Emerging and High Growth Companies

The Emerging and High Growth Companies Group at Osler is passionate about entrepreneurship and supporting the growth of early and growth stage ventures. Ranked Band 1 in Chambers Canada and located in offices across the country, including Toronto, Vancouver, Montréal, Ottawa and Calgary, our knowledgeable and experienced team members share their insights and expertise with emerging companies to drive business value and to ensure long-term success.

Our group works closely and collaboratively with our Venture Capital teams to help clients recognize, develop and move forward on significant and innovative venture capital opportunities. We advise both emerging and high growth companies and investors nationwide on the unique issues involved in venture capital deals. Osler was ranked as the number one Canadian law firm in the inaugural global venture capital league tables, being the only Canadian firm  ranked among the top five firms globally as advisor to both companies and investors.

We represent entrepreneurs and emerging and growth stage companies nationwide covering a broad spectrum of knowledge-based industries, supporting them through the stages of their lifecycle, providing legal advice on a wide range of issues and requirements faced along the way:

Laying the foundation

Osler’s Startup Package is designed to get your venture off to the right start.

Protecting your product

You have worked hard to establish your product, and Osler’s leading Intellectual Property and Trademark teams will help you protect what you have built.

Addressing Risk & Maintaining Compliance

Osler’s Privacy & Data Management team, will help you address the privacy & anti-spam issues that can often arise at various stages of a company’s lifecycle.

Building your team

Osler’s leading  Employment and Labour lawyers will support you in the hiring and management of your team.

Contracting

Our Osler TechSure™ and RetailScale™ teams will help you negotiate contracts with your customers.

Raising funds

Osler’s renowned Venture Capital lawyers focus on getting your deal over the finish line.

Exit

We are a leading firm for M&A transactions and IPOs.

Through our established national network, our clients have access to potential funders, as well as to other sources of capital, service providers, potential board members, executives, customers and suppliers. Our strong legal referral community includes both international and domestic clients looking for business opportunities in Canada. 

Osler’s transactional deal flow

Osler acts for more than 1,500 early, growth and late-stage ventures and venture investors across Canada, United States and around the world. In the last five years, we have acted on more than 940 angel, venture and private equity financings. In 2022, despite the continued effects of COVID-19 on the fundraising landscape, Osler advised on 301 deals with more than $5.48 billion raised by EHG companies.

A summary of these deals is provided below.

Startup program for emerging companies

At Osler, we believe that establishing a foundation for your venture is the key to your future success. That is why we have carefully designed our startup-program to get your venture up and running as quickly as possible, taking into account the standards for venture-backed companies.

Our startup program reflects our long-term commitment when working with emerging companies by providing the highest level of strategic advice and service on a fixed-fee basis. Even after an emerging company has graduated from the program, we are proactive in considering our clients needs and we will continue to deliver legal services on, as much as possible, a competitive fixed-fee basis or a recurring monthly fee basis (instead of the traditional hourly rate model) to provide cost certainty as the company scales and throughout its lifecycle.

Notable graduates of our startup program which have gone on to be successful enterprises include Wealthsimple, Clearco, Xanadu and ApplyBoard.

First of its kind

Osler’s Emerging and High Growth Companies Group is proud to have worked on the following deals that were notably mentioned for being the largest or first of its kind.

1. Verafin – in its sale to NASDAQ for US$2.75B – the largest private tech M&A transaction.
2. ApplyBoard – in its $100M Series C financing – led the company to a valuation of $2B, obtaining unicorn status.
3. Wealthsimple – in its $114M equity financing – led the company to a valuation of $1.4B, obtaining unicorn status.
4. Prodigy – in its $159M Series B financing – one of the largest raises in the Canadian EdTech space.
5. Waabi – in its US$83.5M Series A financing - one of the largest Series A rounds ever raised by a Canadian startup.
6. Symend – in its $73M Series B financing – one of the largest Series B rounds in Alberta history.

Many of Osler’s Emerging and High Growth clients are leading the way in fighting COVID-19. We are proud to work with these innovative companies that are at the forefront of fighting this disease with made-in-Canada solutions.

Supporting innovation nationwide

As part of our commitment to Canada’s broader community of entrepreneurs, Osler sponsors a number of programs and organizations across the country that are dedicated to supporting emerging companies. We are committed to the idea that founders with passion, vision and a plan can access the legal and business guidance they need to launch their venture.

Osler helped launch and continues to support the following:

We are also partnering with a number of early stage accelerators such as:

As well, Osler is a founding sponsor of The Next Big Thing, an entrepreneur-led foundation committed to the next generation of Canadian entrepreneurs. We are committed to working with our fellow sponsors at these and other ventures, such as TandemLaunch, Peerscale (formerly AceTech Ontario), League of Innovators, CIX and the C100, to ensure that founders can access the support they need to launch their venture.

Deals

Osler represents companies and venture capital funds and investors from the pre-seed stage, right through to the high growth and exit stage. Our portfolio of experience demonstrates the broad range of deals and sectors that we have assisted and our ability to help companies to scale their business. Read about a selection of our recent deals below, or access the full list of representative work in the Deals & Cases section of this page.

Industries we support