Chris O'Neill

Worth knowing

He has run a consumer software company to more than 220 million users, built a division inside a global accounting platform, and co-founded an enterprise AI company that launched with $55M. He backs Canadian technology founders with his own money, from Koho and Ritual to Relay and Layer6. Canadian founders weighing a US move, a first big go-to-market hire, or an AI product bet should write.

Story

Chris was born in Toronto and grew up in Acton and Goderich, Ontario, working in his family's Canadian Tire franchise as a teenager. After Huron University College at Western and a start in strategy consulting at Oliver Wyman, he joined Google in 2005, led US retail industry strategy, then took over Google Canada in 2010 before moving to Mountain View to run business operations for Google Glass at Google [X]. He left to become chairman and CEO of Evernote, then Chief Growth Officer at Xero and co-founder of the enterprise AI assistant Glean. He mentored GrowthLoop co-founder David Joosten at Google, joined the board in 2023, and took the CEO seat in August 2024. He invests through Bobcaygeon Capital, the angel vehicle he founded in 2012.

Highlights

• CEO, GrowthLoop (since August 2024); board member since 2023
• Chairman and CEO, Evernote 2015-2018; grew to 220M+ users
• Managing Director, Google Canada, 2010-2013
• Board director, Gap Inc. (2018) and Tim Hortons (2014)
• MBA, Tuck School of Business; B.A. Economics, Huron at Western