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In today's health tech landscape, few people can combine strategic thinking with operational precision the way Dylan Hardy does. An engineer by training, a consultant by experience at McKinsey and KPMG, and now CFO of high-growth platform Cronometer and founder of investment fund Victor Avenue Capital, he is a rare breed of operator-investor who lives inside the very challenges he later evaluates in founders.
Victor Avenue Capital focuses on 'un-sexy' sectors — nutrition, vision, home care — that seem mundane until you realize they weather economic storms better than any hype cycle. That same first-principles engineering approach is what Hardy applies to startups, to his own portfolio, and to selecting markets for investment.
In October 2024, Dylan Hardy flew to Kyiv for the Invest in Bravery conference — and left a different person. What he witnessed: defense innovation cycles of 7–8 days, founders building products right now, under pressure, without excuses — forever changed his understanding of what a real entrepreneur looks like.

Dylan, your career moves from technical engineering to high-stakes consulting and then to the operational front lines. How does your engineering mindset — focused on structural integrity — influence how you diagnose systemic inefficiencies when you first enter a boardroom or a new startup?
When I joined Cronometer, the product was extraordinary — 50% year-over-year growth driven purely by word-of-mouth, users who genuinely loved what the team had built. But it was clear that the infrastructure surrounding that product — the org chart, the financial systems, the operational processes — had been designed for a scrappy ten-person startup, not a company on a trajectory to serve tens of millions of users. The engine was powerful — the chassis wasn't built for the scale-up journey that was about to happen.
That gap is one of the most common structural issues I see in startups that achieve product-market fit. And it's the kind of thing an engineering lens helps you spot because you're not just looking at outputs, you're looking at whether the underlying systems will support the growth you anticipate. My rough math: at 50% YoY growth you need to be actively building the tools and processes you'll need in 18 months. At 100%, build for 24. This is how you stay ahead.
Where I think engineering diverges from a traditional MBA approach is in the toolbox and mindset. An MBA-trained operator often benchmarks against best practice — valuable, but it can anchor you to a solution not designed for your specific system. An engineer starts from first principles. Every business, every team, every market is unique. The best answer for your company may not match what worked somewhere else.
You've held both strategic advisory roles and executive leadership roles. What is the hardest thing to 'translate' when moving from theoretical strategy at McKinsey or KPMG to the practical reality of scaling a digital health platform?
Execution relies entirely on people. Not the people in your ideal scenario, but the very real people who do the work — your team, your customers who come with their own preferences, your competitors who make moves you didn't anticipate. I'm a fan of testing your big ideas in the field and seeing what happens.
When I look at why strategy implementations fail — and I've seen it fail in both directions, through broken processes and through people who weren't ready — the underlying thread is almost always what I'd call magical thinking. Leaders who overestimate their team's capability, the quality of their tech, and/or their operational readiness. The moment you optimize for optics, not output, you're solving the wrong question.

