GUV Powerlist 2018: #25 Todd Farrell

Todd Farrell has been president of Entrepreneurship@UBC, the entrepreneurship hub of University of British Columbia (UBC), for seven years, and as part of his duties has overseen the management of the UBC Seed Fund.

Entrepreneurship@UBC is a strategic initiative to encourage and support the creation of new and innovative companies at UBC and Farrell has worked with, and seed funded, 15 startups that have gone on to raise a total of over C$300m ($233m) in follow-on funding, including Acuva, Aspect Biosystems, Clinicbook, Eagle Energy, Elix Wireless Charging Systems, Encepta, Illusense, Microbiome Insights, Microdermics, Nanozen, Target Tape and Terramera.

Farrell, who is chairman of water purification technology developer Acuva, said: “Acuva is a great example of the success to be had from partnering university innovators with external entrepreneurs to bridge the innovation gap.”

The spinout raised $2.1m in series A funding from unnamed angel investors in January this year, having closed an oversubscribed seed round at $850,000 in 2016 backed by Entrepreneurship@UBC Seed Fund.

Acuva was co-founded by Fariborz Taghipour, a professor who works with ultra-violet photoreactors in UBC’s department of chemical and biological engineering, together with Manoj Singh, a graduate of the UBC Sauder School of Business.

Farrell is also a board observer at distributed infrastructure survey provider Encepta and caffeine vape inhaler producer Eagle Energy. Alongside mentoring, education and startup space, Enterpreneurship@UBC offers seed investment of between $25,000 and $200,000 – disposable adhesive patch maker Target Tape was the first startup to receive seed funding.

Nick Seto, co-founder of Target Tape, said in 2014: “In our early days, we knew we had a great technology, but we needed to put building blocks in place for business success. UBC not only provided very early investment, but also invaluable assistance in terms of connections and resources.”

The seed fund was created through donations to the incubator from alumni and other sources close to the university. The fund also provides tax incentives to donors, offering a 30% tax credit in British Columbia for the purchase of shares in the fund.

Farrell has nearly 20 years of venture experience. Before spending almost a year as investment manager at Vancity Community Capital, which has a focus on impact investments, Farrell was for more than a decade vice-president of investments at venture capital firm GrowthWorks Capital, which he joined after selling his startup, insurance-focused environmental risk assessment service Insite Systems, to media company Thomson Reuters.

At GrowthWorks he was the founding VC investor in companies such as speech recognition software developer Wavemakers Research, acquired by electronics company Harman International, and wireless network testing systems developer Dyaptive Systems, acquired by communications equipment manufacturer JDS Uniphase.

Farrell, who is also chief acceleration officer at UBC, said: “Securing early-stage funding is a major milestone for young ventures. By accurately identifying UBC ventures that have key elements for success, we can provide a small amount of initial capital to accelerate their development and maximise the chance that a venture will reach its next stage of growth.”