After serving at the helm since January of 2019, Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA) CEO Kim Furlong has announced plans to step down this summer following the lobbying group’s upcoming annual event.
In a May 14 email sent to the organization’s members and shared with BetaKit, CVCA board chair Jeanette Wiltse said the board has initiated the process to find a new CEO. Furlong shared the news publicly in a May 17 LinkedIn post promoting the CVCA’s Invest Canada Conference next week in Calgary.
“I just felt, for me, but also for the organization, that it was time for someone else to step in.”
Kim Furlong,
CVCA
In an interview with BetaKit, Furlong said she decided to step down as CVCA CEO earlier this year, as the organization nears the completion of its second consecutive three-year plan under her tenure and gears up to develop a new potential five-year strategy.
“I didn’t see myself doing it for another five years … I just felt, for me, but also for the organization, that it was time for someone else to step in,” Furlong said.
Furlong informed the CVCA board last week and is set to officially depart on July 4. She has already decided what she will do next, but declined to share more details at this time.
“It was a privilege to be able to serve this industry for the past six-and-a-half years,” she said.
Since becoming CVCA CEO, Furlong has steered Canada’s national venture capital (VC) industry association through a tempestuous period filled with highs and lows. Her tenure has spanned a pandemic-fuelled drop and boom in technology investment, as well as an ongoing macroeconomic downturn that reinforced structural issues in Canada’s domestic VC market.
Furlong cited the CVCA’s promotion of the Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative (VCCI), advocacy against the last Liberal government’s now-scrapped capital gains tax inclusion rate hike, and encouraging diversity in Canada’s VC industry as highlights under her tenure as CEO.
In the email to CVCA members, Wiltse thanked Furlong for her dedication and impact, adding that, “The legacy of her work will continue to shape the association and the industry for years to come.”
Furlong, who has been openly praised by some and publicly questioned by a former CVCA chair for her performance during her time leading the organization, is set to leave during an ongoing identity crisis within Canada’s VC market.
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The sector just stumbled through another tough quarter of declining deal totals, with emerging managers quitting the field after failing to secure necessary capital. At Elevate’s recent CIX Summit in Toronto, Canadian VC leaders held closed-door discussions about poor investment performance, a lack of funds willing or able to lead deals, and concerns about the “prevailing narrative” of a feeble sector becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Last week, the private concerns became public conversation after a CVCA report revealed that the first quarter of 2025 saw particularly sluggish pre-seed and seed stage activity and a five-year low in terms of Canadian VC deal count. This data, coupled with another recent CVCA report on the outsized role US investors play in scaling Canadian tech companies, has helped give rise to a wave of online soul-searching across Canada’s VC industry. One former VC, Matt Roberts, went so far as to declare that “Canada’s domestic VC market is dying.”
Furlong noted that “It’s a nervous time.” She said global economic uncertainty has slowed down VC investment decisions, mergers and acquisitions, and fundraising.
She expressed worry about current pre-seed and seed-stage VC investment levels in Canada—“If you don’t seed it, you can’t grow it”—alongside confidence that Canada’s VC industry will survive and eventually continue to grow despite the aforementioned challenges.
“This industry, it has ebbs and flows, but I feel like the foundation is solid, and it’s here to stay, and it’s going to be strategically important for Canada’s future,” she added.
Ahead of the April federal election, the CVCA published a white paper pushing policy recommendations aimed at incentivizing domestic investment.
Last month, Furlong sat down with BetaKit to unpack the CVCA’s requests, which included calls for a temporary capital gains tax inclusion rate reduction and a national investment tax credit. The CVCA is also asking the feds to follow through on recapitalizing VCCI, reforming the Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credit program, and incentivizing Canadian pension funds to invest more domestically.
Furlong said today that the CVCA has spoken with the country’s Department of Finance, and has meetings with senior government officials in June regarding the CVCA’s policy priorities.
Compared to when she assumed the role, Furlong said Canada’s VC industry now has more general partners and VC firms with sophisticated theses, as well as a much larger crop of promising VC-backed tech companies. But she noted that “There’s [still] work to be done” to ensure the ecosystem has the right ingredients and mechanisms in place to thrive.
Furlong said today that with the time she has left as CEO, she will keep pressing the feds to “think strategically” by reinvesting in VCCI and considering ways to encourage pension funds to invest more domestically.
“As long as I’m in this position, I’ll continue to advocate,” she said.
Feature image courtesy the CVCA.