The rest of the 100 (in alphabetical order): Ben Letalik, TD Ventures
With every equity investment TD Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the Canada-based TD Bank, does it also develops a commercial partnership, according to Ben Letalik, associate vice-president and head of TD Ventures.
As a result, TD Ventures has generally flown under the radar for its eight deals as it avoids co-investing “because our investments follow the line of business planning process rather than the startup’s funding cycle”.
Letalik organised TD’s first ever summit on artificial intelligence (AI) for more than 120 TD senior executives, which culminated in TD Ventures leading the diligence for the $100m acquisition of Layer 6 AI, which was the first time the bank has acquired an AI startup.
For the year ahead, he said TD Ventures was currently evaluating multiple deals and being consulted for many “special projects”.
Letalik joined the bank in October 2015 after corporate planning and strategy at Canada-based phone operator Rogers. Earlier he had spent nearly a year as CEO of startup Fun in Progress after the near-obligatory three years as consultant at Bain.
