Sunil Sharma is Managing Director for Techstars Toronto. Techstars Toronto is a city program and Techstars first accelerator in Canada. Techstars Toronto is a joint venture between Techstars and Real Ventures (Canada’s most active venture capital fund).
Prior to Techstars Sunil was a Managing Partner with Extreme Venture Partners (EVP) and co-founder and Managing Director of Extreme Startups. While at Extreme, Sunil sourced and lead more than 40 investments across two funds and two accelerator programs.
Sunil is the Chair of the Board of Canada’s Accelerator and Business Incubator Association (CABI) which has had responsibility for administering the Startup Visa immigration program to fast-track the immigration of founders to Canada.
Sunil spends a lot of time in Waterloo where he has served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Communitech, one of Canada’s largest technology hubs.
Sunil is passionate about helping entrepreneurs become great. He spends some of his free time running the Founder Institute pre-accelerator program in Toronto and Waterloo. Through Founder Institute Sunil has helped first-time founders create more than 100 brand new startups with the support of more than 80 mentors.
Sunil has been very active in the startup community from his time co-launching Startup Weekend Toronto (now part of Techstars) as well as organizing many of Canada’s leading innovation and technology conferences and events.
Prior to his career helping startups Sunil was a career diplomat in the Canadian Foreign Service. Sunil served as the Head of the Canadian Consulate in San Diego, California where he launched one of Canada’s newest diplomatic missions. Sunil has also worked at the Canadian Space Agency and represented Canada at the United Nations in Geneva.
Sunil has an undergraduate degree from the University of Victoria and a graduate degree from the University of Toronto.