Leaders Fund

Leaders Fund is a venture capital firm based in Toronto, Ontario, with an office in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded by a team with a background in scaling enterprise software companies, the firm focuses on investing in early stage companies in the enterprise software sector, particularly those leveraging cloud, mobile, and machine learning technologies. With an evergreen fund structure, Leaders Fund partners with other investors to ensure alignment with portfolio companies on deal structure, growth strategy, and long-term goals. The firm specializes in seed, startups, early, mid venture, and bridge financing investments, primarily targeting high-growth B2B enterprise SaaS companies across Canada and the United States. Leaders Fund typically invests between $1 million and $5 million per company, taking stakes ranging from 5% to 20%.

Stephen A. DeBacco

Co-Founder & Managing Partner

Gideon Hayden

Co-Founder & Managing Partner

Dave MacDonald

Venture Partner

David Stein

Co-Founder & Managing Partner

43 past transactions

360insights

Venture Round in 2016
360 Incentives provides a highly flexible software as a service platform which enables manufacturers and distributors to create, measure and manage their incentives programs such as sales spiffs or rebates in real time with 100% auditing and fast payout of claims.

Baker Technologies

Seed Round in 2016
Baker Technologies, Inc. develops online customer relationship management solutions for the cannabis industry in the United States and Candida. It offers customer acquisition, engagement, and retention tools; and an e-commerce platform for online ordering, menus, and delivery. The company was founded in 2014 and is based in Denver, Colorado. Baker Technologies, Inc. operates as a subsidiary of TILT Holdings Inc.

Ada

Series B in 2020
Ada Support Inc. develops a chatbot platform that makes artificial intelligence accessible to non-technical support teams. The company operates through both web and mobile machine learning engine that reduces support volume, empowers customers to find answers on their own, and automatically learns how to better serve customers in the future. Ada Support Inc. was founded in 2016 and is based in Toronto, Canada.

Influitive

Series B in 2016
Influitive is driving the shift from company-centric marketing to advocate marketing. Their advocacy platform and team of experts helps the world’s most successful businesses spark, build and sustain a movement behind their brands with the participation of their greatest marketing asset: their customers. They believe the companies that put their customers at the heart of their marketing — and their business — are the ones that will win.

Drata

Seed Round in 2021
Drata is the world’s most advanced security and compliance automation platform with the mission to help companies earn and keep the trust of their users, customers, partners, and prospects. Drata helps companies streamline their SOC 2 compliance through continuous, automated control monitoring and evidence collection, resulting in lower costs and time spent preparing for annual audits.

CallRail

Private Placement in 2020
CallRail is a phone call tracking and analytics platform businesses use to understand which marketing campaigns drive leads and conversions. Its intuitive software helps data-driven marketers optimize the performance of their online and offline advertising campaigns, increase sales effectiveness, and improve customer retention.

ThreeKit

Series B in 2021
ThreeKit Inc. designs and develops three dimensional (3D) product configuration and visualization platform that offers interactive product solutions and user-selected customization options. It offers interactive 3D solutions, photorealistic 2D solutions, augmented reality and virtual reality solutions, visual configuration solution that provides interactive visualization of product catalog, and digital asset management solutions which control digital assets through platform. The company was founded in 2005 and is based in Chicago, Illinois.

Drata

Series B in 2021
Drata is the world’s most advanced security and compliance automation platform with the mission to help companies earn and keep the trust of their users, customers, partners, and prospects. Drata helps companies streamline their SOC 2 compliance through continuous, automated control monitoring and evidence collection, resulting in lower costs and time spent preparing for annual audits.

Drata

Series A in 2021
Drata is the world’s most advanced security and compliance automation platform with the mission to help companies earn and keep the trust of their users, customers, partners, and prospects. Drata helps companies streamline their SOC 2 compliance through continuous, automated control monitoring and evidence collection, resulting in lower costs and time spent preparing for annual audits.

Ada

Series A in 2018
Ada Support Inc. develops a chatbot platform that makes artificial intelligence accessible to non-technical support teams. The company operates through both web and mobile machine learning engine that reduces support volume, empowers customers to find answers on their own, and automatically learns how to better serve customers in the future. Ada Support Inc. was founded in 2016 and is based in Toronto, Canada.

Ada

Private Placement in 2020
Ada Support Inc. develops a chatbot platform that makes artificial intelligence accessible to non-technical support teams. The company operates through both web and mobile machine learning engine that reduces support volume, empowers customers to find answers on their own, and automatically learns how to better serve customers in the future. Ada Support Inc. was founded in 2016 and is based in Toronto, Canada.

Flashpoint

Series B in 2016
Flashpoint is the globally trusted leader in risk intelligence for organizations that demand the fastest, most comprehensive coverage of threatening activity on the internet. From bolstering cyber and physical security, to detecting fraud and insider threats, Flashpoint partners with customers across the private and public sectors to help them rapidly identify threats and mitigate their most critical security risks. Learn more at https://www.flashpoint-intel.com/ or follow us on Twitter at @FlashpointIntel.

