Trade Video
Multimedia CentreVenture Capital Connections
The TCS helps Canadian companies find venture capital in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley, April 2nd, 2009
Duration: 8:58 minutes
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Venture Capital Connections
Michael Mancini: I’m here with Thierry Weissenburger, Senior Trade Commissioner of the Canadian Consulate General in San Francisco, Silicon Valley. Thank you very much for taking this time today. So here we are at the Canadian Technology Accelerator. First of all, can you tell me what that is?
Thierry Weissenburger: That’s the place whereby a company can spend free of charge three months and it gets a suite of specialized services from the Trade Commissioner’s service in the region. Also they’ll benefit from that very special ecosystem which is Plug and Play, which is a very successful for profit incubator that gathers approximately 200 companies, start-ups, small and medium sized companies and the whole purpose being to expose those companies to investors, to corporate partners, to clients at the end of the day. Also HQ, human resources, everything they need for them to grow fast.
Michael Mancini: Why was this Accelerator created in the first place?
Thierry Weissenburger: First of all, the demand from our clients – what we noticed, there’s a huge demand from small companies that basically are both global and want to expand quickly and of course the Silicon Valley is still the Holy Grail of IT. So they approach us and they want introductions to venture capital, to strategic partners, the biggies of the Valley – HP, Cisco, all these big global IT companies. That’s what we do. We introduce them to these companies but it’s in a fairly ad hoc way. They come for a couple of days, maybe a week at most. Sometimes they strike a deal but it’s very unlikely. In reality you have to spend the time here to cultivate, to network, to cultivate those contacts. So the idea basically comes from there. We want to give a very intense exposure of companies that we feel are ready to live that experience for three months. After three months they’ll be able to assess whether they should continue that journey and invest more time. Maybe after three months they will already have striked some success. We hope but more likely they will not, because it takes a lot of time to break in procurement departments in big companies or to convince a VC to invest. Due diligence on average takes more than six months. It takes time, but three months is probably enough to assess their capabilities. In three months they’ll be able to meet all the players that they need to see, line up all the appointments they need to do. Plug and Play as the title says it. It’s plug and play. I mean, you arrive – there’s no hassle about administration, setting up an office, all those things. The next day you’re on the ground and you’re making calls. We just support the Trade Commissioners service and Plug and Play team.
Michael Mancini: So basically this Canadian Technology Accelerator is within Plug and Play. How do Canadian companies get signed up to be here?
Thierry Weissenburger: There are several ways. Canadian companies, through TCS services approach the consulate to receive services. So we work with a roster of companies in the IT area in that case, clients with whom we have developed privileged relationships. Also, we run a series of boot camps across Canada. We had a series last week, March 16th to the 20th, across five cities in Eastern Canada. We intend to have another run in September in Western Canada. Basically that’s an opportunity to qualify, prepare those companies that would best use their time and their energy in this Accelerator Centre.
Michael Mancini: Tell me a little bit about what’s involved. Basically a Canadian company comes here. They’re set up – they have an office space that they can work from. How does this environment facilitate making those connections with those companies, with those key players? Do the companies do it themselves?
Thierry Weissenburger: Both – of course, this is entrepreneurs we are talking about that are dynamic. We want people that can do a lot of things themselves. We basically provide them with an environment where these things are easier and more intense. At any single day in the Plug and Play, in that place, there is one or two networkings available with VCs. There is some of the VCs, some of the angels, they have offices here. Corporate players always roam the place. Also a very important factor is the peer to peer interaction. As I said, just in this building there’s 200 entrepreneurs, companies, that you can share best practices, share contacts. It’s a fairly open innovational environment and that’s the whole spirit of the Valley. That’s why going here in the Valley first of all, but in such a place where through our services we also facilitate that process, makes a lot of sense. You basically maximize your time, reduce the amount of time you would have to spend to meet all the people you need to see to assess your chance to make it in this market.
Michael Mancini: Great. Now we’re about to go in and we’re about to meet some Canadian companies who are doing just that.
Thierry Weissenburger: Let’s go.
Bill Faulkner: Like a lot of exporters in Canada we do about 95% of our business in the US and so we’re about 15 years old. We’re still an early stage company but with 95% of our business happening down here we need to have a presence here. This part of the country, Silicon Valley in particular, is very important for us because we’re looking to develop some strategic relationships, do some business development and look at some investment possibilities as well – companies to invest in. We really felt we needed to have a presence here and we were wondering how we would manage that. Then this project came along and it was kind of a serendipitous thing for us. That stars all kind of aligned and we were fortunate to be selected to be here. This is our first week here and they had the ribbon cutting I think it was Monday. We had a reception. We had some angels around. They had a really good selection of people, people from Intel and that kind of stuff. I’m happy to say that from that first day we’ve already had … usually what happens is you meet some VCs, try to look sexy and then call them and hope they remembered you, right, so they’ll ask you out. I was fortunate enough that the guy from Intel and another one of the angels contacted me before I got a chance to contact them, just from the conversation we had that night. We feel we’re off to a really good start.
Mike John-Baptiste: Most of our engineers are based in Toronto. I live in San Francisco. I was hired in the company two months ago because we needed the application of our technology, was really important in the US market, in particular in the Bay area. So I am a Canadian citizen from Toronto originally. I’m currently working out of my house. I’ve got another colleague of mine that’s working out of his house and a third who commutes from the Sacramento area on weekends. We’re very dispersed but trying to bring some energy and focus to the business in California. Plug and Play Centre is a gathering place. It’s an infrastructure. It feels like a bigger business. I think we’ll be inspired to be here together and be more focused around what we do. The venture capital community in the United States is really looking for referenceable customers that are known names in the US market. Physically being here in the San Francisco Bay area and being physically accessible to the venture capitalists here is critical.
Glenn Dirks: Actually we just started here about a week and a half, two weeks ago. So we’re new just like some of the other members but already we’ve seen some opportunities. I think the real benefit, because there are so many start-ups here and as we get visibility I think one of the most exciting things is there’s a sense of buzz about the whole building. In spite of the economic downturn here in the Valley, you see less traffic, you see less activity – you come here and the place is full. The parking lot is full. You go upstairs and the lunch room and invariably there are people at any number of tables that are drawing and comparing business plans and strategies. So it’s just a real dynamic mix of ideas and interaction. We’ve already run across a number of different companies where we see some opportunity for synergy either with our own business strategies or with some channel partners or things like that, that we’ve been able to put people in touch with each other. It’s truly a networking opportunity.
