Welcome to CVCA Central’s member profiles series! Here we highlight the innovative and impactful organizations that are a part of the CVCA community. Each profile offers a look into the characteristics driving these organizations.
Today, we are excited to welcome and profile, a new member of the CVCA, Telos Associates!
Tell us about Telos Associates.
Telos Associates is a financial advisory firm focused on providing blue-chip investment banking services to high-growth companies in the Canadian innovation economy. We founded Telos when we realized that there was a need in the market for high-quality strategic and financial advice for innovative companies without the requisite scale for coverage by large banks and advisory firms. Telos provides bespoke solutions across all aspects of finance, including capital raising, M&A, and restructuring/recapitalization, as well as investing our own capital.
What Does Telos Associations Concentrate On?
We’re generally industry-agnostic but look for fundamental and scalable innovation in the firms that we represent. We are unique in that B2B SaaS is not an area of focus for us unless we see something truly differentiating – we believe that this sector is one of the few in Canada that is well covered at early stages by both investors and other advisors.
How Do You Differentiate Yourself From Other Firms in the Space?
I think there’s a few things that we do a little differently than our competitors, but it starts with the level of service that we have for each of our clients. We typically invest hundreds of hours of work with a client before bringing their company to market, and continually evaluate their business and the overall process while we work with them to ensure that they have the highest possible chance of success. We always put our clients first, going so far as to recommend that a potential transaction be terminated, and forgoing fees, if it’s in their interest.
This level of service places pressure on other areas of our business that I think also differentiate us – because we invest so much in our clients, we need to make sure that we choose the right clients, that we succeed when our clients succeed, and that we realize operational efficiencies in other areas. What this looks like in practice is that we are highly selective in who we onboard, we typically have a fee structure that ensures that we are compensated more when our clients outperform, and we try to use software and other innovation to manage the parts of our firm that aren’t directly related to client interaction.
How Do You Work With Other Players in the Ecosystem, i.e. Other Advisors, Investors, Etc.?
We bring a highly collaborative, creative, and solution-oriented approach to our relationships with other service providers and with our counterparties. Our goal is to get transactions that work for everyone involved across the finish line – which often requires some problem-solving.
With our other service providers (generally accounting and legal) we work to ensure that the intent of the transaction is clearly communicated, and that service providers are quickly provided with all the information they need in a digestible format. This both increases transaction speed and decreases costs.
With counterparties, we ensure that the company and management are presented fairly, highlighting their strengths but also disclosing any potential barriers to the transaction such as a stretched balance sheet or complex cap table. We then try to work with our counterparties to overcome these obstacles in a practical fashion.
What Are Next Steps for Telos?
Right now it’s just the two founding partners – Jeff Hamilton, and me, Max Wensel, but sometime in 2025 we’d like to hire someone at the associate or VP level to help with the day-to-day operations while we build the Telos platform. Longer term, we’d like to be seen as a meaningful part of Canada’s innovation ecosystem and to contribute to its growth.
