A well-known figure in the National Capital Region’s tech community is leading a new venture aimed at bankrolling high-potential startups on the Gatineau side of the river.
Nolan Beanlands has partnered with several entrepreneurs to launch Aventure Capital, a new organization with a mission to help finance emerging tech companies in Gatineau that may not have ready access to early stage seed funding.
It’s a return to familiar territory for Beanlands, who most recently spent almost two years as head of corporate development and strategic partnerships at Ottawa software firm Rewind before officially assuming the role of managing director at Aventure Capital this month.
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Before joining Rewind’s executive team, the 33-year-old University of Waterloo engineering alumnus was the head of the Capital Angel Network from 2017 to late 2021. He followed that up with a 10-month stint as manager of early stage investments at BridgeGreen Capital, the family office for shareholders of real estate giant Minto Group.
Beanlands knows the region’s tech sector as well as anyone. He says that while up-and-coming entrepreneurs in Ottawa are well-served by organizations such as CAN, there are far fewer early stage financing options for tech founders on the Quebec side.
As a board member at tech incubator and accelerator Institut Innovation Gatineau, Beanlands saw firsthand the need for a new approach to boosting startups in that part of the region. He says past early stage funding initiatives in Gatineau often failed because they didn’t understand the needs of local entrepreneurs.
“It was really putting a square peg into a round hole,” Beanlands explained, adding he hopes the new venture will help “unlock the capital that’s available within that ecosystem” and encourage a pattern of successful founders returning some of their earnings to the city’s startup community.
“That’s the cycle that needs to be kickstarted in Gatineau, and we really hope that we’re the ones to get it going,” he told Techopia this week.
Aventure Capital’s investors include Macadamian Technologies founder Fred Boulanger. Beanlands said he, Boulanger and the organization’s other founders “explored a number of different models” before choosing the “syndicate” approach of targeting successful business leaders from a range of industries who might not have the time or expertise to be actively involved in growing the tech ecosystem but still wish to support promising startups.
It’s a bit of a contrast to the more hands-on approach favoured by many investors in groups such as CAN who tend to be more immersed in the tech sector, Beanlands noted.
“To me, this is a very different audience in that it’s people who may not necessarily know a whole lot about angel investing,” he said, adding the model is “very popular” south of the border.
“We feel that we can provide some very good insight to them as to what opportunities are exciting.”
The organization has already gained the support of several key groups in Gatineau’s startup community, including Institut Innovation Gatineau, fellow local tech incubator Cilex and economic development agency Investissement et Développement Gatineau.
Beanlands says Gatineau’s tech leaders “really see the opportunity within the market” for a committed group of angel investors. He believes that, despite the recent downturn in Canada’s VC funding landscape, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the industry’s future.
“There continues to be new technologies created, there continues to be a number of problems that technology can solve, and there is no shortage of brilliant people who are actively trying to solve those problems,” he said.
“Especially for this early stage of investing, I’m less concerned than perhaps a series-B stage investor who has deployed some of their capital already, who is worried if the IPO markets are not as in line as they’d like.”
Beanlands said strengthening Gatineau’s tech community will ultimately benefit the entire region.
“We’re one big metropolitan area, and sometimes unfortunately the river feels like a lake or an ocean,” he added. “We hope to be a bridge to bring those ecosystems together and allow for more of this type of activity all around.”