Zaius

Private Placement in 2018
Zaius is a B2C marketing platform designed to empower marketers to grow revenue from existing customers. The company's CRM eliminates that gap by bringing customer data and campaign execution together in a single platform, empowering marketers to engineer the repeat purchase. Founded in 2012, Zaius is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

Zaius

Venture Round in 2017
Zaius is a B2C marketing platform designed to empower marketers to grow revenue from existing customers. The company's CRM eliminates that gap by bringing customer data and campaign execution together in a single platform, empowering marketers to engineer the repeat purchase. Founded in 2012, Zaius is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

Zaius

Venture Round in 2016
Zaius is a B2C marketing platform designed to empower marketers to grow revenue from existing customers. The company's CRM eliminates that gap by bringing customer data and campaign execution together in a single platform, empowering marketers to engineer the repeat purchase. Founded in 2012, Zaius is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

Manifold.co

Series A in 2017
Manifold allows you to discover, buy, and manage the best developer services for your application, regardless of cloud. Manifold is on a mission to reduce the complexity of building and deploying applications with micro-services and third-party infrastructure services.

Tophatmonocle Corp.

Private Placement in 2020
Tophatmonocle Corp. develops an interactive cloud-based platform and software solutions that curates educational material and presents them online for professors and students. It offers Top Hat Lecture, a classroom response system that enables users to ask questions, take attendance, annotate slides, hold discussions, and capture student responses in real-time; and InteractiveTexts, a pre-made content that offers various media, including text, videos, and interactive elements that help students study. The company also offers Content Marketplace, which provides content in the areas of biology, business and management, chemistry, communication, economics, geography, history, law, math, physics, psychology, sociology, and statistics; solutions for educators to assess, analyze, and act on student performance insights; and mobile applications. It serves colleges and universities, schools, support forums, and bookstores worldwide. Tophatmonocle Corp. was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada with an additional office in Sydney, Australia.

Zaius

Series B in 2018
Zaius is a B2C marketing platform designed to empower marketers to grow revenue from existing customers. The company's CRM eliminates that gap by bringing customer data and campaign execution together in a single platform, empowering marketers to engineer the repeat purchase. Founded in 2012, Zaius is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ask-AI

Series A in 2024
Ask-AI aggregates text-heavy company knowledge and customer communications, surfacing pinpointed answers to questions and revealing product insights that would otherwise go unnoticed.

CereTax

Series A in 2024
CereTax is here to show tax managers, tax directors, and CFO’s that someone has been listening. No longer are you limited to using antiquated technology and choosing between the same legacy platforms that have advanced slower than your own business.

Acme Technologies

Venture Round in 2014
ACME is the revolutionary, customizable, all-in-one visitor commerce engine for cultural institutions, wineries, attractions, and more. Through ACME’s single cart, visitors can transact with these organizations on the web, phone, or in person and immediately enjoy the perks of membership. As a cloud-based platform, ACME pushes this rich visitor/member data into third-party tools such as CRMs to support one-to-one marketing experiences, and ultimately, increasing revenue. ACME’s all-inclusive approach removes barriers and delivers software, hardware, service, support, and upgrades with predictable pricing.

Top Hat

Series D in 2020
As a student engagement and interactive teaching platform, Top Hat’s software helps college professors activate classrooms. In a world of digital distractions, countless academic studies have reinforced the reality that students better understand the day’s lesson if they’re asked to engage with peers, interact with complex material and participate in class. By requiring students to use their personal devices to answer quizzes, reply to polls, and tackle difficult simulations, Top Hat transforms the passive lecture hall into an engaging learning environment. As an advocate for traditional, on-campus education, Top Hat not only modernizes established teaching methods but also facilitates new approaches including the ‘flipped classroom,’ ‘group learning,’ and other creative solutions. Top Hat is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, hosts 120 full-time employees, and has been operating since its 2009 launch behind $22M in venture funding.

360insights

Venture Round in 2016
360 Incentives provides a highly flexible software as a service platform which enables manufacturers and distributors to create, measure and manage their incentives programs such as sales spiffs or rebates in real time with 100% auditing and fast payout of claims.

Flashpoint

Series C in 2017
Flashpoint is the globally trusted leader in risk intelligence for organizations that demand the fastest, most comprehensive coverage of threatening activity on the internet. From bolstering cyber and physical security, to detecting fraud and insider threats, Flashpoint partners with customers across the private and public sectors to help them rapidly identify threats and mitigate their most critical security risks. Learn more at https://www.flashpoint-intel.com/ or follow us on Twitter at @FlashpointIntel.

