Monday, February 2, 2009

Quick update !

OK, so after, what, 7 months, I feel some blog posts slowly forming in my big hairy head, and thus, the urge to freshen up and possibly even resuscitate (once more) this one corner of my ever-more fragmented web presence.

So, as my last post from last summer hinted at, I joined the JLA Ventures team as an associate in late June. It's been exciting times since then, with my time spread between portfolio companies and considering new deals in JLA's Fund IV and looking at hundreds of business plans and working on the first few deals closed with the BlackBerry Partners Fund. BBPF is a $150 M fund that we co-manage with the fine folks at RBC Venture Partners and which was conveniently raised just before I joined. I am still based in Montreal, working out of an small 2-guy office that I share with Pierre Donaldson (JLA partner) and one brand new coffee machine (it's a very cheap one, but, hey, RIP Good Times, right ?).

We spend pretty much every Monday in Toronto, in partner meetings where we mostly argue with Rick about which city has the best bagels (hint: not Toronto), sometimes with samples provided.

So that's the important stuff. More to come on the rest of it.
I am speaking tomorrow on a panel at the Canada-France VC Forum, on the lengthy topic of "How to get returns given the current economic situation and exit context?". I'll try to make a not-too-lengthy blog post out of it.

Cheers.

(oh, I didn't get the Voodoo, I went for the Dell Latitude XT. I really, really don't love Vista, but I'm enjoying working with a tablet and I am as close as you can get to being paperless).