Canada has built a culture and support infrastructure around one kind of entrepreneur: tech-focused, venture-backed and scaling fast. Lisa Cashmore draws on more than two decades of insights into the start-up ecosystem to remind us there is a wider definition of how Canadians can become entrepreneurs and what Canada needs to do to help them thrive.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
In my last blog, I wrote about the decline in Canadian entrepreneurship and why the support infrastructure around founders has never mattered more. The response to my blog was encouraging, and it got me thinking harder about a question that's been on my mind for a while.
Who exactly are we building that infrastructure for?
I've spent over 15 years working across Canada's innovation ecosystem. I've seen hundreds of companies come through programs, coached founders at almost every point on the journey, and watched patterns repeat across every sector and stage. And the clearest thing I can tell you is this: the entrepreneur we tend to picture and the entrepreneur who's actually out there building are often two very different people.
The dominant image is well established. Tech-focused, investor-backed, optimizing for the hockey stick, that sharp, upward-only growth curve that venture capital was built to chase. That model has produced remarkable companies and deserves the celebration it gets. But it represents a narrow slice of what entrepreneurship in Canada actually looks like. Most entrepreneurs don't make headlines. That doesn't make their experiences any less real or any less important.
The entrepreneur next door
Think about the businesses that keep communities running. The cleaning company under new ownership and growing steadily. The senior mobility products business with three decades of loyal customers and untapped room to modernize. The textile sustainability venture built around a genuinely better idea. The student who’s turning a dog walking side hustle into a reliable source of income.
These businesses create livelihoods, employ people and pay taxes. They can sometimes be more sustainable than high-growth ventures, and in many cases more ‘AI-proof’ too. And yet, the conversation about entrepreneurship rarely centers them.
That gap is worth closing, for the builders themselves and for the health of Canada's broader economy.
What every entrepreneur needs
One of the things I've learned from years of working across different sectors and business models is that the fundamental needs of entrepreneurs are remarkably consistent, regardless of what they're building.
These needs don't change based on sector or business model. A founder building a SaaS company and a founder acquiring an existing small business both need peer support, good navigation, accountability and financial clarity. Our support systems work best when they're designed with that universality in mind.
A path most Canadians don't know exists (or are looking past)
Of all the forms entrepreneurship takes, acquisition is perhaps the path the public conversation has been slowest to recognize.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business reports that about 76% of Canada's roughly 1.2 million small-business owners hope to retire in the next decade, with up to $2 trillion in business assets potentially changing hands. More recently, BDC noted that over 142,000 entrepreneurs plan to close, transfer or sell their business in the next 5 years alone, representing 17.4% of SMEs.
This means approximately 900,000 Canadian businesses need to change hands in the next decade as baby boomer owners retire. These are solid, revenue-generating companies in manufacturing, trades, services, hospitality and dozens of other sectors. Many of them are run by owners who haven't had the time or inclination to optimize for technology. They have loyal customers, real cash flow and significant room to grow under new leadership.
According to CFIB, 91% of owners don't have a formal succession plan, and 46% have no plans whatsoever. And Canada doesn't yet have the infrastructure to help the next generation of owners step in.
The contrast with the US is striking. A few leading US business schools including Stanford and Harvard have taught entrepreneurship through acquisition for decades. The US Small Business Administration offers financing that allows buyers to acquire a well-run company with as little as 10% down. Canada has two university programs in this space (Western University's Ivey Business School and the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business), both launched within the last couple of years, and no equivalent financing model.
What that means in practice is that many of those 900,000 businesses will be acquired by foreign private equity or simply closed when the owner decides they're done. Canadian equity, jobs and institutional knowledge will leave with them.
Regenerative Capital Group is one of the few Canadian firms actively working in this space, investing in entrepreneurial leaders to acquire and evolve Canadian small and medium businesses with a mandate for long-term impact alongside profit. I spent two years working with the team there, and we built Canada's first Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Accelerator. That experience changed how I see entrepreneurship entirely.
So much untapped opportunity still exists to build a broader ecosystem that embraces domestic business acquisition as a legitimate and exciting path into entrepreneurship.
What good support looks like
The encouraging thing is that the infrastructure to serve a wider range of builders is growing. It shows up in a few distinct ways.
Program-based support is expanding beyond the traditional tech accelerator model. Organizations like The Forum are supporting women-led companies across every sector, building the kind of community and programming that meets founders where they are regardless of what they're building. The Conestoga Entrepreneurship Collective is proof that the instinct to build something can be cultivated anywhere, creating entrepreneurial pathways for students and grads who don't fit the conventional startup mold.
Sector-based community is emerging as a powerful complement. Mission-driven associations are building the connections, context and advocacy that founders in specific industries need to grow. Natural Products Canada is a strong example, bringing together the entrepreneurs and organizations building Canada's bioeconomy. NPC surrounds high-potential natural products founders with the resources they need to attract capital.
Policy and capital are beginning to catch up as well. In September 2025, BDC announced the $50M Thrive Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Fund, aiming to support more than 60 Canadian women in acquiring and operating Canadian companies. BDC also launched a separate $100M joint financing initiative with First Nations Bank of Canada geared toward helping Indigenous groups fund ETA deals. It’s the first major government-aligned initiative of this kind in Canada and a meaningful indicator that the conversation is shifting. We need to see even more government-aligned capital flowing toward these underserved paths into entrepreneurship.
At NorthGuide, the work we do across these contexts is rooted in the belief that the ecosystem is strongest when it reflects the full range of who is building. Each of these types of support reflect a broader and more inclusive understanding of who builders are. Together, they point toward an ecosystem that is finally starting to reflect the realities of entrepreneurship happening in Canada, and the opportunity for even more Canadians to join.
The entrepreneur next door is out there. They’re running a business acquired from a retiring owner whose child wasn’t interested. They’re building something in a sector nobody calls glamorous, and doing it well. They're creating real economic value, every day, without much fanfare. The need for greater support was recently addressed in this BetaKit story that describes “inclusive succession” as a hidden market opportunity for Canada.
The question for all of us who work in and around the entrepreneurship ecosystem is whether our programs, our funding models and our narratives are wide enough to reach them.
I think they can be. I believe we're just getting started.
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