Introducing Ag-West Bio’s New Investment Manager: Mike Wolsfeld

Mike shares his passion for funding startups, even though it isn’t easy for startups or investors. 

When the opportunity arose to become Ag-West Bio’s new Investment Manager, I jumped at the chance. I’ve spent the last decade of my career working to help grow the innovation economy of Saskatchewan, and I’m so excited to be working to grow ag-bio innovation in this new role.  

Most recently, I spent the last four years with Canada’s most-active early-stage investor. When you’re a part of cutting more cheques than anyone else in the country, you learn a lot of things. A lot of ways to win, and a lot of ways to fail. One of the biggest things I learned is that raising capital in Canada is hard.  

It’s hard for startups. But what many might not know is that it’s hard for investors too. Most investors have to raise money too, from high-net-worth individuals and institutions. And in Canada, those individuals and institutions tend to be risk-averse, happy to leave their money in “safe” investments like public markets and real estate. Raising money in Canada, for both startups and investors, can feel like pulling teeth.  

This sounds kind of doom and gloom, right? So why am I so excited to be Ag-West Bio’s new Investment Manager?  

Well, I could go on about bubbles in other “safe” markets. But instead, I’ll talk about the positives.  

Saskatchewan has one of the fastest-growing innovation economies in all of Canada. And in a new world of “AI slop,” Saskatchewan is really good at building real things in the real world. 

We’re the “breadbasket of the world.” We built the first Synchrotron in North America. We have world-class facilities like the Food Centre, GIFS,  Ag-West Bio’s GAAP, all matched by a world-class talent ecosystem bolstered by our universities and Saskatchewan Polytechnic. We’ve built and attracted billion-dollar businesses in agriculture and bioscience in this province for decades.  

We live in a hungry world, and Saskatchewan doesn’t produce slop. Saskatchewan has all the ingredients it needs. But the ingredient we don’t have enough of is risk-tolerant capital to help grow innovations beyond the lab, beyond the garage, beyond our borders.  

I’m excited to be in this role because Ag-West Bio’s Technology Commercialization Fund has a long history of taking risks on ambitious startups. Importantly, the money in our fund has been “raised” already. It’s not a big fund, but we have some “dry powder” capital ready to deploy. And we’re working to build a strategy we hope will put us in a great position to expand how we support founders to grow in Saskatchewan.  

We’ll likely have more to share with the community in the months to come. Until then, to give you a sense of what we’re working on, here are a few areas of focus where we are looking to expand our impact for founders.  

• We want to build more relationships with VC firms and other co-investors, so we can help attract more capital, mentorship, and networks to Saskatchewan. 

• We want to help coach and level up Saskatchewan founders, so they are ready to raise capital from other investors. 

• We want to play on the same team as founders – that means being along for the ride as partners in their growth, and building on our existing equity investments 

• We want to build a fund that grows when the ecosystem grows, so we can continue to deploy more capital to ambitious founders in Saskatchewan 

At the end of the day, bold founders are what makes an innovation economy grow. We don’t just want to invest in startups. We want to attract more capital to Saskatchewan from outside the province, help connect founders to networks beyond Canada, and set ourselves up to be able to take risks on bold founders for a long time to come.  

I’m already hard at work scouting for high-potential startups who want to build in Saskatchewan. We’ll be investing in tangible startups in ag hardware, food and ingredients, ag biotech, life sciences biotech, biomaterials, or other areas in the ag and bioscience supply chain. If that sounds like you, or you just want to learn more, let’s go for coffee.  

Contact Mike Wolsfeld at mike.wolsfeld@agwest.sk.ca.