Sylvain Carle, a former senior developer advocate at Twitter, will lead Montreal’s FounderFuel accelerator program as it ventures into a new chapter following the resignation of former general manager Ian Jeffrey.
Carle, a born-and-raised Montrealer who calls himself the “Frog in the Valley,” said in a Medium post that he’ll “re-invent their accelerator program.”
“This is a fantastic opportunity for me to continue working with ecosystems, support innovation, crazy creativity, brilliant hackers… I will be joining what I consider to be one of the most founder friendly funds in North America, with big ambitions,” wrote Carle.
An active FounderFuel mentor since the beginning of the program, Carle has also served as an advisor to many Canadian startups. He was also one of the early members of the team that dreamt up the Notman House project. A release said that his personal startup experience as co-founder and CTO of Needium, combined with his valley experience and network “will have a profound impact on the evolution of FounderFuel.”
FounderFuel also mentioned that it recently welcomed Alex Lynn, who formerly spent time at Techstars and Sid Lee, as Real Ventures’ Director of Special Projects.
“We’re tremendously excited about what Sylvain will contribute to Real Ventures and FounderFuel,” wrote Real Ventures partner John Stokes. “He’ll be joining us officially in the next month or so and will be in Montreal to help judge our Fall 2014 Cohort contest at the International Startup Festival in July.”
On his former role at Twitter, Carle wrote that “as much as I have been a Montréaler at Twitter, I will always be a Twitter Developer Advocate, wherever I go…Twitter has changed, is changing, and will change the world. I am proud and humbled to have been able to contribute a little bit to this great company.”
Like Carle, the folks at FounderFuel plucked its former head from Silicon Valley as well. Ian Jeffrey had only just sold his company, Tiny Pictures, at the time he took the position to head up the Montreal accelerator. Now the program looked south for its new face once again.
The accelerator program also announced that it launched two new financing options including additional funding for connected hardware startups.
Software companies will now receive $50,000 of financing in exchange for only 6 percent equity (compared to the previous 9 percent). Companies with a hardware component can opt for $100,000 for 9 percent equity (or stay at the 50,000 and 6 percent level).
“We have seen more and more hardware startups applying to FounderFuel over the last 18 months. Vanhawks and Kiwi made it into the last cohort and from early applications we are sure that we will have more in this upcoming cohort,” wrote Stokes. “The nature of these companies is such that they often need a little more cash than software only startups. We are convinced it is important to accomodate the specific challenges these company face at the earliest stage.”
Photo by Les Affaires