Q-News

December 2011

Mike's Year-End Comment

Posted in Mike's Commentary

As 2011 draws to an end I would like to say a special thanks to our clients and friends in the investment community who continue to strong support for our firm.  Moving into our 11th year providing financial advisory, M&A and financing advice to private Canadian companies, you can be sure that our success would not be possible without that strong support.  From the team at Q1 Capital, we wish all of you good health and prosperity in the coming year and all the best for 2012.

November turned out to be a pretty interesting month with four transactions that stand out. Montreal-based Beyond the Rack ($36.6 million) and Toronto-based Fixmo ($23 million) provided further evidence of the increased involvement of US VCs in Canada; a $10 million Series B investment by a reported group of Canadian super angels in Vancouver-based Strangeloop brought awareness to this increasingly important source of capital; and the $1.65 million investment in Waterloo-based Vidyard by US-based Andreesen Horowitz, Ycombinator and Jawed Karim (co-founder of YouTube) along with Montreal-based iNovia Capital should turn some heads.  A special congratulations has to go to the team at iNovia Capital who participated in Fixmo, Beyond the Rack and Vidyard and this month’s announcement of their new $110 million iNovia III fund squarely places that firm in the top tier of Canadian VCs. 

Congratulations go out this month to Co-Chairs Robert Montgomery (Achilles Media), Rick Nathan (Kensington Capital Partners), and Chris Arsenault (iNovia Capital) for their great work in driving the success of this year’s Canadian Innovation Exchange (“CIX”).  Now in its fourth year, CIX is firmly entrenched as Canada’s leading annual showcase for innovative companies in the ICT and Digital Media spaces to compete for recognition as industry leaders.

Following a day of superb presentations by 20 top-notch innovation companies (who made it through an initial screening of over 200 companies) the top three People’s Choice Winners were WattPad, Wave Accounting, and TribeHR. In addition to company presentations, the day was filled with excellent panels, sessions, and opportunities for entrepreneurs to meet one-on-one with many of Canada’s top investors as well as a keynote by Marcel LeBrun, the founder of Radian6, which was sold to Salesforce.com in one of 2011’s most successful exits.

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