Waterloo about to lose its most active Angel investor

For all of the impact that Canada’s venture capital crisis is having on the Innovation Economy, we never forget the role that Angels play in the formation and growth of early stage Tech and Lifescience companies. According to Gary Will, Waterloo’s #1 Angel investor is about to leave for the U.S.A. Some locals will tell you that Jim Estill has about 60 Angel investments underway at any given time, 5x as many as other active local investors. This will be a great loss for the Waterloo community, as well as the broader Ontario tech ecosystem.

From Gary Will’s Waterloo Tech Digest:

Jim Estill leaves Synnex … likely U.S.-bound March 25, 2009

Jim Estill has stepped down as CEO of Synnex Canada, a position he has held since selling EMJ — the company he founded — to California’s Synnex in 2004. It hasn’t been announced where he’s headed, but it’s expected that he’ll be going to the U.S. to lead a public company there.

Estill’s departure will be a loss for the local startup community. Estill has been one of the most active angel investors in the area, having made dozens of investments. Most have not been publicly disclosed, but those that have include his investments in Primal Fusion and Well.ca. He was also an investor in SlipStream Data, which was acquired by RIM.

Estill invested in RIM when it was a private company and has been on RIM’s board of directors since 1997. At the time of RIM’s IPO that year, he was one of three outside directors, along with Doug Wright and Val O’Donovan. He’s been on the board ever since — only Mike Lazaridis has served longer, among RIM’s current directors.

Between EMJ and Synnex, Estill had remained with the same company for 30 years. He founded EMJ Data Systems in 1979 while finishing his systems design engineering degree at UW and grew it to include a U.S. subsidiary about 10 years later and then an IPO and TSX listing in 1994. By that year, EMJ had $68 million in annual sales and 100 employees. By the time the company was sold to Synnex for $56 million in 2004, it had grown to over $350 million in sales and 300 employees.

MRM