Bruce Croxon

Early life

Bruce Croxon attended Ridley College, a prestigious private boarding school located in the Niagara Region of Ontario. After graduating from Ridley, he enrolled in Western University in London, Ontario, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1982. He has previously stated on BNN that his childhood nickname was ‘Crocs’.

Career

In 1988, Bruce Croxon partnered with Nick Plaine, David Chamandy, and Ed Lum to found LavaLife. Initially a telephone dating service, as the commercialization of the internet progressed in the mid-1990s, the company brought its operations online causing a rapid spike in usage, peaking at over 2 million uniquely created accounts. This made Croxon one of the pioneers of the newly burgeoning field of social media. In 2004, he oversaw negotiations to sell LavaLife to MemberWorks Inc. for the price of $152.5 million USD.

While running LavaLife, he acquired control of a high-end spa in Whistler, British Columbia in 2002, eventually growing the enterprise into a chain of holistic spas across the West Coast called Vida. Croxon’s entry into the spa business was the culmination of his long-standing personal interest in health and wellness.

In 2011, Bruce Croxon was approached by the producers of CBC’s hit television show Dragon’s Den to become one of the program’s judges, also known as ‘Dragons’, who evaluate business pitches from entrepreneurs, or contestants on the show, and decide whether or not to invest their own money in the ideas. He agreed and became a fixture on Dragon’s Den for several seasons in the early 2010s. Some of the investments he made through the show include purchasing stakes in Balzac’s Coffee, The Carbon Farmer, Custom Tattoo Design, and EnRICHed Academy, each of which spoke to his passions for digital media, marketing, and corporate social responsibility in different ways.

Following his departure from the show, Croxon teamed up with John Eckert and Scott Pelton to co-found the venture capital firm Round 13 Capital in 2013. The firm specializes in investing in Canadian growth-stage digital companies. Croxon retains the title of Managing Partner. 

During an interview with the online magazine Re$earch Money, Bruce Croxon discussed his business philosophy. “Every company has a unique set of attributes that separate them from being successful or not being successful. Taking the time to identify what you believe those attributes are, hanging a definition on them, and then actively finding a way to screen for those characteristics are a lot of what separates successful companies from ones that just do okay.” 

He then went on to describe the character traits of his ideal business partners, speaking from the point of view of a venture capitalist. “I would be looking for people that are curious, that are continuous learners, and people that recognize that they don’t have all the answers. Demonstrate that you have some degree of introspection that you can go to work in the morning and say, ‘I made a mistake yesterday’, or ‘Good point, I never thought of that.’ You have to be comfortable in a consensus decision-making environment. Because it’s increasingly difficult for one person or a small group of people to have all the right answers.”

In 2015, Bruce Croxon agreed to a deal with BNN to co-host the television show The Disruptors alongside journalist Amber Kanwar. The weekly show presents business and finance news, as well as offering expert analysis, editorials, and advice to small companies hoping to expand. He is still the co-anchor of The Disruptors today.

Net Worth

Bruce Croxon’s net worth is approximately $20 million.