Quebec's VC world is rolling

Dateline: Montreal

The first sign of Montreal’s vibrant business environment was a completely full Porter flight.  Our team had a couple of great tech stories to see: firms that would rank very well against any of their industry competitors around the globe.  Each appears to be busting at the seams on the staffing and real estate front, two natural signs of succesful growth stories.  Hopefully we’ll be able to get them the growth capital that almost every successful private co. needs. 

But, as indications go, it is the recent financing and hiring transactions that utlimately provide insight into the health of a VC market, and Quebec scores very well on that front:

• Advitech raised $2.5 million in November
• Coveo raised $8.2 million in December
• Medicago raised $11.6 million in December
• PCI Geomatics raised $1.5 million in September
• Rho Canada recruited Roger Chabra in December
• StatusNet raised $1 million in October
• Tandem Expansion Fund I L.P. closed its $300 million fund in December, hiring David Bookbinder, Andre Gauthier, Christopher Legg, Alex Moorhead, Sandy Scott and Deb Shaw
• Teralys began to invest its recently-closed $700 million fund-of-fund, with a $75 million commitment to Tandem
• TeraXion raised $11 million in December
• Topigen raisd $26 million in November
• Vantrix raised $3.2 million in September

The financing data suggests that Quebec has closed as many financings as Ontario over the past four or five months, despite the stark difference in population bases.  There’s no question that things are rolling in Quebec, just as the troika had hoped when the VC industry was cashed-up in 2007: 70% of the new limited partner capital raised that year went to VC funds based in Quebec (see prior post “Digging through the 2007 Venture stats” Feb 13-08).

The people who had the vision to make those choices are now seeing their confidence in Quebec’s VC sector bear fruit.  To borrow a line from the movies: “I love it when a plan comes together.”

MRM