Episode 278 of The Business Development Podcast dives into the explosive rise of Startup TNT with co-founder Tim Lynn, a financial strategist and serial entrepreneur who has helped reshape Western Canada’s startup ecosystem. Tim shares his journey from investment banking to building a community-driven angel investing platform that has mobilized millions in capital, empowered new investors, and opened doors for founders across the Prairies. With a unique blend of expertise as a CPA, CFA, and CBV, Tim explains how Startup TNT is lowering barriers to entry for angel investing and creating real momentum for entrepreneurs.

In this conversation, Tim breaks down the realities of angel investing — why most startups fail, how to build a diversified portfolio, and why collaboration beats going it alone. He shares powerful lessons from his own entrepreneurial journey, the challenges of growing companies in Alberta, and the opportunities that make Western Canada a force on the global stage. Packed with insights, practical wisdom, and explosive energy, this episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about startups, investing, and the future of entrepreneurship in Canada.

Key Takeaways:

1. Most startups fail — 80–90% don’t make it, which is why diversification is critical in angel investing.

2. A winning portfolio isn’t about one bet, it’s about 20–40 “shots on goal” to increase the odds of success.

3. Angel investing doesn’t have to mean $100K+ cheques — pooling $5–10K investments makes it accessible to more people.

4. Collaboration beats isolation: Startup TNT thrives by bringing investors, founders, and communities together.

5. Investors shouldn’t impose their own vision — success comes from backing founders who see the future clearly.

6. The role of investors is to champion companies — providing introductions, advice, and resources when asked, not dictating.

7. Great companies are built on strong teams — weak team dynamics can derail even the best products.

8. Distribution and sales often matter more than the product itself; the best idea isn’t enough without reach.

9. Alberta and Western Canada have world-class talent and innovation, but need more business and sales expertise to scale.

10. Early mistakes and failures are part of the process — both founders and investors grow by “bumping into walls” and learning.

🚨 We’re also proud to be nominated for the 2025 Signal Awards in the Business Category — and we need your help! We’re the only Canadian independent show in the category, and every vote counts. Cast your vote here:

👉 https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2025/shows/genre/business

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Startup TNT
• Capital
• Edmonton Chamber of Commerce
• Edmonton Unlimited
• Edmonton Regional Innovation Network
• Alberta Innovates
• Prairies Can
• Alberta Women Entrepreneurs
• BDC
• Drivewise
• Sketch Deck AI
• Zero Point Cryogenics
• Simple Hedge

Welcome to episode 278 of the Business Development Podcast.

And today we sit down with Tim Lin, a powerhouse financial strategist, startup advisor and co founder of Startup TNT who's reshaping Alberta's entrepreneurial ecosystem and driving millions in angel capital into the hands of founders.

From successful exits to building one of Canada's most vibrant investment communities, Tim brings insights that every entrepreneur needs to hear.

Stick with us, you won't want to miss this episode.

The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business Development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips and experiences and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to.

Grow business brought to you by Capital.

Business Development, CapitalBD CA.

Let's do it.

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Hello.

Welcome to episode 278 of the Business Development Podcast.

And today it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Tim Lin.

Tim is a seasoned financial strategist and investment professional who has dedicated his career to empowering businesses.

With deep experience in Alberta's investment banking scene, Tim has become a trusted advisor to companies navigating corporate transactions, capital raising and financial modeling.

Equipped with a cpa, CFA and CBV credentials, he advises businesses as a fractional cfo, bringing critical expertise in cash flow management, forecasting and customer economics to diverse sectors.

Tim is committed to strengthening Alberta's entrepreneurial ecosystem.

As co founder of Startup tnt, he has fostered a vibrant community of investors and founders, deploying millions in angel capital and educating new investors across Canada.

Tim's passion for investing drives him to actively seek out companies transitioning to new ownership, bringing his expertise to both angel backed startups and traditional businesses.

He is shaping the future of Alberta's economy with every deal.

Tim, it is an honor to have you on the show.

Great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

It's.

It's awesome, dude.

It's awesome.

You know we talked about this when we first met, but I was like, Tim, I need to have you for the Alberta Ecosystem series because I've been doing this and there's been this gigantic missing piece that is Startup tnt.

And so dude, I am pumped.

I'm revved up.

I'm excited to chat with you today.

I'm Excited to impart some wisdom onto our listeners.

And just once again, thank you so much for joining me and not only joining me, but for the incredible work you are doing in Edmonton for the Alberta ecosystem.

No, and same to you and I'm humbled to be among a great list of folks that you've already spoken with on the Alberta ecosystem.

So I'm like a little iota of what's going on here.

So I appreciate you having me.

Oh, dude, it's amazing.

It's amazing.

I love Alberta, right?

Like I'm from here.

I'm Albertan to the core, man.

Born, born, just born in Edmonton, raised just outside in Stony Plane.

Moved to Spruce Grove when I was a teenager.

Spent a lot of time in Edmonton after that.

And now we're back to Stony Plane.

It's been like an interesting little, little circle.

That all counts as Edmonton.

That's like, that doesn't count as like.

Moving away that 10 minutes.

Yeah, yeah, it's like, like 10 minute drive.

We're still here.

It's, it's incredible, man.

I love being Albertan.

I love being Canadian.

I love, you know, the work we're doing right here in Edmonton, which is groundbreaking, you know, incredible work coming out of Amy and startup TNT and all the amazing stuff that we have going on here.

And the Alberta ecosystem was something that from the very beginning I knew I wanted to do.

And it's funny because when I started the show, Tim, I knew absolutely nothing about the Alberta tech industry at all, period.

I was just dumb to it all and I slowly, my eyes were open.

It's like, holy crap, there is some crazy cool stuff happening right here in Edmonton.

And then I found out that, you know, we're world leaders in a lot of things.

Like, I had no idea how powerful Edmonton has become.

Yeah, there's a lot of horsepower here.

It's, it's pretty fantastic.

And there's, there's some great commercialization.

I mean, at the time of recording, the exit of Drivewise is super recent and who knows what they'll finally announce by the time that that word this is being heard by folks.

But mid 9 figure exit for the Edmonton region, unlocking a whole bunch of capital for to be recycled into the next generation of startups and importantly, a whole bunch of fantastically talented people that are able to help commercialize great, great technologies.

We have a university that's pumping out a whole pile of really interesting technology from, you know, life sciences to engineering technologies to nanotechnologies to artificial intelligence.

There's a bunch of really smart people here.

And so I'm excited for where this is.

This world is going to take us.

Absolutely.

