RBCx Platform

Our top talent. Your competitive edge. Grow bigger, bolder, faster with our network of proven difference makers and exceptional company builders.

Our team of specialists and technologists help our portfolio companies scale and support banking clients in all things marketing, operations, design, and technology.

Marketing & Growth

You’ve got a great story. We’ll help you tell it.

Discover

Leverage our team’s deep early-stage communications and partnerships experience to get your business brand and story to market as fast as possible. We support those in marketing functions to set goals, understand audiences, build media strategies, and select the right channels for your sector and stage.

GTM communications
Content marketing
SEO, SEM, CPC
Budget creation and allocation

Grow

We understand your business’s inflection points and story arcs. We can help throughout your growth journey with positioning, spend, and reporting to increase and optimize your funnels, acquisitions, and conversions. When it’s time to put the pedal to the floor and scale your marketing, we are here to share everything we know.

Positioning
Display and retargeting
Performance marketing
Analytics and reporting
Mobile marketing

Scale

From startup founders to enterprise tacticians, and everything in between, our marketing team includes an array of practiced experts. Lean on us as strategic advisors, and get a second set of eyes on your existing frameworks and systems to ensure you’re optimized for innovation, improvement, and scale.

Marketing recruitment
Team and function design
Market sizing and goal review
Optimizing spend and conversion
Vendor and asset management
Investor relations

Marketing & Growth Leadership

Nicole Kelly

Head of Marketing and Growth

/nicolemariekelly

Nicole leads our platform engagement and marketing teams, which manage performance, brand, marketing, technology and operations, and partnerships for both the RBCx practice and scaling Ventures portfolio companies. Nicole and her team also work closely with early- and late-stage Banking clients to support their scaling efforts with resources and advisory on go-to-market strategies, growth marketing, PR, and communications.

Prior to RBC, Nicole served as the Director of Community at OMERS Ventures, where she led marketing, communications, and stakeholder relations.

Nicole has over twelve years of marketing and communications experience, primarily within finance and media across digital and traditional platforms.

Laith Shukri

Director of Platform Engagement

/nlaithmshukri

Russ Sunderji

Director of Marketing

/russ-sunderji-3091265

Betsy Taggart

Director of Marketing

/betsy-taggart-aa680211

Operations

From establishing your people experience to managing risk, we laser-focus on the details.

Discover

When you’re building the next big business, creating your operation and financial processes can be daunting. Get the support from those that have been there. Whether you’re a team of two or ten, leverage us to help understand the best tools and practices for your business.

Accounting and bookkeeping
Financial planning and analysis
Contract and partnership negotiations
Budgeting and forecasting
Reporting and KPIs

Grow

We all know the need to have your operational house in order becomes top priority once you’ve gotten some traction – managing your team, stakeholders, existing or new potential investors, and early adopters and customers. Get ahead of the curve with our expertise and consultation during this pivotal time.

Operations and financial strategy
Develop procedures for financial function efficiencies
Design competitive employee compensation plans
Evaluate commercial programs and partnerships
Compliance

Scale

Running a high-growth technology business presents itself with a new set of challenges to ensure short and long term growth. If you’re expanding to new geographies, looking to improve margins, or implementing new processes to drive growth and efficiencies, we are here to guide you through financial and operational design.

Financial analysis and optimization as operations scale
Procurement and enterprise partnership negotiations
Legal and risk management
Talent strategy and resource management

Operations Leadership

Vikram Luthra

Head of Operations and Health & Wellness Ventures

/vikramluthra

As Head of Operations of RBCx, Vik leads finance, strategy, operations, risk, employee engagement, and analytics functions for the group. As Head of Health & Wellness Ventures, Vik builds and scales our portfolio in the healthcare space. Previously, Vik was the CEO of Dr.Bill, and also Head of Strategy & Business Development for B2B & Health verticals at RBC Ventures. In this role, Vik led Ownr’s acquisition of Founded, a legal tech start-up that set the foundation for Ownr’s exponential growth.

Equal parts entrepreneur, corporate innovator, and business executive, Vik has built and/or led more than 15 businesses over his career, including a multi-million dollar consulting business that he exited successfully in 2011.

Vik is a CPA, CMA, and holds a BA from York University.

