Janet Bannister

Janet Bannister is a Canadian business executive and venture capitalist. She is the founder and managing partner of Staircase Ventures.^[1] Prior to launching Staircase in 2023, she was the managing partner at Real Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm.^[2]

Janet Bannister
Nationality	Canadian
Education	Ivey Business School
Alma mater	University of Western Ontario
Occupation(s)	Business executive, venture capitalist

Early life and education

Bannister was a varsity long-distance runner and a national triathlon champion in Canada finishing 8th in the world at the Long Distance Triathlon World Championships in 1996.^[3] She holds a degree from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario.^[4]

Career

Bannister started her career as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble and then as an engagement manager with McKinsey & Co. In 2001, she spent four years at eBay in Silicon Valley.^[5] In 2004, she launched Kijiji.ca which became one of Canada's most-visited websites.^[6][7][8]

Bannister is the co-chair of C100^[9] and on the boards of the Ivey Business School and LEAP,^[10] a social venture accelerator, as well as serving as a mentor at Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto.^[11]

She also founded and was CEO at a venture-backed start-up prior to joining Real Ventures in 2014.^[12] In 2017, she was announced as part of a team to guide fintech strategy for the province of Ontario^[13] and the Canadian Economic Strategy Roundtable on Digital Industries.^[14]

Staircase Ventures

Launched by Bannister in 2023, Staircase Ventures closed their first fund by collecting C$34 million^[15] with investors including the Royal Bank of Canada.^[16]

In October 2023, it led the Calgary fintech startup Fillip to a C$5m seed round of fundraising.^[17] By February 2024, the firm had also led seed rounds of funding for other Canadian startups including AI drug discovery platform Biossil and Rhenthi,^[18] a marketing automation platform, along with a C$6m round for AI-focused Sibli.^[19] In April of that year, it was involved in a C$2.7m seed extension to Galatea,^[20] a waste logistics software company, while in December it helped lead a $5 million minority equity financing round for Eventric, a US-based software company focused on live events.^[21]