Spatial

Private Placement in 2018
Spatial Systems, Inc. provides a augmented workplace platform. The company’s platform lets users to held meetings with spatial audio and 3D telepresence, as well as helps user to share and organize 3D models, videos, docs, images, and websites. It also virtualizes various contents on their phone or computer into digital workspace. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in New York, New York.

Helpful

Seed Round in 2017
Helpful.com Inc. develops a mobile application to share video updates, status updates, broadcast news, give feedback, and share ideas at work. The application can be used to share meeting updates, executive updates, and travel updates as well. Helpful.com Inc. was incorporated in 2015 and is based in Toronto, Canada. As of January 28, 2019, Helpful.com Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Shopify Inc.

CallRail

Venture Round in 2017
CallRail is a phone call tracking and analytics platform businesses use to understand which marketing campaigns drive leads and conversions. Its intuitive software helps data-driven marketers optimize the performance of their online and offline advertising campaigns, increase sales effectiveness, and improve customer retention.

Briza

Seed Round in 2020
Briza.io is the commercial insurance-as-a-service API. Briza is creating the infrastructure that underwriting systems will use to talk to insurance agencies, consumer apps, and anybody who wants to instantly sell insurance with just a few lines of code.

Spot.io

Series B in 2018
SPOT, a new Tinder like app for cool, geeky products just launched publicly for iOS and Android at the same time using the cutting-edge Famo.us framework. SPOT is the best way to discover the newest and coolest products! Easily swipe through product cards that we curate and that your friends spot to let everyone know how you feel about each one. Apple App Store: http://bit.ly/SpotAppiOS (Search for "spot" or "spot the cool") Android: http://bit.ly/SpotAppDroid

Top Hat

Series C in 2017
As a student engagement and interactive teaching platform, Top Hat’s software helps college professors activate classrooms. In a world of digital distractions, countless academic studies have reinforced the reality that students better understand the day’s lesson if they’re asked to engage with peers, interact with complex material and participate in class. By requiring students to use their personal devices to answer quizzes, reply to polls, and tackle difficult simulations, Top Hat transforms the passive lecture hall into an engaging learning environment. As an advocate for traditional, on-campus education, Top Hat not only modernizes established teaching methods but also facilitates new approaches including the ‘flipped classroom,’ ‘group learning,’ and other creative solutions. Top Hat is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, hosts 120 full-time employees, and has been operating since its 2009 launch behind $22M in venture funding.

CrowdRiff

Series A in 2018
CrowdRiff is a visual marketing platform for travel and tourism brands that allows to discover and deliver top-performing visual content to every marketing channel. Powered by artificial intelligence, its platform allows marketers to source and share top performing visuals with their respective audiences, at scale. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in Toronto, Canada.

Briza

Private Placement in 2020
Briza.io is the commercial insurance-as-a-service API. Briza is creating the infrastructure that underwriting systems will use to talk to insurance agencies, consumer apps, and anybody who wants to instantly sell insurance with just a few lines of code.

Spotinst

Private Placement in 2018
Spotinst LTD. develops a cluster software and prediction purchasing algorithm for EC2 and GCE resources. It offers Elastigroup, a cost-oriented cluster that is used in the AWS Spot market and Google Preemptible VMs. The company also provides Elastitude, a resource optimizer and anomaly detector that enables engineers to gain a look on their cloud infrastructure. Spotinst LTD. was founded in 2015 and is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. As of July 9, 2020, Spotinst LTD. operates as a subsidiary of NetApp, Inc.

Influitive

Series B in 2016
Influitive is driving the shift from company-centric marketing to advocate marketing. Their advocacy platform and team of experts helps the world’s most successful businesses spark, build and sustain a movement behind their brands with the participation of their greatest marketing asset: their customers. They believe the companies that put their customers at the heart of their marketing — and their business — are the ones that will win.

CereTax

Seed Round in 2022
CereTax is here to show tax managers, tax directors, and CFO’s that someone has been listening. No longer are you limited to using antiquated technology and choosing between the same legacy platforms that have advanced slower than your own business.

Ada

Private Placement in 2018
Ada Support Inc. develops a chatbot platform that makes artificial intelligence accessible to non-technical support teams. The company operates through both web and mobile machine learning engine that reduces support volume, empowers customers to find answers on their own, and automatically learns how to better serve customers in the future. Ada Support Inc. was founded in 2016 and is based in Toronto, Canada.

Spatial

Series A in 2020
Spatial Systems, Inc. provides a augmented workplace platform. The company’s platform lets users to held meetings with spatial audio and 3D telepresence, as well as helps user to share and organize 3D models, videos, docs, images, and websites. It also virtualizes various contents on their phone or computer into digital workspace. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in New York, New York.

CrowdRiff

Private Placement in 2018
CrowdRiff is a visual marketing platform for travel and tourism brands that allows to discover and deliver top-performing visual content to every marketing channel. Powered by artificial intelligence, its platform allows marketers to source and share top performing visuals with their respective audiences, at scale. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in Toronto, Canada.