Metiquity Ventures’ Bryan Slauko has expressed the importance of learning from difficult situations when trying to guide the next generation of local, early-stage companies and founders in Alberta and across the Canadian Prairies.

With more than 20 years of experience – and directorial roles across several portfolio companies – Bryan boasts that he has “dealt with lots of different types of people and experiences” in his career to date, some of which he described as “very challenging”.

One of the challenges Bryan has experienced stems from a miscalculation of someone’s entrepreneurial character – a factor which he claims is “critical” due to the significance of listening and building a relationship with entrepreneurs when “investing in people”.

According to Bryan, a small team can “be thrown upside down” if a member of the team “ends up being the complete opposite and doing things that you would never, never condone”, leading to a “whole lot of trouble all of a sudden” for a company.

However, it’s situations such as these which can indicate the effectiveness of a team in their effort to give back to an industry, in spite of any drawbacks which they may encounter.

On the topic, Bryan elaborated: “A lot of learning comes from what we’ve learned from some of those challenging situations, how to deal with them and watching for warning signs.”

Some of Metiquity Ventures’ recent successes include WaitWell and Arolytics Ltd, which you can read more about via our blog.