And I think one of the challenges is there's so much incredible stuff happening in Alberta, in Edmonton, in Calgary.

Right.

That it's really hard to, like, understand how the whole thing fits together, which was why I was like, holy crap, I need to, like, do an Alberta ecosystem series.

And so at this point, I've had the pleasure of interviewing Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, Edmonton Unlimited, Edmonton Regional Innovation Network, Alberta Innovates Prairies Can, Alberta Women Entrepreneurs, BDC Canada Startup tnt.

And I'm sure I'm missing one.

We talked about this before.

There's just so much like, this is an incredible place to be.

But trying to understand what is all this stuff and how does it fit together?

I'll be honest, dude.

I've gone through all of these interviews, and I think I'm still confused about how it all fits together.

I've learned a lot, but it's.

It's a lot.

Yeah.

I mean, I've been in it for five years, and I don't think I've got a perfect understanding of it either.

So, yeah, there's people just looking to pull levers.

A whole bunch of passionate people looking to help advance the community and.

And working in the ways that they see best fit.

And so people see gaps.

People try and fill it in.

And it's really awesome to have all levels of government really interested in helping advance the sector, too.

That's a.

It's a huge boost for the economy here.

Totally.

Totally.

And.

And here's the thing.

I think the takeaway from this is we may not have all the answers on how it fits together, but there are a lot of supports for you as an entrepreneur in Alberta.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And it's a.

It's a great community of folks looking to.

Like I said, looking to push the ball ahead.

Yeah, it's a.

And it takes a community.

So it's great to have a lot of positive momentum here.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Tim, you're a serial entrepreneur.

You've done some pretty incredible things right here in this city.

Before we get into that today, though, I would love to go back to the beginning.

Who is Tim Lin?

How the heck did you end up on this path?

Yeah, Tim Lin, born and raised in Edmonton.

Born in the southeast of Edmonton and then moved over into the southwest.

Ultimately wanted to be an engineer all the way through from, like, grade four all the way until grade 12.

My plan was, you know, I'm pretty good at math.

I like Buildings I like, you know, it's like a pretty well paid profession.

This seems like a good path.

I didn't really do a lot of thought into it because I was in grade school.

Yes.

And then ultimately I went to the, went to the Butterdome for the like university career fair.

What are we going to be when we grow up type thing.

Chatted with the structural engineer guy and the theory there was, you know, we look at the columns and we make sure that, you know, we just need to test how thick they need to be and make sure that it's made out of the right materials like that sounds like this person probably should have done a little bit of business development training before coming in here and trying to convince people to become whatever that is.

And so right across the, right across the little hallway was the finance folks from the school of business.

They were like, oh yeah, we manage, manage money and help turn money into more money.

And it's a whole sector and like one of the largest sectors in the world.

And like oh this is, I mean I come from a pretty, you know the, my family's pretty fortunate.

I, you know, had a stock portfolio since I was super young.

So I'd been exposed to that world and I didn't put the pieces together that was an entire industry I guess until I was making the decision as to what I wanted to do with my life.

And so went to business school, went through the program that they were describing called prime.

Did a quick bit of investment banking down in Calgary in the public sector world.

Not public sector, like public company world.

Realized that that was like absolutely not my path and very much over rotated.

Enjoying my buddy's startup.

We were building diaper sensors for seniors homes.

So lived in nursing homes in Maryland and then Toronto and then San Francisco and then ultimately sold the thing to a Swedish company called sca.

Came back to Edmonton, worked at Deloitte in corporate finance for about three and a half years helping other folks sell their businesses, mostly helping with some fundraising and helping with some public sector work, that one being actual government work.

And then yeah.

And then wanted to get back into the startup world and so met the one VC that we had in Edmonton at the time named Arden with the Accelerate Fund, which is another sort of government, government backed fund investing in great entrepreneurs that are based in Alberta.

Was like where do I go?

Who do I meet with?

Like I did the entrepreneurial thing, I want to get back into it.

Who do I talk to?

Like I don't need to do business model 101.

Where do I Go to just meet actual entrepreneurs.

I need a co founder.

I need investors.

I want to go and do the next thing.

He's like, oh, startup tnt.

It's this happy hour.

It stands for Thursday night tradition.

Happens every week.

It's at Polar Park Brewing, which is now no longer around.

But, yeah, you just go have fun, make friends, build companies.

People just hang out and.

And have a time.

Go.

Great.

Sounds good.

So I show up and the door is locked, the bar is under construction.

They're like, oh, this is the state of the Edmonton community.

This is where we're at.

This is week seven of this thing.

And.

And they're putting on this newsletter construction.

How to build a newsletter, how to engage an audience type thing.

Thing.

And yeah, and it was Zach sitting at the bar, working on his own newsletter by himself.

I'm like, okay, this is.

I was expecting a thing and this is.

This is very intimate, but it was fantastic.

And so, you know, we hit it off from there.

I was forwarding somebody else's newsletter and adding my own thoughts to it, and I was like, ah, that's kind of a newsletter.

I can engage on a conversation about this.

Sure.

And yeah, kept coming back every week and it turned out to be that Zach ultimately asked me, was like, do you think we can get 25 investors together?

Everyone puts five grand in a hat and then we all work together and invest in a great, awesome local company.

I was like, 100%.

That sounds fantastic.

We should totally do that.

And he's like, really?

Everybody else thinks I'm crazy.

Like, you think we could do that?

Absolutely.

And then we've done, I don't know, probably about 40 since then across western Canada.

And so the idea really took off especially during COVID when people had a bunch of time and money and.

And looking for cool things to do.

And so, yeah, expanded super quickly to Calgary and then Saskatchewan, and we did a stint in Manitoba for a couple years and now we've parlayed that over to being in British Columbia.

So that's where we're at now.

Wow.

Wow.

You know, talk about launching this in Covid.

Like you said, you know, you get to a bar, I'm surprised they didn't just chain the thing up and say, never come back again.

We don't know when we're reopening.

Yeah.

So thankfully.

So thankfully our, like, that.

And so a lot of the conversation in the room, actually, or not a lot of the conversation, but it was brought up like, oh, this Covid thing, this, like, China thing, this is.

I wonder what's going to happen.

It's like on some, you know, it's at some ski resort in Italy or something like that.

Like that it was starting to become a problem.

People are like, I don't.

I don't know, how bad could it possibly be?

And then less than a month later, we're all, like, stuck sitting at home wondering what we're going to do with our lives and whether we're going to be able to go and see our friends again.

And so, yeah, so it was like, I think it was a perfect foundation time, like a formation time, to be able to serendipitously get together and do all that sort of stuff.

