It was an emotional end to the finale of Startup TNT’s spring agriculture investment summit on Thursday. Along with announcing this year’s winners, community development lead Jesse Wiebe also announced a departure: his own.
“The best investors are not the ones with the most money, they’re the ones with the most curiosity, the ones that show up.”
After five years with Startup TNT, Wiebe is moving on to a what he calls a larger role, which he says will be similar, but national in scope, and allow him to accomplish bigger goals. The official announcement will be made in a few weeks, meaning he couldn’t be specific about where he is going just yet.
“Canada is in the middle of a structural crisis in early-stage capital formation,” he said.
“Particularly, the investor base that built the ecosystem over the last two decades is cycling out. Pre-seed deal sizes fell again in 2025, emerging managers raised their lowest total ever reported, and just the re-investment cycle has slowed.” That problem requires a solution, he said, which will be the aim of his new role.
“I’m still going to be working very closely with TNT,” he said. “But with a lot of other, similar groups, as well as fund managers and other organizations, on solving this problem.”
Wiebe choked back tears while talking about his time with the Edmonton-based non-profit, thanking colleagues and fellow investors. The transition will happen over the next five months, he said, and will be complete at the end of September, in time for the Fall 2026 Agri-Food Powered by FCC intake.
“I’ve learned that the best investors are not the ones with the most money, they’re the ones with the most curiosity, the ones that show up,” he told a crowd of about 50 in Calgary. “They’re the ones who sit across from a founder building something they do not understand, they ask the questions instead of walking away. They get curious.”
Startup TNT has grown considerably since co-founders Zack Storms and Tim Lynn launched a weekly networking meetup in Edmonton in 2019—TNT stands for Thursday Night Tradition—and it has since expanded into national summits across BC, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, deploying more than $21 million into nearly 130 pre-seed Canadian companies.
A prominent community builder in the prairie startup ecosystem, Wiebe pioneered the launch of TNT Saskatchewan in 2021, which led to the national expansion and development of agri-food sector programming. He’s also an investor, as the founder of WieGrow Capital and Consulting, which he started alongside his father, Doyle Wiebe.
Along with the growth spearheaded by Wiebe, Startup TNT has restructured itself somewhat in recent months with the hiring of CK Dhaliwal as the first executive director. “What we’re trying to do right now is we’re changing the operating model into this new community-led kind of piece,” said Dhaliwal. “We’ve established regional advisory boards in each one of the cities we operate in, and that’s comprised of our angel investors, people who invest through TNT, and then a few other folks, VCs locally and ecosystem partners like a Platform Calgary for example.”
Reverse Dragons’ Den
The concept for the spring and fall summits is simple: first, 20 investors each put $5,000 into a pot. Then, startups from across Canada apply to join the eight-week pitch night process (this spring, 38 startups threw their hats in the ring). Using a ranked ballot, investors choose 20 companies to participate, which means at least one meeting with them, along with some educational programming.
Eventually, investors whittle that selection down to five companies that are chosen to pitch at the finale. This year’s group was so strong that six were brought to Thursday’s event at Platform Calgary.
What makes this event different, says Wiebe, is that they don’t pick winners and losers. The overall winner takes home the $100,000 pot, comprising those $5,000 cheques, but deals will also be made with the others.
“We set the deal terms before we put them on stage,” he said. “It’s almost like a reverse Dragons’ Den where we do the due diligence ahead of time, we set the deal terms, and then we make them pitch.
“The cool part is the investors can choose to invest more into the winner, or any of the companies that are around the table.” According to Startup TNT’s website, those additional angel investments often mean winners raise between $150,000 and $500,000, while runners-up can also take home tens to hundreds of thousands.
Toothpod, a dental smart gum that helps clean teeth and improve oral health, was chosen as the overall winner on Thursday, and two others, Finleaf Technologies, a circular nutrient recovery platform that converts fish waste into biofertilizer, and Corol, which makes bio-polyol from canola, also secured deals.
Along with being able to gain much-needed pre-seed capital, it’s the chance to network with like-minded founders and investors that makes taking part worthwhile, said Finleaf CEO Myrna Gillis, who has founded multiple startups.
“It’s not just about money, it’s about exposure and networking,” she said. “Because I can tell you already that from this event, we’ve had introductions with people who are going to try our product, we’ve had introductions with people we can network with to accelerate our growth.”
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
CORRECTION (04/10/2026): A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Startup TNT deployed more than $17 million into more than 100 pre-seed Canadian companies. The numbers have been updated to reflect the correct figures.
All images courtesy Dave Dormer for BetaKit.