Becoming a General Partner at White Star Capital and launching our Toronto office

I am very excited to announce that I will be joining Eric, JF, Lylan, Matthieu and Nick in the White Star Capital partnership to lead our Canadian investment strategy, deepen our presence in Toronto and continue collaborating with our teams in New York and Montreal to deploy capital in North America.

Since joining White Star

I joined White Star’s Montreal office two years ago. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of investing in some of the most exciting start-ups in Montreal, New York and Toronto such as Borrowell, Dialogue, Vention as well as yet to be announced seed and Series B investments. All of which have continued to scale and/or raise significant subsequent rounds of financing. I’ve also been lucky to witness many of our other portfolio companies achieve great accomplishments such as Meero’s recent $230m Series C, Mnubo’s successful C$115m exit to AspenTech and Drop’s recent $44m Series B. We’ve had a great run and I’m certain there is more to come.

I’ve also continued to develop my industry expertise in sectors such as digital health, industrial technology, marketplaces and SaaS which will hopefully strengthen White Star’s position as a partner of choice for start-ups in these fields.

Increasing presence in Toronto

Since White Star opened its first Canadian office in Montreal in 2014, we’ve invested in 10 Canadian start-ups. Those companies have gone on to raise over $200m, create over 300 tech jobs and generate one of the largest AI-related exits to date in Canada. We want to expand the already significant impact we have had from Montreal.

Toronto has now emerged as one of the most important tech hubs in the world. When I became a venture capitalist 10 years ago, we often discussed Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver and Waterloo, but we didn’t hear much about Toronto. It’s amazing that Toronto is now North America’s fastest growing tech hub and 3rd largest market for tech talent. As an active investor in Canada’s largest city, our firm has been along for the ride thanks to our investments in some of its most exciting start-ups such as Borrowell and Drop. Now is the right time to double down on Toronto. Which is why I will be leading White Star’s plans to open an office in Toronto to complement our strong presence in Montreal. This is core to White Star’s thesis of investing in major tech hubs outside of the Silicon Valley. We will also be recruiting a Toronto based investment professional to join our fantastic team. If you are interested, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Helping Canada’s tech scene go international

As part of my role, I will continue to work with my partners in London, Hong Kong, New York, Paris and Tokyo to help our Canadian start-ups expand internationally. I will also work with our portfolio companies in the US, Europe and Asia to leverage the rich Canadian tech ecosystem. Whether it is setting up operations or engineering teams here, I hope to help them take full advantage of what Canada has to offer.

I am certain that my new role will lead to many exciting things ahead. It’s time to get back to work.