Early-stage,

nano VC

Incubators and startup bootcamps can provide useful learnings, but when you have a beta-version product and you're ready to focus on building, come to us! We write first cheques and, as former startup operators, we're glad to get our hands dirty with founders of ambitious, data-driven, software-focused startups.

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Supporting founders so they can make magic happen

A first investment cheque allows you to focus full-time on your venture and gives you the ability to hire. We're there for strategic advice, assistance with operations, introductions, or as your first beta testers; we've got your back!

Our Manifesto
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From early prototype to product/market fit

Goals: Generating recurring revenue, defining important metrics, and getting ready for a seed funding round.
Cash
Up to $100k
Office
Partner perks & discounts
Mentors
Expert mentors
Services
In-kind services
Cloud services
Cloud services credits
Direction
Experienced advice
Promotion
Visibility for your startup
Introductions
Introductions
Timer
No time-wasting

What's a hands-on investor?

Good question! We're looking to join you in the adventure, long-term. We believe in unstructured mentorship, sharing test and learn ideas, being a sounding board, and asking lots of questions. It should almost feel like you're getting our team as new minority co-founders.
We're not aiming to invest in more than 10 startups per year. Keeping the portfolio small means that we can best support all founder teams.
No hard deadlines, but targets are important. Startups should aim to cycle through build-test-learn phases to demonstrate early evidence of product/market fit in less than a year.
Target next fundraise round for portfolio startups in a VC-led seed funding round.
Vancouver, BC, Canada

We're in Vancouver, the ideal place to build your startup.

In addition to the natural beauty all around, the city is consistently rated as one of the world's most liveable cities in the world and always near the top in startup ecosystem rankings.

But just because we're here, doesn't mean you have to be!

Our investment thesis does include a geographical preference for very early-stage startups based anywhere in Western Canada, i.e. west of Toronto/Waterloo. In part this is because of the relatively larger "gap" in pre-seed venture funding compared to other regions.

We get it, finding a first investor is hard

It used to be that after love money, or a first angel investor, ambitious and talented founders could find seed investment. It's rarely the case now, with seed investors now looking for significant revenue or evidence of market traction.

We're here to fill that gap!

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  1. $

    Up to $100k investment

    Many founders don't have enough savings to quit their job or side hustle to work full-time on their innovative ventures. With our funding, up to 4 co-founders would have enough to cover their living expenses for a year and focus 100% of their efforts on building up their startup. There should be enough left over to hire freelancers, get a summer intern, pay for marketing experiments, etc.

  2. Office

    Intangible support & services

    Access to mentors and advisors (our team, our venture partners, our investors), active promotion, and all we can do to support you!

  3. Cloud credits

    $40k+ of cloud infrastructure

    Plenty of IaaS/PaaS credits to build on and experiment, in addition to other partner perks and discounts, e.g. deals on flexible meeting and desk space, $1k of Notion credits, etc.

What we're looking for

First, and foremost, we're looking to invest in founding teams that are ambitious, but also humble; hard-working is a given! 😅 The startup project should be beyond the idea stage, with at least a rudimentary prototype (ideally a beta-version product) and preferably 2 to 4 co-founders with diverse and complimentary backgrounds.


Our initial investment interests encompass the dual themes of smarter communities & smarter data systems.

These include solutions addressing the following problem spaces:
Smarter decision-making Identity Trust Personalization Controlled data sharing Privacy Data traceability Environmental sustainability Security Technological accessibility Future of work
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