As the Canadian innovation ecosystem stares down a complicated macroeconomic environment spurred by tariff disputes and a new Prime Minister, conversations at this year’s National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) Summit encouraged angel investors to be bold.
Held at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, the summit gathered 500 investors, entrepreneurs, and senior innovation leaders the day after the 2025 Canadian federal election. The event featured discussions on the importance of interprovincial investing, global cooperation, and how to further incentivize risk capital in Canada.
As part of the summit, NACO released a preliminary report on angel investing in Canada. The report found that angel investment increased by $137.3 million in 2024, a nearly 20 percent jump year-over-year. This gain was bolstered by an approximately 30 percent increase in deal volume over 2023. Cumulative angel investment tracked by NACO since 2010 has also now surpassed $1.68 billion.
“Maybe the moment that we’ve got a reason to come together … is the time we have some fight.”
Suzanne Grant
Capital Angel Network
The gains in dollars invested and number of deals showed “remarkable resilience,” rebounding after two straight years of contraction despite global economic difficulties, the report says. It went on to warn that trade conflicts and capital tightening pose a threat to the upward trend continuing this year and beyond.
However, if resilience got angel investors through 2024, conversations at the NACO summit indicate a bolder mood for 2025.
Following his panel conversation earlier in the day with Build Canada’s Daniel Debow, also crowned a “Nation Builder” at the summit, NACO CEO Claudio Rojas told BetaKit that Canada is at an inflection point, and there’s an urgent need for “bold leadership and action” that helps transform Canada into a nation of builders.
“Invest in Canada for the benefit of your children and your grandchildren and the country that future generations will inherit,” Rojas said. “That’s the primary motivator of angel investing.”
In a panel conversation on the importance of cross-provincial co-investment, TandemLaunch managing partner Émilie Boutros said that Canadian risk appetite needs to increase. She said that making higher-risk investments, and taking more risks as individuals, will create better companies now and in the future.
Spring Activator co-founder Keith Ippel argued that the rise of national angel networks, challenge-based programs, and funds connected to accelerators and venture studios have helped attract investors to common ground, breaking down interprovincial barriers. He noted that part of encouraging risk taking is sharing the details behind these Pan-Canadian deals, telling the story of how they are done, because “it helps the people around us be more bold in how they invest.”
Ippel also mentioned that the “elephant in the room” with investors is often who is going to lead a round, adding that investors have to be willing to share deals across the country to find co-investors that can help. Boutros encouraged angels to take the lead in Canada, calling it a “personality thing” to be able to negotiate deals, rather than wait for the United States (US) or a VC firm to do it. Highline Beta founding partner Marcus Daniels took it one step further, asking if investors even need a lead in 2025.
“At the end of the day, you think that how we’re building companies, and how fast things are changing with AI—we’re all angel investors, can we just write the cheque?” Daniels said to audience applause. “Because I think that’s the challenge that we’re seeing.”
The conversation at NACO Summit mirrors similar closed-door conversations by institutional investors at the recent CIX Summit in March. There, attendees asserted that Canada lacks enough seed investors who can lead deals, saying there are “more price-takers than price-setters” in the country’s early-stage VC ecosystem.
Seeking government (in)action
Angel investors believe taking these risks will be easier with the assured death of the capital gains tax rate changes by the new Liberal government, which was alluded to as a relief throughout the event.
“The risk-reward [was] outta whack,” Canavan Capital principal and 2025 Angel Investor of the Year Joe Canavan said of the late capital gains tax rate changes in conversation with BetaKit editor-in-chief Douglas Soltys.
“If I’m getting charged at the time … 35 percent [in tax] and I have an 80 percent chance of failure, why would I write a cheque when I could get five percent risk-free?” Canavan added.
Capital Angel Network executive director Suzanne Grant noted that conversations at the summit paralleled an overall sense of civic duty exemplified by the high voter turnout in the recent federal election. She said that the Canadian investors and entrepreneurs want to hear that they have leadership in the country that is pro-entrepreneur and pro-wealth creation, and won’t shame people for making money and investing their wealth in Canada.
“We’ve been talking about culture shift for 20 years. What does it take to get us there, nationally, to change our culture?” Grant told BetaKit. “Maybe the moment that we’ve got a reason to come together, because we do have risk as a nation, is the time we have some fight.”
Industry groups have been urging Canada’s new government to take a renewed focus on long-standing issues, like tackling Canada’s flagging productivity, incentivizing investment through tax credit reform, and boosting support for domestic companies amid a trade war with the US.
NACO will be advocating for policies recommended in its report to boost angel participation in the country. Among them is asking the Canadian government to pursue an Entrepreneurship Capital Catalyst Initiative (ECCI), inspired by the Venture Capital Action Plan (VCAP) and Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative (VCCI) programs.
Rojas said that the existing VCAP and VCCI programs, in which the federal government matches a percentage of venture funding for select fund managers, successfully mobilized pre-institutional capital into the ecosystem. He would like to see that designed and brought to the early stage. He also floated a National Entrepreneurship Tax Credit inspired by a similar incentive in British Columbia.
“The way that our banks are structured, this asset class, the innovation economy, is not recommended to high net worth clients,” Rojas said. “A national entrepreneurship tax credit of even 15 percent would require, from a fiduciary perspective, all wealth managers to bring the asset class to their clients’ attention.”
Feature image courtesy NACO.