Amplify your impact
The SAIL Fund offers contributors a rare opportunity to create lasting, Canada-wide economic resilience by strengthening both the country’s capacity for innovation and its economic future. Canada produces world-class research, yet many promising discoveries fail to reach the market due to a lack of early, risk-tolerant capital. The SAIL Fund addresses this gap by deploying patient capital to de-risk technologies aligned with national priorities, and to support a new generation of entrepreneurial talent to grow and remain in Canada. Your contribution will help kickstart a virtuous cycle of innovation that builds a more resilient Canadian economy.
For Contributors
1
A Proven Model
Rather than one-time grants or traditional venture capital investment focused on short-term profits, the SAIL Fund adapts a proven venture philanthropy model to the Canadian context. The proceeds of successful outcomes are recycled to support future innovation, creating a virtuous cycle in which the success of this generation becomes fuel for the next. In the UK, this approach was responsible for creating 5x more companies from publicly funded research than would have otherwise existed and turned every £1 contributed into £7 of long-term economic value.
2
Sustained innovation
Because returns are recycled, SAIL Fund enables contributor capital to be amplified through multiple innovation cycles. Direct return on investment is important only to make the fund self-sustaining, but beyond that is not the primary objective. Over time, this approach contributes to creating innovative firms within Canada, and to training and retaining a new generation of entrepreneurial talent that can pay your contribution forward, all while providing a way for Canada to domestically secure and benefit from the valuable intellectual property created in the course of publicly funded research.
3
Benefits for Canada
Certainty already has funding. The SAIL Fund embraces the inherent risk of investing in the early stages of emerging tech as a core element of its strategy, leading where possible and following only when doing so is needed to give an eligible firm the runway it needs. SAIL Fund measures success at the portfolio and ecosystem level over long time horizons. Failure is an expected and planned outcome at this stage of innovation, and even ventures that are eventually unsuccessful generate valuable knowledge, develop talent, and strengthen Canada’s innovation capacity. The SAIL Fund exists for contributors who want their capital to keep working long after it is given, delivering measurable and sustained improvements to Canada’s economic strength and resilience.