Canadian Industry Acknowledges Kirchner role in the Industry

25 May 2009(Original Blog Date) – Interesting enough, many new VC faces are in fact venture capital knowledgeable operators and entrepreneurs. Others, like Bud Kirchner of Kirchner and Company are not only showing leadership, they are taking ownership!

The Kirchner and Company team have been extremely active and involved on both sides of the equation: as a VC, by partnering up with existing fund managers to raise funds and actively oversee direct investments such as with Avrio Ventures where Bud joined as a Partner; then, by being one of the most active investment bankers doing M&A and divestitures in Canada, sometimes representing the buy-side and other times assisting the sell-side; and finally, as a key partner to secondary fund managers, acquiring and managing the exit process for a broad range of portfolio companies (rumour is that they recently came to an agreement with Coller capital for the management of the old portfolio of Innovatech Montreal which was sold toColler in a secondary transaction a few years ago).

The following outlines what Kirchner & Company say makes them different. Funny thing is that it doesn’t sound any different, right? Wrong. Its different because Kirchner and Company, like many new entrants in the VC ecosystem, are building their business on new paradigms, where the people in the team are less alike, more complementary and more driven by entrepreneurial fuel. Just take a look at Kirchner’s recent additions to the team: Barry Gekiere (ex-Ventures West), Les Lyall (ex-Growthworks), Claude Vachet (ex-Multiple Capital), Andy Agrawal (entrepreneur), Chris Butlin (entrepreneur), Mike Cooke (entrepreneur)… and I can keep going. Doesn’t this start to sound way more like a next generation VC fund than the typical investment banking firm?

(Above is an excerpt from Capital Rants Blog written by Chris Arsenault Managing Partner & COO, iNovia Capital )

http://chrisarsenault.blogspot.com/2009/05/changing-face-of-canadian-vc-industry.html