Investing

15 Jul 2019

Investing Through The Unfolding Energy Disruption

Although a life long mathematician and technologist, recently much of my focus has been on being a savvy investor, in many asset classes from private seed/angel investing to public markets and alternative investments. While Canadian investors have traditionally thrived on conservative, cash generating value investing and fixed income plays, the future is rendering such risk averse models obsolete, making it critical to adopt a forward lens, looking out, perhaps a decade into the future.

I have lived through many market disruptions in which “software is eating the world.” Such disruptions include the “Kodak Moment” of digital photography rendering mining of silver oxide to supply the ecosystem around film irrelevant in a digital photography age. Another exemplar is the upending the entire value chain for newspapers and other ad-funded media by the likes of Google (Adwords) EBay (classified ads).

Energy has driven world economies for time immemorial and may even have led to the fall of the Roman Empire. As modern societies have become wealthier, energy consumption has seen stratospheric growth. The simple reason is that Energy underpins the creature comforts of modern society, including food, shelter, transportation and consumer consumption. There is widespread concern that this nonstop growth model that underpins our economy is ultimately unsustainable, particularly as rich country ways spread to the rest of the soon to be 10 billion people on planet earth. The younger generation, who will ultimately see the limits of such consumption in their lifetimes, has embraced a more pessimistic view of their future and adopted a focus on lifestyle changes, including low carbon (vegan or vegetarian) diets, not owning a car, and trying to eschew rampant consumerism.

Essentially, there are two paths open to a more sustainable way of living:

conservation, in which individuals strive to lower their environmental (primarily carbon) footprint, and
a technology revolution in which traditional energy is replaced, for example by renewables, and even more radical, technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Thus, futurists have long predicted the same fate for energy driven by new technologies that include renewables, storage (battery and other), Digital Electricity, subjecting the global energy market to its own “Kodak Moment” of digital disruption. The future has arrived, and today in 2019, this energy disruption is already in full force, potentially rendering oil, gas and coal essentially obsolete over a time as short as the next decade.

What does this mean for the Canadian investor, including business, government and insurance companies who all will see their future results impacted by how this unfolds?

I have been researching a formal presentation around energy disruption for investors, but this recent CBC article spurred me to publish this post and perhaps have readers send me their thoughts and research.

Fighting climate change may be cheaper and more beneficial than we think | CBC News
Governments aren't calculating the true cost of fighting climate change when they fail to take into account side effects such as fewer deaths from air pollution - co-benefits that make the net cost of climate action as low as zero, growing evidence shows.

The above article is instructive inasmuch as it paints a picture of a better world achieved by strategically and aggressively re-allocating resources in our economy. The suggestion is that to do so, far from being foolishly spendthrift, is our most rational and positive outcome. What it doesn’t say is that to delay doing this, by allowing others to capture leadership in the “new”, post fossil fuel, growth industries, render Canada a much poorer (aka “third world”) country in the future.

The fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) industry is facing many headwinds, which has moved economists from a previous narrative of concern about “Peak Oil” (ie. the world is running out of oil) to the new narrative of “Peak Demand” (ie. demand will drop as energy consumption is disrupted by new technologies). Here are some of the head winds and their implications:

