Wall art on the Build Ventures/Volta wall
Patrick Keefe is announcing his new fund today called Build Ventures, a $50m early and mid stage fund based in Halifax.
The guy is a Harvard MBA, an Oxford grad, former Atlas Ventures principal, Boston Consulting Group executive and he built over a dozen Starbucks coffee franchises which he then sold back to Starbucks corporate. When you meet Patrick and dig in to his background you start wonder where the hell this guy came from.
What’s even better is that Build is the in-house fund at Volta, a new startup crash pad in Halifax that currently houses 10 startups. The fund has taken up residence at Volta and has been a key part of getting it started.
The fund has just launched so it hasn’t announced any investments yet, but we are excited to see which deals they do first.
Volta and Build are two big leaps for the startup community in Atlantic Canada and when you consider it alongside what has been happening in New Brunswick with Launch36 and Startup Week, as well as a recent string of big exits, it seems like things are accelerating incredibly quickly.
The next major event is the Atlantic Venture Forum in June which is being keynoted by Paul Singh.