Venture Capital in Québec, Q3 2007 figures (3)
November 15th, 2007 · by Heri · startups
Réseau Capital has released yesterday a study about venture funding in Québec and in Canada. The study is in french and is 8 pages long; you can find it in their “communiqués” area.
Some key figures:
- They have observed a 30% growth in VC investments from year-to-year
- Meanwhile, the rest of Canada went through 47% growth. Québec takes up 25% of all investments
- Information technology takes 49% of all investments, 40% is in biotechnology and pharma
- Expanding companies represented 78% of these investments, while startups and early-stage companies took the rest. Investments to startups declined 26% in Q3 2007
- Montreal and the greater Montreal area takes 82% of all those investments in Quebec
- Foreign investments represent 30% of all VC investments in Québec
- In information technology, telecommunications companies received $25 million, software companies received $12 million, electronics and semi-conductor companies received $10 million, and Internet companies like Praized or Weblo got a total of $6 million
The key figure I am not so happy with here is the decline in funding to startups, it has seen 26% decline in Québec this year, while it has grown outside Québec. However, all the figures are rising, and I don’t think one should be too alarmed at the state of VC funding.
Over all, the number of investment, dollar amounts are very good, but I’m convinced start ups did not fare well. We should take example from Ontario that just announce the creation of a 165M$ fund (with BDC and Manuvie) aimed at start-ups.
fiy, investments were proportional to those found in the US in the late 90′s. investments plunged in canada after the dot com crash, and haven’t really recovered yet, especially in IT.
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