A prominent Saskatchewan angel investor who heads a national association for startup financiers has been charged by police with willfully committing an indecent act and unlawfully entering a dwelling with intent to commit an indictable offence.
Jesse Wiebe was charged after being arrested by Saskatoon police on May 17. An officer swore before a court that Mr. Wiebe, 36, had entered an apartment in the city while naked, “with a sex toy attached to his genitals with the intent thereby to insult or offend” two occupants.
Police had said in a release last month that the alleged intruder, who wasn’t named at the time, appeared to be intoxicated and was unknown to the occupants. He was released into medical care.
Mr. Wiebe appeared Monday in a Saskatoon court and a Crown attorney elected to pursue the charges on a summary basis. That means they are regarded as less serious criminal offences that could carry a maximum penalty of two years less a day in jail if there is a conviction. The charges have not been tested in court. Mr. Wiebe is set to return to enter a plea on June 30.
“This is a deeply serious matter, and I am treating it as such,” Mr. Wiebe said in an e-mailed statement to The Globe and Mail on Wednesday. “I am currently addressing significant personal and mental health challenges, and I am receiving professional support and treatment. I am co-operating with the legal process and will not be commenting on specific details while the matter is before the courts.”
Mr. Wiebe is one of Canada’s more active angel investors, or individuals who provide early funding to startups. His family’s firm, WieGrow Capital & Consulting, lists investments in 38 companies. Mr. Wiebe has also convinced many others to become angels and built programs for Startup TNT, one of Canada’s most active private investment groups, where he served as community development lead.
In April, he launched the Canadian Startup Capital Association, comprised of more than 19 angel investor syndicates and fund managers. He is the executive director.
Mr. Wiebe registered as a federal lobbyist last month to advocate for changes to tax policy, funding for early-stage venture capital activation and support for emerging fund managers.
His organization is one of three national bodies aiming to influence how the government spends $750-million allocated in last fall’s budget for a new strategy “to support Canadian firms facing early growth-stage funding gaps.”
The Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association has argued there is a gap in Canada’s ability to support scaled-up “champion” companies, which results in foreign sources predominantly funding later-stage financings. It proposes Ottawa spend the money on new and existing Canadian fund managers to back those later-stage rounds.
The National Angel Capital Organization, which represents angels and early-stage investment organizations, argues that the bigger problem is at the earlier stages. Fledgling startups are chronically underfunded while later-stage companies are well-served by other government programs, it argues.
NACO has proposed that Ottawa put $500-million into a matching-fund program for investments made by early-stage financiers. It is also asking for $250-million over five years to fund operational infrastructure to help “stabilize and professionalize” early-stage investors.
Like NACO, Mr. Wiebe’s group believes young companies are underfunded. But he told The Globe recently the problem isn’t a lack of capital, founders or investors. Rather, he said, Canada needs stronger networks to connect investors with each other and with startups, supported by more modestly funded infrastructure than what NACO envisions.
Mr. Wiebe said he hoped for $75-million to $150-million from the government – one-third for program funding to activate capital providers, educate and connect them, and two-thirds for a fund-of-funds to back early-stage fund managers. The CSCA recently set annual membership fees at $3,000 and suggested that organizations wishing to participate as founding donors could contribute $25,000.
Last week, Mr. Wiebe postponed a meeting of his new board, telling incoming and prospective members by e-mail he had been “working through an unexpected personal issue and a lot of stress from the past several years which I need to resolve before engaging in this next phase.”
On Monday, Mr. Wiebe wrote a lengthy LinkedIn post titled “Hurt people hurt people. And sometimes they hurt themselves.” He did not share specifics, saying only “there was an incident. A moment where the way I had been coping caught up with me in a way I could no longer explain away or fold back inside the armour.”
Mr. Wiebe wrote his post “is about mental health. About scars I thought I had healed and have realized I have not. About what it actually feels like to walk into rooms as a leader while a much younger version of you is still bracing for impact underneath your suit. About the ways I started hurting myself when the world stopped doing it for me. About what I have been doing to come back from that.”
Despite attempting to follow a healthy lifestyle, he “gave it all away,” he wrote, citing work pressures, including the creation of the CSCA, and said he reached for “whatever would numb me fastest … whatever would let me stop feeling everything for a few hours,” he wrote.
“I was hurting because I had given away every coping tool I had to people who needed me, and then started using a worse coping tool to keep functioning without the good ones.”
Mr. Wiebe wrote that he had decided to stay “sober for the foreseeable future” and had started seeing a therapist, meditating and exercising again.