Laura Lenz

Laura Lenz is a Managing Director at OMERS Ventures based in Toronto, where she leads the firm's investment activity in Canada. She brings roughly two decades of venture and private-markets experience. She began her career as an investment banker at BMO Nesbitt Burns, working on IPOs and buy-side/sell-side transactions for telecom, media, and technology companies, with postings that took her to Tokyo and New York City before she moved into private markets. She discovered venture capital in 2004 at EdgeStone Capital Partners, one of Canada's earliest stage-tech funds, where she served as a Principal.

Before joining OMERS Ventures, Lenz spent more than 15 years investing in Canadian emerging-technology companies, including roles as a Partner with Generation Ventures and as an Investment Director with the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund. Across these roles she built a track record of early-stage Canadian technology exits.

She was promoted to Managing Director at OMERS Ventures in August 2025, taking on responsibility for developing and executing portfolio strategy. She sits on the boards of several portfolio companies, including Float, OneVest, Solink, and Hopper.

Lenz is an HBA graduate of the Ivey Business School at Western University (Dean's Honour List) and completed the General Management Program at Harvard. She is multilingual (with Spanish and Japanese), a founder and former co-chair of the Canadian Pediatric Stroke Support Association, and an accomplished martial artist holding black belts in Karate and Tae Kwon Do.

• Invests at the intersection of fintech and commerce, a theme she calls "financial value exchange."
• Specific interest areas: data exchange and enrichment; enterprise orchestration layers (managing and driving insights across an enterprise's many applications and point solutions); fraud and identity management; agile billing platforms; and financial literacy / inclusion technology for underserved populations.
• Looks for markets that "will be seriously disrupted" and demand-driven timing — "the market exists and the timing is right."
• Heavily metrics-driven: values revenue growth, net dollar retention, CAC, LTV, and gross margins, expecting at least some metrics to be exceptional.
• Emphasizes leadership above all: *"A strong leader is paramount to any successful company. A massive market opportunity and an innovative technology are never enough to be successful on their own."* / *"A successful company needs a strong CEO."*
• On transparency: *"My mantra is that I don't like surprises. If a founder is honest"* about both good and bad developments, the partnership works well.