By John Lorinc for Globe & Mail – Friday, February 24, 2017
Since stepping down from the top job at Rogers Communications in 2013, after a 25-year career at the company, Nadir Mohamed has made some moves one expects from a CEO emeritus: a few highprofile directorships and a gig as CEO-in-residence at Ryerson University. Less conventionally, the 60-year-old executive has thrown himself headlong into Toronto’s frothy tech start-up world, a place inhabited by millennial entrepreneurs and disruption-minded investors.
In 2015, Mohamed partnered with former Ryerson president Sheldon Levy to launch ScaleUp Ventures (1), aiming to tackle one of the tech set’s most persistent obstacles: that large Canadian firms too often turn up their noses at domestic start-ups, opting to buy from established international firms.
ScaleUp is armed with $25 million in public funding, $75 million in private cash and a leadership “council” of CEOs who can open doors.
What was the idea that sparked ScaleUp?
While I was at Rogers, I was very involved in trying to understand what was happening with digital technology. This included getting involved in a New York initiative that Mayor Bloomberg had started, putting established companies in the media and telecom sectors together with start-ups and developers, and really making the case for why New York City could be the growth engine for high tech. Could we do something similar in Toronto? (2) That’s when I thought that as a catalyst, we should create a fund that targets these sectors [media, banking, telecom and manufacturing], and brings universities, entrepreneurs, the corporate sector and government together.
More here http://rwstory.com/theglobeandmail/former-rogers-ceo-nadir-mohamed-has-cool-new-job and http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GAM/20170224/RBMMATCHMAKER and http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/former-rogers-ceo-nadir-mohamed-has-a-cool-new-job/article34124258/
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