Over the last decade, coal power, one of our greatest carbon producers, has already been rendered uneconomic, with declines in coal mining and production starting from around 2010.
Solar and Wind electricity production costs continue to drop and since 2016 are cheaper at scale than oil, and now gas (including Gas Peaker Plants).
The electrification of transportation, from cars, buses, trucking and more, is continuing to grow rapidly year over year. Current estimates call for Peak Petroleum Vehicle (ie. those “ICE” or Internal Combustion Engine powered) sales to occur by 2023.
New technologies, particularly in the areas of energy storage, are quickly coming on stream. Year over year more than doubling in such storage capacity further indicates exponential disruption at work.
Carbon pricing, in whatever form whether carbon tax or cap and trade, is needed for the market economy to work and will certainly become pervasive as the climate crisis escalates. It will require the majority of people to demand government policy and action. Current government policies seem to be held hostage to the oil and gas lobby instead of the wishes of the general public, although some parties try to disguise oil and gas wishes as “for the people”.
Fossil fuel subsidies in Canada, including taxes and direct subsidies, are estimated to be between $30 and $50 Billion annually. I continue to work at sourcing more definitive subsidy data, but it is clear that simply better allocating these subsidies to a cleaner future must happen.
Because the oil industry has known about our current Climate Crisis for many years (40 or more) and actively spread misinformation and hugely lobbied governments to ignore the long term effects, litigation for the damages caused by climate change will only escalate. This is analogous to the class action suits against tobacco companies for spreading misinformation about smoking in the 1960s and 1970s that have made these industries Wall Street pariahs today. In essence, this misinformation and deflection is an attempt to delay the inevitable, at the cost of real future damage to our world and the people inhabiting it.
Fake News Has a Cost: various industries have spent billions of dollars bombarding us with a continuous stream misinformation in order to distract and deflect us from proper policy. While the Kohl Brothers who make money from coal are legendary, examples of other myths include:
- apparently the power unions and nuclear industry heavily fund anti-wind energy misinformation, such as Wind Turbine Syndrome
- the auto industry funds significant misinformation about EVs, and this isn’t just in Buzzfeed, but in fact finds itself in otherwise reputable news media like The Globe and Mail: See The Trouble with Electric Vehicles – Winter and Out in the Cold with a Hyundai Kona Electric.
- consider both the cost to all of us when this misinformation helps form government policy and also the notion that those promulgating this misinformation may attract future liability for harm stemming from real harm their actions inflict on society.
For those not familiar with Exponential Innovation, it can be deceptive because humans tend to see growth as linear and get caught off guard as what look like small numbers rapidly balloon into much larger ones. The perceptual problem that people have with Exponential Technology Adoption curves is explained here: The Problem With Exponential Innovation : People

The above just skims the surface of the major disconnect between reality and lobbying and misinformation. Those who want to drill deeper into this fascinating world of energy disruption may wish to check out this video by futurist and technologist Ramez Naam from Singularity University.

Ramez Naam - Future of Energy

All of this leads to predictions that, by around 2030, both the price of oil and the public market stock prices of public oil majors crater. In the process, some economists predict that globally US$100 Trillion (yes that’s right) of fossil fuel assets will be kept in the ground, and hence written down. Such a staggering number means a huge economic dislocation for countries, companies [and investors].

Here are some closing thoughts:

Short Coal, Oil and Gas: and their ecosystem. Although no one can be sure about the timing, the fact that the coming energy disruption will have a hugely detrimental effect on these industries is irrefutable. Don’t get caught in the massive price (commodity and stock) swings that this market disruption will unleash. You heard it here first!
See Beyond Partisan Politics: because parties, and elected representatives, seem more beholden to the 100 largest global fossil fuel companies than their own voters, the time is long overdue to return politics to a grassroots level of democracy where the views of citizen voters actually count. In the US, there is a movement to pressure local representative to refuse fossil fuel industry funding. It will be interesting to watch this unfold here in Canada. No doubt our coming economic transition will be a gargantuan effort — I liken our upcoming transition to the effort to win World War II – everyone united, regardless of party line, for a common cause. It would be good to emulate the spirit of such a war effort. In spite of past failures of partisan politics, the net/net is that citizens can mobilize and collectively push our elected officials toward policies that actually help citizens and our planet.
Insurance: The current climate crisis may up-end the property insurance business and make insurance coverage unaffordable for many homeowners. To date, the insurance industry has led in research and advocacy around resilience and adaptation to Climate Change. The day is fast arriving when that will have to change. Increased weather volatility may make the climate so hard to model that realistic pricing of risk, which determines policy premiums, close to impossible. Lastly, as litigation starts to segment companies by liability for knowingly contributing to climate change, the insurance industry will undoubtedly be forced to respond both in their own investment portfolios and in the core insurance business.

As an investor, citizen, and voter I know that we need a significant reset in how we respond to the inevitable decarbonization of our economy. No one suggests it will be easy. Conversely, further inaction and delay will result in hugely greater pain, and suffering.

It’s your choice – where will you place your investment?

