Staircase Ventures

Janet Bannister spent a career inside other people's institutions — eBay, where she conceived and launched Kijiji, then a decade as a partner at Real Ventures — before raising her own fund. Staircase Ventures made its first close in 2023 and leads pre-seed and seed rounds of $1 million to $2.5 million into Canadian technology companies with early customers, mostly B2B software and increasingly AI-applied. The distinguishing feature is what the firm spends money on besides cheques: a founder development platform that pays for executive and health coaches, financial advisers, peer support groups, and cash toward childcare or elder care. The bet is that founder durability compounds into returns, and so far the numbers support it — Fund I, at $34 million, has reported a net internal rate of return above 50 percent, placing it in the top decile of North American funds of its vintage. Fund II closed at $50 million CAD in March 2026, over a $40 million target, in a market where most Canadian managers were struggling to raise at all. Named portfolio companies include Fillip, Biossil, Rhenti, Sibli, Ultimarii, Mave, Tengiva and MedEssist.