Sammy Lau

After graduation, I ended up at Canopy Labs, and from there spent nearly a decade in startups ranging from seed stage to Series E: Canopy Labs, Top Hat, Lillio, and others. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I learned what matters in building a business.

Outside of work, I've always been drawn to things that widen access. I sit on the board of the Art Canada Institute, which is working to make Canadian art history available to everyone, and TO Live, which operates Toronto's three major civic theatres. I interview candidates for the Loran Scholars Foundation and McCall MacBain Foundation because those scholarships changed my life and I want to help find the next generation. I was selected as a Governor General's Canadian Leadership Conference delegate and an AKFC Global Leader.

Greenline came from a personal gap. I grew up in an immigrant family where no one talked about money. For years, I deposited every paycheque into a chequing account because I genuinely didn't know where else to put it.

A bank teller I'd never met asked me that, and it sent me down a rabbit hole. As I learned more, friends started coming to me for help. The same patterns kept showing up: people paying fees they didn't understand, celebrating returns that actually underperformed the market, or too embarrassed to admit they didn't know where to start.

The tools that existed were built for people who already understood finance. Everyone else was left guessing. That's why I'm building Greenline: a dashboard that helps Canadians see everything they have, understand what it's costing them, and know whether they're on track.