Allen Lau

Worth knowing

He has done the whole arc a Canadian founder is aiming at: raising US$120 million from top-tier VCs, scaling a consumer platform worldwide, and selling it to a strategic acquirer in Asia. Through Two Small Fish he writes early cheques into deep tech and internet companies, with SkipTheDishes, BenchSci, Sheertex, Printify, Ideogram and Ada on the list.

Story

Allen was born in Hong Kong and came to Canada at 19, finishing two engineering degrees at the University of Toronto by 1992. He wrote software at IBM, joined the Toronto start-up Delrina in 1993, and later moved to Brightspark, the venture incubator started by Delrina's founders. Two companies of his own followed: Tira Wireless in 2001 and the mobile advertising firm FeedM8, acquired in 2008. In 2006 he and fellow U of T alumnus Ivan Yuen started Wattpad, betting that people would read and write stories on their phones. He stayed until 2022, through the Naver acquisition and the spin-out into NASDAQ-listed WEBTOON, then became an executive advisor there. Today he invests full time from Toronto and mentors at Creative Destruction Lab.

Highlights

• Co-founded Wattpad (2006); CEO until 2022; acquired by Naver, announced 2021
• Raised US$120M for Wattpad from top-tier VCs
• Board member, MaRS Discovery District and OpenMind Research Institute
• BASc and MASc, Electrical Engineering, University of Toronto; Engineering Hall of Distinc…
• $2M gift with Eva Lau for U of T's Commercialization Catalyst Prize