“Let’s innovate for mankind, and leave no one behind.”
In partnership with the Coca-Cola Foundation’s 10,000 Women Entrepreneurs Initiative, Startup Canada is celebrating and spotlighting leading Canadian Women Entrepreneurs. Startup Canada was pleased to sit down with Eva Lau, Founding Partner of Two Small Fish Ventures to learn about her journey and the impact of her work.
Eva is a well-respected entrepreneur-turned-investor. Before starting Two Small Fish Ventures, she was Wattpad’s Head of Community and Content—where she helped nurture and scale the company into one of the largest online communities in the world. Prior to Wattpad, she was Director of Product Development at Brightspark, a Toronto-based accelerator.
She’s involved in many incubators and accelerators, such as Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto’s Entrepreneurship Hatchery, Ryerson’s DMZ, University of Waterloo’s Velocity, and Techstars. Eva also serves on the board of Branksome Hall and a number of startup companies.
SC: In one sentence, what does being an entrepreneur mean to you?
EL: Being an entrepreneur means taking the risk to build something from scratch and doing your best to make it happen.
SC: Can you tell us about your entrepreneurial ventures and what role they play and have played in your life?
EL: I have always been in a position to support entrepreneurs in their ventures. During the early 2000s, I worked at a tech incubator where I helped startups build their products from concept to finding product-market fit to launch. During the Wattpad days, I helped my husband build and scale the business from its infancy to tens of millions of users.
My journey became more interesting when I started building Two Small Fish Ventures. It started out as a fun project—a pet project—with the idea of recycling my knowledge and experience to start dabbling into angel investing with my own capital in the startup ecosystem. As I became more involved in the ecosystem, I decided to build it as a venture capital firm. I’m managing people’s money and owning the responsibility of other people’s investments into the fund.
SC: What motivated or propelled you to become an entrepreneur?
EL: I think everyone has different DNA in terms of their drive towards making. Some people work very well as one of the nuts and bolts in a large corporation. I caught the startup bug very early on in my career when I joined a software startup after graduating from U of T.
I love the environment; iterating quickly and building something awesome for the users. It’s very fulfilling. The innovations that we’re working on really make an impact on people’s lives. As a VC, my day-to-day work contributes directly to the success of other founders as they transform the world.
SC: What are you most proud of related to your ventures?
EL: What I’m most proud of is the companies that I’ve helped build and the companies that I’ve invested in are all making a tangible impact in the world. They’re not just thinking about innovation, nor are they just trying to build successful businesses—they’re actually focusing on making an impact for their customers.
SC: What inspires you to keep going?
EL: In my capacity as a venture capitalist, I feel that Canada doesn’t have a strong culture of people who have built and scaled successful businesses reinvesting in the ecosystem through their capital. We need more people in that capacity.
That’s why my fund is not just myself. It includes a number of high net-worth individuals and corporate investors recycling their capital and knowledge through my fund to support the next generation of startups trying to take over the world with their businesses—and that’s what keeps me going.
I want more unicorns being built in Canada to transform our economy from our age-old resource focus into an innovative, innovation-focused economy.
SC: What is the next mountain you are climbing and what is left undone?
EL: I think Toronto, Montreal, and Waterloo have relatively mature tech ecosystems. They’ve been growing for the last 20 years. In my dealings with angel investors, as well as entrepreneurs coast-to-coast in Canada, I’m actually noticing a lot of emerging ecosystems.
Right now I see an opportunity to be the bridge builder between these emerging ecosystems. We don’t have the population density of the US, so if we don’t band together, our efforts will always be just a fraction of what they need to be to serve the global market.
Canada has strength in diversity. We have a lot of immigrants who speak different languages, and who have different cultural backgrounds. If we can actually connect all the emerging ecosystems, we could be a huge force to make an impact globally.
SC: What has been your biggest learning along the way?
EL: You have to give before you take. A lot of people need some sort of help—either knowledge or capital. If you want to collaborate with others, the very first step is to give. If you can give them something, people will know you can be helpful and they’ll be more open to collaboration.
SC: Have you identified or confronted any systemic barriers through your journey? If so, how have you persevered through them?
EL: To make a very broad strokes statement; Canadians are less risk-taking than our counterparts in the United States—from a VC perspective and also from an entrepreneur’s perspective. I sometimes feel that our startups may not be dreaming big enough.
Also, I’m not sure the VCs in our ecosystem really know how to invest in companies to help them build into unicorns. I think it’s a cultural barrier we need to work on. I just hope that our government can be more progressive when it comes to the innovation agenda.
SC: What advice do you have for those just beginning to embark on their entrepreneurial journey?
EL: I would say grit is the number one thing that helps any entrepreneur pull through. Be very clear on your goals and just work hard on them. Not all ventures are backable by VCs—but at the bare minimum, give it a shot.
Many ventures require multiple iterations before they become meaningful. If your first startup fails, just do another one! Learn the lessons, iterate again, and keep moving forward.
SC: Where can people go to learn more about your journey and organization?
EL: Our website. Otherwise, I share lots of things on LinkedIn and on Twitter.
SC: What is your big vision for Canada and the World over the next 20 years?
EL: I am hoping to see technology and people come together in a more seamless way that benefits everyone . If you look at the world, who do you think can actually achieve that? I think Canadians can. We embrace differences, we call things out when they’re wrong, and we really try to work hard together, as a group.
Let’s innovate for mankind, and leave no one behind.
SC: To that end, what do you think today’s entrepreneurs should be focused on for a better, brighter future?
EL: Focus on the needs of the people, but not necessarily just doing what people ask for.
In the 1800s, if you asked people what the problem was with transportation, they would tell you they needed faster horses—they couldn’t imagine a car!
So delight people with a ‘car’; take a new approach and try to build technology that really fulfills the needs of society. Wow them with something life-changing.
Are you on the cusp of something life-changing worth sharing? Join the Startup Canada Women Entrepreneurs Network to gain access to resources, community events, and more!