The Roundabout Path

Stephen A. Jarislowsky is the founder, chairman and CEO of Jarislowsky Fraser Limited, which he built into one of the largest and most successful investment management firms in Canada, with over C$40 billion in assets under management, primarily institutional and ultra high net worth clients. In May 2018, Scotiabank completed the acquisition of Jarislowsky Fraser Limited, creating the third-largest active asset manager in Canada. 1. On his success as an investor: "It's very simple: buy low, sell high...

Gerry Schwartz is the founder, chairman and CEO of Onex Corporation, a private equity and credit investor and manager founded in 1984. Schwartz worked alongside Jerome Kohlberg, Jr., who later became a founding partner in Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, one of the first LBO fund. As of March 31, 2019, Onex had approximately US$31 billion of assets under management. Since its founding, the firm has generated a gross multiple of invested capital of 2.6x and a gross internal rate of return of 27% on its realiz...

Mary Barra is GM current CEO. She was appointed in January 2014 and she is the first female CEO of a major auto manufacturer. At the time of her appointment, she had been with GM for 33 years, making her a veteran of the company. Barra started working on the assembly line, inspecting fender and hood panels, to help pay her college fees as an 18 years old. She completed her degree in electrical engineering at the General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) and then started worked as an engineer ...

David Ossip is the CEO of Ceridian HCM, a provider of HR software and services. It is a publicly traded company on the NYSE as of April 2018 and the one of the most interesting turnaround story in recent years. In 2012, Ceridian acquired Dayforce, a time and attendance cloud company founded by David. David began the transformation and renewal of Ceridian with focus on the Dayforce HCM offering. In 2013, David became the CEO of Ceridian. David also founded Workbrain, a workforce management software comp...

Boris Wertz is a top tech early-stage investors based in Vancouver. He is the founding partner of Version One and a board partner with Andreessen Horowitz. Previously, Boris was the COO of AbeBooks.com which sold to Amazon in 2008. I recommend to read his blog and follow him on Twitter. 1. "Generally speaking, there are two ways (and only two ways) to scale a business to hit that $100 million threshold: Your business has a high Life Time Value (LTV) per user, giving you the freedom to spend a signific...

Louis Tetu is a Quebec City entrepreneur and is currently the Chairman and CEO of Coveo an enterprise search company. Prior to Coveo, Louis co-founded Taleo Corporation, the leading provider of software for talent and human capital management, acquired by Oracle for $1.9B in February 2012. 1. "When you start a company you are physically responsible for both setting and executing the strategy. So I spent a lot of time in the field…talking to large corporations, understanding their needs, forming strate...