Dont be surprise to see action The Quebec fund iNovia Capital strikes hard by recruiting two techno superstars, Google and BlackBerry, to help it bring forth the next giants of the web "made in Quebec".
"I do not want it to happen elsewhere. Why would it happen elsewhere? We have the potential to do it. We have the talent. We have the universities We have artificial intelligence.. We have the capital. And here we have mentoring with people who have already done it, "says iNovia Capital managing partner Chris Arsenault.
iNovia gets its hands on former vice president and chief financial officer of Google Patrick Pichette, who worked there until 2015. The Montrealer led the creation of Alphabet, parent company of Google. He has more than 200 acquisitions behind the tie and sits on Twitter's board of directors.
The venture capital firm also seduces former RIM (BlackBerry) vice president of finance Dennis Kavelman, who has boosted the company's revenues to $ 15 billion under his leadership with more than 14,000 employees worldwide.
With the arrival of these two big names, Chris Arsenault has the ambition to create thousands of jobs by propelling the growth of local companies, but he refuses for the moment to confirm the creation of a fund of half a billion US dollars to support them.
"We can not comment on the possibility of raising these funds because it would go against the rules of the Canadian Securities Administrators and the Autorit des marchs financiers," he says. .
Since its founding 11 years ago, iNovia Capital has raised more than $ 424 million, $ 110 million at launch, $ 134 million in 2011 and $ 180 million in 2015.
In the past 36 months alone, its portfolio companies raised more than $ 1.11 billion.