New startup fund for Montreal
Both Jevon at Startup North and Rob at TechVibes have covered the launch of Montreal Start Up, a fund specifically targeted at very early stage startups. It’s “only” a $3M fund, so the ideals are very much in line with what we are planning here at Bootup: find great people and ideas, and help them succeed with both some level of monetary support, but also use networks and mentoring to help those startups succeed.
Of the partners / investors listed, I only know Austin Hill, and him only be reputation and a few email introductions. Montreal is on my list to make some cross pollination happen with Vancouver, so I hope to either visit there (but only when it stops snowing!) or have some folks come out west for an event.
It’s interesting to see that this group is, indeed, a fund. One of our current principles with Bootup is that we are not a fund. This will give us a bit more flexibility in the types of activities we pursue. But as Jevon points out, “Montreal Startup will be one of a new type of VCs in Canada who are far more engaged with local startup communities than ever before”. And that’s a very good thing.
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Hey Danny and Boris - we are very keen on “cross-pollination” and have already been “off-island” with trips to Toronto and Waterloo - Vancouver is very much on the radar and we are keen to partner up with like minded individuals.
MSU manages a Fund but we also work as part of the Montreal community to give input and advice to entrepreneurs as they develop their ideas - if an investment opportunity comes out of it - great - but we don’t want people feel they need to wait until they need money to have a chat with us.
Good luck with your initiative - we’ve heard only positive stuff so far !
John (Montreal Start Up)
From the perspective of people that are just starting out, more programs that offer hands-on support and advice to new startups can only benefit the Canadian entrepreneurial landscape. I think MSU is a fantastic idea, and will create a great foundational layer of early-stage technology companies. I think we’ll see more programs like this as the early innovators succeed…
@ John,
Boris and I are on the same page re: cross pollination. He knows that this is very much what I am trying to do with the networking event, Launch Party. We’ve done some cross pollination with the folks at Twiistup in LA and we would love to do a joint event with start-ups in Montreal to bring our tech communities together.
We should all chat offline about making this happen.
Maura (Strutta & Launch Party Vancouver)
[...] Boris Mann writes about the fund at Bootup Labs. [...]
[...] Boris Mann writes about the fund at Bootup Labs. [...]