Father and Son Schwartz Partner with Fintech Founders to Create Exit North Ventures

A family pair of seasoned financial services professionals from Canada has joined forces with a cadre of successful founders to establish a new venture capital firm dedicated to the FinTech sector—Exit North Ventures. This Toronto-based firm, founded and spearheaded by Tal Schwartz, the editor of the Canadian Fintech newsletter, and his father, Gary Schwartz, who is the founder of the Canadian Lenders Association (CLA), is in the process of raising a $20 million CAD fund aimed at supporting early-stage FinTech startups throughout Canada.

The Schwartz duo embarked on this journey last year, intent on building a fund that would empower Canadian FinTech entrepreneurs with proven track records of successful exits. Since launching their initiative, they have successfully secured over $5 million from founder limited partners (LPs), engaged several of these LPs to assist in vetting and advising startups, and made investments in six emerging FinTech companies.

As they began focusing on attracting exited Canadian FinTech founders as LPs, the momentum picked up significantly. “Once we began targeting exited Canadian FinTech founders as LPs, everything clicked,” remarked Tal Schwartz, general partner (GP) of Exit North, in an interview with BetaKit. He emphasized that the firm’s name reflects the backgrounds and experiences of the people involved.

In addition to Gary Schwartz, who has his own history of building and selling a tech company—Impact Mobile, which specialized in mobile messaging—Exit North’s investor lineup includes five other prominent Canadian FinTech founders serving as venture partners. This impressive group features Michael Garrity, co-founder and executive chair of Financeit; Katherine Gregory, co-founder of Paradigm Quest; Catherine Dahl, co-founder of Beanworks; Ali Metel, co-founder of LendCare; and Norm Cappell, co-founder of Savvyy. While Tal Schwartz has opted not to disclose the identities of Exit North’s limited partners, he mentioned that they primarily consist of high-net-worth individuals with extensive financial services expertise, alongside a few family offices and institutional investors.

Initially, Exit North aimed to raise $5 million, a target they exceeded rapidly during their first close held a year ago, prompting the firm to set its sights on a higher goal. Although the exact amount raised to date remains confidential, Tal Schwartz anticipates that the firm will soon reach its revised target of $20 million, despite navigating particularly challenging conditions in the venture capital fundraising landscape.

Exit North plans to allocate investments ranging from $250,000 to $1 million into Canadian FinTech startups at the pre-seed and seed stages, with a strategic focus on business-to-business technology across various sectors, including capital markets, insurance, lending, payments, treasury, and wealth management. The firm aims to cultivate a diverse portfolio of approximately 30 companies.

To date, Exit North has made six investments, backing startups such as Baseline, a Toronto-based private lending software company; Arbor, a Calgary-based emissions tracking platform; Opal, a Vancouver startup specializing in spend management for advertising agencies; and Walter, a provider of operating systems for law firms, among two other undisclosed Canadian FinTech firms. Notably, many of Exit North’s portfolio companies have enlisted one of its partners as an advisor, enhancing their chances for success.

Tal Schwartz brings a wealth of experience to Exit North, having previously spent five years as head of policy and research at the CLA and nearly three years as a product manager at Nomis Solutions, a San Francisco-based bank infrastructure technology company. Before launching Exit North, he engaged in several angel investments, backing Canadian FinTech startups like NetNow and Bree.