Startup TNT has freed its co-founders to continue building a community of investors by hiring its first-ever executive director.
The organization, launched in Edmonton in 2019 as a tech-focused networking happy hour, has gone on to organize investment summits for startups and convince people to be angel investors, operating today in Edmonton, Calgary, and around British Columbia and Saskatchewan, all while still running its happy hours on Thursdays in Edmonton and other cities. It once had a chapter in Manitoba, but that was put on pause in 2024. Startup TNT also runs sector-specific summits for industries such as agri-food and life sciences.
In December, after announcing the Manitoba pause in July, the organization shared that it was at a "pivotal" moment, was letting some staff go, and was restructuring its operations to give more local ownership to its Startup TNT communities.
"One of the things that we have learned over the course of time is that centralizing operations and having individuals in locations (to run a chapter of Startup TNT) isn't super durable from a community-building perspective," co-founder Tim Lynn told Taproot.
"Zoom calls don't build community," co-founder Zack Storms added.
That's where a central part of the restructuring, in the form of the new executive director, CK Dhaliwal, comes in. Speaking to Taproot after about a week on the job, Dhaliwal said he wants to hear how Startup TNT's regional chapters want to operate, not force them into a mold.
"Every region, every community is unique, and I think (Startup TNT has) done a really good job of trying to find a good brand ambassador in each one of those areas," Dhaliwal said. "My main focus is on listening to as many people as I can … I'm hearing everybody's needs, where they're at, and where we can support and grow each region."
Dhaliwal has moved to Startup TNT from his position as a business development specialist for interactive digital media at Edmonton Screen.
Lynn said Dhaliwal's work will himself and Storms more time to treat the Edmonton chapter as a flagship operation where they can "iterate on what models work and don't and could."
Startup TNT co-founder Tim Lynn (left), new executive director CK Dhaliwal, and co-founder Zack Storms posing at a Startup TNT happy hour event on May 15 at Pub 1905. With Dhaliwal in the mix, the three said how Startup TNT runs its regional chapters will change and that Lynn and Storms can pursue a greater swath of investors. (Supplied)
Iteration has already been part of Startup TNT's narrative. By December 2019, only months after forming, Startup TNT hosted its first investment summit, Storms said. The summits award one winner with $150,000 in investment from a network of angel investors, who pre-commit $5,000 each, before they have any idea which company will get the money. Some investors choose to make additional side deals with the winner and other summit participants. 2S Water, which analyzes water with sensors, is Edmonton's most recent summit winner.
The smaller amount and the community atmosphere is critical, Storms explained. "It's actually a lot easier to get them to commit $5,000 to invest in a startup among interesting people and support the experience," he said. "It's interesting. Before this, I used to think we should get people to commit, like, $500,000 to raise a venture capital fund. That's hard. Part of the motivation here was that this is a much easier way to activate capital."
Startup TNT also eventually began work on a VC fund in 2022, which ultimately closed at roughly $3.5 million, Lynn said. The first iteration of the fund asked investors for $50,000 to $100,000, spread across four or five years. The next fund, Lynn said, will be a "vintage fund" with single-year commitments.
"Folks can be in for $12,000 for 2025 and then be in for $12,000 for 2026, if they want," Lynn said. "(Investors can) sort of turn on and off the taps when they see fit. People have been a lot more amenable to that as a concept, which helps us with attracting and retaining our investor base."
Some of Dhaliwal's early work has been to compile stats on Startup TNT. In Edmonton, Startup TNT has funded more than 31 startups via nearly 230 investors, amounting to just more than $5 million in investment, Dhaliwal said. He added that the investments have spurred 153 new jobs that account for $9.8 million in wages. Storms and Adrian Mitchell from Startup TNT appeared on the May 9 episode of Shift by Alberta Innovates, where Mitchell detailed Calgary's greater investor spend. (The provincial government announced May 20 that it is cutting Alberta Innovates's budget by one-third).
"Calgary is our most active community, approaching 200 angel investors and 42 companies," Mitchell said on the podcast. "I think when we sum up the number, it'll be almost $8 million deployed in Calgary."
Much like how regional chapters of Startup TNT are not a one-size-fits-all, neither is the investment landscape, Storms said.
"I don't know if (Edmonton is) going to catch up — (but) do we need to catch up?" he said. "There are strong incentives in the Calgary community to be very entrepreneurial, and so you've got a larger group of both investors and companies down there. Edmonton is probably never going to catch them, and that's OK. We're Edmonton. We can still punch above our weight."
Arden Tse of Yaletown Partners similarly told Taproot that comparing investment between cities may not paint a fulsome picture of an ecosystem's health. His comments were for a story on Nanoprecise Sci Corp's US$38 million Series B round, which was the second largest VC deal in the country during the first quarter of 2025.
Right now, some of the Startup TNT team is in Calgary for Inventures. On May 22, the organization hosts a showcase of five past summit participants who will help tell the story of Startup TNT's first six years. The lone company from the Edmonton region is PulseMedica, which won a summit in 2021.