I spent Saturday morning in Hong Kong as a speaker at the Canadian Engineering Asia Pacific Conference, a gathering that felt historic.
Not one, not two, but eight deans of Canadian engineering. In the same room, on the same program, in Asia. The conference materials called it a “historic gathering,” and that’s not an exaggeration.
Hong Kong is the perfect place for this to happen. It has a very large base of Canadian engineering alumni. You could feel it immediately. The electromagnetic pull of hundreds of iron rings in the room. A community that’s stayed connected not just to each other, but to an idea.
And despite the diversity of schools, disciplines, and career paths represented, the conference kept circling back to a single word.
Trust.
Yes, one panel was explicitly about modern engineering ethics and building trust. It was moderated by Dean Kevin Deluzio (Queen’s University) and featured Dean Heather Sheardown (McMaster University), Dean Mary Wells (University of Waterloo), and Dean Caroline Cao (University of Ottawa). What struck me was how the theme showed up everywhere else too. Education, innovation, even the informal hallway conversations. Trust wasn’t a topic. It was the subtext.
This is where Canadian engineering has something uniquely world class to contribute. Why? Because we have a cultural and professional tradition that keeps pulling us back to first principles. What we build touches people. And we take an oath to uphold high ethical standards, safety, and integrity in our professional work. That oath is not performative. It is a commitment the public can hold us to. That is trust.
This conference also marked 100 years since the Calling of an Engineer tradition began in 1925, a uniquely Canadian ritual built around that vow, to uphold high ethical standards, safety, and integrity in our professional work.
That vow is trust.
My panel focused on the future of engineering education, and it was moderated by Dean Chris Yip (University of Toronto). I had the privilege of sharing the stage with Dean Phillip Choi (University of Regina), Dean James Olsen (University of British Columbia), and Dean Viviane Yargeau (McGill University). I shared a view that we are going through a platform shift driven by AI disruption. It is a foundational change that will reshape every sector and touch every aspect of our lives, including university education, where AI can reshape how university students learn and how courses are designed.
That is why I also believe this may be the best time to become an engineer. As an early stage investor in the next frontier of computing and its applications, I get to see this shift firsthand every day. The collapsing cost of intelligence, and hence abundance, is changing what is possible, and it is creating the conditions for entirely new category defining companies.
The most moving part of the day was the re obligation ceremony, hundreds of Canadian engineers forming a human chain to renew our vows.
Standing there, I was reminded of something simple. Canada’s brand, when we earn it, is built on trustworthiness.
Trust becomes a competitive advantage for Canada. But it’s not something you declare. It’s something you practice day in and day out.
That’s what the iron ring symbolizes at its best, not nostalgia, not ceremony, but a commitment to be worthy of trust through ethics, safety, and integrity, in the work we do and the systems we leave behind.
A century in, the ring still does what it was meant to do. And right now, that feels more important than ever.
And on that note, I trust we do not have to wait another 100 years for the next one. Let’s do an Iron Ring 101 next year!
P.S. The group picture is only University of Toronto, so you can tell how big the crowd was. We have eight universities represented!
We need new architectures to meet the speed, security, and energy demands of the next frontier of computing and its applications, which is the lens I used in The Factory Analogy.
Our portfolio company Applied Brain Research (ABR) just achieved a new milestone: ABR announced the successful closure of its oversubscribed seed funding round, including investment from TSF as a lead investor, with Eva Lau joining the board.
ABR created and patented a new type of AI model, called state space models, to make AI smaller, faster, and more energy efficient than transformer models. State space models deliver real-time voice and time series intelligence without the cloud, built for privacy and efficiency. ABR’s first chip, TSP1, delivers real-time, fully on-device voice AI without the cloud. Full vocabulary speech-to-text and text-to-speech are now possible at under 30mW.
At the edge, every millisecond and every milliwatt count.
For context:
30mW is 100× less than a 3W LED lightbulb.
A data-center GPU lives in a different universe: an NVIDIA H200 NVL is up to 600W.
Now connect that to the three constraints that define the edge:
Speed: for voice and interaction, half a second is half a second too late. Cloud voice is “a terrible experience,” plagued by delays.
Security: shipping voice data to the cloud bakes in privacy risk by default — which is why we keep coming back to intelligence that stays close to the user, as Brandon argued in his post In Favour of Intelligence That Stays Put. ABR calls out “privacy concerns” as a core issue with cloud voice.
