Category: Industry Insights

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State of SaaS in Canada: Trends, Challenges, and Growth

2024 has been a pivotal year for Canadian tech. While challenges remain, the opportunities are even more significant, making this the perfect time to build world-class companies in our own backyard. As we prepare to release our State of Canadian Software Report in early 2025, here’s a preview of the key trends shaping our ecosystem,…

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Putting Patients at the Center: Parallels between Customer Experience Solutions and Digital Health platforms

As an investor at Inovia, I work with a team that has over 15 years of experience partnering with exceptional healthcare companies like AlayaCare, BenchSci, Vital, Signal1 and Forward. While I’ve spent the last three years meeting with many healthcare startups, I have a deeper expertise in Customer Experience solutions. My prior life was spent…

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Cracking the Code of Venture Debt in a Changing Landscape

The Canadian startup ecosystem has witnessed a remarkable explosion in recent years, and venture debt has become a crucial tool for companies to leverage. New financing options such as MRR lines, acquisition lines, and senior term loans have emerged to support negative cash flow businesses. Until recently, these debt instruments were cheap, non-restrictive and often…

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Inovia-Portfolio HR & Talent Session: Future of Work with Prasad Setty

The workplace is rapidly evolving, with changing social dynamics and new technologies shaping how we collaborate and innovate. We recently held an Inovia-Portfolio HR & Talent Session on the Future of Work with Prasad Setty, a seasoned HR leader who spent 15 years in leadership positions at Google. When the pandemic hit, Prasad led Google’s…

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Beyond the Cart: Key Shopify Developments

Welcome to Episode 4 of Beyond the Cart! In this episode, I highlight key developments in the Shopify ecosystem over the past year and their outsized impacts on the future of commerce enablement. I chose to write this blog about Shopify because they have considerable market influence and they have redefined the e-commerce category over…

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Introducing the Revenue Execution Model

The world of company building has changed, and a new strategic and operational mindset is needed. Scaling a technology business today requires a deeper emphasis on execution and a better understanding of the link between strategy and execution. While strategy is a topic that tends to be well understood, we’ve found a notable gap in…

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Beyond the Cart: Perspectives on Tech-Enabled Marketplaces

Welcome to Episode 3 of Beyond the Cart! In this episode, I am going to be sharing our thoughts on tech-enabled marketplaces, and the key analyses that are top of mind during Inovia’s due diligence process. What is a Tech-Enabled Marketplace? One positive outcome of the lockdowns is people have taken a step back to…

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Beyond the Cart: Post-Purchase Thesis

Welcome back to Beyond the Cart for Episode 2! In case you missed Episode 1, we covered an overview of the commerce enablement landscape and how we see its future. In this episode, we will explore the post-purchase landscape and our expectations for value accrual in specific product verticals. Why Post-Purchase? The tools for creating a…

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Beyond the Cart: Commerce Enablement

Welcome to Beyond the Cart. Over the course of this blog series, I will be sharing insights and thoughts on the latest trends and technologies that are driving the e-commerce industry forward. I’ll look at a wide range of topics, from perspectives on commerce enablement and thesis areas Inovia has developed around them, to my…

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The Times They Are A-Changin’

I was born in 1962. The year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the year Marilyn Monroe died, and the year the Beatles released Love Me Do. Yes, I am that old. But age brings some benefits. For example, I am entering my fifth recession as an adult. Been there, done that. That comes in handy…

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