Shikha Bhuchar

Head of Venture Strategy

/shikhabhuchar

Paul Guest

Director, Operational Risk

/paulguest

Kyle Hinkson

Senior Director, Head of Analytics

/kyle-hinkson-17bb9323

Anush Sachdeva

Director of New Product Strategy

/anush-sachdeva-37a17a59

JT Saund

Director, Operations Optimization

/jatindersaund

Branding, CX Research, and Design

We help define your purpose and deliver a consumer-centric experience.

Discover

We leverage social science and human-centred research methods to obtain a deep understanding of “moments that matter” with target audiences, and help innovators discover and test new, bold and groundbreaking ideas.

Journey mapping
Consumer research and sensemaking
Ideation sprinting
Future-state visioning
Desirability concept testing

Grow

We continuously ideate, prototype, and test to deliver elegant and effective products that people rely on and love. We help teams and organizations adopt Design Thinking best practices to efficiently and consistently push products to market.

Value prop validation
Rapid-cycle wireframing and prototyping
Usability testing
Design System development
Product roadmapping and delivery

Scale

We build distinct and memorable brands, and leverage storytelling to attract and retain customers. We create content and marketing that deliver on top-of-the-house business objectives.

Brand strategy
Visual identity design
Art direction and campaign execution
Content creation and editing
Funnel tracking and optimization

Branding, CX Research, and Design Leadership

Hector Crespo

Head of CX and Design

/hcrespo

Hector is the ultimate blend of creative thinking and strategic execution. He and his team work closely with our venture founders and partners to help them discover new business opportunities, gain insights on the human experience, and design exceptional products and services.

Prior to joining RBC, Hector worked in consulting at top advertising and digital agencies, where he built and managed creative service and marketing practices for clients including Fortune 500 companies and major league sport franchises. He’s also led digital and mobile strategy and delivery teams at large financial institutions.

While he grew up, received his undergraduate and graduate degrees, and lived throughout the U.S., he now calls Oakville, Ontario his home, along with his wife and son.

Julie Do

Director of UX and Product Design

/julie-do-82490725

Jen-Chi Lee

Director of Design Operations and Enablement

/jenchilee

James Lynch

Director of Digital Product Design

/james-lynch-3450062b

Patrick Noonan

Director of CX

/patrick-noonan-52254943

Jessica Wong

Creative Director

/jpywong

Lionel Wong

Creative Director

/lw

Wai Yuan

Creative Director

/wai-yuan

Technology

We’ll help you navigate setting up a tech team, scaling, closing a deal, and everything in between.

Discover

Our technology leaders have been in the game for a long time – with experience across most tech stacks and environments – on deck to provide recommendations and guidance as you build front and back end applications.

Cloud native service delivery
Secure application development
Application and infrastructure architecture assessment
KPIs for technical performance

Grow

Whether you’re building or enhancing software applications, systems architecture, or infrastructure, our specialists can provide recommendations and insights to make decision making easier and quicker.

Technical development, project and budget management
Development operations and development security operations
Site reliability engineering

Scale

As your company grows, your technical scalability is instrumental. As you develop strategic plans, IT roadmaps, risk mitigation strategies, technical policies and frameworks – all while managing overall business priorities – we’re here for you. With deep technical experience in software and service delivery from venture-backed startups all the way up to public behemoths, you can trust we’ve been there before.

IT strategy and leadership for global technology and operations
Acquisition tech due diligence and post-close integration
Coaching and technical leadership
Engineering and product resourcing management
Cybersecurity risk mitigation

Technology Leadership

Dave Simons

Head of Technology

/dasimons

Despite being our Head of Technology, Dave is first and foremost a people person. He oversees our team of high-performing tech leads and engineers to help build and refine founders’ visions.

Dave has managed software teams and delivered innovative infrastructures, consumer-facing services, and licensed software for over 25 years in large corporations, small to mid-sized private companies, and venture-backed startups across Silicon Valley, Toronto, New York, Tel Aviv, and Waterloo.

Most recently, Dave was the Senior Vice President of Engineering at Kik. Prior to Kik, he was the Chief Technology Officer at Points.

Dave lives in Toronto with his wife and their three sons. When he’s not busy solving tech challenges, he loves to fish and spend time at the family cottage.