Alex Tong

PRINCIPAL

Alex joined Information Venture Partners in 2016 focused on investments in FinTech and enterprise software startups, and works closely with the fund’s portfolio companies. Alex serves on the board of LendingFront and is currently involved with a number of other portfolio companies, including Cinchy, Jirav, Knowtions Research and Procurify.

Prior to joining Information Venture Partners Alex worked at Hootsuite as its first team hire in corporate development. Alex worked cross-functionally with its leadership team, executing on numerous growth initiatives including corporate and team acquisitions, new mobile apps (content and social selling) and raising venture capital. Prior to Hootsuite, Alex worked at BMO Capital Markets in both Mergers and Acquisitions and the Financial Institutions Group, working on various mandates including a U.S. regional bank acquisition, financial technology M&A, large P&C insurance IPO, and other M&A assignments across energy, utilities, media and telecom. Alex also worked at CIBC in its Leveraged Finance Group, focusing on credit opportunities involving various private equity and mid-market companies.

Outside of the fund, Alex also serves as a mentor to various startups. Alex graduated with First Class Honours, holding a BBA from the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University.

Jane Podbelskaya

Principal

Jane joined information VP in 2021 as a Principal on the investment team, where she is responsible for sourcing and executing new investments as well as providing board-level and operational support to Information VP’s portfolio companies.
Before joining Information Venture Partners, she most recently worked at Georgian Partners, a North American fund investing in growth-stage SaaS companies, where she held a number of roles over her six-year tenure. Focusing both on new investments and portfolio support, Jane was instrumental in designing the fund’s portfolio acceleration program; she optimized investment and due diligence processes, successfully closed numerous investments, and led many post-investment value-add projects within the portfolio leveraging her specialization on SaaS customer success.

Prior to Georgian Partners, Jane was a Consultant for Bain & Company, where she worked on several projects in financial services industry, including strategy work for international life insurance and wealth management company, and advisory on customer loyalty strategies in retail banking and the insurance sectors around the world.

Earlier in her career, Jane was a Consultant and Solutions Architect for Xerox in both Toronto and Moscow. She was a chief architect for a major business process outsourcing engagement for CIBC, where she designed implemented a document imaging and records management solution streamlining the bank’s lending processes. Jane started her career as a software engineer at ABBYY.

Jane holds an MBA from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto as well as an M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Peter Carrescia

Venture Partner

Combining over 25 years as both a technology executive and a venture capitalist, Peter has funded and helped scale many high growth companies both as a VC and an operator.

Most recently, he led strategy, business development and corporate development at Wave Financial, a high growth financial technology company acquired by H&R Block in 2019 for $537 million. Peter’s involvement with Wave began in 2011 when he led the first venture round as Managing Director while at OMERS Ventures.

Prior to Wave, Peter was the president of NEXT Canada, a national accelerator focused on fast-tracking the development of Canada’s most talented young innovators and founders.

Peter’s deep knowledge of venture capital came through senior roles at large Canadian venture firms. At OMERS Ventures he was the founding Managing Director and the first member of the investment team. He was instrumental in the development of the initial investment sectors, thesis, strategy and processes. He also led and was instrumental in the recruiting of the initial investment team. Prior to OMERS Ventures, he was a General Partner at VenGrowth Capital Partners where he led investment activity in high growth technology companies.

Early in Peter’s career he held progressively senior roles at both IBM Software and Microsoft.

Peter holds a Joint Honours Bachelor of Mathematics (B.Math.) in Computer Science and Business Administration from the University of Waterloo and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Schulich School of Business at York University.

Sara Defina

Director of Finance 

Sara joined Information Venture Partners in 2020 and works alongside the CFO, focusing on overseeing fund operations and reporting as well as the legal and financial related activities involved in due diligence and support of portfolio investments. In addition, she assists the partners with fund raising activities and helping to manage LP communications and relationships.

Prior to joining Information Venture Partners, Sara worked at SurePath Capital Partners, a boutique investment bank advising B2B SMB software companies. In this role, Sara was responsible for supporting clients through all technical aspects of mergers and acquisitions and growth equity financings, including the preparation of deal-related materials, the evaluation of different proposals, and the due diligence process. Prior to joining SurePath, Sara was a manager in the Valuations Deal Advisory group at KPMG where she provided valuation assistance and strategic recommendations for the purposes of financial reporting, taxation, mergers and acquisitions, and investment reviews for many private entities, public companies, and Canadian pension funds. Sara also has experience in performing financial statement audits and reviews for both public and private clients in the financial services industry.

