Who is she?
Julia Elvidge is the co-founder of SheBoot, a program that aims to increase the number of women making and receiving investments in women-led tech startups. She is also the former president of Chipworks. She also serves as a tech adviser and is a member of several boards, including Invest Ottawa, the lead economic development agency for knowledge-based industries in the city.
What’s her background?
Elvidge, who is trained as an electrical engineer, has 30 years of experience in high-tech starting in the semiconductor industry in 1987 before eventually switching to the business side of technology at Chipworks.
As co-founder and president, Elvidge helped grow Chipworks — which was sold to TechInsights in 2016 — into an international seller of patent analytics and technology intelligence.
What’s she known for in Ottawa?
After retiring from Chipworks in 2017, Elvidge turned to SheBoot to address the funding gap for women in the area of investment.
“One of the things I recognized … was that I was frequently the only woman in the room as an investor,” Elvidge told Capital Current.
SheBoot was founded by Invest Ottawa and the Capital Angel Network, Ottawa’s largest early-stage investor group, in 2020.
“When I joined I was the third woman out of a group of about 50 members at Capital Angel Network,” said Elvidge. “Now 30 per cent are women investors and that’s happened partially because of SheBoot.”
“Every year we’ve seen more and more applications from women entrepreneurs and we see the need out there,” she added. “A big part of what we do is changing the investment world. Getting more women investing is a very crucial part to getting more women invested.”
What do people say about her?
“This kind of programming is really, really critical,” Julie MacDonell, co-founder and CEO of Heirlume, told the Ottawa Business Journal after finishing Elvidge’s SheBoot bootcamp in 2020. “It’s unfortunate that we need it.”
“The [SheBoot] program is laser-focused on closing the funding gap,” she said. “It was structured to assist us, in terms of coaching you through your due diligence, preparing you to pitch so that you’re perfectly polished.”
What’s a lesser-known fact about her?
Elvidge spends part of her time, summer and winter, on the East Coast, at her place on the ocean near Lunenburg, N.S.
