Building a Business That Lasts: Why Our Partnership with BDC Matters for Women Founders

Building a business is an act of belief.

It asks us to keep moving through uncertainty, make decisions without having every answer, and create something that can grow beyond a single moment: or even beyond us.

For women founders, that journey can come with additional barriers. Access to capital is not always equal. The right advice can feel difficult to find. And many founders are building while also navigating caregiving, systemic barriers, burnout, relocation, discrimination, or the pressure to do everything alone.

At Founders Fund Canada, we believe entrepreneurship should be more accessible, inclusive, and connected. That is why we are proud to have partnered with BDC since 2020 as our title partner for educational events.

Together, we create spaces where women founders can learn, ask honest questions, build relationships, and think intentionally about what comes next.

We believe support should meet founders where they are: and help them move forward.

A partnership rooted in shared purpose

Founders Fund was created by founders, for founders. Since 2019, our community has connected diverse women entrepreneurs across Canada with barrier-free funding, mentorship, education, and meaningful opportunities to build relationships.

Our partnership with BDC strengthens that work.

BDC is the bank for Canadian entrepreneurs. Through financing, advisory services, education, and ecosystem partnerships, BDC helps entrepreneurs build and grow businesses across the country. Its focus on supporting women entrepreneurs aligns closely with our own mission to help more women access the tools and opportunities they need to thrive.

The partnership was especially important during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when women entrepreneurs faced immense pressure. Many were working in sectors hit hardest by disruption while also carrying increased caregiving responsibilities and navigating unequal access to capital.

But this partnership has grown beyond a response to a difficult moment.

Since 2020, BDC has been a consistent partner in creating practical, thoughtful, and welcoming educational experiences for our community. Their support helps us bring founders together: not only to talk about business growth, but to explore the personal and strategic questions that shape long-term leadership.

We are building access. We are building trust. We are building together.

Why educational events matter

Funding is important. So are mentorship and resources. But lasting businesses are also shaped by the conversations founders have along the way.

An educational event can offer a new framework for making a decision. It can introduce a founder to someone who understands her experience. It can create the confidence to ask a question she has been holding quietly for months.

These moments matter because entrepreneurship is not a straight line.

Founders may need support with pricing one year and succession planning the next. They may be ready to scale, but unsure how to grow without losing their values. They may be successful on paper while feeling disconnected from the business they built.

Our events create room for these realities.

With BDC as our title partner, we have been able to design gatherings that combine useful insight with genuine connection. The format may be a lunch, a panel, a founder dinner, or an evening mixer. The goal remains the same: bring ambitious women together in a space where learning feels accessible and community feels real.

Explore more about Founders Fund’s community and values.

Bringing Curated in Canada to life

BDC has been key to bringing our Curated in Canada series to life.

The series was created to offer intimate, carefully designed experiences for women founders and leaders across Canada. Each gathering is built around a meaningful business theme, thoughtful speakers, and the kind of conversation that continues long after the event ends.

These are not large, impersonal events. They are spaces for good people, good conversation, and good food.

They are also spaces where founders can be honest.

Founder Dinner: Scaling up and thriving through uncertainty

Our first Curated in Canada founder dinner took place in Toronto at The Loft on King Street in May 2025.

The evening brought together ambitious women entrepreneurs for a family-style dinner, real conversation, and an engaging panel on rising above, scaling up, and thriving through uncertainty.

Angie Tran of Kind Laundry and Rebecca Prime of Beck’s Broth joined Rowda Mohamud from BDC for a conversation moderated by Jam Gamble. Together, they explored the realities of building and growing a business when the path is not always predictable.

The discussion made room for vulnerability and strategy. Founders heard about the decisions, setbacks, and turning points that often sit behind a company’s public success.

The evening also reflected what makes this partnership meaningful. BDC did not simply attach its name to the event. Its support helped create an experience where founders could connect with one another and learn from leaders who had navigated similar challenges.

