Today’s announcement at Waabi, a Toronto company building artificial intelligence for self-driving trucks, is a reminder of what founders can build here. Canada’s next great companies are being started right now, in every part of the country, and large cities do not have a monopoly on great founders. In St. John’s, local angel investors backed Verafin, a developer of fraud detection and anti-money laundering software that grew into a US$2.75 billion company. Across the country, angel investors are the first to back founders, bringing capital, mentorship and the experience of having built companies themselves.