Yeah.

I will say happy hours online on Discord.

You can only sit in front of your computer every Thursday evening trying to chat with people online so many times, especially when it's that late, late in the week and people are all zoomed out and whatever.

Totally.

But from the Investment summit perspective, from the raising money and getting angels together and.

And all that side of things, it was a.

A blessing in disguise, really.

The you, now that I think about it, in the.

In the past, like we were doing those first.

That first investment summit we did, everything was in person.

People were coming out to the bar to have the meetings to discuss what was going on.

And then Zoom became the new normal.

And it made it a lot easier to engage people, made it a lot easier to expand geographically.

Made it a lot easier.

Like, our Life Sciences Summit is across Western Canada.

And so we wouldn't be able to do that if not for people moving on to Zoom and doing things online and stuff like that.

Yeah, like I said, bit of a blessing and a curse.

And we were pretty established across multiple jurisdictions in that.

Yeah, it was just a catalyst that made it work.

I love that.

I love that.

And actually, I actually also see it as a giant opportunity.

So there's a lot of people who see video calls as.

As like, oh, video calls Right, but there was a time when you had to fly on a plane to have a meeting in Ontario.

Right?

That was the expectation.

And now the fact that we can do business across Canada, in my case across North America without having to leave my home is pretty bloody incredible.

And I think we forget how incredible that is because there was a time and you know, I'm not, I'm not actually negating in person meetings.

What I'm saying is that in the beginning, even that initial conversation really had to be in person in LA or in person in Sarnia or wherever the heck you're going for that introduction meeting.

And now we can really do those introduction meetings just like this and still create a pretty great connection.

Absolutely, yeah, it's great.

The, yeah, the.

I, it was really funny.

So the, the first sort of in person conference that had all of the startup people that I had met as sort of two dimensional figures across, you know, Calgary and Saskatchewan and stuff like that was the Uniting the Prairies conference that was hosted in Saskatoon.

And it was my favorite and remains to be my favorite conference that I'd ever been to.

Not like the conference itself is great, but that specific year, because it was sort of the unmasking of like all of these people that I had met online and it was like, oh, great, that's all these people.

And it's like, I think I know you and it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, and so it was, it was really great.

But yeah, absolutely, to your point, the ability to access, you know, different geographies or even, I mean, we're both in Edmonton and we're doing this from our respective, you know, offices or homes or whatever.

And so it works really well.

And so.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And you know, like, in all fairness, we met in person too, but.

But we did, but, but this is also excellent.

Right?

And I think that that's what I really want people to kind of remember is that as long as you can get that video face to face, you can build trust, you can build a relationship.

And I think there's people who think, well, no, I have to do this absolutely in person.

And while in person is better, of course, where you can.

Honestly, this is pretty good.

You know, I mean, I feel like me and you have a great connection here.

I've met many people online, like you said, who, when we finally met in person, it was like we knew each other, which is the goal anyway, to be, to build that foundation of trust and.

Absolutely, yeah.

And I mean, we've done, I think, I mean, with startup tnt, we've done over a hundred deals.

I mean, part of the magic is that we've done.

It's a distributed diligence community of investors that are working together to invest in startups.

And so we've got, you know, over 500 investors that are working together to invest in these awesome companies.

But like, I like, like you say you can build that trust.

There is.

It's better in person, but you can get like most of the way there online, especially if it's mostly just sharing information and not so much of the sort of like internal room, political dynamic type stuff.

That stuff is way better in person to see the body language and that type of thing, but just to be able to share information, to be able to get to know each other, to be able to do some of the preliminary stuff is great.

A lot of qualifying, a lot of stuff is super easy with video.

And so yeah, it's such an unlock.

I'm glad, glad where we are now, absolutely.

That like Catalyst, there have been blessings from COVID I know we don't want to like, acknowledge that, but there have been great things that came from COVID and this is definitely one of them.

Yeah, totally.

Tim, you know, I want you to take me into this essentially micro, micro angel investing.

That's basically what it is.

It's pretty incredible.

You know, I've talked with a lot of angel investors on this show and you know, when I talk to them, we're talking hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars at a time.

Right.

I remember talking to you and hearing what you're saying and be like, what, this is a thing?

Because I'm a millennial.

You're a millennial.

We're broke.

We just bought, you know, half million dollar houses and living on, living on the edge.

Right.

We still want to invest, we still want to make good choices, but most of us don't have 100k to drop on an angel investment with that level of risk.

But I think a lot of us have five to ten grand that we could do that with.

Talk to me about that idea.

I'd never heard of it before I talked to you.

Yeah.

And so I will, I will preface it by saying that from a securities regulation perspective, everybody has to be accredited.

So everybody is either makes over 200 grand a year or has over a million in investable assets.

Yeah.

And that's not so much a Tim rule as it is a securities rule.

And maybe there'll be a way around that in the future.

But it does also lead to everybody around the table Being generally being business owners or professionals or sort of like descendants of professionals or descendants of business owners.

And so it makes.

It makes for a great group.

But to your point, there's a lot of folks that have invested off of their buddy's diligence, which is pretty thin to begin with.

On, like, oh, this is like the next.

My buddy's son is the next Mark Zuckerberg.

So I'm going to give them 50 or 100 grand and then they, like, jets off to the Bahamas and, like, the money's gone.

Yeah.

Or it's just not a great idea.

And, you know, fraud aside, it's.

It just goes up in smoke because, you know, maybe it wasn't the best business plan, or even if it was 80%, 90% of these companies fail.

And so what you need to do is build a diversified portfolio of fantastic companies that have been well diligenced, which is why we've made over 100 investments.

This is why a VC fund is generally, you know, 20 to 40 companies strong in search of finding that diamond in the rough.

Like, at the time of investment, you're not making investments off of, yeah, this is the one that's going to fail like that.

It's probably better to just keep your money.

But all of them are strong shots on goal.

Into that same analogy, you look at a hockey game, you've got, you know, 20, 30, 40 shots on goal, and there's, you know, two, three, four goals.

Yeah.

Same math that happens in a VC fund portfolio or a angel investing portfolio.

And so to break that down, what I want and what the goal is is there's a lot of people who have sort of, maybe a lot of people is a strong word, but relative to, you know, 100 million billionaires, there's a lot of one to 10 millionaires.

And so to build a VC or angel portfolio, which should be really, like at max, 10% of the entire portfolio that you've got.

Hypothetically, if you've got 2 million, 10% of that is 200 grand.

Then if you want to have, say, 20 companies in that, that's $10,000 per company.