Angel of the Year Award: Yuri Navarro, Jérôme Nycz, Randall Howard, Michelle Scarborough

3 Oct 2014

Canadian Angel of the Year Award

At the NACO Summit in Québec City, it was truly humbling to receive the Canadian Angel of the Year Award. I see this partly as a calling to be an ambassador to continue to help raise the Angel bar in Canada in the coming years. I wish to thank all those kind colleagues who, unbeknownst to me, wrote letters of nomination. Also, this is all based on the remarkable people at GTAN and in the Waterloo and Canadian ecosystem generally.

In response to the award, and recognizing the opportunity to build on current success, I shared the following observations and future challenges at the closing Keynote on Friday 3 October, 2014.

“TODAY’S CRITICAL MASS CAN POWER A QUANTUM LEAP”

Closing Keynote NACO Summit, Québec City Friday 2 October, 2014

Bonjours, mesdames et messieurs. Good morning, ladies and Gentlemen.

I hope that Yuri was aware of what he was unleashing by inviting me to share perspectives and future challenges of Angel investing in Canada! Not unlike a startup running on “fumes”, Canada’s angel sector reminds me of the quip from cartoonist Bill Hoest: “I just need enough money to tide me over until I need more”. I’ll start by looking back to help us paint a future directional context.

As Angel investors, we’ve watched a powerful people-driven engine, coming from nowhere, to become a key enabler of Canada’s future prosperity. As Angels, we fuel innovation companies with our capital and mentorship, ultimately creating some of the highest value jobs for 21^st century Canada. What’s not to like about that?

Let’s turn the clock back about 5 years. In 2009, the global economy endured the infamous credit crunch, perhaps the worst economic correction since the Great Depression. I observed this to be the final nail in the coffin for a large number of Canadian venture capital firms, for years struggling to generate viable returns. The seeming extinction of venture capital A-rounds and the bleak landscape for young, emerging companies, compelled me, as a seasoned tech investor, to get involved with the founders at Golden Triangle AngelNet (GTAN) in Waterloo-Guelph-Wellington-Stratford area. In a pattern surely repeated across Canada, Angel Groups from a slow start quietly and persistently worked to fill the funding gap through a labour-intensive “syndication” of Angel capital, with other groups and with government co-investment. In Ontario, this meant repurposing MaRS IAF from its origins as a VC on-ramp to co-investment in Angel rounds, lobbying that ultimately led to the Feddev “Investing in Business Innovation” (IBI) program, and BDC convertible notes.

A typical syndication for a top tier investee company might entail half a million dollars of Angel money being spun into $1.5 million or more. I used to describe this approach as providing “half the money of a VC A round for 10 times the effort”. At the time, I imagined this to be a strategy for a short term “bridge” of Canada’s innovation ecosystem to a more sustainable future. How did this market correction turn out for Canadian Angels?

NACO stats show a remarkable growth in total Angel investment. Between 2012 and 2013 alone, Canadian Angel group direct investments grew a stellar 120% from $40 million to $89 million. Of course, this doesn’t capture the aforementioned co-investment leverage that Angel investors attract nor does it cover investments outside of NACO members. All of us rightfully deserve to be proud of such collective impact.

But is it enough? Both from my own international investing and available statistics, it would appear that Canada’s Angel ecosystem is ahead of Europe on the maturity curve. I would estimate Canada has a 3-5 year head start on Europe. On the other hand, our American friends are definitely well ahead in maturity, deal dollars and information gathering. Angel Capital Association (ACA) data shows almost $25 billion of total US angel investment in 2013. To be at this level, on a per capita GDP basis, Canada would need about $2.8 billion of annual Angel investment. Even counting all the leverage, Canadian angel investment needs to grow 5 to 10 times over the coming years just to achieve parity with the US.

In Waterloo, home of Perimeter Institute, we tend to love Quantum Mechanics metaphors. Thus, propelling today’s critical mass through a quantum leap is a mission all of us need to work on collectively and individually, whether as angels, angel groups, NACO, governments, venture capitalists, sponsors, in fact, each and every ecosystem participant.

