What does innovation mean on Bay Street?

Dani Lipkin, Innovation Sector Head at Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV), gives the inside scoop on what it’s like to be in charge of the “cool” industries. To Lipkin, the innovation sector is comprised of technology, clean-tech, and life sciences, which includes cannabis and esports.

As a Mario fan, Lipkin has enjoyed being able to work in these innovative industries, especially since he grew up with some of these games and now can relate with the professional gamers.

It’s safe to say his experience as a Battle Royale player has paid off. He states that the key to winning Battle Royale was finding the red shells and stars. Now, the key in the equity markets is finding the next Shopify or the next big winner that is going to get a huge return overall.

However, on the flip side, Lipkin states that it is crucial to do your due diligence on companies as this is essential to help  ensure they are geared for success. It’s important that companies that come to the marketplace are set up to grow; TSX can help them as much as possible so they can succeed not just on the Exchange but within the entire Canadian ecosystem as well.

Lipkin believes that the Canadian ecosystem is like no other for many reasons: there are bankers who will support companies throughout all stages of growth, companies are also more likely to get analyst coverage, and companies are able to attract the attention of institutional investors, to name just a few. Additionally, TSX has a unique two-tiered ecosystem where companies are able to go public at a much earlier stage than anywhere else in the world on TSXV and can quickly scale up to become tech unicorns, and possibly graduate to TSX.

For example, Canopy Growth Corporation (TSX:WEED) went public before reaching a market cap of $1 billion and now, has grown over the past five years to be a multi-billion dollar company.

Lipkin says that we can expect the momentum for the IPO sector to continue since there is a huge demand for tech companies to go public in Canada.

It will be interesting to see who the next big winner is!