Welcome to Forum

Forum Ventures® was started from a place of helpfulness, with the mission to make the B2B SaaS journey easier, more accessible and successful for early-stage founders.

We invest in early-stage SaaS founders first, and their companies second. We treat our community with immense respect, integrity, honesty, and inclusivity. We are humbled daily – we know we don’t know it all – and we stay open to learning, to different and new ideas, and to growing together. We're passionate about helping founders and we mean it when we say founders come first.

We’re ex SaaS founders, operators, and early builders, ready to lend expertise, give honest feedback, and celebrate your wins together.

Mike Cardamone

CEO & General Partner
Previous Life:
BD at Box

Michael Cardamone was one of the first 30 employees at Box in a BD role and then led partnerships at AcademixDirect. After 6 years in operating roles, he launched Forum Ventures. He is also an angel investor a dozen companies, including in the seed round of Flexport.

Taylor Walker

Head of People
Previous Life:
Talent Acquisition at Auvik Networks

Taylor Walker is our Head of People where she helps build and support our team with the resources necessary to stay engaged and healthy. She works with our portfolio founders building talent and HR strategy, as well as operations support. Previous to Forum, Taylor built out people and talent functions at Atomic VC Canada, and SaaS scaleup, Auvik Networks.

Olivia O’Sullivan

Partner
Previous Life:
Innovation at Dow Jones

Olivia O’Sullivan is a Partner at Forum Ventures. She builds communities, connections and resources that help early-stage founders go from zero to sustainable. Olivia joined Forum Ventures from Dow Jones where she managed Product & Innovation Strategy.

Daniela Pico

Head of Platform
Previous Life:
Operator in Ed-Tech

Dani is focused on supporting our founders and their surrounding ecosystem to ensure the Forum community is connected and thriving. Prior to joining Forum, Daniela was an operator in ed-tech start-ups

James Murphy

General Partner
Previous Life:
Co-founder of Robly

James Murphy is Forum’s General Partner, and was the Co-Founder of Robly, a marketing automation platform based in New York City. James is an active angel investor and advisor to numerous early stage SaaS startups.

Jonah Midanik

COO & General Partner
Previous Life:
Founder of Limelight

Jonah Midanik has spent the last twenty years at the intersection of marketing and technology as a serial entrepreneur in Canada. Jonah has been lucky enough to have several different lenses on the founder journey from bootstrapping, to launching new corporate divisions, and raising 8 figures of venture capital.

Bocar Dia

Partner
Previous Life:
GTM Sales Leader at Hootsuite

Bocar sits at the intersection of investing and working 1:1 with portfolio founders through the early stages of building, including go-to-market, founder-led sales, and fundraising. As part of the founding team of the Enterprise product at Hootsuite, Bocar helped the business grow to over $150M+ and 2,000+ employees in under seven years.

Maia Benson

Venture Partner
Previous Life:
Global Commercial Head of Shipping & Fulfillment at Shopify

Maia works with SaaS founders from inception to scale.  She has spent over 20 years founding, building and scaling award-winning SaaS products for Entrepreneurs and SMBs at places like LexisNexis, Pitney Bowes and most recently at Shopify, where she helped found, launch and scale their Shipping and Fulfillment products from inception to 60%+ merchant adoption and $Bs of transportation spend.  

Derek Bugley

Managing Director
Previous Life:
3x B2B SaaS founder

Derek Bugley is a 3x B2B SaaS founder, having raised over $30 million in venture financing from the AI Fund, Sequoia, Techstars, and others. He specializes in early go-to-market strategies in highly technical markets and products. His last two startups focused on building AI tools for assessing the skillsets of organizations' talent. Having successfully sold to buying centers at Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Pinterest, Lyft, and Delta, he is well-versed in both bottoms-up (PLG) and direct-to-enterprise approaches.

Alexis Clarfield-Henry

VP of Marketing
Previous Life:
Product Marketing at Instacart

Alexis Clarfield-Henry is a B2B SaaS marketing specialist who spent 12+ years in the advertising industry before joining Unata, a Toronto-based B2B tech startup, as an early employee and the first marketer.

Paulina Szegda

Investor Relations Manager
Previous Life:
Microsoft for Startups

Paulina focuses on building and nurturing our investor community in order to make the best possible matches between investors and our portfolio companies. Paulina joins us from Microsoft, where she spent the last 2+ years leading community, investor and partnership initiatives for the Microsoft for Startups Program.

David Uponi

Investment Associate
Previous Life:
Venture Capital and Growth Equity Investing at Georgian

David is an Investor at Forum Ventures and focuses on sourcing, evaluating, and executing investment opportunities for the firm. He enjoys surfacing incredible SaaS businesses in the earliest stages of their development and partnering with them to help accelerate their growth. He brings over 5 years of experience in the software investment, market research, and management consulting space.

Alice Krenitski

Head of Studio
Previous Life:
Business designer and strategist in a venture studio

Alice leads the process of transforming concepts into companies by designing and validating solutions and helping our founders translate insights into product. Prior to joining Forum, Alice was a business designer and strategist in a venture studio.

