StartupCFO : Mark MacLeod

I announced back in January that I was leaving Real Ventures to join FreshBooks. I’ve been spending some time with the fine folks at FreshBooks since then. I had forgotten just how hard it is to operate companies. Especially fast growth ones. It was all too much, so I am announcing today that I am going back to the VC World.

I am pleased to announce a joint venture with Kiltr called Kiltr Ventures. KV is a new, specialized venture fund that exclusively backs Scottish entrepreneurs. The Scots are a hardy bunch. They have toiled under English persecution for centuries. They are virtually unemployable, which makes them great founders. And many of them have fled the crap weather in Scotland giving KV a global base of potential founders to choose from.

If you or your parents were born in Scotland and you are a founder of a startup, I want to hear from you. Strong preference will be given to anyone whose surname begins with “Mac”.

VCs attend lots of board meetings. The vast majority of them are sub-par experiences. That goes both ways. The entrepreneurs spend a lot of time preparing for them and don’t get much return on that time investment. And VCs don’t end up contributing a lot and don’t get much return for their time investment either (especially true when they have to travel to said meetings).

This is a shame and a waste of a precious opportunity. The right board can have a huge impact on a startup’s performance by offering an expert perspective on the issues facing the management team, exposing their network of relationships, and helping the CEO develop and grow as a leader.

So, if you’re not getting the impact you should from your board then read on.

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I was reading this morning that Matrix Partners has brought on a new partner. Jared Fliesler is all of 28 years old, but has already held down senior roles at Square and Slide / Google. Impressive stuff. I’m sure the guy is brilliant, but I think 28 is just too young to be a partner in a venture fund.

Have you ever seen a sports coach that is younger than the players? Me neither. And that’s the right analogy here. The best VCs act as trusted advisors, mentors and connectors. To do that you need to have been around a lot, seen a lot (of successes and failures) and know a LOT of people.

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Seventeen years ago today, I moved from Toronto to Montreal. This was shortly after the October ’95 referendum. At the time most people were moving west not east. For 14 out of those 17 years, I’ve been a part of the Montreal startup community. But in two short weeks, I’ll be packing my bags again and heading west to start full time at FreshBooks.

I’ve lived through the highs and lows of our startup scene in Montreal. I remember when Austin Hill was on US national television talking about internet privacy for Zero Knowledge. I lived through the dark days of 2002 – 2004 when almost nothing was getting funded. We were actually lucky here in Quebec. Our province has a longstanding commitment to funding innovation and so provincially funded VCs were still cutting some cheques.

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