At Cronometer and Think Research, you've operated at the intersection of nutrition, data science, and clinical workflows. What are the biggest barriers to making consumer-generated data actually 'useful' for a doctor in a clinical setting?
Let's start with the data itself — because that's where it all begins. Clinicians are scientists at heart — they can smell shoddy quality and dodgy data. That's exactly why we're so obsessed with evidence-based data at Cronometer. We have over 16 million signups, with users self-logging nutrition and health data every day. And the reason users and clinicians trust that data is because they can trace its provenance directly to validated, evidence-based datasets.
Healthcare and privacy regs exist for a reason. Do they add friction — absolutely. Is it worth it — absolutely. The smart play is to stop treating compliance as a cost of doing business and start treating it as a differentiator. Find the highest standard in your space — take GDPR in Europe as an example — and build to that standard from the start.
People don't remember price. They remember quality. They remember accuracy. They remember how they were treated.
Victor Avenue Capital focuses on 'essential' human needs like vision, nutrition, and home care. Why do you believe these fundamental but 'un-sexy' sectors are more resilient to volatile economic cycles than the fringe technologies that often capture headlines?
My investment thesis is borrowed from the Health Ministries I've had the chance to work with in Canada and around the world. Any Minister of Health is sweating three questions: ● Can people get the care they need when and where they need it? ● When they receive that care, is it good? ● And what did it cost to deliver that care outcome?
That's the filter I apply to every investment. If a startup's idea will move the needle on two of those three — they may have a viable product. But the best ideas for investment will improve all three simultaneously: better access, higher quality, and lower cost.
I'm an engineer who grew up on a farm — a practical, 'get the job done' kind of guy. Un-sexy is where it's at. Un-sexy businesses have more impact, less drama, and better returns. They just don't make great conference keynotes.
You describe yourself as a 'Partner-Operator' investor. Where does your role as a 'supporter' end and your role as a 'disciplined operator' begin?
As a board member, I am disciplined about staying in my lane. Nose in, hands out. The CEO has the toughest job in the building. My role on the board is to support them, help them grow, and set them up for success — not to second-guess every decision. If you're going to hold a CEO accountable for results, you must let them run the company.
During COVID, one of my portfolio companies won an extraordinary wave of contracts — four years of sales volume was closed in six months. The product team could integrate and automate health data systems 80% faster than anything I'd seen. But they needed to quadruple their delivery capacity in 12 months. The CEO asked me to come in, work alongside the team, and design and implement a rapid scaling plan. The team delivered tremendous impact for patients — they scheduled approximately 10M vaccine appointments with a product that didn't exist pre-COVID.
But the key to making that work — and this is where the discipline comes in — is having a crystal-clear mandate. When you step into an operator role as an investor, you need to know exactly what you've been asked to do, stay inside that mandate, get the job done, and then roll off cleanly.

As a member of the Techosystem Venture Committee, you are helping Ukrainian startups scale globally. What specific 'DNA' do you see in Ukrainian founders — often building in high-stress, geopolitical-risk environments — that sets them apart from founders in more stable hubs like Silicon Valley or Toronto?
I spent time in Kyiv in October 2024 for the Invest in Bravery conference and it left a mark on me. What struck me was the velocity of innovation and the sheer determination of the founders I met. Only a fool would stand between these people and their goals.
The Ukrainian founders I've encountered through Techosystem bring a combination of qualities I haven't experienced anywhere else in 15+ years of investing: resourcefulness, practicality, and an exceptional level of personal agency. They are not waiting for anyone's permission. They are not waiting for the perfect conditions, the ideal funding environment, or the geopolitical situation to stabilize. They are building right now, under extraordinary pressure, because that is simply what is required.
The technical depth is also world-class. The engineering and scientific talent coming out of Ukraine is elite — and the products reflect that. When a technical product finds success in Ukraine, it has global potential.
You've noted that the next technological breakthrough is as likely to come from a bomb shelter in Kyiv as from a lab in Palo Alto. What needs to change in the 'Western investor mindset' to fully unlock the flow of capital into these resilient innovation corridors?
What needs to change? It's a combination of risk aversion, unfamiliarity, and frankly — laziness. It's easier to write a cheque into a familiar ecosystem, attend the same conferences, back the same types of founders in the same cities.
What changed it for me was simple: my friend Ryan Little called and asked me to come to his conference and be on an investor panel. So I got on a plane, went to Kyiv, attended Invest in Bravery, and met the founders. That was it. The quality of the ideas, the calibre of the people, the noble cause of the war effort — that made the investment decision easy.
So if you're a Western investor reading this, my advice: Go. Just go. These are world-class ideas, backed by deep technical talent, built with a resourcefulness and urgency that will blow your mind.

Faces of Impact is about the humans behind the systems. What is the 'thread of impact' you want your career to leave behind in the next ten years?
I'm super lucky — I get to work with interesting and fun people every day. I want to help build companies that help hundreds of millions of people live healthier, happier lives. I hope to do it for a long time — and I hope that I get to do more of it in Ukraine.