- Canadian venture capital firm Portag3 Ventures announced it closed a second fund at $427 million CAD
Portag3 Ventures — a Canadian venture capital firm that makes early-stage investments in promising financial tech companies — announced it has closed a second fund at $427 million CAD. With this fund, Portag3 Ventures is going to invest in companies globally with a focus on Canada-based startups.
“We’re on a mission to build global champions from a Canadian base,” said Portag3 CEO Adam Felesky in an interview with TechCrunch. “Canada has the talent, the expertise and one of the biggest markets in the world directly to our south. All the ingredients are there, we just need more success stories – and we are on our way to getting them. Success will breed more success. In order to understand what it takes to succeed globally, you need to invest and work with the best of the best from around the world. Many of the early fintech unicorns are based in Europe on the back of substantive, helpful policy changes. Canada needs to learn from these examples so we get the right ingredients for building a leading, vibrant ecosystem – and we slowly but surely are.”
Alterna Savings and Credit Union, Aviva France, BDC Capital, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, CNP Assurances, The Co-operators, Eldridge Industries, and Green Shield Canada are some of the LPs in this fund.
The Portag3 Fund II has made several investors already. Some of the companies that received an investment from that fund include KOHO, Clark, Integrate.ai, Diagram Ventures, and 13 other startups. And its first fund invested in several financial technology companies such as Clearbanc, Drop, League, and Wealthsimple.
In conjunction with this funding, Portag3 also recently set up a new group of senior advisors to advise the companies it invests in. The advisors include Rockefeller Capital Management CEO and president Gregory J. Fleming and former AIG president and CEO Peter Hancock.
Executives at Portag3 include Felesky, executive chairman Paul Desmarais, managing partner and president Samuel D. Robinson, partner and CFO Stephan Klee, CTO Kris Hansen, partner Stephanie Choo, partner Sacha Haque, partner Ben Harrison, partner Hélène Falchier, partner Francois Lafortune, senior advisor Nick Hungerford, principal Leslie Hill, principal Melissa Gasser, VP of Finance Amer Javed, director of corporate finance David Fraser, senior legal counsel Junaid Subhan, senior sales principal Brendan Callaghan, and CIO Adam Vigna.
