It is often said that Canada lags behind in entrepreneurship. That has not been my experience. I want to do a profile on two of Canada's successful entrepreneurs who work in the GRAND space. One, Greg Wolfond, is a serial entrepreneur who was a pioneer in mobile technology with his second company, 7/24 Solutions. He now helps younger entrepreneurs through his angel investment company, Blue Sky Capital. One of the companies that he has helped, Polar Mobile Group Inc., is run by Kunal Gupta. 

I met Greg in the 1980s when he and his partner were young, recent grads who wanted to develop technology that would permit financial institutions to better know their customers and their financial needs. Their product client track began during a work term when they were assisting Bayshore Trust, owned by Greg's father. They took that company to a 300 person company licensing its software around the world. Ultimately they sold the company to IBM. But like all entrepreneurs, Greg could neither work for Big Blue nor sit idle. He took his profit and started one of Canada's first mobile focused companies, 7/24 Solutions. That company went public during the tech boom of the late 1990s. Again Greg made money and again he could not sit idle. While he went back to school to learn about biotech, he founded Blue Sky, an angel investor company that he wanted to use to help other would be entrepreneurs. One of the companies that he has helped, Polar Mobile Group Inc., is run by Kunal Gupta. 

I met Kunal through Impact, a youth entrepreneurship organization that he helped establish at my alma mater University of Waterloo. I agreed to do pro bono legal work for his organization. On graduation he turned his drive and enthusiasm towards the mobile space. Polar Mobile seeks to help traditional media companies better exploit the smart phone space. I introduced Kunal to Greg and they hit it off immediately. 

This is what I see happening in Canada and it is quite encouraging.