Jeffery:
Well, welcome everybody! We just go right into it, so we’re already live, we’re already recording so and I’m gonna – I guess to start it off Permjot Valia, I’d like you to kind of give and hope, films saying your name right and I’m not missing it, but I’d love for you to kind of give us a background about yourself. So a little bit about your – maybe what you’ve been doing for the last 20, 30 years some good things like that and then we’ll jump into the questions.

Permjot:
Sure! So, the last 20 years or so I’m from London originally and been doing various things but then – the – I really got involved in angel investing as a consultant. I was working at a large – one of the large four accountancy firms as a sales guy. And then got involved got the entrepreneurial bug. They’re invested in a company, the company did very well and then I just started doing more angel investing and 2007, in the midst of the financial crisis, we launched a fund – a recovery fund called “Flying partners,” that is still going and it’s been running now. We’ve got about 20 million Canadian under management, very very small fund, but is very active. We actually buy the whole company we don’t find equity we buy the whole company turn that around and for the last 20 years, I’ve been really working my passion which is economic development. Working within rural areas across the world and really just identifying and helping lots and lots of startups. So that’s brings me to where we are today.

Jeffery:
No, that’s awesome! And we’ve had some good discussion around your background, and all these great things you do, and I can say that of all the people, I’ve interviewed I really loved a lot of your background and the stuff that you’re doing. So we’ve aligned quite well there, so David’s good for putting us in contact.

Permjot:
Thank you! Thank you!

Jeffery:
So you kind of touched a little bit on that, when you put an investment into a start-up. Maybe you can give us a little bit of an idea on what got you started like – what was that driving force that really puts you into the driver’s seat on investing and got you more excited to keep it going?

Permjot:
So what got me started with investing was initially I was working as a consultant to this business which manufactured lasers for skin treatments. And having first-hand knowledge of how well they were doing what the order book looked like, the value proposition, the customer
feedback, I thought the company’s going to do very well and then I found out that the company was raising money and I didn’t know anything about angel investing. I didn’t know what it was called or anything I just said “Oh is there a chance for me to put money in this?” and then I did and I enjoyed it. And then there were other opportunities that came about. I mean most angel investors, it’s a close-knit community, people tend to know each other. They kind of tell people about deals at Center etc., so I just could evolve that way and then I got involved in more angel groups. I didn’t really enjoy being involved in angel groups but I got involved in a few but then I really – for the last I’d say 10, 15 years, we do my own investments. I have invested in angel funds. So I’m an investor at a large fund here in Atlantic Canada, a fund in Arkansas, and a fund actually in Eastern Europe but angel fund. So I’ve enjoyed that but yeah, that’s what got me started in angel investing.

Jeffery:
No, that’s pretty good and you kind of jumped into a lot of things like you didn’t just go into investment. You’ve tried kind of a mix of the whole thing so it’s giving you a good flavor of angel investment funds going direct. So you’ve got a really good learning there which is super helpful for any startup to have you participate and help them because you can carry a lot of knowledge on where to go to get other investors to join in, but at the same time you get a good view of the landscape of what’s going on pre and post Covid and obviously all of the other things that occurred. So that’s really great, so when you made that first investment what was the excitement about it? You said that you were really excited, you really liked it, what was that piece that you really enjoyed about it?

Permjot:
Actually, it was just being a part owner of a business, so one of the last investments have made the investment that brought us – connecting us was in a company called “Crib Cap” which is run by a CEO called David How based in Atlantic Canada and what was really nice about this was if A: it came through a recommendation of somebody a very successful business guy, Kyle Rocky, who runs a phenomenal business called “Proposal Fly.” It was in the media, actually yesterday because they raised a truckload of money and very successful business. So he recommended David How from Crib Cap which is a great thing. And then what really impressed me was, David was a seasoned entrepreneur. He really knew what was doing and often I think what the ability to pitch is overrated and I say that as a somebody who makes a living, training people how to pitch but I think the ability to pitch is overrated man David was not only a really good picture but what I saw in him and what I look for in other people i investing is that command over the operational detail but can you actually operate the business because most people can with a lot of training and maybe I’m in a unfair position to know about this because I’ve trained people and I’ve trained some people to do great pictures but they’re still not good businesses. Whereas what you really want to do is look for people who can really understand the landscape of an of running a business and have domain expertise and that was something that was very impressed in this particular entrepreneur. So that that gives you an idea of actually, just using him as an example because he’s a common thread we have that was what I’ve looked for and now increasingly I look for people with an operational experience and people who actually can run and make business decisions rather than just pitch.

Jeffery:
No, that’s great advice and a great way to look at it and I agree David’s a very detail-oriented. He gets things done, I think a big thing about early-stage companies or early – any company is how well can they organize and get things completed? How can they move that needle every day if that’s a little objective here to the next, to the next, to me I’ll close it off. And I found that a lot of entrepreneurs, sometimes become too much marketing and not about function and they’re – they think that that’s the only way they’re gonna be accomplishing something. But when you gotta where five, six seven hats you’ve got a lot of things to juggle and you be dropping balls because you can’t complain you don’t have enough money or enough resources. It’s how well can you pick the ball up move it forward go to the next one move it forward and keep everything moving. So I wholeheartedly agree, I think that’s a great point very valid to how startups can really focus better on accomplishing their goals. So you’ve got a got this good little mix going, what’s the favorite part? What do you just love the most? What’s your favorite part about investing? Like you were talking about operations you got all these little cool things that working but what’s the real thing that you wake up in the morning you’re like I love this?

Permjot:
I enjoy the getting it right, I mean sadly we get it wrong, just the numbers we get it wrong more often than we get it right, but I love the – it to me it’s an intellectual exercise. I mean you don’t you don’t ask investors to invest in your company with the attitude that they want to become rich. If my primary motivation was to become rich to angel investing I would probably do something different. It’s a different thing, it’s an intellectual thing that can you see the pieces, the person, can you figure out what you think is going to be successful, can you understand what the growth hypothesis is, what the value of hypothesis is, and most of my investi companies will tell you, I’m an extraordinarily passive investor. I don’t like getting involved, I think I just hate it when investors say you know, “the number one thing for me – the number one thing is team.” It’s all about the team and then they want to get involved in the team or they want to get tell the team what decisions to make. But if I wanted to run your business, I’d be running your business. I wouldn’t be investing in you, I’d be buying your business. I don’t want to buy your business, I want to invest in