About Unicorne
A regulated marketplace for Canadians to invest in pre-seed startups at the same stage venture funds do.
The team
Alex Yang
Waterloo Engineering. I handle product, investors, and the legal and compliance side. That means working out how we operate under NI 45-110 today, scoping the dealer registration we're pursuing next, and getting the trust-account, KYC, and disclosure pieces through with counsel so every listing holds up to how the OSC will read it. I've had 6 co-ops, heavily in the compliance and workflow space, which have given me depth for understanding our systems, advantages, and position. It's not the most glamorous thing in the world -- but it's what decides whether we're still here in two years. The rest of my time goes to users.
Kevin Ge
Waterloo Engineering. I build the hard parts: the SAFE and SPV automation that turns thousands of retail investors into one line on a cap table, the KYC and identity flows, the trust-account integration, and the systems that turn every view and save into real signal for founders. I'd rather understand the regulation cold and design around it than ship something that gets torn out the first time the OSC asks a question. The whole thing was built around the right regulations from the start.
The problem
Investing in startups is the most powerful wealth-building engine of the last fifty years, and almost no one is allowed to use it. The best Canadian companies raise their first rounds quietly, from accredited investors, family offices, and friends-of-friends. By the time a company is available to a retail investor through a public stock, the asymmetric upside is already gone. Everyone else gets gamified trading apps, gambling-grade options flow, or “high-yield” savings accounts that lose to inflation.
What we’re building
Unicorne is a regulated equity crowdfunding marketplace built for Canadians, operating under NI 45-110. We give pre-seed and early-stage Canadian founders a clean way to raise capital from the people who actually use their products, and we give retail investors the chance to put real money into real companies at the same stage venture funds do. To solve the hardest part of retail investing, which is information asymmetry, we layer institutional co-investment directly into the platform. When a family office or seed fund commits capital to a listing, retail can follow at the same terms. Smart money becomes a visible signal, not a closed door.
Why we’re doing it
We are both engineering students who tried to invest seriously, looked at what was available, and realized every tool on the market was built for someone else. We started Unicorne because we wanted it to exist. Building a regulated financial platform from a dorm room is, by any reasonable measure, a stupid idea. We are doing it anyway, because the people who should have built this twenty years ago did not, and the country is poorer for it.
Get in early
Join the waitlist and be first when Unicorne opens.
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