Allied Venture Partners

Hello Partners,

As a current or prospective partner, this newsletter provides exclusive insights into our investment strategy, portfolio companies, and industry trends.

Thank you for your continued trust and support,

Matt Wilson

Founder & Managing Director | Allied Venture Partners

Not an LP? Click here to join the Allied Venture Partners syndicate.

Team Updates

• Our core team includes Steve, Melinda, Brendan, and Leia.

• The Allied Scout and Advisory programs continue to expand with several new members each week, providing quality, diversified deal flow from across Canada and the United States.

• If you know a great startup that we should meet, please introduce us!

New Deals

• Two of our portfolio companies are preparing to raise follow-on rounds. I look forward to sharing each opportunity with LPs in the coming weeks.

• We also have several exciting new opportunities in late-stage diligence.

• LPs can join the Allied syndicate for free and gain access to our dealflow here.

Portfolio News

• In response to strong customer demand, Share has transformed its internal asset management tools into a dedicated software suite for existing customers. The platform, PocketAM (Pocket Asset Manager), enables service providers to deliver Share-powered asset management directly to their clients.

• Stanify added three new Fortune 500 companies to its client roster last month and launched a hilarious Super Bowl–style ad campaign. Check out their latest video on YouTube.

• Congratulations to Carsten and the Roq.ad team on completing their first major acquisition of 2025. Roqad is now the fastest-growing identity data infrastructure platform for global commerce.

• Thanks to Danil, Alex, and Go Global World for inviting me to judge their latest pitch bootcamp. We had more than 80 founders join!

• Also, a big thank-you to Marian, Andrew, and Innovate Calgary for inviting me to their first Founders Lunch of 2026. We had a great discussion on fundraising with more than 200 investors, founders, students, and industry partners.

Industry Insights

Standing before 200 investors and founders at Innovate Calgary last month, I posed what's become venture's defining question for 2026: "What is your AI strategy?" The silence that followed was telling.

We're past the point where AI is optional infrastructure. The divide now separates founders who treat it as existential—both opportunity and threat—from those still viewing it as peripheral. For example, one of our portfolio companies recently restructured its customer service operation using AI, reducing headcount by a factor of eight while pushing gross margins from 65% to 85%. This isn't efficiency at the margins; it's fundamental business model transformation happening in real-time.

The "SaaS is dead" narrative misses the evolution underway. AI tools represent SaaS's next chapter, not its obituary. Pricing models are shifting toward volume-based billing, but the subscription architecture persists. More importantly, enterprise buyers aren't ripping out core systems for shiny new models—they're doubling down on existing providers who can thread AI capabilities into established workflows. This creates an interesting dynamic: incumbents with credible AI integration strategies may prove more defensible than pure-play AI startups fighting for greenfield adoption.

For founders, answering "What's your AI strategy?" requires two components: 1) articulating how you're deploying AI to compress costs and accelerate growth, and 2) demonstrating how you're monitoring the landscape to avoid disruption. At Allied, the quality of that response increasingly determines whether we move forward with an investment. The founders ahead of this curve are building compounding advantages; those behind are accumulating silent risk that compounds just as quickly.

As a reminder, our Core Investment Values since Day 1:

Read our investment thesis one-pager, available here.

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Disclaimer: The information provided herein is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Individuals should consult their own professional advisors before making any investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.