And you can't get in and have conversations with people, waste a whole bunch of their time, have like two hours of diligence, and they're like, all that for 10 grand, like trying to build a company, trying to raise 2 million bucks.

Like, I don't know what the math is, but 10, two hours for 10 grand, like on an hourly rate, they're working full time for the whole year to raise that Money and they can't build the company.

And so these, then you can't get access to these great companies.

You can only get access to mediocre companies.

And so the trick is we want to roll up a whole bunch of folks that are really smart, that are really good, that want to be investing in the community and are investing in the community to invest alongside.

We also have some folks that are in that sort of 100 Millionaire range that are investing alongside this because it's easier to get deal flow when working together.

You get, and you get better diligence working with a whole bunch of other smart people that can see things that you can't.

Like from my perspective, I'm more of a finance guy.

I come at things from that customer economics lens.

I come at it from the, you know, the money part of the business, but other people more on the product development side, more on the marketing side, more on, you know, how to build a team side, there's like a whole bunch of facets that go into building a business and all of them need to work well.

And so it's a great group of people to work together and also to be able to drop that check size while simultaneously wrapping it all up under a good brand so that it looks good to other investors as well.

So we co invest with other sharp folks across the country and really work to do that as well.

Gotcha.

So it's essentially one investment through startup tm.

Yeah, literally one investment.

But on the back end you have quite a bit of people pouring into that pot.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's like thousands of investments that we facilitated into us to then invest down those hundred companies.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow, that is.

That's pretty cool, dude.

That's pretty incredible.

I ear, you know, not early on, but let's call it like a hundred episodes ago or so.

Probably more than that, actually.

Probably like almost 200.

But anyway, point being, I interviewed Michael Battam from the Georgian Angel Network out of Ontario, and that was my first foray into angel investing and I learned quite a bit during that time.

I found it pretty incredible, but one of the parts that I found pretty incredible was a lot of angel investments don't pan out.

Right.

Like, and so he was talking about how like you really have to invest like 15 investments or so to get one winner.

And I was like, my God, how do you do that?

How do you, how do you sleep at night?

That's got to be like really stressful.

Do you find that with your financial background that you are better able to pick the winners you know, using statistics and data.

No.

If it was that easy.

Well, first of all, I'm not that old too.

I'm not that good.

So the, it's a numbers game.

Like even the s and P500,500, like it's professional.

Like this is a, this is a global game that everybody tries to play is pick the right companies that are going to beat the index.

Right.

And it's like people build teams to try and be able to beat the s and P500, which is like the most covered, you know, largest companies in the largest economy in the world.

And it's, it's a really, really challenging sport.

And so to do it in private companies that are super small, that aren't even really companies, it's a group of people working on trying to build a company.

Yeah.

There's like not a lot of data to run on.

It's a function of evaluating the people and whether they're able to really, like, what are the hurdles for them to go out and build that business?

A large component of it is market.

Right.

Whether, whether they're going to build something that the market will actually want, whether that market is going to exist down the line because they're building something for, you know, five years, 10 years in the future.

And so they're, they're skating to where they think the puck will be.

To continue to use hockey analogies.

Yeah.

And then the other part is, yeah, like it's, you need a large portfolio, like even in the S&P 500 to continue to use that one.

Like the big five at the time of recording, like the Apple and the, the Facebook and, or Meta and Google and Amazon and whatever.

Like those ones, absent those ones, the entire, the other 495 companies are so far behind where those five are.

Yeah.

And who knows with how this will be, I could look like an idiot in, in the future.

But all that said, it's a large function of selection.

And so if you can pick the right ones, then great.

But it's smarter to just pick the whole portfolio as long as they are all good.

And so to the Georgian guy's point, and to really a lot of people in this space, it's a function of building a well crafted diversified portfolio that all of them look good, but who knows how they're going to play out in the future because really only a few of them will and those ones will carry the rest of the portfolio.

You really have to have also a good idea of what the future looks like.

Right.

Like if you're making Those bets, sure, you're betting on the companies, but in order to bet the right bet, you also have to have a pretty good idea about what 10 years from now looks like.

You know, what does that process look like?

How, how are you able Tim, to essentially forecast and see what will be valuable to the world in the future?

Things don't change really that much.

Right.

Like if, even if you think to 10 years ago now we have what some, some AI we went through Covid now we do things on zoom.

But broadly I think people are people.

People want things to be more simple, people want things to be easier, cheaper.

Just broadly there's some fundamental tenets of like the human personality that are.

They exist.

And so especially on business to business type companies, which is the predominant focus for where, where we play in, in the prairie economy, at the very least it's a lot more rational than what you'd think.

And so it's.

Yeah, we think we're going to be able to solve this problem for there's a whole bunch of these types of companies who think that we can solve this problem.

For example, so we have a company in Edmonton called Sketch Deck AI.

Daniel's the founder, super sharp guy, structural engineer.

He saw the issue on for fabricating like fabrication companies, folks who are making structural steel for construction projects.

What they do is they essentially get a PDF with a whole bunch of lines on them that describe what the structural beams are that are needed for the project.

And then these fab shops have to bid on the projects on essentially.

Yeah, they just have to bid on the projects and they have to literally count like with a ruler and like write out how much they think that this project should be to be able to bid on it.

Which is obviously pretty dumb.

Like in, in this day and age that feels like that can be.

Call it AI'd away, sure.

But it's a super niche industry.

However, these companies want to be bidding on more stuff.

They want it to be done easier.

And so Daniel saw the opportunity, built the technology to be able to do that bidding and then now is selling it to structural steel companies not only in Edmonton, but across Canada and into the United States.

Wow.

And hopefully at the time of this being launched, he's absolutely smashing it.

But he's already north of seven figures of revenue, which is fantastic.

And so from a homegrown company here in Edmonton.

And so.

But the fundamental tenet being we want more revenue and we want it to be easier to get that great.

That is going to exist.

We're going to continue to Build things.

Sure.

The like core question is okay, well is somebody else going to be able to come in and displace you like to do it cheaper or better or faster or whatever.

But what we're betting on is Daniel has the structural engineering background.

He's got a whole bunch of customers already.

And let's see, like we think that Daniel's the smart one to be able to navigate that market.

He understands it better than us.

We think that that market does exist.

And so let's give Daniel some cash to be able to see if he can go and take down more of the market and continue to push things ahead.

And so I don't have a crystal ball on it, but there's like just some fundamental bets.

So it's mostly betting on the manager or betting on the founder to be able to foresee those things better than us.

It's more asking some skill testing questions on how, what they think of the world more than like I don't.

