What’s interesting about the Round13 Capital announcement today isn’t the size of the fund – they are targeting $100MM. It isn’t the people who are involved – they are amazing. It isn’t the LPs – they are different. The team, Bruce Croxon, John Eckert and Scott Pelton, are bringing together a group of entrepreneurs to serve as mentors. This is not uncommon in the US with a number of funds like SoftTech VC, Felicis Ventures, Founders Fund and similar to Founder Collective (if you are interested read the Kauffman Foundation’s Do Entrepreneurs Make Good VCs? [PDF]).
“Venture capital firms with a greater fraction of entrepreneur VCs have better firm performance. The positive relation between entrepreneur VCs and performance is stronger for venture capital firms specializing in high-tech industries and in early-stage investment.”
— Do Entrepreneurs Make Good VCs – Entrepreneurial Finance and Innovation Conference – The Kauffman Foundation
The Round13 Capital team has done an amazing job of bring together founders with exits as both LPs in the fund, and more importantly as mentors for their portfolio companies. This is a critical differentiator for Canadian entrepreneurs. Hopefully the Round13 fund will close and they can start funding Canadian entrepreneurs soon.
Round13 Investors/Founders
- Mike Alkier (LinkedIn), cofounder OmniLogic
- Christopher Barnard (LinkedIn), cofounder Points.com
- Dave Charmandy (LinkedIn, @dmc1962), founder Darwin Dimensions & cofounder Lavalife
- Paul Chen (LinkedIn), founder FlowNetwork and founder Fortiva
- Randall Howard (LinkedIn, @randallh), cofounder MKS
- Nick Koudas (LinkedIn, @koudas) and Nilesh Bansal (LinkedIn), cofounders Sysomos
- Daniel Langlois, founder Softimage
- Haroon Mirza (LinkedIn, @haroonfmirza), Shahzad Malik (LinkedIn), and Faizal Javer (LinkedIn), cofounders CognoVision
- Ray Reddy (LinkedIn), founder PushLife
- MIke Serbinis (LinkedIn, @mserbinis), cofounder DocSpace and cofounder Kobo
- Michel Vulpe (LinkedIn), founder i4i
This is great new for Canadian entrepreneurs!
I like the fact that @spelton:twitter and the @r13vc:twitter look like a aging boy band in this photo!
Congratulations on starting something new and innovative. Does their office look as cool as they do in that pic?
Haven’t seen their offices, but they are a very cool group of guys (well if you can call @spelton:twitter cool)
I respect that we have more entrepreneurs taking on tech investment as it should be – “VC Entrepreneurs backing Entrepreneurs” by first understanding what they are getting into and what it takes to build a long lasting business. @spelton already had that approach at GrowthWorks while @Bruce_Croxon has gone through the trenches as well did John, but from very different angels. That’s great news for our tech community. Over the last 10 years the Canadian Venture Capital industry has witness a huge transformation and I hope it will continue. Next, we need to see results. Not just deal closings… more importantly the direct impact of Tech Entrepreneur VC Funds making a difference with regards to the Exit size and ability to build large multi-hundred $M revenue companies in our own backyard.