Dave Unsworth & Kerri Golden from Information Venture Partners — Investing in Tomorrow’s Leaders
Miguel Armaza sits down with Dave Unsworth and Kerri Golden from Information Venture Partners, a Canadian Venture Capital firm that primarily invests in early-stage North American B2B FinTech and enterprise software.
We talk about:
- Dave and Kerri’s transition from operators to investors
- IVP’s relationship with the Royal Bank of Canada
- Fundraising from institutional LPs
- The duo’s strategy to invest in the next generation of leaders
- The importance of engineering a culture early on
- Interesting fintech trends
- The role of a CFO at a Venture Capital firm
- And a lot more!
Full interview → Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple
Dave Unsworth
Dave Unsworth co-founded Information Venture Partners in 2014. Dave has led investments in eSentire (exited, 2017), Verafin, Sensibill, Igloo Software (exited, 2017), Viigo (acquired by BlackBerry), Coconut Software, BigID, Knowtions and LendingFront. Dave is focused on FinTech and Enterprise software and is particularly interested in cybersecurity, mobile, enterprise 2.0 and ventures that create highly valuable data assets by being at the center of large-scale financial transactions. Prior to founding Information Venture Partners Dave worked as an investor with RBC Venture Partners from 2001. Prior to his career in venture capital, Dave had a successful career in operating roles focused on e-commerce strategy development, technology-enabled financial services product development, technology project management and retail/commercial financial services. Dave is an active member in the start-up community in Toronto and Waterloo as a mentor to early-stage CEOs and founding teams. Dave also serves as a mentor in the Kaufmann Fellows program and more recently with the Holt FinTech Accelerator and as an investment committee member for the Investment Accelerator Fund. Dave has been a frequent contributor to Private Capital Magazine. Dave is an original member and past Chair of the Financial Services Venture Capital Alliance. Dave was granted an MBA from Queen’s University, a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from Wilfrid Laurier University. He is also a graduate of the NVCA’s Venture Capital Institute and the Rotman SME Board Effectiveness Program.
Kerri Golden
Kerri Golden joined Information Venture Partners at inception in 2014 and works with the investment team to help select and support the fund’s investee companies and manage the financial operations of the fund. She has over 30 years of general management and finance experience in a variety of technology industries and she’s been active in securing financings of over $1 billion in equity and debt and in negotiations of a number of merger and acquisition transactions. Kerri was a General Partner of Primaxis Technology Ventures for eight years where she led and managed several investments in early-stage companies in the IT, software and communications sectors and also served as CFO of the fund. Kerri had a successful corporate career with high growth technology companies. She was a mobile pioneer at Rogers Wireless, joining prior to service launch and experiencing start-up challenges and opportunities as company grew from zero to $200M in revenue during her 2.5 year tenure. She was a public company CFO at Alliance Atlantis Communications and Lorus Therapeutics and ended her successful 7-year career at Bell Mobility as CEO, Paging Division after progressive leadership positions in Finance and IT. Kerri is an experienced start-up executive. She co-owns a small business Urban Flats Toronto and served as COO at SeaWell Networks and CFO at Infobright. She serves the start-up community as an active mentor at MaRS, where she co-founded the JOLT Fund and continues to serve as a volunteer general partner. Kerri obtained an HBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario and earned her CA designation while working with KPMG in Toronto.
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Miguel Armaza