So, I will conclude by identifying just five of the gaps that we collectively need to fill:

Scaling: Recently, my friend Steve Currie, VP Strategy at Communitech, observed “Canada is great at starting companies, but not so good at growing them beyond the 5 year horizon.” This means less job creation but also smaller exits. In a study of 183 recent high tech exits versus 2300 comparable US exits, the average US valuation was US$384 million versus US$100 million for the Canadian companies. I don’t know about you, but I find it simply tragic to leave so much value on the table. Angels have a huge role both in mentoring management skills around scaling, but also pivotal to financing that scaling. And, bigger exits, will in a virtuous circle, drive more Angel investment.
Giving Back: We need more of our successful serial entrepreneurs to become (super) angels and continue to start new ventures. In the Silicon Valley, Paypal alone had 14 serial entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel and Max Levchin whose experience and wealth helped build legends like LinkedIn, YouTube, Tesla, Kiva and Yelp. While we do have a few super angels, we have yet to spawn someone like Ron Conway whose 600 investments include Google, Facebook and Twitter. Canada needs more titans like Mike Volker and Jim Estill.
Deal Discipline: Great companies grow and scale partly because of external motivations. In the 1990’s the hottest companies all wanted to do an IPO and that involved a playbook of enhanced management, systems and processes that also helped the companies scale into better organizations. VCs also played a part, but today, this role often falls onto Angel investors, hence requiring a more “institutional” approach versus becoming just another retail asset class.
Co-investment: Government funding has been critical to our success and it is key that funding increasingly backs Angel choices rather than governments having to choose winners. That said, there is plenty of room for more. For example, our Feddev IBI program in Ontario provides a 50% match while the almost identical “Double Equity” program in Austria does a 100% match to angels. And, the Angel Tax Credit, so common internationally, in parts of the US and in BC, would provide a much-needed boost to overall Angel resources.
Operational Innovation: Currently, most angel groups run as nonprofits using largely committed volunteer deal structuring and with little automation of the process. A big reason for this is Securities Regulations, especially in Ontario, that put a chill on innovations that might trigger an expensive regulatory burden. While there is some hope that the proposed Equity Crowd Funding rules might provide the clarity for such innovations, there is also the risk that this is a force that further pushes deals into a retail mode when what we need instead is more institutional discipline.

With these key points in mind, and assuming the right environment, I have no doubt that greater innovation in business models will fuel growth of a larger and more sustainable Canadian angel landscape. All of us can play our part. To dial up our game, will be an aggressive, yet I believe achievable challenge. And, we need even better measurement so we can regularly monitor, and report back to ecosystem participants, our progress.

The road forward isn’t just about traditional business. Because Angel investors’ motivations uniquely straddle the ever-blurring boundary between “passion capital” and Wall Street-style finance, Angel investing will increasingly be a great exemplar of Social Innovation. To me, the culture of collegiality and sharing resembles my experiences in nation-building around charitable foundations.

The last five years have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of Canadian Angel investing and we are poised for even more remarkable growth in the next five. In the words of the incomparable Alan Turing,

“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done”.

Now, let’s get to work …

14 Jun 2012

Who Will Revive Canadian Venture Capital (Part I)

Today was a banner day for announcements involving a reset of the technology funding ecosystem in Canada.

For a long time, the slow demise of Canadian Venture Capital has concerned me deeply, putting us at an international disadvantage in regards to funding and building our next generation of innovative businesses. You may recall my 2009 post Who Killed Canadian Venture Capital? A Peculiarly Canadian Implosion? which recounts the extinction of almost all of the A round investors working in Ontario.

Since then, many of us have worked to bridge the gap by building Angel Networks, including Golden Triangle AngelNet (GTAN), where I chair the Selection process and using extreme syndication and leverage to replace a portion of the missing A rounds.

Today, the launch of Round 13 Capital revealed a new model for venture finance centred around a strong Founder Board whose members are also LPs, each with a “meaningful” investment in the fund. My decision to get involved was based both on this strongly aligned wealth of operating wisdom coupled with the clear strength of the core team.

The launch was widely covered by a range of tech savvy media, including:

Mark Evans gave some background in his post Round 13 Capital Moves to Fill VC Gap, and
David Crow, covered today’s announcement in his post Round 13 Capital Puts Founders First.

To illustrate the both the differentiation of Round 13 and show the depth of founder experience, Bruce Croxon, indicated that the founders board has, measured by aggregate exit value, built over $2.5 billion of wealth in Canada. It is this kind of vision and operational experience that directly addresses the second of my three points that Canadian Venture Capital needs to solve.