Energy: edge devices are constrained by battery life and on-device resources. ABR’s on-device voice numbers move this from “interesting” to “deployable.”
This is why ABR enables numerous new use cases that weren’t viable before in categories like AR, robotics, wearables, medical devices, and automotive.
Imagine AR glasses (or other wearables) that respond to your command in real time without draining the battery. Imagine a robot that reacts with no hesitation. Imagine a medical device that can provide insight securely, without exporting sensitive data. Imagine a car that can respond to voice commands even when the network is unreliable. These are just a few examples. The list can go on and on.
Or as Eva put it in ABR’s announcement: sophisticated voice AI doesn’t require the cloud.
On Friday, October 17, 2025, Chancellor Kathleen Taylor at York University conferred on Eva Lau the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
I purposely avoided hearing her practice so I could experience it on stage for the first time, just like everyone else in the audience.
It turned out to be the right call. By taking the risk of not previewing it, I gained an asymmetrical upside! Ironically, these are the lessons she shared. Frankly, I wish someone had told me these lessons when I was in my twenties.
Please read her remark when you have a moment:
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Dean Zwick, faculty, honoured guests, proud families, and—most importantly—the graduating class of 2025: thank you. It is a profound honour to stand before you today.
First, I want to thank the school for recognizing my work in entrepreneurship and innovation and granting me this extraordinary honour.
I also want to thank my mom and my late father, whose leap of faith to immigrate to Canada opened the doors for me and my sister to build our lives here.
To my daughters—you’ve been my biggest motivators. You are the reason I push forward, because I want you to know your potential is uncapped. You can chart your own paths and build your own successes.
And to my husband, Allen: thank you for your love, support, and affirmations. You mean the world to me, and you make me a better person every day.
And to the graduating class—congratulations! Today is a celebration of your hard work, your determination, and your costly Red Bull habits. It is my greatest joy to share a few words with you. Since we are all business school graduates, let’s get straight to business. I want to share with you a strategy—a framework, at least for me—on how to calculate risk, how to execute with an edge, and how to maximize the upside, to a point that it can be transformational. That’s right, I am putting our education to work here. No group project required!
Lesson 1: Embrace Risk—But Know Your Bottom Line
In school, we learned about Risk Management in Finance. Identify the risks. Quantify them. Mitigate them. Protect value. Very neat, very rational.
But in life, risk doesn’t come with a spreadsheet. In life, managing risk means asking: how much am I truly willing to lose? Unless you define that, you can never truly take a risk.
When people read about the success of Wattpad, the story can look deceptively simple. We built the product. Users loved it. The product went viral. And ta-da! It became one of the most iconic internet platforms in the world, serving over 100 million users worldwide, sharing over 1 million new stories in 50 languages every day. We even have TV and movie products around the world. When the company was acquired in 2021, it was one of the most significant tech exits in Canadian history.
But the “ta-da” moment was actually years of sweat, doubt, and very small numbers. At the start in 2006, Wattpad didn’t just have few users—we had so few that our total ad revenue was…two dollars. Not two million. Not two thousand. Not twenty. Just two. And Allen and Ivan, the two cofounders, had to split it. I think one bought a coffee… the other just got the receipt.
Our family’s finances? Let’s just say “tough” doesn’t quite capture it. We were running low on savings and even had to leverage our house to keep everything going. Allen and I had many long kitchen-table talks. In the end, we decided we were willing to risk everything—even selling the house—if that’s what it took. But we drew a firm line: we were willing to go down to zero, but we were not willing to go into the negatives.
That’s what embracing risk looks like for an entrepreneur. It’s not about avoiding loss. It’s about defining your boundaries and then giving it everything you’ve got. Try your hardest to stay clear of the bottom line.
And when mobile computing took off with the launch of iphones and android devices, all that persistence paid off. Wattpad became the world’s number one story-sharing app on all app stores.
We took the same approach when exploring new frontiers at Wattpad—first with AI, then with entertainment. In 2012—long before “ChatGPT” became a household name—we became one of the first companies to deploy AI at scale on a commercial platform. It was a bold move, and yes, a risky one. Then in 2016, we leapt into film and TV production—an entirely different world for us. Both were high-stakes bets, but because we had clearly defined what we were willing to invest and what we were prepared to lose, we could take those risks with confidence.
