Steve Woods
Partner & CTO
Inovia

Steve Woods joined Inovia as Partner and CTO in August 2021. Steven has worked in software development, research and technical leadership for more than 30 years. As co-founder of three software and services companies based in the USA (Quack.com, Kinitos, NeoEdge Networks), he built strong, high-performing teams of product and technical experts based in both Silicon Valley and the Waterloo-Toronto tech corridor.  One of these companies - Quack.com - pioneered the world's first interactive voice assistant and was acquired by Netscape/America Online in 2000. Steven joined Google in 2008 in order to return home to Canada and build a world-class engineering and product capability with a uniquely Canadian culture of quality, commitment and innovation. Steve led the growth and leadership development of the Google Canada product and engineering teams from 20 to over 1,300 across a range of impactful products between 2008 and 2021. In his role at Inovia, Steve brings his years of entrepreneurial and engineering experience, his passion for working with innovators and founders and his extensive network to our portfolio companies. He also plays an important role in evaluating deal flow from a product, technology and talent perspective. Steve has long been an independent investor, advisor and board member to startups, innovation networks and non-profits in the USA and Canada.

Kory Jeffrey
Vice President - Platform Technology Inovia

Kory joined Inovia in March 2022, as VP of Platform Tech and will be based primarily in our KW office. He spends his time working with portfolio company executive leadership teams on the product and engineering side, working on product and tech due diligence, and working with Partners on technical investment theses. Prior to Inovia, Kory was the Chief of Staff of Engineering for Google Canada. As such, he was part of the Google Canada leadership team driving strategy, operations and Canada community engagement across its engineering sites. Prior to being Chief of Staff, Kory led Developer relations for Google in Canada and Eastern USA. Prior to Google, Kory created startup investing/acceleration programs at Communitech and Wilfrid Laurier University.

Melissa Dominguez
Advisor
Inovia

Melissa Dominguez holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence with a focus on computer vision.  She has been an engineering leader for a decade, leading mobile apps teams for Gmail, Google Wifi, and Google Home, and the Partner Experience team for Stadia.  Additionally, Melissa has helped define the culture and diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy for the Google Waterloo office, and has regularly spoken publicly (including TV, radio, and print interviews) on both technical and diversity issues.

   Devan Batavia

General Partner
Enjoy the Work

Devan loves the early stage journey, particularly uncovering the magical intersection between what the market wants and how to sell it. There are so many open questions, different stakeholders, shifting variables – it’s like a game of chess where the right moves lead to rising revenues and happy customers. 

For the last 10+ years, Devan has built and led go-to-market teams for 3 organizations, Jive which went public in 2011, Origami Logic was acquired by Intuit, and TripActions, still a public company valued at over $5B USD. B Building startups has fed Devan’s ambitions for years. He joined Enjoy The Work so that he could impact not just one startup, but rather a portfolio of them across the globe. 

   Lesley Ross

General Partner
Enjoy the Work

Lesley has worked in tech for 14 years as an operator in growth and analytics roles. She founded Quantified Ardor in 2016 to support growing startups around the world on data-driven decision-making. She has also spent the last 7 years as a startup advisor (including as a mentor for Google For Startups since 2016) while holding multiple COO positions for startups at various stages. 

   Leslie Fine

General Partner
Enjoy the Work

Leslie’s career as a startup founder and product leader began after earning her PhD in Game Theory and Behavioral Economics from Caltech. In 2008, she founded her first startup, Crowdcast, and successfully exited the company in 2012. Following Crowdcast, Leslie helped lead three more startups: Spigit (SVP Product), tenXer (Head of Product), and Swerve (Founder, CEO). After her four startup experiences, she ventured into the enterprise world and joined Salesforce (VP Product), where she helped ship the company’s first AI product. But it was through her involvement in Salesforce’s M&A process that she ultimately realized she wanted to return to startup life. 

  Rick Hartwig

General Partner
Enjoy the Work

With more than 20 years as a technology product development and marketing executive, Rick has helped grow companies from seed stage to series F. He led multiple companies through acquisition as a VP or CMO, and has worked with numerous CEOs to successfully raise $100M+ in funding. Later, as he moved into consulting and advising, he sought to become an even better company advisor and leadership coach. He became certified with both the College of Executive Coaching and International Coaching Federation as part of this effort. 

   Mike Lewis

General Partner
Enjoy the Work

Over the last 20 years Mike has founded and successfully exited three startups. First was Qloud, a B2C on-demand music streaming service that grew to over 10M monthly unique visitors. Next was Kapost, a B2B SaaS company that grew to over $13M in revenue and 100+ employees. The most recent was Onward, a ride-sharing service for seniors that partnered with hospitals and medical facilities.

Alongside those experiences, Mike also experienced hyper-growth at Airbnb. From 2015 to 2019, he served as Head of Product for Airbnb for Work and Airbnb Luxe. While there, bookings grew from zero to over $1B in 2.5 years.

Although each company created value in different ways, he grew to appreciate the things that stay consistent. Building a high functioning team, shipping good product, honing a sales motion, raising capital, etc. Now he’s giving back and paying it forward as a General Partner at Enjoy The Work, and grateful to work with founders bringing the next generation of technology to market.

  Ruben Ortega

General Partner
Enjoy the Work

Ruben joined his first startup more than 25 years ago and was immediately delighted by the blank slate in front of him. He has always sought out companies that were early in their growth stories, which led him to join Amazon, Google, and Pinterest many years before they became some of the world’s largest enterprises. The common denominator – novel software, products, and teams that surprised and delighted massive numbers of customers.

His joy comes from bringing new products to the world. He’s learned that there is a right way, a harmonious way, to ship those solutions. And he’s grateful now to have the experience (and scars) to help others get there faster.

