Happy new year everyone! As I do every year, I begin the new year with a recap of the most popular posts of 2011. This was my first full year on the VC side and I was so busy meeting people that I had a lot less time to write. Not sure how Fred Wilson [...]

There may not be any snow on the ground, but it’s that time of the year again in Montreal when the whole startup community gets together to party at Technoel. The 2nd annual Technoel bash takes place this Wednesday night. As always, we’ll have some solid tunes. I’ll be starting things off with a chill [...]

If you’re in Montreal next Wednesday, I’ll be doing a work shop on SaaS Math for the most excellent folks at Startupifier – an organization that connects new grads with the startup community. If you are interested in joining or starting a SaaS company come join us as we go through the nuts and bolts [...]

If you’ve been around Notman House in the last few days then you’ve likely seen some VCs and founders running around with a little more facial hair than usual. Team members from Real Ventures and Founderfuel have come together in support of Movember. Prostate cancer has definitely hit my family. And I know it has [...]

It’s August 1. Beginning of the month when large chunks of Europe book off and hit the beach. It’s popular to slag Europe over here in N. America. But when it comes to vacations (and many other things), they’ve got it right. As a very active seed fund that’s out there doing deals all the [...]

Bessemer Venture Partners one of the premier VC funds in the World has what they call their anti-portfolio: A list of companies that they looked at but passed on that went to achieve huge exits.  That list includes companies like Google and Apple. Ouch! As a newbie VC and part of a new fund, it will be a long [...]

For startups the mantra is always, “release early, release often” – get your product out there, get feedback and iterate. We practice what we preach and we launched Real Ventures last October we had little time to optimize our web presence. We’re still working on it but I am pleased to announce a major rev [...]

The deadline to apply to Founderfuel, our accelerator program, is fast approaching. On July 1, we will be closing the doors and will start reviewing all the great teams that are looking to come on board. To date about 1/3 of the applications have been coming from outside Canada. That’s great to see. Interest in [...]

I often meet entrepreneurs that are working on a startup while owning and running another business. Sometimes that is a services business and the intention is to transition to the startup. Other times it’s another startup. In many cases though, the entrepreneur plans to keep both businesses going post funding. I have issues with that. [...]

Attention Canadian entrepreneurs: The folks from VISA Canada contacted me to let me know about a chance to win a VISA card with $10K on it to help you run your business. This card goes to the company with the best elevator pitch. The finalists will literally ride a 49 storey elevator to make the [...]

I will be speaking May 24th at MaRS in Toronto on SaaS math. This session is part of MaRS best practices series. Getting your pricing and metrics right is critical for any start-up, but doubly so for a recurring-revenue business. In this session, we’ll explore key customer metrics for new ventures, including acquisition, activation, conversion, [...]

I am pleased to announce today that Year One Labs has entered into an agreement to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Real Ventures. We have been pretty impressed with the team at Year One. It’s been about 6 months since they launched. In that time, they have scoured the country meeting entrepreneurs and spreading [...]

We are looking to hire a Chief of Staff at Real Ventures. As the title suggests, we are looking for an autonomous individual who can be both internally and externally focused and be involved in many aspects of our business.