“Raif is a stellar leader who is thoughtful and thorough in his analysis and decision making. Data driven with loads of experience, he’s a master problem solver. He’s an excellent people leader with a magnetic personality that makes him a joy to follow. Any organization would be lucky to have Raif as a part of their team. ”
About
I'm a startup CTO turned VC at Mistral Venture Partners in Canada. Prior to Mistral, I was the founder or CTO at multiple VC-backed companies in the Bay Area and Toronto, two of which were acquired, and two reached millions of users.
My investment focus is seed-stage and tends to follow my experience – B2B SaaS, dev tools, e-commerce marketplaces and fintech, in the US & Canada.
My recent investments:
- Metacommerce - Sales and Marketing Automation for Web3 ("Web3 CRM")
- BHuman.ai - Personalized videos at scale ("Generated live actor videos for the enterprise")
- Loop Financial - Cross border banking for eCommerce businesses
My more recent startup founder/CTO experience includes:
- Nuula, US fintech where I led product, design & engineering, which raised $120M.
- Influitive, where I led the product, design, engineering and customer success teams, is a late-stage B2B SaaS company whose customers include 8 of the 10 largest software companies in the world.
- Loblaw Digital, the team responsible for digital and e-commerce at Canada’s largest retailer. Part of the founding team, I led engineering, data science, QA and support and built a team of 150. We grew the eCommerce business from zero to nine figures in four years through the launch of four distinct eCommerce and customer engagement platforms. Loblaw Digital scaled to over $3B in revenue in 2021.
I also advise venture-backed startups across the US & Canada on how to scale their product and engineering organizations, typically working directly with their CEO and CTO.
Earlier in my career, I had a tenure at another seed-stage VC firm, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, in San Francisco, where I cut my teeth on the startup business and three very formative years at Deloitte as a management consultant. I have an MBA from UC Berkeley, a B.Sc.H. in Computer Science, and a B.Sc in Mathematics from Queen’s University.
I take my work pretty seriously (most of the time), but I have three kids and a wife that come first. Soccer comes second. I’ve played since I could walk and coached the last ten years – Coach of the Year 2019 U12 Boys @ Erin Mills Soccer Club!
Experience
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Education
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Activities and Societies: Haas Entrepreneurs Association, Haas Consulting Club, Haas Soccer Club
- MBA focusing on Venture Capital & Entrepreneurship.
- Finalist - UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition.
- Facilitator – Only MBA student selected to facilitate CISE, a consortium of 25 bay area CIO’s that meet monthly to discuss ideas and trends in the marketplace. One year assignment.
- Co-organized an entrepreneurship course and arranged for 12 entrepreneurs and CEO’s to speak.
- Graduate Student Instructor – Financial & Managerial Accounting. -
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Recommendations received
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LinkedIn User
6 people have recommended Raif
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