The Globe and Mail

While still in his teens in his home town of Dawson Creek, B.C., Robert Wilfur entered a contest sponsored by the Vancouver Stock Exchange and turned $50,000 in hypothetical money into nearly $1-million within 90 days.

The VSE was so impressed, they offered him a part-time consulting job to help develop stock market educational material for high-school students across the province. Then, after graduation from high school, he spotted an ad in the Calgary Herald. Marathon Brokerage was opening a discount stock trading brokerage in Calgary and had two job openings. He drove to Calgary and landed one.

By age 20, he was buying and selling stocks, options and futures contracts for clients.

About 18 months later, he shifted to a traditional stock brokerage and became a full-scale broker. By the time he was 30, he was a vice-president and director with Goepel McDermid Inc.

After the company was bought, Mr. Wilfur moved to First Capital Management Ltd., initially as managing director and later to become president and CEO.

Focusing on early-stage companies with proprietary knowledge or technology, Mr. Wilfur and First Capital have led groups of private investors into ventures such as Osum Oil Sands Corp., a private Alberta-based company focused on the development of oil sands properties. First Capital and Mr. Wilfur provided Osum with an initial few million dollars to hire staff and open the company’s first office in Calgary. Mr. Wilfur continued to finance Osum to allow the company to make its initial land acquisitions and subsequently First Capital became the company’s largest shareholder, up until 2008, when Osum raised $275-million of equity. As of January, Osum’s net asset value exceeded $6-billion.

Mr. Wilfur also launched the $50-million FCI Energy Opportunities Fund.

Despite the pace of his business life, Mr. Wilfur insists on finding time for his wife Leslie Piper and his five children, aged 1 through 19.

“Whenever I can, I work from my home office,” he says. “I am not one of those people out to make money for money’s sake. Besides, I love my family too much to let business be the focal point of my life.”

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Editor's note: This is a corrected version of the story. A previous version had an incorrect value for the FCI Energy Opportunities Fund.