Curated in Canada Lunch: Exits and succession planning

In November 2025, our Curated in Canada lunch focused on a topic that deserves more attention: exits and succession planning.

Hosted in Toronto, the lunch featured Miranda Lievers, co-founder of Thinkific, sharing hard-won lessons on succession and exit planning: and how to build a business that can thrive beyond its founder.

Christina from Profit Reimagined joined the conversation, challenging founders to think strategically today so they can create more opportunities tomorrow. Jam Gamble returned as moderator, helping guide an open and energetic discussion.

For many founders, succession planning can feel distant. It may seem like something to consider only when retirement is approaching or when a sale is already on the table.

In reality, thinking about the future can make a business stronger today.

It can help founders clarify their goals, document important processes, strengthen their leadership team, and make decisions that support the business beyond their own capacity. It can also create more freedom: freedom to evolve, step back, bring in new leadership, or explore a new chapter.

A business that lasts is not built around one person doing everything forever.

An evening of intentional growth in Ottawa

The series has also made space for an evening mixer and panel in Ottawa at Le Germain Hotel.

The theme was personal and practical: our relationship with our businesses is more than a feeling. It is also a choice.

Founders were invited to reflect on what they choose to commit to as leaders: and what they are ready to stop romanticizing as they move into a new season.

Less hustle. More intentional growth.

Less doing everything. More doing what actually matters.

The gathering was designed for women founders and leaders looking for honest conversation, meaningful connection, and space to reconnect with the businesses they are building. Especially during moments of challenge and burnout, that kind of reflection can be powerful.

What BDC makes possible

BDC’s support helps us create more than events on a calendar.

It helps us create continuity.

A founder may attend one event looking for answers and leave with a new relationship. She may return to another gathering with a clearer idea, a stronger network, or the confidence to approach a challenge differently.

That continuity is important. Businesses are built over time, and so is confidence.

BDC also brings a strong understanding of the different forms of support founders may need at different stages. Its resources for women entrepreneurs include financing, management advice, education, and connections to organizations across Canada. BDC’s Women Entrepreneur partners and Thrive Platform for Women are examples of how the broader ecosystem is working to improve access to capital and growth opportunities.

For founders in our community, that ecosystem matters.

Founders Fund offers barrier-free grants, mentorship, education, and community. BDC adds its national perspective, entrepreneurial expertise, and commitment to helping women-led businesses grow.

Together, we can offer more pathways: not one definition of success.

Building beyond the next milestone

We often talk about growth as if it is always about doing more: more revenue, more customers, more team members, more visibility.

But intentional growth can look different.

It may mean creating systems that reduce the founder’s workload. It may mean making a first hire, preparing for a strategic partnership, improving financial planning, or deciding that a smaller and more sustainable business is the right goal.

It may mean preparing for an eventual exit or succession plan long before it becomes urgent.

The Curated in Canada series gives founders space to explore these questions with others who understand the work. BDC helps make those conversations possible. And our community brings the openness, experience, and care that turn a gathering into something lasting.

We build businesses: and legacies

Our partnership with BDC matters because it reflects what we believe about entrepreneurship.

We believe founders deserve access to useful education without having to navigate everything alone.

We believe community is not an extra. It is part of the infrastructure that helps businesses endure.

We believe growth should be intentional, inclusive, and connected to the life a founder wants to build.

And we believe a lasting business is about more than financial performance. It can create jobs, support families, strengthen communities, and open doors for the people who come next.

We are resilient.

We rest, recover, and continue through the challenges that come with entrepreneurship.

We are a community.

We share knowledge, celebrate progress, and make room for honest conversations.

We build legacies.

We create businesses and opportunities that can serve future generations.

Thank you to BDC for partnering with us since 2020 and for helping bring Curated in Canada to life. We are grateful for the speakers, moderators, founders, mentors, and community members who continue to make these gatherings meaningful.

The work continues.

Together, we are creating more room for women founders to learn, lead, grow, and build businesses that last.

Learn more about Founders Fund Canada, explore our resources for women entrepreneurs, or connect with our team.