This is also to, to talk about angel investing.

One of the, one of the rookie mistakes that I've made in the past, and I think everybody does when they're getting into it, is playing the role of well, if I was doing it, I would do A, B and C. This is such a cool technology.

If I had it, I want to see if I can get them to do whatever it's like.

But that's not the game.

Like they're running it and so if they don't see it, then it won't work.

However, if they do see it, or that's most of the conversation, is trying to figure out what, how they think about the world and how they're going to navigate the changes that come over the next five, 10, 20 years.

And betting on them and their ability to foresee those things.

And so wow, okay, okay, I want to spend a minute there.

Yeah, totally.

I've never heard that before, but actually that makes a lot of sense.

And what you're kind of saying, if I'm hearing you correctly, is you can't put your ideas or the way that you see it in your founders heads.

They have to see it the way they see it.

And if it is not congruent, is that a red flag for you?

Is that even if you see it as being something else, if they can't see that, is that automatically a red flag?

It's automatically a yellow flag and then it's something to dig into.

But yes, for sure.

Yeah, that's the, that's the line of thinking for sure.

Because otherwise what happens is you end up with a lot of frustration watching somebody sort of flail and they could be doing it right, like they could end up being successful.

But if it's not the way that you're thinking about it, then it's going to be really frustrating to watch because they're going to make what are perceived missteps along the way that it just, it leads to really tricky dynamics.

And so we saw this happen, you know, with, yeah, with a company in the portfolio where you know, an investor just got so upset, they were like, just give me my money back.

This is like, this is insane.

You guys don't know what you're doing, blah, blah, blah.

They've continued on to be successful and they're continuing, you know, they're continuing to advance.

But the, it would just cause such consternation for the investor that it, they need it out.

And so that's a very much a one off situation.

But yeah, but it's, it's hard for the founder as well.

If an investor is just like yelling at them over things that they perceive to be wrong but are.

Nothing's necessarily wrong.

Like the only things that are wrong are things that are like illegal and immoral.

Like who knows, it could be the right path.

It just might not be the path that I think or they think.

And so therefore I just shouldn't invest.

Like it's not really that complicated.

That's why there's an entire market.

Like I'm not the arbiter of truth as to whether something's going to be successful or not.

I just.

We need to make bets that align with what I think is going to happen.

And there's so many factors that are out of our control.

As much as we want to control everything.

There's so many factors.

Like a Covid could come out of nowhere.

The idea could be incredible and there could just be something that makes it impossible that is not in our control.

And so I think where is that line?

You know, once you invest in something, Tim, in your opinion, once you've made that investment decision, is it something that you should really just take a step back from and let that founder do their thing?

Because you know, you obviously had enough trust to invest in them in the first place.

What involvement should an investor have after the investment stage?

I think the ideal spot and part of why we wrap everything up into one check and, and write it from our like it's one investment from the TNT perspective down into the company is to be able to insulate the founders from the investors so that there isn't that sort of like direct, when am I getting my money back?

And you know, you're not doing the right things, blah, blah, blah.

It's like, no, you go through us because the founders need to be insulated from that.

The role, from my perspective of the investor is to primarily be a champion for the company.

And that's a champion.

If they say that they need help with finding talent, they need help with finding investors, they need help with finding customers.

If we know somebody, then we should make introductions.

If they want some advice, if they think that we've gone through something similar and they want to bounce some ideas off of us, by all means.

But where I think it goes wrong is when it's like cramming down advice onto the company and that's not particularly helpful.

And where I think folks tend to get more involved is when they think that the founder isn't right for the company anymore.

Often.

And the founder or the company will outgrow the founder.

So like, if they haven't gone and built a team before, if they haven't gone and done stuff, this happens a lot in technical focused companies.

The technology gets developed and then there's a function of commercialization, building a team and doing sales and doing like all the business stuff.

Yeah, they need to hire a CEO.

And so.

But if the technical founder doesn't necessarily want to give that up, which is something that should be tested on in diligence.

Because if they don't want to give it up and they don't, if we don't think that they're going to be really good at business.

This is like a fundamental mismatch here.

It's not much of a business to build the, like getting involved at that stage and helping to install the right CEO.

It's effectively like a board.

Like it.

You know, there can be a formal board relationship, especially down the line at a Series A or a board is properly created, but at the early stage, it's sort of like a quasi advisory board that folks that can help move things along, but otherwise it's not a super involved sport.

It's not like private equity or something where you're like getting in and getting dirty.

It's.

It's giving money to some folks that have the agency to be able to run with it and build cool things with it.

Totally.

And you know, like a lot of these, A lot of these founders these days, they're pretty young, right?

Like me and you, we're not spring chickens.

We're both in our 30s, right?

We've lived a little life.

But I'll tell you what, man, when I was in my 20s, I was an idiot.

Like, I'm not afraid to say that.

And I think in a lot of cases, I'm not calling all these founders idiots.

I think they're incredible smart people.

I just think that there's a lot of life that happens between 20 and 35.

There just is a lot.

And I am not the same person I was at 25, at 35.

And I'm sure neither are you.

Yeah.

Talk to me a little bit about what it's like, because, you know, when I was in my 20s, I knew everything.

No one could tell me shit.

I knew it all.

And honestly, I learned a lot of hard mistakes.

I learned a lot of hard lessons because I knew it all.

Unfortunately, what that meant was I had to run headfirst into a wall, bounce, shake my head and be like, I'm an idiot.

Learn my lesson and keep going.

Right?

Totally.

But, you know, talk to me when you're, when you're working with these young founders, because I imagine a lot of them are in university or coming out of university.

Maybe they're only a couple years out.

They have, they're smart, they're brilliant young people, but they just don't have that life behind them yet.

Like you mentioned before.

What, what is the secret to that?

Is it that maybe we need to get some people more senior in there, advising them and giving them that help?

Where do they get that extra help from, in your opinion or in your experience?

So two things.

So one, sort of like a preconception that's being tossed out on this one is that all founders are young and they're not.

I think the vast majority that we're invested in are probably in their 30s, 40s, folks that have that life experience, that are looking at the world from that life experience being like, hey, this needs to be fixed and there's an opportunity here for me to go and fix it.

And so, yeah, it's not, maybe not the majority.

I don't know.

I don't have the, like, age demographics of the portfolio, but, like, having the, the life experience and the work experience and industry experience to then go and create a thing and move the industry forward.

Like, it requires some, some experience to be able to go and do that, to be able to see the problem and ultimately act on it.

