Schedule 2026-2027

The Money Talk: Startup Fundraising Unfiltered

Location | Hart House, 2nd floor Music Room

Speakers |
Salman Qadir - Associate Principal at Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)
Kate Grant - Business Advisor at Fasken

How do startups get funded in Canada? What makes an investor take notice, or immediately lose interest? How much should founders raise, and when is the right time to raise? What makes fundraising in Canada different from elsewhere? And what actually happens after the pitch, the partner meeting, and the cheque?

Whether you’re already building a startup, exploring entrepreneurship, or simply curious about how funding actually works, this conversation is designed to give you a practical look behind the scenes.

Salman and Kate will take us through the fundraising journey from both the investor and advisor perspectives: from choosing the right source of capital and preparing for investor conversations, to understanding what happens behind closed doors after you leave the room. They’ll also unpack what happens beyond the deal being signed, how founders can build strong relationships with investors and advisors, and how Canada’s startup funding ecosystem may evolve in the years ahead.

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Building in the Age of AI: The Founder's Playbook

Location | Toronto Rehab, 2nd floor Auditorium

Speakers |
Warren Ali - Director of Industry Development at the Vector Institute
Dr. Nardin Samuel - CEO and Co-Founder of Cove Neurosciences

Artificial intelligence is changing not just what we can build, but how quickly ideas move from concept to reality. Foundation models, open-source tools, and accessible infrastructure have thrown the doors wide open, and that changes everything about what founders can build, and how fast they can build it.

But more access means tougher questions. Where does AI actually create value, versus just adding buzz? What does it take for a small, early-stage team to build something technically rigorous and genuinely different in a crowded field? And as products move fast, how do you ensure reliability, privacy, transparency, and responsible deployment from day one, instead of treating them as an afterthought?

Join Innovation OnBoard for a panel with Warren Ali, Director of Industry Development at the Vector Institute and Dr. Nardin Samuel, CEO and Co-Founder of Cove Neurosciences, on building technology-driven ventures in today’s fast-evolving AI landscape. Drawing on experience in AI, healthcare, commercialization, and startups, they will explore how founders can turn ideas into scalable, trusted, and valuable AI-enabled products.

The panel will be followed by a live audience Q&A and an informal networking session with students, researchers, founders, and members of Toronto’s technology and innovation community.

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Before the Pitch and Beyond: Building as a Student Founder

Location | Hart House, 2nd floor Music Room

Speakers |
Kino Song - Co-Founder and CEO of TalkToMedi
Dr. Sushant Singh - CEO and Co-Founder of VRIT Inc.

Join us for a fireside chat with Sushant Singh and Kino Song, two former Innovation OnBoard Pitch Competition finalists, as they share how they transformed their ideas into ventures, navigated early-stage challenges, and built startups beyond the pitch. The conversation will be followed by a live audience Q&A and an informal networking session with fellow students, founders, and members of Toronto’s innovation community.

Kino Song is the Co-Founder and CEO of TalkToMedi, a Toronto-based healthcare AI company solving one of the most persistent problems in healthcare access: patients waiting on hold, reaching voicemail, or never getting through to the clinic. TalkToMedi builds MEDI, a clinical-grade AI receptionist that helps clinics answer calls, book appointments, complete front-office workflows, and recover missed revenue from unanswered patient interactions. Today, TalkToMedi supports over 1.5 million patients across Canada. Its moat comes from deep EMR-native integrations, healthcare-specific workflows, and practical deployment inside real clinic operations, making MEDI more than a voice bot, but an operational layer for patient access.

Dr. Sushant Singh is CEO and Co-Founder of VRIT Inc., a regenerative medicine startup developing point-of-care technologies for skin and wound repair. VRIT's platform spans INSITE™, a semi-robotic handheld bioprinting system for treating wounds at the bedside, and SHIELD, a cell therapy platform for skin regeneration. Sushant holds a PhD in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto, where his research focused on microfluidics, bioprinting, and skin tissue engineering in the Guenther Lab. He is currently a MITACS Accelerate Postdoctoral Fellow at the same institution. As an officer of the company, Sushant sets VRIT's overall strategic direction, including fundraising priorities, regulatory planning, and product vision, and has helped secure non-dilutive funding from a range of Canadian innovation programs to advance the company's technology toward clinical translation.

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