Billions With Zero Knowledge - Austin Hill, Entrepreneur & Angel Investor

I’m incredibly proud to be part of the new Montreal Startup fund that launched this week.

Montreal Startup is a new $3 million dollar angel-backed seed fund, that is run by John Stokes & Daniel Drouet.  Both John and Daniel are very active in the local startup community and did an incredible job in securing the support & involvement of many of the cities angels and structuring a fund that is focused on a gap in the funding market.

Alongside my friends Alan Macintosh, Jean-Sebastien Cournoyer - I am involved a both as an investor & board member of the fund.  The rest of the investors include a who’s who of the cities seasoned & successful entrepreneurs with generous investment support from Investissement Quebec

Montreal Startup will be focused on seed stage investments where we will be assisting entrepreneurs in building venture ready companies by providing critical funding and mentorship.

You can read more about the funds focus in this announcement.

Kristina Tomaz-Young at VC-TV has a two posts about the launch up.

She also has some video from this weeks press conference up which I’m including here.

As Jevon points out on StartupNorth, a $3 million dollar fund isn’t a large fund for Canada but with our focus on seed style investments and the combination of the advisory capital with capital investments for early stage projects we are confident that this will help meet a needed gap in Montreal.  I also know of similar projects being initiated in Toronto & Vancouver and we hope this fund can serve as a model for replication across Canada.

In addition to the launch of the fund, Montreal Startup announced their investment in Standout Jobs.   As Ben points out, Montreal Startup joined iNovia Capital, my own funding and participation by some other angels in the previously announced funding of Standout Jobs.  Now that the fund has launched we are able to announce this investment which is a great example of how Montreal Startup is going to be also investing alongside angels & VCs for the best new startups in Montreal.

For some more comments on the fund here are some links I found interesting,

• Marc MacLeod, CFO at MobiVox (who writes a great blog on CFO life at a Startup)
• Boris Mann writes about the fund at Bootup Labs.
• Heri at Montreal Tech Watch covers the announcement and the investment in Standout Jobs.

If you are an entrepreneur in Montreal, looking for funding then MSU is open for business.

As always, Ben has a great post on what you need to know about Startup Funding.  Ben is a great writer and shares his experiences building Standout Jobs regularly on his blog which is a must read for those with an inkling for startup life.

On Sat 15 Mar 2008.