Janet Bannister

Founder & Managing Partner, Staircase Ventures

📍 Toronto, Ontario, Canada🔄 Updated July 2026💼 23 investments📅 12 years investing🗓 Last invested Nov 2025𝕏 @upgrade_to_unlock
VC🌍 Canada20+ investmentsInvested this year
23
Total investments
10
Early stage
3
Mid stage
4
Late stage
12y
Years active
Portfolio
22 investments · sorted by recency
All investments
Early stage
Mid stage
Late stage
Board Member
Nov 2025
MedEssist enables pharmacies to become Pharmacy Health Clinics. The platform modernizes how vital population-scale health initiatives can be delivered by providing pharmacist-tailored digital infrastructure that enables them to build longer patient relationships. Our mission is to improve the everyday health of our patients by empowering them to understand and manage their health using technology.
Board Member
Aug 2025
Ultimarii is an AI enabled technology company focused on streamlining and accelerating the execution of large-scale, complex projects across various industries. Our Alberta based team works with companies globally.
Board Member
Jul 2025
Board Member
Jun 2025
Tengiva is a commercial operating software that enables textile suppliers to effectively run their business with easy-to-use sales tools, order management, embedded payments processing, fulfilment, automated logistics, CRM, inventory management and more. Built on a unified database, the software also powers white-labeled marketplaces and e-commerce channels for industry aggregators, allowing suppliers to instantly distribute across an interconnected ecosystem of trade shows and sales channels with a single click while creating powerful network effects across the textile supply chain.
Board Member
Apr 2025
Una is Performance Planning software built to drive execution, not just analysis. Traditional FP&A tools are static, fragile, and stuck in the past—breaking down the moment plans need to adapt. Una changes that. It delivers AI-powered, execution-focused planning that evolves with your business and keeps strategies aligned with reality. By combining agile financial planning with a foundation rooted in performance, Una ensures finance teams aren’t just forecasting outcomes—they’re driving them. Learn more at www.unasoftware.com
Board Member
Jun 2024
At Banting AI, we’re revolutionizing clinical trials through intelligent automation. Our AI-powered platform streamlines critical research workflows, reducing administrative burden and accelerating how medical breakthroughs reach patients. We’re committed to empowering those at the center of research, enabling clinical research teams to focus on what truly matters: advancing patient care and driving innovation. Join us in shaping the future of clinical research.
Board Member
Dec 2023
Institutional investors leverage our technology to secure an information advantage, uncover blind spots, and improve performance. The technology processes unstructured data, identifies key insights, and delivers them to portfolio managers and analysts, empowering them to make better investment decisions.
Board Member
Jul 2023
Rhentis industry-leading marketing automation and leasing platform streamlines the listing-lead-lease process. Trusted by thousands of residential rental owner-operators, property managers, real estate agents, and landlords across Canada. Questions about Rhenti? Reach out: contact@rhenti.com
late stageReal Estate
Board Member
Apr 2023
Biossil is an applied AI drug discovery platform founded to develop targeted therapies for biologically defined patient sub-populations. Our focus is on diseases for which traditional drug discovery has been challenged by population variability.
Board Member
Apr 2023
Fillip gives businesses a better way to manage vehicle expenses. 📲 Issue digital fuel cards to drivers in seconds 🔓 Protect profits with spend controls ⛽ Fuel up anywhere 🧾 See every purchase in real time Save time and money with the fuel card your whole team will love. Book a demo or sign up today! *** The Fillip Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Peoples Trust Company pursuant to licence by Visa Int. *Visa Int./Peoples Trust Company, Licensed User. Le Fillip carte prépayée Visa est émise par la Compagnie de Fiducie Peoples, en vertu d’une licence de Visa Int. *Visa Int. /La Compagnie de Fiducie Peoples, utilisée sous licence.
Board Member
Feb 2023
Galatea Technologies has developed a sophisticated platform to digitalize, optimize, and automate transportation workflows - enabling businesses with the data and tools necessary to maximize operational, financial and environmental performance. Before Galatea, we worked for producers, transporters, and receivers. The problems we solve today are the ones that used to keep us up at night. We help clients craft the workflow we wish we had!
Board Member
Mar 2020
Clutch is Canada’s largest online used car retailer, delivering a seamless, hassle-free car buying and financing experience to drivers everywhere. Shop thousands of used cars online, get the right one delivered to your door, and enjoy peace of mind with our 10-day Money-Back Guarantee. You can even sell or trade in your car and get an instant cash offer. How sweet is that? Clutch. Cars done right.
Board Member
Aug 2019
Revolutionary talent assessment provider Plum knows when people flourish, business thrives. With a universal design, Plum uses objective data to measure and match human potential to job needs, enhancing talent decisions across the employee lifecycle. Featuring unmatched scalability, Plum empowers organizations to quantify job fit, improve quality of hire, identify potential, provide personalized career insights and create high-performing teams from one platform. Plum has been named a Top HR Product of the Year by Human Resource Executive, won an HR Tech Award from Lighthouse Research & Advisory and secured High Performer status with G2. Visit www.plum.io to learn more.
Board Member
Jul 2019
Delphia has a vision: a world where our data unlocks financial prosperity. To get there, we’re inspiring people to invest their data so they can understand its true value. Next, we’re enabling them. We’re giving people the power to treat their data for what it really is: an asset that can now be invested as such. Our proprietary algorithm will use the data being invested by our members, so we can make stock selections across thousands of publicly traded companies up to seven financial quarters in the future. It acts as an AI investment strategy that aims to outperform the market, giving us and everyone who contributed exactly what we should have had all along: the opportunity to benefit from their data.
Board Member
Apr 2018
Unify your fashion design, development, and production processes, utilizing easy-to-use communication tools, and the latest AI technology. Dynamic asset storage, real-time collaboration, AI design generation, project/production management tools, and more.
Show all 22 investments ↓
Experience · 26 entries
All (26)
Investments (23)
Founder (2)
Board (23)
2025
Board Member
Nov 2025
MedEssist enables pharmacies to become Pharmacy Health Clinics. The platform modernizes how vital population-scale health initiatives can be delivered by providing pharmacist-tailored digital infrastructure that enables them to build longer patient relationships. Our mission is to improve the everyday health of our patients by empowering them to understand and manage their health using technology.
Board Member
Aug 2025
Ultimarii is an AI enabled technology company focused on streamlining and accelerating the execution of large-scale, complex projects across various industries. Our Alberta based team works with companies globally.
Board Member
Jul 2025
Board Member
Jun 2025
Tengiva is a commercial operating software that enables textile suppliers to effectively run their business with easy-to-use sales tools, order management, embedded payments processing, fulfilment, automated logistics, CRM, inventory management and more. Built on a unified database, the software also powers white-labeled marketplaces and e-commerce channels for industry aggregators, allowing suppliers to instantly distribute across an interconnected ecosystem of trade shows and sales channels with a single click while creating powerful network effects across the textile supply chain.
Board Member
Apr 2025
Una is Performance Planning software built to drive execution, not just analysis. Traditional FP&A tools are static, fragile, and stuck in the past—breaking down the moment plans need to adapt. Una changes that. It delivers AI-powered, execution-focused planning that evolves with your business and keeps strategies aligned with reality. By combining agile financial planning with a foundation rooted in performance, Una ensures finance teams aren’t just forecasting outcomes—they’re driving them. Learn more at www.unasoftware.com
Show all 26 entries ↓
Investment activity
2014–2025 · 23 investments
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