Sara has also volunteered her time assisting early-stage technology companies seeking financing through MaRS Innovation. She obtained a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from the University of Toronto and is a Chartered Professional Accountant and Chartered Business Valuator.

Dave Unsworth

GENERAL PARTNER AND CO-FOUNDER

Dave Unsworth co-founded Information Venture Partners in 2014. Dave has led investments in eSentire (exited, 2017), Verafin, Sensibill, Igloo Software (exited, 2017), Viigo (acquired by BlackBerry), Coconut Software, BigID, Knowtions and LendingFront. Dave is focused on FinTech and Enterprise software and is particularly interested in cybersecurity, mobile, enterprise 2.0 and ventures that create highly valuable data assets by being at the centre of large-scale financial transactions.

Prior to founding Information Venture Partners Dave worked as an investor with RBC Venture Partners from 2001. Prior to his career in venture capital Dave had a successful career in operating roles focused on e-commerce strategy development, technology enabled financial services product development, technology project management and retail/commercial financial services.

Dave is an active member in the start-up community in Toronto and Waterloo as a mentor to early stage CEOs and founding teams. Dave also serves as a mentor in the Kaufmann Fellows program and more recently with the Holt FinTech Accelerator and as an investment committee member for the Investment Accelerator Fund. Dave has been a frequent contributor to Private Capital Magazine. Dave is an original member and past Chair of the Financial Services Venture Capital Alliance.

Dave was granted an MBA from Queen’s University, a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from Wilfrid Laurier University. He is also a graduate of the NVCA’s Venture Capital Institute and the Rotman SME Board Effectiveness Program.

Brendan Foster

Analyst

​Brendan joined Information Venture Partners in 2020 as an Analyst focused on investments in fintech, insurtech and enterprise software.

Prior to joining Information Venture Partners, Brendan worked at HarbourVest Partners where he was responsible for originating, assessing, monitoring, and reporting on direct co-investments and partnerships.

Brendan holds a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo and a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) from the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University

Kerri Golden

Partner and Chief Financial Officer

Kerri Golden joined Information Venture Partners at inception in 2014 and works with the investment team to help select and support the fund’s investee companies and manage the financial operations of the fund. She has over 30 years of general management and finance experience in a variety of technology industries and she’s been active in securing financings of over $1 billion in equity and debt and in negotiations of a number of merger and acquisition transactions.

Kerri was a General Partner of Primaxis Technology Ventures for eight years where she led and managed several investments in early-stage companies in the IT, software and communications sectors and also served as CFO of the fund.

Kerri had a successful corporate career with high growth technology companies. She was a mobile pioneer at Rogers Wireless, joining prior to service launch and experiencing start-up challenges and opportunities as company grew from zero to $200M in revenue during her 2.5 year tenure. She was a public company CFO at Alliance Atlantis Communications and Lorus Therapeutics and ended her successful 7-year career at Bell Mobility as CEO, Paging Division after progressive leadership positions in Finance and IT.

Kerri is an experienced start-up executive. She co-owns a small business Urban Flats Toronto and served as COO at SeaWell Networks and CFO at Infobright. She serves the start-up community as an active mentor at MaRS, where she co-founded the JOLT Fund and continues to serve as a volunteer general partner.

Kerri obtained an HBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario and earned her CA designation while working with KPMG in Toronto.

Cristin Gray

Executive Assistant and Office Manager

Cristin Gray joined Information Venture Partners in 2019 as the Executive Assistant and Office Manager.

Prior to joining Information Venture Partners, Cristin worked as the Executive Assistant to the CEO of Karmic Labs; a leader in the convergence of payment cards and mobile software (acquired by Prepaid Technologies). Prior to her career supporting C-level executives, Cristin was a Social Worker in the mental health and addictions field.

Cristin holds multiple diplomas in Social Work and Emergency Services Communications, with a deep-rooted passion for improving the lives of others.