Sid Bharath

Head of Studio
Previous Life:
Founder of Broca

Sid is helping launch and grow B2B startups. Prior to joining Forum, Sid was the founder of Broca, an AI SaaS startup. He has also consulted for and led growth at dozens of early-stage SaaS startups. He has a passion for all things AI and technology.

Neal Sarraf

Managing Director, Accelerator
Previous Life:
Co-Founder of First Resonance

Neal Sarraf is a Managing Director and Partner at Forum Ventures. He focuses on pre-seed and seed investments and works alongside portfolio founders, supporting their 0 to $1M ARR journey. Neal experienced this journey first-hand as the Co-Founder of First Resonance, a manufacturing SaaS business where he raised $20M+ in venture funding and grew the team to 40+ employees.

Teija Bean

Head of Design, Studio
Previous Life:
Creative Director at Creative Capital Design Studio

Teija is Forum Studio’s Head of Design. She is a storyteller focused on creative direction, brand, web and product design for the tech industry for the last decade. Teija has worked in the corporate world of Capital Markets Technology, led and managed teams, and served as Partner and Creative Director at a boutique full-service design agency in Toronto.

Karthik Srinivasan

Karthik Srinivasan

CTO, Studio
Previous Life:
VP of Engineering at Zuva.ai

As Head of Technology, Karthik is responsible for turning ideas into useable concepts. Karthik has over 2 decades of product engineering experience in the Tech sector. Prior to Forum, Karthik served as the VP of Engineering at Zuva.ai and over the past two decades, he has been a co-founder at Pixibo and a Full Stack Engineer at Getty Images, Travelocity to name a few.

Naomi Goez

Principal
Previous Life:
Alpaca VC

Naomi Goez is an Investor at Forum Ventures who is focused on deal origination, evaluation, and execution. She is a former supply chain operator who began her career in the fashion industry, managing Western Hemisphere production and sustainability initiatives at Centric Brands, and later navigating the fundraising process at a pre-seed stage circular brand. She received her MBA at The Wharton School, while working as an MBA Associate at Alpaca VC, and is passionate about promoting diversity in the ecosystem as well as supporting underrepresented founders and investors alike.

Maggie Bolt

Marketing Manager
Previous Life:
B2B Marketing at a Boutique Consultancy

Maggie is a B2B marketing professional with experience in fast-growing companies, developing and implementing integrated marketing plans to drive awareness, acquisition, and leads. Maggie will be working to reach and attract the best early-stage SaaS founders in the world.

Nia Pryce

Community Manager
Previous Life:
Marketing & Community in AgTech

Nia supports founders by building and activating our Alumni network of 500+ founders, as well as our communities of mentors, corporate innovators, partners, operators and more.

Navid Wheeler

General Counsel
Previous Life:
Goodwin

Navid joins us from Goodwin where he was an Associate on their Venture Capital and Startup team. He brings great experience working with both startups and VC funds at one of the most reputable law firms in the industry.

Carmen Tsang

Head of Talent and Recruitment, Studio
Previous Life:
Talent acquisition and customer success

Carmen joins Forum Studio’s Talent team to focus on founder recruitment and early-stage hiring strategy and execution. She has spent the last 10 years building relationships in talent acquisition and customer success.

Dallas Price

Growth Team, Studio
Previous Life:
Co-Founder of Leo Prestte

Dallas is helping launch and grow B2B startups. Prior to joining Forum Dallas was leading early-stage programs at Co.Labs a Saskatchewan-based incubator helping founders go from idea to revenue. He is also a Co-Founder of Leo Prestte, a brand and content design agency.

Alejandro Pereda

Venture Analyst
Previous Life:
BDC Capital

As a Venture Analyst, Alejandro plays a part in initiating, identifying, and assessing prospective investment opportunities. Before joining the Forum team, he served as a junior investment analyst at BDC Capital's Seed and IT Venture Fund, and working with Fidelity Investments. Moreover, Alejandro offers distinct insights of a founder, having co-founded a venture, Viable Ads.

Ammar Abuleil

Technical Lead
Previous Life:
Magnet Forensics

Ammar comes from a background of innovation and ideation. Prior to joining Forum's Studio, he was the Director of Idea Lab at Magnet Forensics and prior to that the Technical Lead at Sonova Innovation Lab. In both roles he led teams in exploring and validating novel concepts, transforming them into successful and impactful solutions.

Waun Broderick

Technical Lead, Studio
Previous Life:
Tech Incubator, Canadian Armed Forces

Waun Broderick is a Technical Lead and full-stack developer at The Forum Venture's Studio Team, where he designs and builds B2B SaaS Products. Prior to joining Forum Ventures Waun worked in a breadth of diverse organizations; from North America's largest Tech Incubator, to the Canadian government's Top-Secret intelligence agency. He was also the co-founder of a SaaS company that scaled two products across North America, and a technology consulting organization. He has a passion for technology and designing pragmatic solutions that utilize AI to deliver real value to his clients

Visha Vijayanand

Platform Operations Manager
Previous Life:
OnDeck, NEXT Canada

Helping startups build community

Ellie Bof

Director of Finance
Previous Life:
Wine & Spirits

Ellie Bof, joins us after 13 years leading Accounting and Operations at Canadian Iceberg Vodka Corporation, bringing a wealth of finance best practices, knowledge and experience from an equally highly regulated industry to Forum.