It is exciting to be involved with the unfolding next generation funding ecosystem for technology companies of the future. Time will tell the ultimate outcome, but I’m certainly bullish on Round 13.

3 Apr 2012

Social Innovation – Can Social Sector Learn from Tech Startups?

It is notable that much of the recent trend towards Social Innovation has come from people who began their careers in technology startups, in Silicon Valley or other technology clusters. Some notable examples include:

Bill Gates, partly at the instigation of Warren Buffet who added his personal fortune to that of Gates, left Microsoft, the company he built, to dedicate his life to innovative solutions to large world issues such as global health and world literacy through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Started by Paul Brainerd, Seattle-based Social Venture Partners International is innovating at the intersection of technology and venture capital, with Venture Philanthropy. Paul sold Aldus Corporation (an innovator in desktop publishing applications, including Pagemaker) to Adobe in the mid 1990s. In his mid-40’s at the time of the Adobe acquisition, he was young enough to seek a significant and active social purpose in his life.

Jeffrey Skoll, a Canadian-born billionaire living in Los Angeles and an early employee of eBay, has numerous activities aimed at Social Innovation including Skoll Foundation, Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship and Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Most of his initiatives are aimed at empowering the individual Social Entrepreneurs who are fuelling a new generation of Social Innovation.

Waterloo’s own Mike Lazaridis aims to transform our understanding of the universe itself by investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physicsn and Institute for Quantum Computing, effectively innovating a new mechanism of education and discovery. Notable is that this area of investment is one that may well take years, possibly decades, to show what breakthroughs, if any, are discovered.

Whether or not always attributtable to this connection with technology entrepreneurs, increasingly Social Sector organizations are starting to become much more like the entrepreneurial startups so familiar in the world of high technology. I’ve personally witnessed some of this change, and would like to suggest, that while there remain big differences, the parallels are strengthening over time. The following concepts represent just a small sampling of the key areas of similarity:

1. Founders Versus Artists

Stories are legion of smart, brash (and even mercurial) technology company founders who transform a business sector through the sheer strength of their wills. Many of these founders are “control freaks” and might find employment in conventional jobs a difficult proposition. Venture capital and angel investors have learned to be wary of such founders, citing numerous examples of founderitis – in which uncoachable founders, in a case of “my way or the highway” would rather maintain control than bend to ideas from often more experienced mentors, board members and investors.

Such personalities also exist in the Social Sector. For example, many arts organizations are founded by bright and innovative artistic directors. And yet, many of these same organizations come unravelled by the same mercurial nature that prevents the organization from being properly governed and accountable to funders (investors). With my background on both sides of this divide, the parallels are hauntingly striking.

Since such founders strengths can also be their undoing (or that of their organization), a conscious Board level assessment of such situations is always wise.

2. Running on Empty

Notwithstanding the media coverage of a few lucky technology startups such as Facebook or Google, most technology startups run of little or no significant funding. Many seek to change the world with very small amounts of capital, sometimes no more than several million dollars. The recent trend towards building such small capitalization organizations is called the Lean Startup movement. The challenges inherent in their undercapitalization is often the top complaint of such startups. However, Sergy Brin, the Google co-founder has insightfully observed that “constraints breed creativity” to describe how an underfunded state has led to the discovery of innovative ways to build companies and deliver their products.

Likewise, from my experience the vast majority of charities and nonprofits complain about being undercapitalized, and the reality is that most are. It is a fact of life in the social sector. Only now are we starting to see the emergence of social ventures, which by stealing a page from underfunded technology startups are exploring new business models and ways to deliver social change, often leveraging IT or a different process to vastly reduce costs of program delivery.

3. Technology Changes Everything

We’ve seen the emergence of a world where all information is stored in digital form and people are connected, even while mobile, the role of the web and technology can’t be underestimated. Technology-based startups, because they are small and start from scratch, often approach traditional problems in very non-traditional ways. Revenue and funding models change, as do fundamental ways to organize a business or social enterprise. Social media allows ideas to spread in a viral fashion. We have already seen how organizations like Avaaz can mobilize hundreds of thousands or even millions of supporters globally for both local and international issues of social injustices and poverty. This is a direct analogue to how many people now rely on Twitter or Facebook, rather than a printed newspaper, for much of their news and information.

