The bmannconsulting.com website
bmann.ca
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2link: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/boris_why-does-canada-not-have-more-preseed-funds-activity-7245107226116292610-QU8f
3tags:
4 - Canada
5 - startup
6 - investing
7 - preseed
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9I shared this on LinkedIn. There's a good discussion in the comments around this.
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12
13Why does Canada not have more preseed funds writing first cheques?
14
15It’s (I think) a recognized fact that this is the case.
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17Is it because we are so close to the US ecosystem that the massive number of preseed funds there effectively cherry picks our top founders?
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19I have heard that Canadian pre-seed has the opposite problem. They have to wade through a lot of inbound in Canada (many low quality), but themselves have such small funds they deploy very little.
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21I have been thinking about what I did at Full Stack. The ecosystem was smaller then. There was no institutional preseed. 9 deals in 6 months made me one of the top investors in Canada. I say that not to boast, but show how low the bar was (is?).
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23I modeled smaller cheques with much higher velocity during the pandemic with Venture Scouts. Recently talked to [[Jesse Rodgers]] who is thinking something similar.
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25The model I have in mind would be
26- across Canada
27- scouts in every community (diverse young people)
28- 10k - 25k lead cheques - don’t need to wait for a lead, we say yes first
29- scouts check the hygiene - legal setup, founders reverse vesting etc
30- syndicate every deal
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3250 - 100 deals annually? One of the experiments here is if one can find and execute on this many.
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34Not all would be venture track, so slightly different [[IndieVC]] style deal terms might be needed.
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36Overhead is massive compared to capital deployed. Not enough AUM for management fees to pay for much.
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38What do you think?