Follow-up post: Do We Need a Dedicated Medtech Startup Venture Fund in Canada?

My most recent blog post stirred a lot of interest from many followers. Several people provided very good comments and questions, including: ”Given the convincing nature of (my) case, what do we need to do and do we have the necessary ingredients to make a dedicated Medtech venture fund happen?”

In other words – to borrow from my previous “chicken and egg” question – now that the initial egg has been cracked, do we have enough to make a great omelette?

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Here’s my answer: Yes, we have five of the six critical ingredients, and maybe we have the sixth.

The five we have for sure are:

1.  Growing interest and innovation skills coming out of our healthcare and biomedical engineering institutions.

2.  Critical Medtech deal flow, given the success of several accelerators across the city of Montreal and the province of Quebec.

3.  Ready access to Accelerators and mentors with successful healthcare entrepreneurial experience to assist our young entrepreneurs.

4.  Healthy and growing ecosystems in Healthcare and AI.

5.  Strong support from both the Provincial and Federal Governments.

The sixth ingredient - hopefully a fixable one that can turn from a maybe into a yes - relates to how a venture fund is created.

A venture fund is made up of one or more investors called limited partners or “LP’s”. To finalize the terms and mandate of the fund requires one of them to lead the negotiation process with the fund’s founding partners (called managing partners or “MP’s”).

A lead typically requires skill and experience in the space (in this case, Medtech), as well as deep pockets. These players/funders are often called “fund of funds (or FoF’s) ”.

In Canada, several prominent FoF’s exist: Teralys Capital, Northleaf, and BDC Strategic Fund are three of them. All three funds have the know-how and resources to lead this needed initiative.

It bears repeating: We need to keep up with the rest of the world when it comes to Medtech innovation and development .

A dedicated Medtech fund is a critical element of the evolving ecosystem here in Quebec and across Canada.