Sharing some fun facts I noticed while going through a Pitchbook report about Canadian VC funding activity in Q1 2016. All charts and data below are from Pitchbook — they gave me permission to share so here goes (PS: If you want to subscribe to them, I can refer someone).
Cold, hard numbers with all $ figures CND
- $0.88 billion across 103 deals (54 seed + 28 Early VC + 21 Late VC), out of which Software category saw $466 million invested across 51 deals.
- Median Seed size $1.66 million, Series A size $5.88 million.
- US-based investor participation was seen in 62 deals across $0.58 billion. This implies 66% of venture capital dollars invested, and 60% of deals had US VC participation.
Q1 was the strongest quarter ever for total venture capital invested in Canadian startups
70% of venture capital invested in Canadian startups in Q1 was in $25 million+ rounds => going to mature, later stage companies
But wait, take that with a grain of salt, as if you dive into the data, it paints a healthier picture as deals are getting done at all stages:
- <$500k: Total $2M across 15 deals
- $500k-$1M: Total $9M across 12 deals
- $1m-$5m: Total $77M across 34 deals
- $5M- $10M: Total $76M across 10 deals
- $10-$25M: Total $99M across 8 deals
- >$25M: Total $616M across 10 deals
I am looking at this as ~$163M of higher risk venture capital invested in Canada in Q1 (considering startups receiving more than $10M in a round are more stable/mature and thus less risky inherently).
US had USD $1.6 billion in angel and seed activity in Q1 — making the Canadian angel and seed activity barely 0.7% of that of the US (some contrasting numbers: Canada’s GDP is ~9% of that of the US, and the population is ~11% of that of the US)
And wait — before you judge Canadian VCs as being too conservative based on the above chart, analyze this, the trend amongst US VCs has been similar:
Only good exit for venture backed startups in Q1 was M&A. No IPO.
13 exits, $0.14 billion exit value, all acquisitions.
League table — most active VC investors by deal count in Q1 2016
