Steve Woods spent 13 years building Google Canada's engineering team from about 20 people to more than 1,300, after co-founding Quack.com, which he says created the world's first interactive voice assistant before it sold to AOL/Netscape for $200 million, and he still builds with new AI systems himself for weeks at a time to understand what's possible before backing founders. Outside of tech, he grew up in Northern Saskatchewan, competed in hockey and golf, and spent two years playing semi-professional hockey in Australia before returning to AI and startups.