Introducing Northside Ventures’ inaugural venture fund targeting $15m to support the next generation of exceptional Canadian founders across North America
Alex McIsaac here!
I’m excited to announce Northside Ventures’ inaugural fund focused on backing exceptional Canadian founders in both the US and Canada at the pre-seed and seed stages with cheques from $100k to $500k.
Why I’m Launching a Fund
After 12 years in the Canadian tech ecosystem as both an operator and investor I observed a major gap in the Canadian pre-seed venture category where there has been insufficient institutional capital invested into founders who are still pre-revenue and pre-product.
Northside Ventures aims to fill this gap by bringing both early stage institutional fund investment experience and operational startup experience to founders at the point of company inception. From my time as a Principal investor at BDC Capital and as a Partner at Global Founders Capital, I’ve built relationships domestically and internationally and aim to provide founders with access to the best networks around the world to help them grow into category defining companies.
Our Mission
The fund’s mission is to back exceptional founders whose unique insight from past experiences provides a competitive edge in their next venture and who possess a deep ambition to build a global company that transforms our world’s future.
Collectively aligned with the mission, the fund’s limited partners bring a wide range of networks and experience to the portfolio including many funds capable of providing follow-on capital and successful founders, executives and senior employees from companies including:
Why Now
There are more startups launched by exceptional Canadian founders today than ever before. Canadian founders are more experienced now due to a greater number of companies reaching the growth stage, the rise of big tech companies in Canada, increased venture capital investment, and an historic surge of liquidity events over the last few years.
Stage Focus
We invest at the pre-seed and seed stage and participate in the company’s first round of external capital, often at the point of company ideation and inception.
Cheque Size
Initial cheques are $100k — $500k.
Categories of Interest
We believe in a versatile approach to early-stage investing, prioritizing categories that hold the potential to greatly transform our world’s future.
Core investment categories include: artificial intelligence, B2B SaaS, fintech and cleantech.
Founder Focus
We take a founder-first approach to investing meaning we index most heavily on the founding team in our evaluation and diligence process. We take time to understand a founder’s journey, motivations, insights derived from past experiences and their vision. We value a founder’s ideation process, their approach to customer discovery and strategy for solving big problems. We look for founders with a sense of urgency, high intellectual velocity, the ambition to build something massive, and the resilience to realize their vision.
Value Add
Once we invest, we prioritize supporting founders across three areas:
- Helping founders secure their first 10 customers and find product-market fit
- Supporting founders to raise their next round of capital
- Always available as a sounding board for ideas and advice
Stay in Touch
You can visit our website northside.ventures to sign up for updates or follow us on LinkedIn and X (Twitter).
Intact Ventures DesignTM is a trademark of Intact Financial Corporation. All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
