Nadir Mohamed made his name as Ted Rogers’ successor at the top of the Rogers Communications empire, and used 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 helped 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 friend and business associate, said Mohamed always had an entrepreneur’s spirit.

“I think he saw the power of believing in yourself and believing you can build things,” said 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 helping bridge the gap between the startup ecosystem and the corporates,” Satchu said.

The two met about 25 years ago, Satchu said, 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 moved to Toronto and was leading Rogers’s wireless unit.

“My wife and I were going to have a dinner party, and my parents said, ‘We told them to come over to your house.’ And of course, I said to my parents, ‘OK, you’ve got to stop doing that.’”

But Mohamed and his wife showed up. Over the meal, a long friendship was born.

“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 get there,” Satchu said.

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 change before his retirement in 2014, as Rogers transformed from its beginnings as a cable television and broadcasting company into a business led by its wireless unit.

That said, 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, said Mohamed Lachemi, TMU’s president.

“His first contribution was really to grow a very small part of the business to be dominant within Rogers,” Lachemi said.

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 country. He wanted to give back to Canada, and for him, the prosperity of our country should always be based on the opportunities we offer to the next business leaders,” Lachemi said.

Mohamed’s involvement with numerous startups meant his influence extended far beyond what anybody will see, said 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,” said 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 said. “After there was a pause, Nadir would say, ‘I think I can sum this up.’ Then Nadir would tell you what he thought, and then everyone would say, ‘Well, that’s right.’”

Mohamed could be cheerfully stubborn when he had a cause, said 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 tell them the story,” Levy said. “And then he would end by saying, ‘I’m going to be here until you say yes.’”