The other thing, though, and to the, the diaper sensor company that we were talking about earlier, I think part of what made it really successful was one of the investors so Raymu Zika, who's a fantastic Edmontonian, don't need to go into his entire life story, but he's one of the bioware guys.

He was a fantastic mentor for censureshire.

So there's a whole bunch of really headstrong folks that are in their 20s.

Like everybody was like 22 to 25 to your point, just like running as fast as they can into walls, living on the floor of nursing homes, just trying to do the best classic startup hustle grind thing.

And Ray was this awesome, and still is this awesome calm, thoughtful voice, but importantly a respected, kind of an authoritarian voice that when we needed to, he would give us some answers or give us his thoughts that we would perceive as answers, which would just help us realign the thing, move on past a problem.

Because otherwise, like you said, like a whole bunch of like 20 year olds that have no life experience and are just like running around bashing into like, that's not, it's not good for anybody.

And so, yeah, so to have.

And I, I mean we saw it in the, in that investor.

And that is a role, like I was saying, like an investor can play.

And that was a really active role.

Like it was a call maybe like once every two to six weeks.

He even flew out to Maryland to come and see us one time.

But yeah, no, the having smart folks who are like industry advisors or folks who are respected by the team, super, super useful in, in being, you know, formative to the company to help just keep things aligned, especially on like co founder dynamics and stuff like that.

Yeah, absolutely useful.

I love that.

And you know, I'm not, I'm not hating on young people, guys.

I was one of you, right?

Like I was 23 when I got into business development.

I was late, late to the world.

I was young in business development, but honestly I had a lot of growing to do and I didn't realize it.

Like, it's really hard in your 20s to see how little you actually know.

And I'm not saying that at 35 I have all the answers either.

I just know a lot more now than I did then.

And I kind of look back at some of the dumb stuff I did back then.

I'm like, what were you thinking, kid?

But you know, I think everybody gets that way.

I think 30s has this weird effect on us.

I don't understand what happens.

But I was funny, I was talking to a psychologist.

She's like, yeah, 30 to 35 are like some like major growing years for all humans.

And I didn't Realize it till I was.

But yeah, I'm not, not hating on my young people.

You guys are incredible.

Just understand that all the decisions that you make, you may look back and realize you might have made different decisions in your 30s.

It's a, it's an interesting transition, without a doubt.

Yeah.

But on the, I mean, on the flip side, being too cautious and not making decisions and like trying not to make bad decisions, if that's phrased properly, like if you're too cautious and you won't make any decisions, and then you won't learn anything.

And so I think the, like this sort of bang around into walls concept in the 20s is super formative for 30s.

And I have no idea what comes down the line.

I think you're right.

I actually agree for sure.

Gonna look back at things that I've done in my 30s.

Oh, I should.

At the time of recording, I'm only 31.

Like, yeah, I've made missteps, although already in my 30s and who knows how many more I'm gonna make if there's gonna be a bajillion more.

And so, yeah, just a function of learning from them and continuing to move forward.

Yeah, totally, totally.

And, and you know what?

I wouldn't be the person I am today had I not made all those mistakes.

And so by all means, make the mistakes.

We learn less single one of them.

The secret is just to learn the lesson.

I think ultimately too, the nice thing about your 20s is that you can screw up real bad and you can recover fairly easily.

Right.

Like the, it's.

It may be like a tough time to like, because there's so much happening.

You're building your career, you maybe just finished university or college, you're building a company.

Maybe you're a founder, maybe you're changing the world.

But it's a lot, it's a lot of growth in a really short period of time.

I think your 20s is like this like crazy compacted growth stage where it really kind of catapults you into your 30s in a completely different place.

But I think the only saving grace of it is, sure, you, you probably will make mistakes.

There will probably be a few of them or a lot of them.

But the nice thing is most of the time you can recover from your mistakes in your 20s.

Totally.

Yeah.

And things haven't compounded enough to be able to be like an authoritative figure where then, you know, if you say the wrong thing, then nobody's.

Well, there are people like that have gotten to that level that are like getting canceled in their 20s, but there's very few people who are getting canceled in their 20s because nobody really cares what they say.

Whereas, like, down the line, after you've, like, done a few things that you have to be pretty careful about, some of the stuff you say or some, some of the ways that things can be perceived or some of the risks that you take, because it can take down all of the compounded growth over the last many years where that hasn't happened.

It's just a function of starting and seeing how fast you can compound from there.

That's right.

You've been a founder a really long time.

You know, you've been an angel investor a long time.

You've advised businesses a lot.

You know, one of the questions that I have for you is, in your journey, in your founder's journey, what were some of the mistakes that, that you might have made that you're seeing now with some of the startups that you're investing in?

Like, what is some of the advice that you're learning from your own life experience that you're giving?

Sorry, from your own life experience to some of the startups you're working with today?

From your own experience?

Yeah, too many.

I mean, I think.

And to that point, like, it's a function of starting things and then compounding on the knowledge from learning, learning by doing.

I mean, I'm.

And I think, I think most entrepreneurs are this way.

Like, yeah, learning by doing, not really listening to what other people's mistakes are, like, hearing them and then be like, yeah, I could probably do that better than that.

Like, I'm smarter than that.

And then like, for sure, making the same mistake.

And so I think a company is just a group of people working together to solve a problem.

And so it's super important and for me, underappreciated how important that team development is.

The team dynamic, the team, like, how everybody complements each other and how everybody works together.

How it, like how the hierarchy is, how, like the right people in the right spots, all that type of stuff.

Like, there's like a bunch of tried advice that's out there that I'm not going to be able to do.

Hint, shake a stick at, like.

But having gone through and seeing a few teams and where things are working and where things aren't, it's wildly important.

It's super distracting.

When the team is not working well, it makes it impossible to work on anything else because especially once you have a few people working on the company, that's the only thing that ultimately your job as a founder or a leader of a company is to be providing the resources for the team to go out and execute the mission.

And as soon as the team isn't working and if it like compounds and becomes a problem for the entire team, it becomes systemic.

Like the whole thing is just, it's so hard to run with.

And so or if, if you don't have the managerial skills or hire people with the managerial skills to be able to manage enough people and to build out a system and a hierarchy to be able to go and multiply the team, you bump up against the carrying capacity on how many people you can have on the team, which then ultimately impacts the amount of impact you can have, the size of the company, whatever.

And so yeah, the team side is, is super huge that I as a finance, like I'm finance and accounting, right.

And so like I go through school, go go through grade school thinking I'm going to be an engineer, build buildings, go through university, being like yeah, numbers, public stock market, it's like, yeah, you just take money and turn it into more money and then it's like oh shit, this is actually teams.

