is a sacred one. You're solving a problem that most people, most conventional people would say that problem is unsolvable or that's not how it's done. And so it takes a lot of grit and it takes a lot of perseverance. And so what I would say around, you know, liquidity is liquidity has to happen for another event to take place. Like in your life, if you're a founder, you know, maybe you should sell the company. I mean, don't sell it at the bottom of the market. Don't sell it for pennies on the dollar. You know, when you believe that there's some value there, but transitioning to another business or transitioning into full-time investing into funds or startups can be very valuable, you know, both from a value creation perspective for yourself, but also from the perspective of, you know, doing something new and the excitement that comes with that. You know, I know one of my close friends has done three startups now. He sold the last one to MX, and then he put on his LinkedIn, I am taking a career break. And I meditate with this guy twice a week. So I already knew that he had already started another company, but publicly he's like, oh, I'm on a career break. It was just so that he wouldn't have all the inbound asking what's the next thing? I want to fund the next one, right? Like he's been successful three times. That's like, you know, really rare. And so I think you have to look at overall what is really bothering you? The best founders and the best investments come from the ventures that are tackling a problem that is big enough, that is annoying enough, and that has the right people around solving it. And inspiring people to come and solve it with you is one of the roles that a good founder usually has. You know, an investment is probably one of the most, you know, investment of time, whether that's investment like as a co-founder, you know, you equate your regular job to join some startup, or investment of capital is one of the highest levels of commitment that you can get in terms of inspiration to solve that problem, right? So, yeah, I don't know if that answered your question, Ian or Peter. No, that's awesome. Go ahead, Peter. No, I was just going to say, I'm very leery of people's time. We've got six or seven minutes left. So I just want to sort of to hopefully reach out to anybody who's listening here, that both Joe Berger and I and Ian, you know where you can find us if you have any questions for us that you'd like us to answer. Please fire them off to NOA, and they'll get to us. And I guarantee you it may not be right away, but we will do whatever we can to answer your questions. So I'm leaving that out to put NOA on the block. You're going to be passing us a message. I just want to thank everybody for your time. Leave you with, you know, there was a question, somebody asked, can you talk about some of the most successful things that you've been able to be an angel investor in and as a mentor, as a coach? I can probably give you two very specific in my own personal. We're talking about time, about investing. I told you the company that I invested back in the 80s finally had a, I think I invested at somewhere around 60 cents a share and sold them off throughout the years, but they finally got bought out for $50 a share in 2015. So that took a little bit longer than eight or nine years, but I was a pretty patient individual and I was involved with them through the majority of that time. So that's certainly one of my sort of, I learned a lot from mentors there. And the second thing I'd have to say is that even here in Northern Ireland, here in Serbia specifically, of course, we've had several very, very successful startups who started off with their discovery document, planning long-term care staffing solutions. One of the most successful female entrepreneurs has franchises right across the country. We're very proud, proud of Sherry Tomczyk and what she's done. One of our friends from Flosonics, RNA Diagnostics, iRegain, I can go on and name a few more, all of which have been able to raise millions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars. So it is possible, it can be done right here in Northern Ontario, and NOA is the starting point where you can get started from. So thank you, Ian, for inviting us. Thank you. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Roberto, for logging on. And I really appreciate the time. I've written down a whole bunch of questions, like I mentioned. This is our first attempt at Investor Insights, transferring this rich knowledge from these two gentlemen. And we'll be looking at doing more of these, getting some different voices integrated into it. I think for this first one, where people have logged on, you've learned from two wonderful people that have been big champions to Northern Ontario angels with different experiences. But I think you arrive at the same place around your thesis and what motivates you. And I really appreciate you transferring that and sharing those experiences and investing in Northern Ontario. I think this is obviously a very, very exciting time for our region. And Peter and Roberto, you've identified a lot of the different partners and agencies within the region that are helping us poise for unprecedented growth. So Kim and Taryn, my colleagues, have been working in the chat here. So Peter's offer to funnel questions our way is info at northernontarioangels.ca. Roberto, you're participating. Love it. Multitasking. Has a great- I just want to call out two links that I've posted. One is called Something Ventured. It's the first one. It's a video. It was a documentary, I think from the late, early 2000s about venture capital. But it goes way back to like the early days of Arthur Rock and the whole term venture capital and Intel and the 60s, et cetera. It's a really great historical take on venture capital. Definitely, you know, check that out because it's entertaining. And then the other one is a link that I put together for an event I went to in Portugal. And it's more for founders. We hacked this together to help founders and also help us when we're doing due diligence to make sure all the things were in place. But we eventually, because we're founders ourselves, ended up making it into a little checklist for founders when they're starting an idea. And, you know, Notion is a platform and also a really great, one of Angel Portfolio's best investments. But Notion is a great tool for organizing your thoughts and keeping a list and all that. So check that out. That's the second one, bit.ly.com. Beautiful. Thanks, Roberto. Appreciate those resources and guidance. Well, folks, thanks for logging on. We will follow up with this recording for those that registered. And like Kim gratefully put in the chat, info at NorthernOntarioAngels.ca, we will funnel the request to our great investor friends. So thanks very much for being here and look for the next one coming down the chute. Thank you, everyone. Thanks. Great presentations. Thank you very much.