State of VC in five years?

Canada has a great financial sector, a growing economy, tons of smart people and a bunch of pretty snazzy exits recently. Yet, with all this Deloitte and the National Venture Capital Association still predict that the number of VC firms in Canada will continue to decline (hat tip: TechCrunch).

?

Sure, Canada is doing better than US and Europe but we’re not doing so well versus the BIC. The first reaction may be that it is now conventional wisdom that China, India and (lately added) Brazil will  take over the world so it stands to follow more VC will set up in those countries. Fair enough.

But deconstruct this a little further. The Canadian VC industry has already been decimated over the course of the past few year and yet, according to this survey, over a quarter of the respondents think it will shrink further. (The VC industry’s shrinkage in the US is a good thing I and many other would argue. Too much dead weight)

And VCs follow exits, well recently Canadian companies have exited to Apple, Google and not to mention a pretty killer IPO. That should bode well for the VC industry over the next five years, but it appears that it doesn’t (Yes, these exits happened after the survey was held, but still….)

In fact, it seems that achieving exits in Canada  is the number one barrier to expanded investments in the minds of VCs when they think about Canada.  Number 2 barrier is “lack of established venture capital community” which seems like a bit of a vicious circle.

So what do you think? Should Canada be worried? What can be done to improve the five-year outlook on the Canadian VC scene?

Week in Review

Vancouver based Layerboom acquired by Joyent (?)

A few hours ago Techvibes reported that Vancouver based Layerboom has been acquired by Joyent.

The post was subsequently taken down however, but once you tweet it, it is there for the world to see. I assume Techvibes was asked to take down the post as they jumped the gun on posting. We always respect embargo’s and I am sure this was a mistake, but I am happy to take the jump and push the speculation along.


Joyent, which started as a shared hosting provider and online office suite, has long had a Vancouver office. Toronto native Rod Boothby has been part of the early Joyent team and is currently their Vice President, International. As soon as he starts picking up his cellphone I hope to have confirmation on the acquisition.

This win could be two-fold for Vancouver: Layerboom is a Bootup Labs incubated company and competes with Toronto based Enomoly, among others.

Layerboom provides hosting companies with a comprehensive solution which enables them to build and sell virtual private server clouds. After installing Layerboom software, hosting companies can manage their physical and virtual server inventory, customer accounts, define virtual machine sizes, packages, and pricing, as well as customize a hosted dashboard.

Bootup Labs has recently had their share of problems and Boris Wertz, Vancouver’s rockstar angel and early stage investor, has stepped in to turn it around with original Bootup partner Danny Robinson. This could mark a turning point which would help Bootup regain needed credibility in the Vancouver startup community.

You heard it here first folks.