[6][7][8] Bannister is the co-chair of C100[9] and on the boards of the Ivey Business School and LEAP,[10] a social venture accelerator, as well as serving as a mentor at Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto.
[14] Launched by Bannister in 2023, Staircase Ventures closed their first fund by collecting C$34 million[15] with investors including the Royal Bank of Canada.
[16] In October 2023, it led the Calgary fintech startup Fillip to a C$5m seed round of fundraising.
[17] By February 2024, the firm had also led seed rounds of funding for other Canadian startups including AI drug discovery platform Biossil and Rhenthi,[18] a marketing automation platform, along with a C$6m round for AI-focused Sibli.
[19] In April of that year, it was involved in a C$2.7m seed extension to Galatea,[20] a waste logistics software company, while in December it helped lead a $5 million minority equity financing round for Eventric, a US-based software company focused on live events.