Sam Haffar came up through operating roles, including Chegg's founding team, before moving to Montreal after visiting Notman House convinced him to help build Canada's startup scene from the inside, and he later helped develop Real Ventures' spreadsheet-based method for building a company's narrative line by line before it becomes a pitch deck. He treats fundraising as a tightly planned process, telling founders to expect about five and a half months for a Series A and to start with at least eight months of runway, and he works closely with founders on messaging itself, as seen when Uvaro's co-founders rebuilt their Series A story with him over three weeks and about a dozen drafts.