About

I BUILD COMPANIES

Paul Dawalibi is currently the CEO of Obsidian Ventures, founder of Conquest and the Executive Chairman of Cinematique. Over the last 15 years, he has been an active participant on all sides of the venture equation, and helped to create the startup ecosystem that exists in Canada today. Although he's born a Canadian, he's an American at heart, and has never felt more at home than in New York City.

Paul started his career at IBM where he had worked multiple summers. They stuck him in a dungeon selling IBM mainframes to banks. He lasted 9 months before leaving IBM or risk becoming suicidal. Ironically, those 9 months were in some ways the most pivotal of his career, convincing him that he would never be able to work for a big company, and never answer to anyone but himself. Leaving IBM forced Paul to start on the path of entrepreneurship which would lead to the creation of a handful of businesses, the management of an early stage technology fund, an MBA from MIT, the creation of a boutique investment bank, and a lifelong passion for technology, startups and the joys of company-building.

I'M ALLERGIC TO BULLSHIT
Paul has been doing venture in one form or another for over 10 years. In that time, he's seen the scene/industry evolve and witnessed the recent massive surge in popularity around entrepreneurship.

Unfortunately, with startups and entrepreneurship going mainstream, it attracted those who were ill suited to be founders or CEOs of companies, and worse still, those who believed that building a company was all about private jets and parties in the valley

Building companies is hard work and not for everyone. Paul has no patience for pretenders and bullshit artists.

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