Philip Rowland

Venture Partner, Fulcrum

Having started his career at Ford Motor Company in IT, Philip did an MBA and then taught at the same business school before joining McKinsey. There, he worked in UK and European defence for seven years. As a Partner he led multiple projects for both government and industry spanning defence procurement, logistics and support (including a brief visit to Iraq), major platform acquisition, international collaboration and platform and systems delivery.

He also worked extensively in oil and gas (with many nights spent off-shore), automotive and ran the London accelerator for the firm. He then went into private equity where for 20+ years his portfolio has covered many technology companies including one in security, one in cryptography and one in defence (the latter sold to a large Defence Prime). Philip is a Partner at a Defence and Security focused VC firm based in Europe, an advisor to Vimy Forge, Canada’s national defence accelerator, and is working with several startups in Vancouver, some of them defence focused. Philip has lived and worked in Europe, Asia and North America.

Vancouver is now home where he lives with his wife and two daughters, making frequent trips to see his son who lives and work in London, England. Now semi-retired Philip has two personal missions: firstly, to help Canada re-arm with sovereign capability, and reform its procurement approach to do so urgently; secondly, to help Vancouver retain its SMEs and help them scale up from there.