Montreal Start Up

The MSU team has been working hard over the past few months on putting together a new venture fund. We mentioned in an earlier post that we had submitted a proposal to Investissement Quebec to act as a cornerstone investor in our new seed-fund.

Today they announced which funds they were going to support !

The three Québec-based technology company seed funds recommended by the Selection Committee are Real Ventures in the information and communications technologies industry, AmorChem in the life sciences industry and Cycle-C3E Capital in the green technologies industry.

We are pleased to say that the Montreal Start Up team are also the team behind Real Ventures !

The press-release went on to say:

These new funds will be financed in part by the Québec government, which has agreed to provide a $50-million contribution through Investissement Québec, by the Solidarity Fund QFL, which is investing $33 million, and by FIER Partners, which plans to invest $17 million. The minimum contribution from the private sector is $8.25 million per fund, and the minimum total contribution for each fund is $41.25 million.

The new technology company seed funds were selected by means of a rigorous process for identifying the three best projects. The Selection Committee was in charge of coordinating the call for proposals and selecting the managers who would be responsible for securing private-sector capital and managing each fund. Committee members studied each of the 17 proposals in detail and conducted a series of group and individual interviews with six of the top management teams.

You can read the full press release here.

There is still a lot of work to do before the new fund is up and running ….

In addition to the minimum private-sector subscription of $8.25 million, these new funds are subject to a number of specific conditions for their promoters, including signing employment contracts with key resources, conducting due diligence and ensuring that every investor in each fund signs a limited partnership agreement. The government and its partners anticipate that it will take promoters roughly four months to meet these conditions.

….but we are really excited that we have our cornerstone investor and can get on with establishing our new fund!

Thanks to everyone who has supported us so far and keep your eyes peeled for more news on the launch of Real Ventures.