And now this is just people.

And I'm like haven't focused a lot on people.

It's like from a formal education background perspective, I'm just sort of bumping into walls as we go through here.

Yeah.

And I'm seeing the impact of that both, both AT T and then also in portfolio companies.

Right.

There's just like a carrying capacity to whether people are able to build a team and multiply it.

And then the other one being from Alberta or the Prairies where we have a whole bunch of sort of resource extractive export industries that are commodities or construction and housing, which is like effectively a commodity but with labor.

We don't have a lot of markets like sales and marketing background here.

It's needed especially if you're trying to sell things that are differentiated but we don't really have it innately in our DNA here.

It isn't something that's super talked about and so it's something that founders need to put a lot of attention to.

I'd say there's like a trite piece of advice which is that first time founders focus on products, second time founders focus on distribution and it's it.

I can see why that advice exists.

It's super important to focus on like the best product isn't the one that wins.

Like if you think about, you know, Apple versus Android or Apple versus P or Mac versus PC, like the distribution and the ability to get people to pay for it, I guess, because Windows has much better distribution than Apple.

But point being, the marketing associated with it and the distribution associated with it and the brand developed influences the margin a lot more than just the quality of the product.

And so it's not a function of features, it's not a function of whatever.

It's also a function of how it's presented to the end consumer or the business or whoever the purchaser is of whatever you're trying to sell and your ability to get it in front of them.

And that strategy is as important, if not more important, than the product development.

Absolutely.

And I love that you touched on that.

And let's use Windows as an example.

Right?

Sure.

Me and you both grew up here.

Very likely we both used Windows computers in school.

Like, our entire exposure to computers for the most part was Windows.

So obviously we would gravitate towards Windows as business owners, as adults.

Right.

Like, they did an absolute incredible job at exposing the young to their system.

I think in my mind, that is why Windows 1, it has nothing to do with the fact that it might be a better program or not.

Maybe Apple's is better.

But I'll tell you what, I don't know how to use Apples.

I know how to use everything in Windows.

That is totally it.

Like you, you don't need the best product, but you need the best exposure.

Yeah.

Similarly, I think the ipod touch is what helped me.

The iPhone.

So great.

You have a whole bunch of kids that grab it.

Like, everybody sort of moved to an ipod touch and then was sort of used to the.

I mean, it's the exact same form factor, just without part.

Yeah.

And people, oh, I can add a phone to this thing.

And this is like, great.

Now I'm running the same thing, but it's even better.

And now they don't even need to deal with the ipod touch because the iPhone is so ubiquitous.

So back in the early days, I think that was pretty formative to how.

How they got that much off the ground with the iPhone.

Oh, totally, totally.

And I agree completely.

And you know, I've talked with a lot of people using the iPhone analogy that, you know, and comparing it to AI actually.

And the comparison that I make is we love the iPhone.

I remember watching Steve Jobs come out and talk about the iPhone.

I watched that one hour thing on my computer and just being like, wow, that's super cool.

Like, they put a phone in an ipod.

Right.

But like, we couldn't.

My home, security, you name it, whatever.

Like, we could not have, like, understood the power that iPhone was going to become in our lives.

And, you know, I, I use a Samsung, but whatever, same thing.

But the supercomputer that we carry in our Pockets, you know, 15 years later, we could not have seen at that time.

Just like right now, you know, we see a lot of cool stuff coming out with AI, but like VR and Metaverse.

Right?

But I don't think right now we have the ability to see the full picture of what is coming, but it's going to be just as groundbreaking, if not bigger.

And I agree.

And then to like, add on to that and take it back to sort of the investing side, I think it's a function of options and like, financial options.

So options in the financial world are like, essentially you're paying, you have a lot of upside.

Like, it's a lot of upside with not a lot of downside.

So you have like options to.

Hypothetically, if you build land, you then have an option to build a building and then capture value from it that way.

And you can have an option to build any sort of building on that land.

And similarly, when investing, I think that there's sort of two ways to look at it.

There's sort of the income, fixed income type folks that are, they want like a dividend stream.

They want, you know, certainty as to what they're going to get.

They're going to buy Royal bank because it is the bank that pays out whatever, like 3 or 4% of a dividend.

And like, we know what we're going to get from this.

There's not a lot of growth, but it's not going to die.

Life is going to be good over here.

And then there's the.

It's like, oh, this, like, who knows where this like iPhone thing is going to go?

They've already got the Mac.

It's like, proven that they know how to build technology.

This iPhone looks pretty groundbreaking.

Who knows what they're going to turn it into?

It could be, could be nothing, could.

They could just go back to being a Mac company, in which case, who really cares?

It doesn't really.

Doesn't really cost that much.

Whatever.

They shot a shot on goal and they Missed and whatever.

Or it turns into something and then they continue to iterate on it and it develops and turns into something awesome and it turns into essentially its own company with separate products that are an entire like Fortune 500 company that are AirPods.

Like you don't know what is going to come out of a company.

And so those options and those like, who knows what's going to come out of it?

We don't know.

There's not a roadmap here, but it seems like they have the opportunity to do some cool things.

That's an investing strategy in and of its own.

Right.

Sure.

But it's like, oh, this would be like.

It seems like they could do some cool stuff with this and it's worth taking it bet at or giving them some money in order to see if they're going to be able to go and turn into some cool stuff later.

Very cool.

Yeah, I agree completely.

I think, you know, I mean you could look at Apple at that time and say, yeah, this is going to be big, right?

Like there's certain things that you can just look at and be like, yeah, this is, this is going to be big.

And you know, I wanted to lead into the next part with that where talk to me about your vetting and selection process.

I know, for instance, when I talk to Albert Innovates, they don't just invest, they invest in a lot of things.

But there are certain things that they are looking for more, particularly specifically MedTech, AI, things like that.

Yeah.

So one of the things, one of the interesting things I think about Startup tnt, like I was saying, it's a group of about.

In any given Summit, there's about 25, 30, 35 people that are sitting around the individual table, but there's like 500 investors or more that we have that are actively involved in the, in the community or have invested with us.

Then everybody has their own viewpoint.

And so what that means is we invest in pretty well everything.

So about half of the companies we've invested in are pre revenue, I. E. They have $0 in revenue and half of them are post revenue.

A solid chunk are hardware companies.

So like tangible physical things that you can do stuff with and, and, and the rest of them are obviously software.

We'll take deep tech crazy stuff coming out of the university.

Like we've invested in zero point cryogenics which is making a super cool dilution refrigerator like borderline absolute zero for.

For you know, crazy quantum computing stuff.

