Remember how I said the NB government should develop a strong plan for economic development and then go ask the Feds to partner? I think that has to be the model. Take this new fund for Quebec. Various funding agencies in Quebec have partnered with the Feds through the BDC.
When Premier Graham announced a new program for SME funding, maybe it would have made sense to structure it like this program below and get lots of Federal dough:
New technology investment fund launched
The Montreal Gazette
Published: Friday, November 17, 2006
The Federal and Quebec governments Friday announced a new investment fund managed by the Business Development Bank of Canada to provide “pre-seed” finance for new high-tech businesses in such fields as information technology, life sciences and telecommunications.
The GO-Capital Fund has an initial $50 million to help start-ups and this rises to $100 million with BDC funds. Maxime Bernier, Federal Industry Minister, said talks are under way with Ontario and Alberta to set up similar funds and eventually the program will extend to all provinces.
“Universities produce legions of ideas from their research but the developers often lack the money and knowhow to create viable businesses,” said the BDC’s CEO Jean-Rene Halde. “We’re aiming to fill that gap and help Quebec’s technology firms grow and compete internationally.”
BDC is a big player in Canadian venture capital and will work with private-sector funds to bring such companies as far as initial public offerings, he said.
G0 Capital’s indirect contributors include the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, the union-backed Quebec Solidarity Fund and Fondaction, and the Mouvement Desjardins.
Information Security & Misuse Protection Leader Secures $3.3 Million USD In New Financing Led By Venture Capital Firms BDC & NBIMC
ATLANTA, Jan. 20 /PRNewswire/ — Q1 Labs (http://www.q1labs.com ), a leader in
the development of network security and misuse management solutions, today
announced that it has received approximately $ 3.3 million, USD in its initial
round of financing led by Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) and New
Brunswick Investment Management Corporation (NBIMC).
BDC Venture Capital is a leading venture capital investor focused on
technology-based businesses with strong growth potential. NBIMC is the second
largest institutional investor in Atlantic Canada and one of the largest
private equity investors in the region.
Q1 Labs intends to utilize the capital inflow to focus on responding to
strong customer opportunities, to further grow market share, continue building
key partnerships, and deliver on its mission to become the market leader in
network misuse protection. Q1 Labs will focus on delivering solutions to key
enterprise target markets including financial services and government
organizations.
Q1 Labs delivers a view-based threat and misuse management platform, that
due to its innovative design, enables organizations to more quickly identify,
respond and resolve network misuse in real time.
“In today’s economic environment, CIOs are charged with delivering
outstanding economic results on new technology investments. We have been able
to demonstrate these results for our customers very effectively,” said Brian
Flood, CEO of Q1 Labs.
As a part of this funding, Q1 Labs will add BDC’s Tony Van Bommel as well
as NBIMC’s George Long to its board of directors. Both Tony and George bring
experience in helping companies reach new levels of growth. Their experience
will be a strategic part of Q1 Labs’ success.
“With Q1 Labs, we saw a solid investment,” said Tony Van Bommel, portfolio
director at BDC Venture Capital. “We saw a powerful network security and
misuse solution that enables organizations to optimize their operations, while
providing an easy to understand method of identifying, responding and
resolving security issues.”
According to Ernie MacKinnon, President and CEO of NBIMC, “With Q1 Labs,
we saw a company that was able to establish an enterprise customer base while
in bootstrap mode. In our view it is a strong indication of a business that
will achieve success.”
John Qian, Network Manager at Agile Software describes QVISION(TM) as, “A
unique product with great vision in network management…I was looking for a
product that could demonstrate a true economic impact on an operational level.
BANG! QVISION(TM) made it easy. Qian also said that Q1 Labs was able to take
data from their existing security products, such as IDS, and provide a view of
what was really happening in their network.
About QVISION
QVISION(TM), by Q1 Labs, Inc. provides a view-based approach for quickly
identifying misuse and threats to your enterprise network, leveraging your
existing infrastructure for more efficient security & performance management,
significant reduction in false positives associated with other security
technologies and extensive correlation, response and forensic capabilities for
preventing internal & external intrusions. QVISION’s (TM) ability to quickly
drill down through specific areas of concern and provide more meaningful
information enables an organization to more quickly and efficiently take
corrective action.
About BDC Venture Capital
BDC Venture Capital is a leading venture capital investor in Canada,
active at every stage of a company’s development cycle, from start-up through
expansion. Its focus is on technology-based businesses with high growth
potential that are positioned to become dominant players in their markets.
BDC Venture Capital has been involved in venture capital since 1975 and has
invested in more than 400 different companies. It currently manages over $400
million in venture capital assets and almost 100% of its portfolio is invested
in the areas of life sciences, telecommunications, information technology and
advanced technologies.
About NBIMC
The New Brunswick Investment Management Corporation (NBIMC) is the trustee
and investment manager for the pension assets of 43,000 plan members of the
Public Service, Teachers’ and Judges’ pension plans.
Located in Fredericton, New Brunswick, it is the second largest investment
manager in Atlantic Canada with assets totaling $5.8 billion under management
at March 31, 2002. NBIMC has set a goal of building a portfolio of $60
million in private investments in the region.
About Q1 Labs
Q1 Labs, an innovator in view-based network security management and misuse
monitoring, is a privately funded Delaware corporation that was founded in
February 2001. Its technology was in development for two years prior to the
company’s inception. Q1 Labs Inc. develops software technology for the
protection of information and against misuse of network assets within an
enterprise. Visit Q1 Labs at http://www.q1labs.com .
Although initiated at UNB, there is no indication I found that they even have a setup in NB anymore (I’d happily be proved wrong). So this is an example of the aforementioned partnership, ironically going to company’s that don’t even employ New Brunswickers (again, somebody should check and hopefully I’m wrong).
An interesting ‘perk’ is that NBIMF now sits on the CHAIR of the company, making one wonder who exactly they are looking out for.
Again, with that many billions, its pretty hard to gripe at the feds for not investing in the province when the province won’t even do it.
“New technology investment fund launched”
Why would you want to do that, David?
It was you who proved [right on this blog] that New Brunswickers have some of the lowest frequencies of use when it comes to the internet and technology in Canada.
IMHO, skilled trades and labour jobs are what need to be looked into and developed more here, especially in slow growth areas. We have the necessary labour force for it.
As for technology, well remember, as Liberal Dominic Leblanc once said, “people in my riding think the internet is a hair spray; they know a great deal about wharfs, roads and community centres, but not about the new economy!”
Like Leblanc, forgive me if I don’t get all excited about these things announced from the ivory towers of Industry Canada. I guess that’s the difference between you and me, you’re a economic purest and I’m a political realist. And you know from the past what wins the day here in New Brunswick. trust me David, I really wish it were the reverse.
I was going to say, if you can list ten pre commercial research companies in the province then I’d love to see it.
I agree with Scott, and as mentioned dozens of times, a quick look at the organizations shows that many have viable business proposals. The problem with many of them is that the feds are actively screwing them over, while in forestry its extremely difficult to get away from the big five. There are huge opportunities in forestry and fishing, but it takes work. That wont happen when the main representative areas are urban centres with no interest in such things.