Alex Yen

Software Engineer
Previous Life:
Software Engineer at Hive

Alex leads the development of several initiatives to support the broader investment team. Most recently, Alex was a software engineer at Hive, and before that, he worked in sales at People Data Labs. Alex has a B.S. in Business from the University of Southern California.

Draper Sturdivant

Business Development Rep
Previous Life:

Joe Cardamone

Product Designer
Previous Life:
Advertising, Interior Design

Joe is a Product Designer in Forum’s Studio. Prior to joining Forum, he worked in a variety of design fields. He started his career in Advertising as an Art Director for many years and then moved into the Interior Design field, where he had his own design firm. Wanting to combine his passion for tech with design, Joe has most recently pivoted his focus to Product Design.

Whitney Sales

Part-Time GTM Operating Partner
Previous Life:
Multi-time VP of Sales and Sales consultant

Whitney Sales has helped startups grow for 15+ years and is considered an expert in entrepreneurial selling and building early-stage sales teams. She is the creator of The Sales Method, a systematic process to help startups identify their target markets, launch products to market and scale sales quickly and successfully.

Meet our Team

We work hard, but more importantly, we love to have fun, connect, and collaborate together!

Backed by World Class SaaS Founders and Executives

John Kim

John Kim

CEO of Sendbird
Nick Mehta

Nick Mehta

CEO of Gainsight
Karen Page

Karen Page

Former Early Box executive
Rowan Trollope

Rowan Trollope

CEO of Five9
Susan Kimberlin

Susan Kimberlin

Former Salesforce
Ryan Petersen

Ryan Petersen

CEO of Flexport
... and many more

Diversity, Inclusion & Equity at Forum

We believe that regardless of background or circumstance, founders should be able to get access to funding, build their dreams, and push the world forward. We’re focused on building and activating a SaaS community that is truly inclusive, diverse, and supportive of founders. 
“Who we choose to wire investments to can have a measurable impact on building an equitable tech ecosystem and on the broader economy.”
Steph Jones
– Steph Jones, Head of D&I & Associate
“We have the responsibility to educate the portfolio companies that we work with day in and day out how to build and foster a diverse team and inclusive culture.”
Jonah Midanik
– Jonah Midanik, Managing Director
“As venture capitalists, we have a platform to be able to create an outsized impact by reallocating capital to those that the industry has historically looked over.”
Pranavi Cheemakurti, Associate
– Pranavi Cheemakurti, Associate
“It’s not enough to hire diverse talent, we need to make sure they are comfortable, empowered, and can flourish on our team.”
Taylor Walker, Head of People
– Taylor Walker, Head of People
“We certainly don’t have all of the answers but we won’t stop learning and improving because we understand how crucial it is to make this change.”
Rei Tran, Associate
– Rei Tran, Associate
“I truly believe that if the first 5-10 hires at a startup are from diverse backgrounds, that company will organically have a diverse workforce at scale.”
Michael Cardamone, CEO & Managing Partner
– Michael Cardamone, CEO & Managing Partner
“We know that the venture capital and startup landscape is inherently flawed when it comes to diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity. As both a startup program and fund, we’re in a unique position to influence the future of the tech industry.”
Alexis Clarfield-Henry, VP Marketing
– Alexis Clarfield-Henry, VP Marketing
“We’re committed to doing our part from our corner of the world by increasing diversity within our team, our funding practices, our program content, and our community at large.”
Dani Pico, Community Director
– Dani Pico, Community Director

A few of our ambitious,
diverse portfolio founders

Kathleen Chan

Kathleen is the Founder and CEO of Calico, the product development OS that powers the $1.4 trillion eCommerce production market from concept to doorstep. A serial founder, Kathleen previously started two D2C brands and grew them from zero to six figures in revenues in the first six months of operations. Prior to Calico, Kathleen was was the youngest professor at Centennial College in Toronto and ran national marketing campaigns at Microsoft Canada.

Ariel Lopez

Ariel is the founder of Knac, a data driven talent evaluation platform that helps companies not overlook candidates. A career coach, entrepreneur, and public speaker with almost a decade of recruiting experience, Ariel has helped some of the biggest brands in the world build great teams; and has worked with thousands of marketing, advertising, and tech professionals to help them grow in their careers and find lucrative opportunities.

Chinwe Onyeagoro

Chinwe is the Co-founder & CEO of PocketSuite, an all-in-one app that helps anyone start and run a business within 15 minutes. Chinwe is a third time founder, previously co-founding Fundwell and O-H Community Partners. Prior to that Chinwe spent time leading a global team as President of Great Place to Work as well as consulting with Fortune 500 Companies at McKinsey and Monitor Group.
Know a great underrepresented SaaS founder or rockstar? We want to grow our diverse community of founders, mentors, speakers and advisors and would appreciate the introduction.
Contact us