All the way on the other side to we have a great founder in Calgary building this company called Simple Hedge which is like Robin Hood for farmers to help them self hedge their crops on the financial market.

And it's the full gamut.

Like we don't.

As long as there's like an opportunity, as long as we think that it's commercially viable, as long as we think that there's a pretty great upside for it, we're interested in having the conversation and interested in investing in it.

There's a distillery right now that we're looking at in the current summit and who knows, like the future folks will know at the time of viewing whether we invested in them then.

Yeah, it's as long as it's got like a enough torque as not as long as we think that it's worth the juice is worth the squeeze in terms of like the upside being worth how much money we have to put into it.

We're interested in having that conversation.

But yeah, and then that's the sort of startup life and that's like super minority equity taking a relatively small percentage of the company in order to have a chance at a whole bunch of the upside.

And then there's of course the different side of the table which is investing and buying entire companies that are a little bit more legacy, a little bit more stable and a little bit less growth oriented and so depends on the flavor.

Yeah.

You know, right now I wanted to ask you just specifically about Alberta.

You know, we're growing.

There's lots of stuff happening here.

You mentioned early on there might be some things that we could do better as companies and you know, I just wanted to kind of ask you, like in your opinion, I think we're doing some pretty incredible things.

Yeah, I mean that's a, that's a super existential question for, for companies and also like our ecosystem.

Right.

How can we be more competitive globally?

Yeah, there's a lot, a lot to unpack there.

So interestingly there's a group of folks that are passionate about helping build the Edmonton community.

That have gotten together to those five pillars.

Entrepreneurs, investors, large companies, university and government.

Everybody sort of needs to work together in order to build the ecosystem up and to have a functioning community, thriving community of entrepreneurship.

And so there's a group of us that are working together to help figure out that problem and figure out some programs or incentives or whatever that.

That we can put together to help spur that development of global competitiveness from the Edmonton region and taking advantage of the stuff that we have at the Edmonton region.

And it's called the MIT REAP program.

And hopefully by, like I said, by the time that this is announced or released that there's some announcements that are being made about the outcomes of that program.

But like I said, the intent is to figure out what sort of the.

What some of the durable advantages are that we have in the Edmonton region.

So obviously we're the most northern, large city in North America, which comes with its own pros and cons.

But focusing on those pros, there's probably some stuff there that we can pull on.

Yeah, we have a fantastic university, like top hundred, consistently top hundred in the world in a whole bunch of facets.

We have, you know, we, we build the oil sands, we build the oil, everything that goes on in this province or in western Canada, which comes with a pile of not only engineering, but a whole bunch of, call it blue collar technical talent with a whole bunch of innovation.

And that our oil world is relatively small compared to the rest of the world.

And so it's a function of taking our innovations and bringing them to the rest of the world as well.

You know, the nanotechnology is great here.

The AI is great here.

There's a lot of technical talent that I think needs to be unlocked from a business perspective here.

And so who knows, what we decide is the silver bullet.

But one of the things that consistently gets batted around is we need more business people here helping to take the great technologies that we have and building them, which is also the thing that's in the back of my mind and why I said earlier around sort of team and access to like sales and marketing or like access to customers, because those are often the gaps that I see on things that are happening in Edmonton or especially Edmonton, is where things tend to fall apart or not necessarily fall apart, just not take advantage of as much as they otherwise could.

And so figuring out how to solve those two in a reliable way for folks here to be able to commercialize awesome university technologies or help take things to market, I think is.

Is the secret.

I just don't know.

I don't know enough about how to unlock that.

It's like that's a problem that a whole pile of the rest of your guests sort of are also focused on.

Well, everybody knows that it's a problem, but don't know how to do it.

And it's like, how do we get, how do we get people to move to Edmonton?

That's a really complicated problem.

Well, between that and building brand recognition and marketing a product, that is a problem that every single company on planet earth has on a.

A certain level.

Right?

Absolutely.

We're all the guy who figures that out completely wins the world.

Yeah.

If I could just convince people to buy more of my stuff, I would have a better company.

Yes.

You and every other company.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Tim, this has been absolutely incredible and thank you so much for coming on chatting startup tnt.

And you know, one of the things that I talked about before the show was I think what you're doing is incredible.

I'm thankful for the work that you guys are doing and I'm sure that there's lots of people listening right now.

You know, we, you know, we have, we have some of the top 20% earners worldwide listening to this show.

What are you guys looking for?

What do you guys need to continue to grow into?

Yeah, I think we're working on right now.

We're working on how to scale tnt.

So it's mostly it's a very local product.

So it's local investors investing in local entrepreneurs, engaging their local companies to sponsor, engaging local government to help support engaging.

It's a, it's a nucleation point for the local community and it's pretty open.

And every community that we have is different in its own right.

And so we're fig how do we expand beyond Western Canada?

And so one thing is if you're interested in having startup TNT as a concept in.

In your region, we'll be super open to having a conversation around how to help make that happen and help provide some of the.

The guidebook on how to do that, on how to help facilitate the development of that.

And the other one is, of course, if you're interested in, if you're in Western Canada and you're interested in getting involved in the community that we already have here, we'll be more than interested in making an introduction to the right person if we have weekly happy hours.

And right now, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Saskatoon and every once in a while in Regina.

And so if you're Interested in coming out and meeting some great people or if you want to just.

I can.

Happy to make an introduction to the right person in your region for you to have a chat.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, investor, sponsor, whatever person who's vaguely interested in the startup community and interested in spending some time to get to know some folks.

Happy to make the right introduction for you.

Amazing.

Amazing.

And if people want to follow Startup tnt, they want to keep their ears to the ground and see what's going on.

Maybe they want to follow Tim Lynn and see what's new in your world.

What's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, so Startup TNT is pretty active on LinkedIn and right now Instagram and Twitter to some degree.

But startuptnt.com, we also have a newsletter that goes out every week so you can pick your sort of region or community that you care about.

And there's a weekly newsletter and yeah, and then I'm, I'm on LinkedIn.

I have some Twitter presence, but I'm mostly LinkedIn, so that'd be amazing.

Dude, thank you so much.

Honestly, thank you.

This has been such a great contribution to the Alberta Ecosystem series and I can't be more proud of you guys and your team and what you guys are doing here in Edmonton.

Thank you for the work you're doing.

No, and you too.

It's awesome.

Congratulations on the fantastic podcast.

Thank you for having me.

I really appreciate it.

Until next time, this has been episode 278 of the Business Development Podcast and.

We will catch you on the flip side.

This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca.

see you next time on the Business Development Podcast.