Photographer: Peter Power
Photographer: Peter Power
Six months after being hit by a bicycle crash that left him paralyzed from the bottom up, tech investor John Ruffolo is launching a $ 500 million private equity fund to help Canadian companies.
Ruffolo’s firm, Maverix Private Equity, will target companies in the growth phase that want to stay private as they expand globally, he said in an interview with Jon Erlichman of BNN Bloomberg Television.
The launch of the fund was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic and then further by its crash in September. Ruffolo was hit by a truck while riding his bike in the Toronto suburb of Markham, Ontario.
“I crushed my spine. I split my pelvis in half. I broke each rib in several places. I lost a kidney, a lung and a lot of blood, ‘says Ruffolo, who is the venture capitalist of Retirement system for municipal employees in Ontario. “I stubbornly did not die.”
“When I first arrived at Sunnybrook Hospital, they did not want to operate on me because there was concern that surgery would kill me due to the great trauma,” he said.
By the end of October, still in a recovery bed in a rehabilitation hospital in Toronto, Ruffolo feels good enough to start talking to Maverix’s potential investors again. The fund intends to seek out businesses that disrupt sectors such as retail, healthcare, transportation and financial services; investors include the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of Montreal, Mattamy Asset Management and pension funds.
“We wanted to build this Team Canada concept, where we bring together the greatest individuals in this country who will rally around us and help the next emerging,” Ruffolo said.
In addition to being one of Canada’s most influential venture capitalists, Ruffolo has advocated the country’s technology industry as a co-founder of the Council of Canadian Innovators, along with Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO of Research in Motion.