So my first lesson: embrace risk. Define your bottom line so you can move forward without fear. Knowing your worst-case scenario gives you the freedom to take that leap of faith. In your case, living in your parents’ basement could be the worst-case scenario. But hey, you already know them well enough. I think you will survive.
Lesson 2: Leverage Your Uniqueness
Once you’ve defined your risk boundaries, the next step is execution. And here’s the secret: the best execution comes from knowing what makes us unique and leaning into it.
When I began my journey as a venture capitalist a decade ago, I knew I couldn’t just be another investor. What set me apart was lived experience: I had scaled a product from a few thousand users to tens of millions. I understood the fear, the pivots, and the sleepless nights—not from theory, but firsthand.
Before Wattpad, I worked in a semiconductor company, managing a product line that was competing with a startup at the time, called Nvidia. AMD later acquired the company for US$ 4 billion. That experience gave me the technical and operational lenses very few investors had.
And then there were my learnings from some of the best investors in the world—people who backed Twitter, Coinbase, Google, and even OpenAI. I had the opportunity to learn directly from them since they were also Wattpad investors.
All of that shaped my unique edge as a venture capitalist at Two Small Fish. With a distinct investment thesis, we became one of the few deep-tech investors in Canada, backing founders tackling hard technology problems with novel innovations. Today, I’m proud to say Two Small Fish is not only among the top-performing VC funds globally, but also a firm that founders love working with—because we do things differently.
That’s the second lesson: know our uniqueness and use it. Don’t downplay it. Don’t hide it. It’s our superpower.
Lesson 3: Chase Asymmetrical Upside
The third lesson is about aiming high. Really high. Chase the Asymmetrical Upside.
Entrepreneurship and innovation are not about making something just 10-20% better. They are about creating something 100 times, 1000 times better. Something transformational.
If you only focus on small, incremental gains, you might survive—but you won’t thrive when the next wave of disruption comes. But if you go after opportunities with asymmetrical upside—where the potential payoff is massive compared to the risk—you position yourself for breakthroughs.
Take Wattpad again. If we had only wanted to build a small reading app for a niche audience, that would have been fine. But by dreaming bigger—by imagining an AI-powered global entertainment company—the outcome was transformational.
And this applies to your careers too. You won’t change industries—or the world—by playing it safe. You have to reach for opportunities that feel a little terrifying, a little out of your league.
I like to remind young entrepreneurs: I have never seen a basketball player aim for the bottom of the net. They always aim above it. That’s how slam dunks happen.
So my third lesson: don’t settle for small steps. Chase the opportunities that stretch you, the ones that scare you, the ones that could redefine everything.
So, Class of 2025, to sum these up, I encourage you to:
Embrace risk. Define your boundaries. Know how much you’re willing to lose, and let that clarity free you.
Leverage your uniqueness. Don’t try to be a knockoff of someone else. Your unique mix of experiences, skills, and quirks is your competitive edge.
Chase asymmetrical upside. Don’t aim for incremental change. Aim for the slam dunk.
Your journey will not be a straight line. There will be pauses, setbacks, and zigzags. But each twist is part of the story that prepares you for the next leap forward.
So step into your future with courage. Take the risk! The world doesn’t need another safe bet—it needs bold leaders, innovative thinkers, and dreamers who are willing to take the shot.
Congratulations once again, Class of 2025. The future is yours—go and dunk it.
At most dinners, introductions start with your name and maybe what you do.
At this one, we began with: “Second edition.” “Fourth edition.”
Why? Because this was our “School of Fish – Legends of Semiconductors” dinner, hosted at our home, where your relationship with the Sedra & Smith textbook was the common thread. (I’m second edition, if you’re wondering.)
We were incredibly honoured to have Dr. Adel Sedra, former Dean of Engineering at the University of Waterloo, join us. Recently appointed to the Order of Canada, Dr. Sedra is a towering figure in the world of electrical engineering. Since 1982, his textbook has taught more than three-quarters of the world’s electrical engineers. It is hard to find someone in the field who has not studied from it. I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate, not just to have learned from his book, but to have been his student more than 30 years ago at the University of Toronto. Few have had the privilege of learning directly from a legend.
