Staircase Ventures

Janet Bannister is the Founder and Managing Partner and makes all final investment decisions. Before launching Staircase, she spent eight years at Real Ventures and previously served as Country Manager for eBay Canada and General Manager of Kijiji, giving her both operator and institutional investor experience.

The firm's most distinctive sourcing mechanism involves deliberately seeking out rounds that lack a lead institutional investor. By positioning itself as willing to anchor rounds that other funds have passed on structuring, Staircase sees deal flow that falls through standard syndication channels. This is supplemented by Bannister's personal network from her Real Ventures tenure and her operator background in Canadian technology.

Staircase focuses exclusively on pre-seed and seed-stage rounds. The firm writes first institutional checks and expects to lead or co-lead a significant portion of its investments. There is no publicly stated interest in Series A or later-stage participation.

Staircase Ventures makes direct equity investments in operating companies. The firm does not appear to participate in fund-of-funds commitments, secondary transactions, or SPV-based co-investment alongside other GPs. Its model is built entirely around direct early-stage company exposure.

Staircase primarily invests across Canada, with a concentration in the Toronto-Waterloo corridor and increasing activity in Montréal's AI and healthtech ecosystems. The firm reviews opportunities across English-speaking Canada and has not publicly restricted itself to a single province.

Staircase has not publicly enumerated negative sector screens. However, based on known portfolio composition and Bannister's stated domain expertise, the firm concentrates on enterprise software, AI/ML, fintech, and digital health, suggesting limited appetite for hardware-intensive deep tech, consumer packaged goods, or capital-intensive clean energy infrastructure.

Janet Bannister was a Partner at Real Ventures from approximately 2014 to 2022 before departing to found Staircase. The two firms share no formal structural or economic relationship, though Bannister's network and investment philosophy were shaped by her tenure at Real. Staircase is an entirely independent new fund with its own LP base and investment committee.