Tech companies in Canada looking for to raise a seed-round may soon find it even harder to secure funding, as rumors circulate that Venture Partners, a Toronto-based venture capital fund, will not be raising a new fund.
According to a story in the Financial Post, one anonymous Canadian angel investor speculates that the decision stems from personnel changes.
Founded in 2009, Extreme Venture Partners co-invested $7 million into Extreme Startups in 2012, a fund dedicated to high-risk, high-reward Internet startup investments.
In its four years the fund had some success, most notably its investments in BumpTop, which sold to Google in 2010, Rypply, which was acquired by SalesForce in 2011, and Locationary, which was recently purchased by Apple.
Extreme Venture Partners was one of three seed-stage venture capital firms in Canada, along with Montreal-based Real Ventures and Vancouver-based Version One Ventures.
According to the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, “new” or first time venture capital investment in Canada was slightly less than $400-million in 2012.
Industry experts are hoping that some of Canada’s other venture capital firms and investors might step in to help fill the void left by Extreme Venture Partners, such as Matt Golden at Golden Venture Partners, Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures, LX Ventures in Vancouver, Mantella Venture Partners in Toronto, or even the Investment Accelerator Fund at Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District.