Trillick has closed nearly a third of its $15-million target and made three investments.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In Manitoba\u2019s technology sector, many founders are forced to look beyond the province for funding. Manitoba has historically garnered a disproportionately small share of the venture capital (VC) dollars invested in Canada compared to other provinces.<\/p>\n
\n\u201c[We\u2019re] the most underrepresented province in all of Canada for [VC] and we want to change that.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Despite being home to 3.6 percent of Canada\u2019s population, last year, less than one percent of VC investment in Canada went to Manitoban startups, according to the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA). The CVCA\u2019s 2024 report<\/a> found a mere $2 million CAD was invested in Manitoba\u2014a 96-percent year-over-year drop\u2014across four deals.<\/p>\n
Winnipeg-based Trillick Ventures<\/a> hopes to help turn the tide. The recently-launched VC firm is raising a $15-million fund to back early-stage Manitoba tech startups and connect investors from other parts of the country with the province\u2019s budding tech ecosystem.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognize that Manitoba is really far behind \u2026 [we\u2019re] the most underrepresented province in all of Canada for [VC] and we want to change that,\u201d Trillick founder and general partner Iain Crozier told BetaKit in an interview.<\/p>\n
Crozier believes that Manitoba\u2019s tech ecosystem has \u201cthe foundation\u201d for success, thanks in part to the growth of homegrown Winnipeg tech firms like checkout software provider Bold Commerce<\/a>, challenger bank Neo Financial<\/a>, and food delivery company SkipTheDishes<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Trillick has secured nearly $5 million towards its $15-million target to date, after holding its first close in February and its second in March. The firm intends to hold another close at the end of April, and Crozier said it ultimately hopes to secure the remainder of its goal by August, as it continues fundraising amid particularly challenging market conditions<\/a>.<\/p>\n
RELATED: <\/strong>Taiv acquihires fellow Canadian adtech firm Local Reach to aid expansion plans<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
The fund\u2019s current limited partner (LP) base consists primarily of high-net-worth individuals, including Manitoba tech entrepreneurs and leaders like Taiv<\/a> co-founder and CEO Noah Palansky, ConstructionClock co-founder and CFO Dominique Smith, Chekkit co-founder and COO Emily Franz-Lien, and Bold Commerce<\/a> co-founder and former CEO Yvan Boisjoli\u2014now the COO of Trillick portfolio company Parallel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tech Manitoba chair and Women\u2019s Equity Lab Manitoba managing partner Sandy Foster, who wrote the first cheques into SkipTheDishes and Taiv, and was an early investor in Callia, is also an LP in Trillick\u2019s first fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year, when I get that map of Canada and the [VC] investment in every province, and it\u2019s not applicable or not available for Manitoba, it\u2019s depressing,\u201d Foster told BetaKit in an interview. \u201cI believe that it\u2019s time that we have a locally-based [VC] fund.\u201d<\/p>\n
With subsequent closings, Trillick hopes to attract capital from institutions and family offices. To round out its team, Crozier has brought on Palansky, TriplePlay<\/a> co-founder and ex-CEO Mark Hlady, and former BDC Capital Seed Venture Fund<\/a> principal Saif Hashmi as venture partners. This trio also sits on Trillick\u2019s investment committee alongside Crozier.<\/p>\n
The fund has made three investments to date, including social shopping platform Parallel and event hosting and management software startup 3Common. Outside of Trillick, Crozier has also independently invested in construction industry time-tracking app ConstructionClock.<\/p>\n
RELATED: <\/strong>Manitoba launches new innovation and tech department amid cabinet refresh<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
Through its first fund, Trillick aims to back 20 to 25 pre-seed and seed-stage tech companies and lead financings for Manitoba startups. It has dedicated two-thirds of its fund to startups in the province, with 25 percent of its total capital reserved for follow-on investments in top performers. To help it fill out the remainder of rounds, the VC firm is allocating the remaining third of its fund to supporting other VC leads in deals outside of Manitoba.<\/p>\n
Crozier said this will give Trillick\u2019s LPs exposure to not just promising Manitoba startups, but nationwide deal flow, and help the firm build relationships with investors across the country and bring them into deals in Manitoba.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be an ambassador for our province,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Crozier said with so few Manitoba tech entrepreneurs finding funding in the province, companies are inadvertently raising a red flag for investors who ask why they are not able to raise money in their own backyards\u2014making the province\u2019s paucity of deals a self-compounding problem.<\/p>\n
