Amoye Henry is an investor, ecosystem catalyst and global consultant backing visionaries and challenging the status quo.
She is the co-founder of Pitch Better, a startup that trains entrepreneurs to build and scale sustainable small businesses.
In 2020, I wrote an article for BetaKit titled “The horrifying truth of being a Black woman founder in Canada.” It revealed a painful truth: across thousands of Canadian venture capital deals, Black women had raised virtually nothing. The piece sparked conversation because it forced the ecosystem to confront a reality many preferred to ignore.
Soon after, I left Canada and immersed myself in the venture ecosystems of the UK and West Africa. I scouted for family offices and funds, supported entrepreneurs, helped design incubators and accelerators, wrote more than a dozen angel cheques, joined syndicates, and raised capital to launch my own fund. What I discovered is that when inclusion is intentional, venture capital transforms. It doesn’t just fund companies; it sparks new life, unlocks opportunity, and builds entire economies.
Returning to Canada’s venture story five years later, I see signs of progress. Fragile, imperfect, incomplete; but progress nonetheless.
The numbers show a shift
Over the past decade, the global picture has begun to change. Between 2014 and 2023, the number of venture capital deals involving female-founded or co-founded companies grew by nearly 60 percent. Yet growth has not meant parity: as of 2023, startups founded exclusively by women still captured only about two percent of global venture dollars, while those with at least one female co-founder secured closer to 21 percent. On the investment side, women represented just under one-fifth of venture capital partners worldwide in 2021; up from only 11 percent two years earlier.
In Canada, the trajectory is equally telling. A CVCA report noted that in 2021, women-led startups accounted for just 4 percent of total VC investment. By the first half of 2024, that number had tripled to 12 percent. The shift is dramatic, though still fragile, reflecting progress in deal flows, but not yet systemic parity.
The gaps remain glaring. But the direction of travel is different. And behind every data point is a founder who refuses to accept invisibility.
Institutions are beginning to respond. The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) has launched multiple initiatives to address these historic gaps. Its Thrive Lab has committed $35 million to co-invest alongside women-led businesses, with a $100-million envelope dedicated to scaling impact over time. Recently, BDC also created a $50-million Thrive ETA initiative to help women acquire or lead established companies. These interventions acknowledge the structural imbalance: while women own just 19 percent of Canadian SMEs, they receive only a fraction of venture investment.
Black entrepreneurship is also being tracked at the national level. BDC’s 2025 analysis shows that in 2023, only 1.3 percent of Black adults in Canada were entrepreneurs, compared to 2.3 percent of the overall population. For Black women, the figure was an even starker 0.7 percent. Yet projections suggest this share will rise: Black entrepreneurs are expected to represent 3.2 percent of Canada’s entrepreneurial base by 2034.
This kind of longitudinal tracking, absent from mainstream datasets just five years ago, is itself an indicator of progress. The gaps remain glaring. But the direction of travel is different. And behind every data point is a founder who refuses to accept invisibility, and whose success is quietly reshaping what is possible.
The founders building what comes next
While data points to incremental progress, real change in the venture ecosystem is best understood through the founders themselves.
Pitch Better, our market research firm, and I have been following the journeys of six Black women founders who have each raised over $1 million through venture capital and non-diluted funding, documenting their journeys not as anomalies, but as signals of a shifting market. Their companies span critical sectors and are being built with global ambition, strong governance, and scalable models; demonstrating that when capital reaches Black women founders, it does more than address inequity; it compounds returns.
These stories move beyond narratives of resilience to offer tangible proof that venture capital’s future is already being designed by founders it once overlooked, and that meaningful ecosystem change, while gradual, is undeniably underway. Here are their stories.
Workind
For Montréal-based Farnel Fleurant, the story of Workind began with a bold vision: to make it easy for businesses to care for all their employees while driving meaningful impact in their communities.
Workind is an all-in-one modern benefits platform that enables employers to offer flexible, human-centred perks, from prepared meals and wellness services to social engagement and caregiver support tailored to each employee’s lifestyle and needs.
“As a Haitian founder in Canada’s tech ecosystem, I’ve witnessed how unconscious biases can make the path to capital and commercial traction slower for early-stage startups led by racialized women,” said Fleurant. “Even so, with a modest $1.4 million seed round in 2023 and a challenging market, we grew 30 percent year over year, retained 90 percent of our customers, and clarified exactly who we serve best. We’re now entering our next phase of growth with stronger foundations and a renewed commitment to building what others said wasn’t possible.”
Oasis Learning
In an era of remote work and globally distributed teams, Oasis Learning is addressing the growing need for clear communication across languages and cultures. Founded by Montréal-based Karine Bah Tahe, the company builds just-in-time learning tools that help multilingual learners and global organizations adapt faster, perform better, and stay productive as they evolve. Backed by more than $1.2 million in funding, including support from BKR Capital, Oasis blends education, technology, and inclusion to deliver training when and where it’s needed. “Education is freedom, and technology lets us deliver it without borders,” Bah Tahe told me, a vision the company is scaling from factories to boardrooms.
Bah Tahe says her entrepreneurial journey has been shaped by both strong allyship and moments that revealed unequal expectations. “I had next-level support from male founders who opened doors, made key introductions, and consistently showed up when I needed guidance,” she said, while noting that her fundraising experience also highlighted how differently founders can be perceived. While early customer traction in Quebec was challenging, the US market proved far more receptive, and that validation ultimately helped attract Canadian investors, shaping how Oasis built credibility and scaled its impact.