4. Mission Creep – or the path forward

Technology startups have come to learn that success depends on laser sharp focus, attention to detail and execution of a “pure play” strategy (ie. only do one thing well). Thatparticular discipline has time and time again proven to be effective in a sector where technology change is moving rapidly and most startups are generally considered to be underfunded.

Likewise, Social Enterprises must adopt similar approaches to deal with underfunding and change. Even in today’s more fluid and fast-changing environment, to avoid deadly Mission Creep, Board and management must have developed a complete Theory of Change roadmap to enable Manage to Outcomes.

5 Feb 2010

Ignite Passion before Money

This week I had the pleasure to be the luncheon speaker during the Ignite Entrepreneurship course put on by Guelph Partnership for Innovation, aimed at University of Guelph graduate students from various technical fields including biology, life sciences, materials, agribusiness, etc.

It’s always a thrill to get into a room with 40 or so energetic and bright grad students who are considering going into business. And, kudos to GPI for hosting this.

As an experiment, I broadcast the 3 questions out into social media-verse (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) and got some great UGC that I factored into the presentation.

Here are the questions regarding Money and Startups that I attempted to address:

Do you really need it?
Where will it come from? and
What will you do with it?

I’d be delighted if any of you could comment on the topic as well. It’s an extraordinarily challenging time to startups to find funding right now, and the importance of a healthy pipeline of new companies to our future well being, has led me to dedicate a fair portfion of my social enterprise/sharing time to the issue of the serious funding gap for startups.

Note that while much of this is of global relevance, part of the advice is very specific to the startup funding landscape in Ontario.

23 Sep 2009

Lessons from Maplesoft Acquisition

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

Mahatma Ghandi

Recently I received a cheque as part of the Maplesoft acquisition and was led to reflect how this was definitely not “How To Get Rich Quick with a Startup“. Last night a Maplesoft co-founder reminded me that this strategic exit was “only 23 years in the making.” (See Cybernet Systems Co., Ltd to acquire Maplesoft in early September 2009)

Why did it take so long?

Way back in the early 1990’s, I had the pleasure to be Maplesoft’s first independent, outside Director. At the time, I agreed to join that Board and committed to invest my time based on the strength of the team and the great product opportunity. Their intellectual property was embodied in a breakthrough symbolic computation engine, spun out of University of Waterloo, that had the potential to revolutionize, through automation, many mathematical, scientific and engineering activities.

Sadly, I had the chance to experience first hand how one of the most promising Waterloo technology companies could become embroiled in, and ultimately paralyzed by, a bad case of founderitis. Put simply, otherwise intelligent founders who have launched a great business, sometimes allow ego and personal agenda to get in the way of the long term interests of the business (and ultimately impede value formation for its shareholders). Usually, this involves blindness to what the real needs of the company are, as well as valuing personal control over business success .

The startup world is littered with cases of founderitis, and sadly some of the worst cases involve university professors. It is ironic that the brightest people in the world can be so colour blind to issues outside their area of academic speciality. At Verdexus, many such experiences have taught us that backing the right team of founders as the most important investment criterion of all. It is interesting that the lessons learned at Maplesoft allowed Open Text Corporation, which shared the same founder, to more easily overcome the founderitis problem, and the value creation there since the 1990’s has been impressive.

While the media have minutely documented how years of stalemate and litigation (both threatened and actual) kept this business in a status quo, it is also notable that a new team of investors and management ultimately triumphed, leading to this very successful exit. They, especially Jim Cooper the current CEO and major investor, are to be commended for persevering, in spite of the founder situation, to turn that around and deliver value to all from a great Waterloo-based technology story.

