Sunil Sharma

Sunil Sharma General Information

Biography

Mr. Sunil Sharma serves as Managing Director, Toronto & Waterloo at Founder Institute. He served as Managing Director at Techstars. He serves as Advisor at Simpu. He served as Managing Director at Techstars. He serves as Board Member at Treepz. Prior to Techstars. He was a Managing Partner with Extreme Venture Partners (EVP) and co-founder and Managing Director of Extreme Startups. While at Extreme, he sourced and lead more than 40 investments across two funds and two accelerator programs. He is the Chair of the Board of Canada's Accelerator and Business Incubator Association (CABI) which has had responsibility for administering the Startup Visa immigration program to fast-track the immigration of founders to Canada. He spends a lot of time in Waterloo where he has served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Communitech, one of Canada's largest technology hubs. He is passionate about helping entrepreneurs become great. He spends some of his free time running the Founder Institute pre-accelerator program in Toronto and Waterloo. Through Founder Institute he has helped first-time founders create more than 100 brand-new startups with the support of more than 80 mentors. He has been very active in the startup community from his time co-launching Startup Weekend Toronto (now part of Techstars) as well as organizing many of Canada's leading innovation and technology conferences and events. Prior to his career helping startups he was a career diplomat in the Canadian Foreign Service. He served as the Head of the Canadian Consulate in San Diego, California where he launched one of Canada's newest diplomatic missions. He has also worked at the Canadian Space Agency and represented Canada at the United Nations in Geneva. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Victoria and a graduate degree from the University of Toronto. Mr. Sharma serves as Advisor at Webware.io. Mr. Sharma co-founded & served as Managing Partner at Extreme Venture Partners. He serves as Board Member at Beam Propulsion Lab. Backed by 5 of Canada's best venture capital funds, he has co-lead investments into more than 18 companies. He is very active in the technology ecosystem across Canada and particularly in the Toronto-Waterloo corridor, where he serves as EIR at Communitech. Prior to that, he was the Global Practice Lead, Venture Capital and Private Equity in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade of the Government of Canada. He served as a Board Member at Groupie.