Juno Technologies
Montréal-based founders Nanette Sene and Lynn Doughane met with a shared frustration: the normalization of women’s pain. From endometriosis to PCOS, millions live with debilitating menstrual pain, often dismissed by medical systems or reliant on pharmaceuticals with side effects. In 2021, they decided to do something radical: build a medical device that offers drug-free relief.
“As one of the few Black women founders, I know that every success or setback shapes opportunities for the next generation.”
Nanette Sene
Juno Technologies
That decision became Juno Technologies, now developing a Class II device that has shown an average 79 percent reduction in pain in early studies. With over $1.5 million raised, support from Johnson & Johnson JLABS, and recognition from Halo Health, the team is preparing for clinical trials. “As one of the few Black women founders, I know that every success or setback shapes opportunities for the next generation. That awareness drives me to pursue excellence, not just for my business, but to keep doors open for the Black women who will follow,” said Nannette Sene.
Cleanster
Gloria Oppong, based in Calgary, saw what many ignored: the cleaning industry touches millions of lives every day, yet it remains plagued by informality, inconsistency, and a lack of trust. Determined to change that, she founded Cleanster, an AI-powered platform that simplifies everything from short-term rental turnovers to office deep cleans, allowing property managers and households to instantly book vetted professionals or manage their existing teams with ease. Having raised $4.1 million, Cleanster is scaling rapidly by blending transparency, trust, and technology to modernize a sector long undervalued and overlooked.
“People deserve reliable service and cleaners deserve dignity; we’re using technology to bridge that gap,” Oppong said. As a young, Black, immigrant woman building a company in a traditionally overlooked industry, she’s had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. Much of Cleanster’s early traction came from the US, where customers were quicker to recognize the platform’s value. That validation reinforced Oppong’s belief that professionalism, trust, and dignity belong at the core of this industry, and that technology can be a powerful tool for unlocking lasting change.
Corol Technologies
When Cynthia Ene looks at a piece of foam or a protective coating, she doesn’t just see a product; she sees an opportunity to remove petroleum from the equation. Toronto’s Corol Technologies is pioneering renewable, plant-based bio polyols that can replace fossil fuel inputs across industries—from construction to consumer goods. It’s a bold bet on a future where sustainability is not a nice-to-have but a baseline expectation, a vision that investors, funders, and partners have strongly believed in, backing Ene with hundreds of thousands of dollars in both non-dilutive and dilutive funding.
As a woman building a company in a deeply underrepresented, traditionally male-dominated materials and manufacturing sector, Ene’s work also challenges who gets to shape the future of industrial innovation. She has begun commercializing Corol’s technology, positioning it as a Canadian innovation with global relevance at a time when manufacturers worldwide face increasing pressure to decarbonize. “We aren’t just creating materials. We’re creating a future where sustainability is the default, not the exception,” she said. For Ene, this isn’t just a business plan, it’s a reimagining of how everyday products are made.
Protexxa
After more than 25 years as a senior executive and board leader across some of Canada’s largest corporations, Toronto-based Claudette McGowan made the decision to leave the boardroom and build something of her own. Her career spanned technology, operations, transformation, and enterprise risk, where she worked closely with teams and saw firsthand how escalating digital threats were leaving too many organizations, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, dangerously exposed. Protexxa was founded to address that gap, raising its first $10 million in 2023 to accelerate the development of AI-driven solutions designed to make enterprise-grade cybersecurity more accessible.
Now scaling across North America, the Middle East, and Africa, Protexxa is positioning itself as one of Canada’s most promising scale-ups tackling the global cybersecurity challenge. McGowan, a woman executive with deep experience in global organizations, views inclusion as both a human and strategic advantage, shaping how the company hires, builds, and expands. That global perspective is embedded in Protexxa’s growth strategy, with Asia identified as a key next frontier, including planned trade missions to Singapore and the Philippines in 2026. “Cybersecurity isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a critical necessity for all businesses,” McGowan said. “Our mission is to keep companies connected and protected.”
A call to action
The myth that there “aren’t enough” Black women founders to invest in has been decisively dismantled. What remains is the real work: ensuring their success is no longer the exception, but the expectation. Achieving this demands structural change, expanding the number of diverse investors with real decision-making power, scaling accelerators designed for Black women founders, and mandating government-backed data collection to drive transparency and accountability.
Five years from now, the only acceptable reflection should be this: we acted when it mattered.
This is not simply a moral imperative; it is an economic one. Black women founders are building companies that address urgent, global challenges, climate change, healthcare equity, workforce integration, cybersecurity, and education. These are not side projects; they are the foundations of Canada’s future economy. An innovation ecosystem that sidelines this talent cannot compete, let alone lead.
The question is no longer whether Black women founders are investable. The question is whether Canada will rise to the moment or be forced to catch up. For investors, policymakers, and corporate partners, the path forward is clear: write the cheque, fund the accelerator, and back the founders already designing the future. Five years from now, the only acceptable reflection should be this: we acted when it mattered.
The opinions and analysis expressed in the above article are those of its author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of BetaKit or its editorial staff. It has been edited for clarity, length, and style.
Feature image courtesy Efosa Photography.