This past week I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, attending the second annual Atlantic Venture Forum, which brought together the best, boldest and most innovative emerging and established IT, cleantech and life sciences companies in Atlantic Canada. The event promised two days of engaging, insightful presentations from entrepreneurs, panel sessions with investors (including myself) from across Canada and the East Coast U.S., as well as compelling keynote speakers - it did not disappoint!
The first thing that struck me, in clear contrast to our situation here in Quebec, is how company-centric the Maritimes currently are; while here at home we focus intentionally on nurturing early stage assets for longer in founder laboratories to develop them sufficiently to attract a pharma partner/acquirer, thus avoiding the whole company situation completely. There are a variety of reasons for that, most of which would take an entire blog to elaborate on, but certainly it is a much less expensive way to go and one that involves considerably less headaches as well!
There were some very interesting life science companies presenting at the forum, but we also saw opportunities ranging from new online shopping apps tailored specifically for men to software designed to make the setting up and operation of large scale music festivals more efficient. It truly was a melting pot of various disciplines and entrepreneurs and investors and there was a definite buzz in the room during the presentations, and also out in the coffee area more or less at all times.
But when things are running too smoothly, there is always someone who gets uncomfortable with all the back-patting and self-satisfaction, and this year that person was none other than Paul Singh, of the aptly titled Disruption Corporation. Mr. Singh is the founder of Disruption Corporation which provides tools, research and advisory services to corporations, angel investors and venture capital firms, and he is also an investor via the Crystal Tech Fund. He was on an entrepreneur panel with a theme of how to get from seed stage to the elusive Series A finance round.
Clearly a fan of all things disruptive, Paul Singh must have felt the panel session he was sitting in on was too cosy and nice, so he decided to liven things up, considerably! From out of nowhere we got treated to an expletive-laden rant about the problems of Canadian business, starting from the fact that by being Canadian, alone, is in and of itself a disadvantage because we are too nice, how founders are not capitalistic enough, how we sell off assets way too cheaply, and how we mollycoddle start-ups in incubators for much too long instead of kicking them out onto the street to live or die.
Needless to say, the room bristled. While probably a lot of us agreed with at least some of the points he made, it felt totally unnecessary to drop in so many F-bombs along the way particularly as the average age in the room was definitely way above what might be typical of other start-up forums he attends. I am not a prude, and on top of that I am Irish, so such language does not offend nor shock me in any way, but you know, if even one person was insulted then that probably is one person too many. I think that all of the points he made could have been made just as forcefully without the expletives, and no one in the room would have minded. While the F-bomb does provide emphasis, the English language is rich enough to make the point without resorting to expletives every chance one gets.
But again, there are a couple of points that come to mind out of his performance. Firstly, and somewhat reassuringly, while he did underline the stereotypical aspects of being Canadian, I am sure I was not alone in the room in thinking just how stereotypically American he is! Secondly, he had said something during the panel about "notability" or "notoriety" being as important as actual success, and that people should travel more to various forums and build some momentum around themselves. He's undoubtedly a very clever guy -a classic agent provocateur - and he knows very well that disruptive contributions do as much for "notability" as disruptive technologies do to changing our world. It wasn't long before the media got wind of it, and talked some more about - you guessed it - Paul Singh!
Entrevestor picked up on it in their blog, referring to him as "foul-mouthed" to which Singh hilariously responded on Twitter claiming that he had not been that bad. I guess we don't want to hear him on a bad day, then! One of the funniest moments in the meeting came via Ray Muzyka, an angel investor with ThresholdImpact, who had to follow-on from Singh's lecture. When asked what his comments were, he stated that while he might have agreed with a lot of what Paul said, he thought he might have framed it (a bit) differently! The room erupted with laughter and even clapping, and the tension was gone.
Paul Singh was a Partner at 500 Startups, a four-year-old "super angel" fund headquartered in Mountain View, California and has overseen investments in over 500 companies across some 35 countries - so he knows what he's talking about, no question. More of a surprise to me is the fact that he is currently serving as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Maybe I missed something, because this would indicate that the White House has loosened up considerably under Obama, if dropping in F-bombs to speeches is now sanctioned for White House ambassadors?! What's next, Obama himself using expletives when discussing the Republicans? That would be something worth watching, for sure!
In any case, it was a very cool gathering of emerging start-ups and growth stage companies, alongside us investors, and I think it's probably true to say that there was a little something for everyone present, and not least that included the stellar catering provided by Taste of Nova Scotia who did the region proud with tasty selections from both land and sea. The fact that the World Cup was on every evening on the big screens in the hotel bar-restaurant also made keeping up with the soccer very easy, including the shocking losses of England to Uruguay and Italy to Costa Rica,, respectively.
All in all, the forum was a big success and even though we at AmorChem have exclusively invested here in Quebec, to date, our eyes were opened to the wealth of opportunities coming out of Atlantic Canada universities and research centres, and we are thinking about finding a way to add one or two out-of-province investments to our portfolio. In the meantime, it's a lovely summer morning and I have a date with a large mug of Emperor's Blend Dark Roast and a chaise longue out on the terrace, so, that's it from me today!
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