Investment Strategies for Founders: Aligning Financial Planning with Risk Management for Optimum Returns
SpinUp Taking Flight Venture Building Program: Session 4 of 10
Talk: How Founders can make prudent investment decisions by integrating financial planning, risk management with strategic foresight into a cohesive decision-making framework. Learn how to guide your organization toward optimum returns by aligning key financial drivers with calculated risk strategies.
With SpinUp partner enabling ideas® and speaker Blair Severn, Chairman & CEO.
Taking Flight Program Abstract: Our SpinUp venture building program by enabling ideas® fast-tracks the entrepreneurial journey and streamlines innovations to commercialization. We equip founders with essential knowledge, capabilities, foundational building blocks, and a business model to attract investors and successfully navigate elevated funding rounds, optimizing market potential.
Each business design and development session builds upon the last, offering practical knowledge and exercises. These sessions sharpen direction and align founders, co-founders, and their teams on strategic and operational decisions, propelling your venture to scale and profitability.
In this webinar we will highlight:
- Strategic Financial Analysis: How to evaluate key financial drivers and make informed investment decisions based on data-driven insights.
- Fact-Driven Financial Planning: The process of integrating accurate financial forecasting and budgeting to support long-term investment goals.
- Risk Assessment and Mitigation: Techniques for identifying, assessing, and managing risk to balance growth opportunities with stability.
- Cohesive Decision-Making Frameworks: Aligning financial strategies with risk management to create a unified approach for sustainable returns.
* Please note this webinar series is open to members of the University of Toronto, University of Toronto Entrepreneurship (UTE), and IDEA Mississauga communities only.
Background
The accelerator landscape in Toronto and Mississauga provides early-stage life science founders with access to wet lab spaces and equipment, enabling startups to develop their innovations toward commercialization. This support, combined with holistic venture building programming, ensures the successful development of prosperous life science ventures and manufacturing. Aligning lab and business resources helps founders through every step of their entrepreneurial journey, from initial idea and development to validation, market-ready product, and commercial scale.
About enabling ideas®
Enabling Ideas® is a venture acceleration studio. We streamline the journey from early stage commercializing to operating income, market expansion and scale. We design business models, help set strategies, build capabilities and position ventures to be highly appealing to investors from pre-seed through elevated rounds of funding.
Just like a Sherpa, we know the more direct route and can provide ventures with a map, or be your guide and take the journey with you to help shoulder the load. Our team and unique support model of expert partners and fractional executives includes; entrepreneurs, senior strategists, market researchers, growth experts, financial experts, organizational development and implementation specialists. We help set ventures up on a pathway to scale and profitability and also function as your extended team.
Meet the Speakers
Blair is the Chairman and Co-founder of enabling ideas®, a leading strategy and business design consultancy founded in 2004, specializing in helping early-stage ventures scale, achieve self-sustaining income, and attract investors for seed and subsequent financing rounds. With a track record of driving profitable growth, Blair combines design thinking, financial expertise, and operational know-how to breaking through inflection points to propel companies toward rapid acceleration.
His experience spans diverse sectors, including technology, software, clean-tech, food science, life science, consumer products, financial services, professional services, and media.
Before founding enabling ideas®, Blair held leadership positions as Compliance Officer at BMO Financial Group’s Office of Strategic Management, National Marketing Manager at Sony of Canada, and Head of Consumer Retail at Consumers Gas. Additionally, he has served on various boards as Chairman and Committee Chair including his current role as Finance Committee Chair at D’Youville University.
Blair holds an MBA in Corporate Finance and Investment Banking from the University of Toronto, an HBAS in Marketing from York University, and a BA in Business and Sociology from Brock University.
9:00 am – 10:00 am EST