A Heartfelt Thank You To Greg Smith

Before his foray into SaaS financing, Greg sat on the other side of the investor-entrepreneur table—he founded and bootstrapped his own software company for seven years before a successful exit in 2000.

In 2003, Greg was invited to join the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) where he spent five years seed funding technology companies across British Columbia.

His experience as an entrepreneur and as an equity investor inspired him to reinvent the model for growth capital. He wanted to address a gap he saw in the market by providing non-dilutive growth capital to capital-efficient founders. Greg went on to co-found Espresso Capital, an early trailblazer in debt and revenue financing for technology companies across Canada.

In 2015, Greg co-founded TIMIA Capital with Mike Walkinshaw. Andrew Abouchar joined them shortly thereafter. Greg and Mike saw an opportunity to grow the technology lending business beyond SRED financing in Canada and provide longer-term, more entrepreneur-friendly loan structures. They built a unique financial model that demonstrated how revenue-based financing could benefit both founders and investors alike.

Since then, TIMIA Capital has provided $105M in financing facilities to 28 companies across North America, offering Software as a Service (SaaS) founders a sustainable alternative to venture capital funding.

“Greg’s deep empathy for SaaS founders has been instrumental in shaping the culture of our business. We will miss his tenacity but are greatly appreciative of the culture and strategy he has helped create and the help he continues to provide us,” said Andrew Abouchar.

Building a Fintech Foundation at TIMIA Capital

At TIMIA Capital, Greg used his profound understanding of founder needs and his investor experience to systemize the process of B2B SaaS financing. He built the foundation of TIMIA Capital’s proprietary fintech platform that delivers the loans that TIMIA Capital funds.

Monique Morden stepped into the role of President of TIMIA Capital in December 2022. She had the pleasure of interacting with Greg in 2016 when she first began her startup Mentio, which evolved into JUDI.AI.

“Many Greg-isms live on at TIMIA — ‘We don’t work with assholes,’ ‘We don’t do bad deals,’ and ‘A good deal with bad people is still a bad deal,’ are still phrases we regularly use around here,” said Monique.

A Lasting Legacy

Greg helped change the face of financing for entrepreneurs. The solutions he developed give founders an alternative to venture capital and allow them to retain equity and control of their businesses.

Simply put, Greg continues to be the “voice of the entrepreneur” at TIMIA Capital.

Co-founder and CEO of TIMIA Capital, Mike Walkinshaw, said, “We often joke that we were the yin and yang of the business—Greg is the Yin and Andrew and I are the yang. We managed to strike the perfect balance between Greg’s untamed entrepreneurial spirit and our risk management mindsets. We will greatly miss Greg’s perspective on a daily basis. He has done a wonderful job mentoring the team and his spirit will live on here in the business he helped create.”

The TIMIA Capital team will continue to work towards Greg’s mission of turning venture capital on its head and encouraging founders to build their SaaS businesses in more capital-efficient ways.

In early 2019, Greg was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive nervous system disease that affects nerve cells and spinal cord.

Greg passed away peacefully surrounded by his family in October 2021. 

ALS Rally

The Sea to Sky ALS Rally was founded in the spring of 2019 by Greg’s son Aidan, after Greg was diagnosed with ALS at the age of 51. Combining his passion for cars with a cause that has directly affected so many seemed like a natural way to raise money and awareness towards this massively underfunded and poorly understood disease.

From the team at TIMIA, thank you.

Tribute to Greg Smith. Video Published June 2020.

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