World Class Venture Capital Firm Reveals Why It Loves Canada

American Venture capital firm Rho Ventures has so far invested $150 million in Canadian startups through its new fund dedicated to technology investments, Rho Canada Ventures.  The fund makes early-stage investments in new media, mobile applications, wireless infrastructure, semiconductors and software.

In a string of recent videos, Rho Ventures explains its reasons for launching in Canada and future plans for investing in our nation’s startups.

Jeff Grammer, managing partner, presented Rho Canada Ventures as a world class investor committed to Montreal entrepreneurs. Rho Canada was launched in 2006 with $100M to invest exclusively in Canada.  In six years, Rho Canada invested in 20 companies.

Rho has now launched a second fund in 2012 with another $100 million for Canada.  In six years, Rho Canada has met over 700 Canadian firms and around 300 from Montreal.

What attracted this important venture capital firm in Canada is the quality of the entrepreneurs, the proliferation of new tech funds, the growth of tech accelerators and many good angels’ investors.  Furthermore, Montreal and Canada overall, have world class universities.

Jeff Grammer explains Rho’s presence in Canada.

Rho invests in all stages of development of the tech firms: seed stage, later stage and great universities.  The success of Rho Canada Ventures demonstrates clearly that one can grow tech businesses outside of Silicon Valley, New York or Boston.

Mr. Habib Kairouz, Managing Partner of Rho Capital Partners, argues in another video that Quebec and Canada now represent primary markets for Rho Ventures with Rho Canada Ventures II. The complementarities between Rho and major VC in Quebec such as Caisse de dépôt et de Placement, Fonds de Solidarité FTQ and Investissement Québec, should mean that more tech investments should proliferate in Quebec in a near future. Rho aims to bring the ingredients that were missing to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Canada.

Mr. Kairouz concluded that the good performance of Rho Canada Ventures will probably attract other foreign venture capital firms in Canada.