His journey from engineer to CTO to advisor has taught him that there is a cadence of communication, delivery, and metrics core to every successful company. With the right foundation in place, a founder can build a company that delivers on the promise of a better tomorrow.

The best part of advising is having the insight to guide a company towards their own unique answers – the ones that both reflect their values and lead to business success. He’s excited to be a General Partner at Enjoy The Work as he continues to teach, learn, and be in awe of the imagination of our founders.

   Jonathan Lowenhar

Founder and Managing Partner, Enjoy the Work

Throughout his 20 year career, Jonathan successfully built a $1B business segment for a large public company, guided the turnaround of a distressed $100M+ revenue business, launched and sold a venture-backed startup, and led the rise of one of the world’s fastest growing B2B SaaS businesses.

His first career was in hospitality, where he served as the first VP of Loyalty Marketing for Harrah’s Entertainment and led the turnaround of a failing 3,000-employee hotel and casino company. In 2007, he founded his first startup, which he successfully sold after 4 years and several rounds of capital. Starting in 2012, he served as COO of Taulia, growing the business from seed to D in less than 3 years.

Since 2014, he has led Enjoy The Work, a firm of expert early stage operators who have combined their considerable skills to advise the next generation of startups to launch, grow and reach scale. He founded Enjoy The Work because he believed that the biggest positive impact he could have on the world would be to positively influence the next generation of startup entrepreneurs. He’s dedicated his professional life to that end. 

   Jenn Romney

General Partner
Enjoy the Work

Jenn has spent the past decade advising CEO founders and their executive teams on leadership, strategy, growth, organization and culture, at companies ranging from Seed to Series D. Her partners and founders range from first-timers to serial entrepreneurs self-funding their latest venture – and most share a common thread of purpose-driven intentions in both their business impact, and leadership aspiration. Her work as an advisor and executive coach followed a decade and a half of CMO, go-to-market, and general management roles across both startups and new business/market development at Fortune 500 companies.

In nearly every advisory role, she heard the same question from founders: “Why does this have to be so hard?” Yet, every challenge is not a new one, and she believes deeply that when equipped with the right resources, relationships & know-how, founders would ask this question far less. And perhaps enjoy the work more.

Whether advising, mentoring or coaching, my energy is fueled by partnering with good humans doing incredible things in the world. And that is the bench of talented startup founders we support at Enjoy the Work.

   Ned Renzi

General Partner

Enjoy the Work

Ned has been involved with startups ever since founding his own software company in the mid 1990s; the bulk of his career has been defined by venture capital. In the early 2000s, He co-founded Pittsburgh-based VC firm, Birchmere Ventures.

Over the following 20+ years at Birchmere, we raised and invested six funds and our portfolio companies achieved a cumulative market valuation of $15 billion. Through those funds, he was fortunate to work with dozens of incredible entrepreneurs.

Throughout his career, his highest highs have come when lending a helping hand to well-deserving, high-achieving founders. His passion lies in watching others achieve success. Through Enjoy The Work, he’s able to fulfill this passion by taking founder mentorship to a deeper level than he could in the VC world.

   Anu Nigam

Managing Partner

Enjoy the Work

Ever since Anu joined his first startup in 1996, He enjoys working with small, driven teams, helping to transform cutting edge technologies into real businesses. His first two startups revolutionized fiber-optic telecommunications, resulting in two acquisitions among the top 10 largest VC-backed M&A deals of all time. After the .com crash, he shifted his sights to consumer internet and started one of the world’s first social networks, hi5.com, which grew to 60M MAU. Later in his career he followed the explosion of smart phones to found an app discover site that organically attracted 15M installs. 

     Yanush Cherkis

General Partner

Enjoy the Work

Yanush has had a few careers in various industries, but independent of his functional roles, the most important skill he mastered is the ability to ask good questions.

 He developed that skill over a 20 year career that has spanned banking, entrepreneurship, personal coaching and startup advising. He helped start 6 businesses, including co-founding a software company that they built from start-up to a profitable multi-million-dollar global operation to a successful M&A exit.

He has his CPA license, multiple academic degrees and a professional coaching certification but above all else my greatest passions are mentoring my fellow entrepreneurs and volunteering at my kids’ schools.

   David Cautin

General Partner

Enjoy the Work

Throughout his career, David led both early-stage, venture-backed startups and global private equity-backed corporations, He’s been motivated to build teams that find creative, often unexpected paths to success.

David’s journey has taken him from an executive at AOL in the early days of the consumer internet to the management team of two venture-backed startups that successfully exited. He then joined the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange as its first Chief Digital Officer.

Over the past 25+ years, He has bought or sold dozens of companies and raised close to $1B in debt and equity.

   Alex Gould

Founder and Managing Director
Long Story Short

For more than a decade, Alex has helped organizations big and small successfully build their brands and “tell better stories”.

A communications and design specialist by trade, he understands the complexities of technology and how to best deliver your message in a persuasive & memorable way. Born and raised in Toronto, he’s helped build brands and businesses on a global scale with stints in New York and London, UK.

To date, he’s collaborated with clients that include MIT, Techstars, MasterCard, Unilever, TELUS, Nissan & AB InBev to launch iconic initiatives across Europe and North America throughout his career.

  Alyssa George

Art Director
Long Story Short

Alyssa is a visual designer and art director with a passion for bringing brands to life through thoughtful design. She is a graduate from York University and Sheridan College, with a degree in Design. Most of her design career has been spent with agencies, creating brand experiences in digital, print and experiential applications. She has experience working with a variety of brands, including Starbucks,Chapman’s Ice Cream, Equifax and the City of Toronto.

When Alyssa isn’t focused on her next design solution, you can find her crocheting or sipping a cold pint

on a sunny patio.