White Star ❤ Canada!

Deep dive on the Canadian Venture Capital Ecosystem

In honour of Canada’s 150th anniversary and following White Star’s 10th portfolio investment in the country we decided to share the results of our summer deep dive on the Canadian Venture Capital Landscape. (PDF)

We initially thought about putting together this report for internal purposes. Our goal was to map out the ecosystem and put on paper all of the elements that within Canada we sometimes take for granted but make this geography so unique and exciting from an external perspective. Part of this external lens is brought in by Sanjay Zimmermann, White Star’s Montreal based associate, who after 8 years out of the country has come back to capture the growing opportunities here. After finishing the report, we felt even more convinced about our thesis on Canada and were compelled to share our excitement with the wider community by sharing this report.

In this report, we begin by outlining why we are bullish about Canada which ties into the strong momentum in successful exits, large funding rounds and increased presence of tech giants entering the market. Then, we look at two unique Canadian advantages stemming from clever public sector support and access to deep talent pools. Finally we end with a deep dive on VCs and other investors making up the space.

A big thanks goes out to Joshuah Lebacq, our Summer Associate who worked hard to crunch a lot of data from various sources to make this report possible.

Please have a read and feel free to share widely!

If you have any comments or suggestions for future versions of the report, please feel free to reach out to Sanjay@whitestarvc.com