Probal Lala

Worth knowing

He has written early cheques into Toronto technology companies for more than a decade and chairs the capital corporation that formalized how Maple Leaf Angels invests, so he knows how seed rounds in this city actually get assembled. He also teaches founders how to finance high-growth businesses and mentors them through MaRS. Founders raising a first round, and anyone building angel capacity in Canada, should write.

Story

Probal took a Bachelor of Engineering at McGill and spent his early career inside Canada's telecom backbone, running Internet operations at Bell Canada, serving as general manager and CTO at Stentor Services, and leading sales at Alcatel-Lucent Canada. In 2007 he switched sides twice over: he co-founded About Communications, a national voice, data and Internet provider for small and medium businesses that he led for eleven years, and he helped start Maple Leaf Angels the same year. Since 2019 he has been CEO of Fluent.ai, which builds self-learning speech recognition for consumer devices and has raised roughly $1.46M from backers including 500 Startups Canada. He is a regular panelist on BNN's The Pitch.

Canadian story

Probal Lala is a technology executive, entrepreneur and investor with more than three decades of experience building, scaling and investing in technology businesses. An exited founder, former venture-backed AI CEO and longtime angel investor, he brings an operator’s and investor’s perspective to AI, entrepreneurship, governance and scaling Canadian technology companies.

Highlights

• CEO and board member, Fluent.ai (Toronto voice AI)
• Founding member, Maple Leaf Angels; Board Chair, MLA Capital Corporation
• CEO and founding executive, About Communications (2007-2018)
• Instructor, Innovation Governance Program, on financing high-growth businesses
• B.Eng., McGill University; MBA in Marketing, University of Ottawa