Brightspark reinvented its strategy in the 2010s because it believed the Canadian startup ecosystem wasn't yet mature enough for a conventional VC approach, shifting instead to helping launch and incubate companies and building a deal-by-deal SPV model around that idea—by 2024 this network included more than 600 investors who had put over $64 million into 23 companies, which the fund describes as a way to give individual accredited investors across Canada access to top early-stage tech deals. The fund is also shaped by Sophie Forest, who says she was the only woman managing partner of a Canadian VC fund for 20 years and describes Brightspark's team, where men are actually outnumbered, as intentionally built around complementary perspectives rather than the industry's usual norms.