In an interview with BetaKit, Boisjoli noted that many of Manitoba\u2019s most successful tech companies were entirely bootstrapped, while the startups that did secure funding were often forced to move to markets where their investors resided, such as Toronto or the United States. \u201cThe idea of raising money and building a company in Winnipeg was just not something you heard about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
RELATED: <\/strong>Winnipeg tech hubs merge to revitalize Manitoba\u2019s startup ecosystem<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
For Bold Commerce, seeking early-stage funding \u201cwas a foreign concept,\u201d Boisjoli said. The e-commerce developer bootstrapped for approximately seven years, focusing its efforts on building a profitable company without any outside investment, before ultimately securing a sizable first financing<\/a> from outside of Manitoba to scale its business in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some really talented, smart people in Manitoba that just never get looked at when they need to raise money,\u201d Boisjoli said. As a Trillick LP, he hopes to help change that.<\/p>\n
The Government of Manitoba launched<\/a> a fund-of-funds in 2022 to help attract more capital to the province. The province has committed $100 million towards the Manitoba First Fund (MFF), which has committed $75 million across five funds to date, including TriWest Capital Partners, PFM Capital, Tall Grass Ventures<\/a>, Pine Hill Capital, and the WestCap-managed Connect Manitoba Growth Fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe idea of raising money and building a company in Winnipeg was just not something you heard about.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n
Yvan Boisjoli, <\/strong>
Parallel<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\nAll five of these firms are headquartered outside of Manitoba and are required to establish a presence in the province as a condition of MFF\u2019s support. The majority focus on more established companies rather than early-stage startups. Asked whether MFF intends to back more early-stage investors based in Manitoba in the future, MFF CEO Ken Ross told BetaKit that MFF is currently \u201cin various stages of discussion with a number of early capital funds.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Manitoba is home to some angel groups and wealthy individuals who invest in startups, its institutional VC landscape is scarce: aside from Winnipeg-based Red Leaf Capital, Trillick appears to be the only other VC firm headquartered in Manitoba.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is certainly a need for early capital (pre-seed, seed, Series A funding) and I hope [Trillick is] successful,\u201d Ross said.<\/p>\n
Crozier, who was born and raised in Manitoba, began his career outside the province working in sales and construction for his father\u2019s company, which built playgrounds for schools and municipalities. After leaving and spending some time helping other entrepreneurs, Crozier built a wine recommendation app called Taistr before returning to startup coaching, including with Platform Calgary, eventually coming back to Manitoba in 2023 to raise his family there.<\/p>\n
Upon returning, Crozier said he quickly became aware of the \u201cvery weak access to capital\u201d in Manitoba\u2019s tech ecosystem. \u201cI saw it as a really big opportunity to bring a traditional [VC] fund to Manitoba,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Last fall, the Manitoba government launched an innovation<\/a> and technology department aimed at growing the province\u2019s tech sector. And earlier this year, Tech Manitoba and the Manitoba Technology Accelerator announced a merger<\/a> to create Manitoba Innovates and the launch of a new funding program for early-stage startups. Crozier and Boisjoli both hailed these moves as positive developments for Manitoba\u2019s tech ecosystem.<\/p>\n
\u201cManitoba is very traditionally a government, agriculture, and manufacturing province\u2014those are our three main sectors,\u201d Crozier said. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason why we can\u2019t add tech to it, because we\u2019ve got the buddings of a really, really terrific sector to grow here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feature image courtesy Trillick Ventures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trillick has closed nearly a third of its $15-million target and made three investments. In Manitoba\u2019s technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3094],"tags":[18001,17993,51,18002,17996,17997,3134,5036,17989,17991,6607,17998,17995,18000,18003,17999,17992,17988,16,15,16097,17994,17990],"class_list":{"0":"post-30094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-3common","9":"tag-bold-commerce","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-constructionclock","12":"tag-dominique-smith","13":"tag-emily-franz-lien","14":"tag-entrepreneurship","15":"tag-funding","16":"tag-iain-crozier","17":"tag-ken-ross","18":"tag-manitoba","19":"tag-mark-hlady","20":"tag-noah-palansky","21":"tag-parallel","22":"tag-prairies","23":"tag-saif-hashmi","24":"tag-sandy-foster","25":"tag-trillick-ventures","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom","28":"tag-vc","29":"tag-winnipeg","30":"tag-yvan-boisjoli"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114358753863992439","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}