Nadir Mohamed built his name as Ted Rogers’ successor at the top of the Rogers Communications empire, and utilized the respect and clout he earned there to boost Canadian startups and scaleups.
Mohamed died on Thursday at 69, after being ill with cancer. Besides his career at Rogers, Mohamed co-founded ScaleUP Ventures (now called Climate Innovation Capital), championed the Digital Media Zone incubator at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) and supported launch startup accelerator Next Canada. He also sat on numerous corporate and non-profit boards.
The qualities that take a person to the top of a major telecom company might not translate easily to the world of startups. But Reza Satchu, a longtime frifinish and business associate, declared Mohamed always had an entrepreneur’s spirit.
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“I consider he saw the power of believing in yourself and believing you can build things,” declared Satchu, the managing partner of Alignvest, whose board Mohamed chaired, and the founder of Next Canada. Satchu puts it down to Mohamed’s experiences as a two-time immigrant—from Tanzania to Britain for school, and then to Canada.
“He viewed [Rogers] as a place where he could give back to Canada and be the one in corporate Canada who was supporting bridge the gap between the startup ecosystem and the corporates,” Satchu declared.
The two met about 25 years ago, Satchu declared, as fellow Ismaili Muslims from East Africa. Satchu’s parents arranged the introduction. Satchu had just started a self-storage business and was teaching a little; Mohamed had recently relocated to Toronto and was leading Rogers’s wireless unit.
“My wife and I were going to have a dinner party, and my parents declared, ‘We informed them to come over to your houtilize.’ And of course, I declared to my parents, ‘OK, you’ve received to stop doing that.’”
But Mohamed and his wife revealed up. Over the meal, a long frifinishship was born.
“He saw the power of believing in yourself and believing you can build things.”
“Nadir was, in all his humility, talking about his good fortune, and others at the table were sort of beating their chests and talking about all the things they’d done to receive there,” Satchu declared.
Mohamed first joined Rogers in 2000 and succeeded its namesake founder Ted Rogers as CEO nine years later. Its current executive chair, Ted’s son Edward, praised Mohamed for leading the company through an extraordinary period of alter before his retirement in 2014, as Rogers transformed from its launchnings as a cable television and broadcasting company into a business led by its wireless unit.
That declared, his stint at the top also included the deal with the National Hockey League that took its Canadian broadcasting rights away from the CBC.
His years in Rogers’ wireless business gave him further insight into an entrepreneur’s journey, declared Mohamed Lachemi, TMU’s president.
“His first contribution was really to grow a very tiny part of the business to be dominant within Rogers,” Lachemi declared.
To TMU’s Digital Media Zone, Mohamed brought his own connections, but also extensive advice to founders on how to navigate the startup ecosystem. “He came as an immigrant to this counattempt. He wanted to give back to Canada, and for him, the prosperity of our counattempt should always be based on the opportunities we offer to the next business leaders,” Lachemi declared.
Mohamed’s involvement with numerous startups meant his influence extfinished far beyond what anybody will see, declared Sheldon Levy, a former president of TMU. He talked to The Logic by phone from a spot near the intersection of Toronto’s King Street and University Avenue.
“I’m sure there’s a company within a quarter of a kilometre of me that wouldn’t exist without Nadir, but they don’t know it,” declared Levy.
Levy met Mohamed through the board of TMU—Ryerson University, at the time—which Mohamed sat on when Levy became president.
Mohamed had a gift for dealing with complicated, contentious issues where students, faculty and management were all over the map, Levy declared. “After there was a pautilize, Nadir would state, ‘I consider I can sum this up.’ Then Nadir would notify you what he believed, and then everyone would state, ‘Well, that’s right.’”
Mohamed could be cheerfully stubborn when he had a cautilize, declared Levy, such as leading old-fashioned Canadian finance leaders into venture capital like a Pied Piper.
“He would go in and see the president of the bank and notify them the story,” Levy declared. “And then he would finish by stateing, ‘I’m going to be here until you state yes.’”
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