I shared this on LinkedIn. There's a good discussion in the comments around this.
Why does Canada not have more preseed funds writing first cheques?
It’s (I think) a recognized fact that this is the case.
Is it because we are so close to the US ecosystem that the massive number of preseed funds there effectively cherry picks our top founders?
I have heard that Canadian pre-seed has the opposite problem. They have to wade through a lot of inbound in Canada (many low quality), but themselves have such small funds they deploy very little.
I have been thinking about what I did at Full Stack. The ecosystem was smaller then. There was no institutional preseed. 9 deals in 6 months made me one of the top investors in Canada. I say that not to boast, but show how low the bar was (is?).
I modeled smaller cheques with much higher velocity during the pandemic with Venture Scouts. Recently talked to Jesse Rodgers who is thinking something similar.
The model I have in mind would be
- across Canada
- scouts in every community (diverse young people)
- 10k - 25k lead cheques - don’t need to wait for a lead, we say yes first
- scouts check the hygiene - legal setup, founders reverse vesting etc
- syndicate every deal
50 - 100 deals annually? One of the experiments here is if one can find and execute on this many.
Not all would be venture track, so slightly different IndieVC style deal terms might be needed.
Overhead is massive compared to capital deployed. Not enough AUM for management fees to pay for much.
What do you think?