We were equally honoured to host Benny Lau, co-founder of ATI Technologies, whose legacy lives on in AMD’s GPUs to this day. AMD acquired ATI for $5.4 billion nearly 20 years ago, still one of the largest tech acquisitions in Canadian history. When Eva worked at ATI, she had the chance to work closely with Benny. His presence brought our conversation full circle, from classroom to commercialization. Adding even more depth to the evening, Benny was also once a student of Dr. Sedra. Two generations of engineers at the same table, both shaped by the same teacher.
From left to right: Benny Lau, Eva Lau, Ljubisa Bajic
This evening was also a chance to reconnect with those who shaped my own journey. Martin Snelgrove and Raymond Chik, my professor and TA respectively, were both there and are now serial entrepreneurs. They are also co-founders of Hepzibah, a Two Small Fish portfolio company. (I still can’t help but sometimes call him Professor Snelgrove.) Xerxes Wania, another one of my TAs from back in the day, went on to build and exit two semiconductor companies and added his voice to the conversation.
From left to right: Xerxes Wania, Dr. Adel Sedra, Allen Lau, Martin Snelgrove, Raymond Chik
We were also joined by Ljubisa Bajic, former CEO of TensTorrent and now CEO of Taalas, who also spent part of his career at ATI, further adding to the thread that connected many of us. Chris Yip, Dean of Engineering at the University of Toronto, and Deepa Kundur, current Chair of U of T’s Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering—continuing the legacy of leadership that Dr. Sedra once held in that position—also attended. Professor Tony Chan Carusone, now also CTO of Alphawave Semi and coauthor of the Sedra & Smith textbook starting with the 8th edition, brought both academic and commercial perspectives to the table.
From the TSF portfolio side, we were thrilled to have Professor Doug Barlage of the University of Alberta and Professor Chris Eliasmith of the University of Waterloo, co-founders of Zinite and ABR, respectively.
And of course, our partner Dr. Albert Chen joined us. He is a graduate of Waterloo Engineering and knows a thing or two about semiconductors himself.
Semiconductors brought us together that night. Textbook and tapeout were what we talked about, and we all loved them.
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This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given.
I’d like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to Richard Sutton, co-founder of Openmind Research Institute and a pioneer in Reinforcement Learning, for being honoured with the 2024 Turing Award—often described as the “Nobel Prize of Computing.” This accolade reflects his groundbreaking contributions, which have shaped modern AI across a wide spectrum of applications, from LLMs to robotics and everything in between. His influence resonates throughout classrooms, research, and everyday life worldwide.
As a self-professed science nerd, I’ve had the privilege and honour of working with him through the Openmind board. Rich co-founded Openmind alongside Randy Goebel and Joseph Modayil as a non-profit focused on conducting fundamental AI research to better understand minds. We believe that the greatest breakthroughs in AI are still ahead of us, and that basic research lays the groundwork for future commercial and technological innovations.
A core principle of Openmind—and a guiding philosophy of its co-founders—is a commitment to open research: there are no intellectual property restrictions on its work, ensuring everyone can contribute to and build upon this shared body of knowledge. Rich’s vision and dedication continue to inspire researchers and practitioners around the world to push the boundaries of AI and openly share their insights. This Turing Award is a well-deserved recognition of his transformative impact, and I can’t wait to see the breakthroughs that lie ahead as his work continues to redefine our understanding of intelligence.
P.S. This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given.
Who are the top 50 VCs in Canada? Two Small Fish Ventures is one of them! At Two Small Fish Ventures, we are deeply honoured to be named among Canada’s top 50 venture capital firms in this year’s edition of The 50 — the annual guide produced by the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) and the Trade Commissioner Service (TCS).
This recognition is not just a badge for us; it’s a reflection of the thriving and globally respected Canadian venture ecosystem we are proud to be part of. We share this honour with an incredible group of firms that are shaping the future of technology, science, and innovation across the country and beyond.
If you are an entrepreneur, this list represents the Canadian VCs you should talk to — firms committed to partnering with visionary founders, pushing boundaries, and building category-defining companies.
We look forward to continuing to back the next generation of transformational founders and are grateful to the CVCA and TCS for this spotlight.
The Full List: Canada’s Top 50 VCs
Here’s the full list of the firms recognized this year (in alphabetical order):