Some of the key lessons are

Founderitis (and the even more insidious variant known as Professor Founderitis) can be hard to overcome. This clearly speaks to the length of time for the great Maplesoft opportunity to reach the level today. Too many years were locked up in battles with people who, instead of focusing on building business and market value for shareholders, including themselves, would seem to rather have control even if it meant “going down with the ship.”.
Strategic value can be achieved even in tough economic situations. Although the current investment and exit climate is probably the worst in decades, the company managed to get (assuming completion of earn-out inducements) somehwere around three times LTM revenues. That’s considered a great multiple in normal times, so for 2009 that should be cause for major celebration. In Maplesoft’s case, a long term relationship with Cybernet Systems as a business partner, made it easy for them to see the strategic value in the acquisition. Furthermore, as a distributor, the loss of Mathsoft product distribution rights heightened their awareness of the vulnerability of not owning intellectual property themselves. Hence this is really story of how a great strategic fit, and a strategic valuation, to match made sense. Such a fit is much more independent of the business cycle.
As much as the media lauds the “quick flip” startup stories, and they do happen, the reality is that building a great business takes time. Business plans never quite work out as expected, and, yes, sometimes, interpersonal issues get in the way of great business value creation. What is remarkable here is that, while undoubtedly Maplesoft lost market share during the period of stalemate to products like Wolfram Research’s Mathematica, the company has managed to forge a strong commercial market, grow market share and ultimately prevail. Clearly this is testament to a great product and a great team of people now driving the Maplesoft opportunity.

Again, congratulations to Jim, his team and the investors who believed in this opportunity. It is rewarding to see, after all these years, this great company deliver a home run.

15 Mar 2009

Who Killed Canadian Venture Capital? A Peculiarly Canadian Implosion

“Fortes fortuna adiuvat” – “Fortune favours the bold” – Latin proverb

The current economic meltdown has unleashed brutal forces acting on all aspects of the business world, but certainly innovative startups in fields like software, web, wireless, green technologies and life sciences are at grave risk. In Canada, our startups have generally been world class innovators, but severely underfunded when benchmarked against US and leading European countries.

Not only has the credit crunch forced most Angel Investors to the sidelines, but the supply of Venture Capital (VC) in Canada has contracted almost to the vanishing point.

Tomorrow’s Canadian Business documents this very well in VC Financing: Cold Realities.

Having started my first software company in the mid-1980’s, I am well aware that although VC money was available and well established in the Silicon Valley, VC money for knowledge-based startups such as mine was then nonexistent in Canada. Through the 1990’s, however, Canada started to build a cadre of new funds that showed early promise of replicating a US style VC funding ecosystem

In the early millennium when Verdexus investigated raising a institutional fund to fill a gap in the Canadian market with our “hands on” model and accessing global capital sources. It gave our partners a chance to look to VC best practices on a global basis and figure out how to apply to the Canadian context. While we didn’t proceed at that time, I’ve had the good fortune to work on projects with top VCs from the US and several European countries, giving me a global perspective on how Canadian Venture Capital measures up.

Sadly, I believe that the 2000/2001 tech bubble, or dot com meltdown, stopped the maturation of our VC industry in its tracks, a body blow from which the industry has never recovered. It is to this time that the root causes of our current VC meltdown can be traced. A few of the main reasons holding the VC industry back can be summarized as follows:

Impact of the Labour Sponsored Investment Fund model on our VC ecosystem.
Lack of balance between financial and operational skills: The Banker Effect.
Lack of International Funding discipline in our VC industry.

I will explore each of these causes in turn.

1. Labour Sponsored Investment Funds

Labour Sponsored Investment Funds (LSIFs, also known as Retail Venture Capital Funds), have been a particular sore spot, as a 2005 Globe and Mail Report on Business article “Labour-sponsored Love Lost” points out. Considered good public policy when launched in the late 1980’s, both Federal and Provincial governments gave individual (retail) investors a significant tax incentive (up to 35%) to invest up to $5 000 with a minimum 8 year hold period. In essence, many funds totalling hundreds of millions of dollars were raised by firms like VenGrowth, Covington and Growthworks as were numerous very small funds.

Lacking the inherent financial discipline imposed by typical venture capital structures, in which several “funds of funds” (legally dsignated as Limited Partners, or LPs) invest in a fund managed by a General Partner (or GP). The LPs in this sense have much leverage, not just in choosing their GPs, but also in ongoing oversight, not to mention the choice to re-invest in the next fund raised by the GPs. This LP/GP structure is the model employed world wide and has generally stood the test of time.

The thousands and thousands of retail investors in a typical LSIF exert no such control and hence we’ve seen Management Expense Ratios (MERs) as high as 4-6% versus the 2% private equity industry norm and Carried Interest (the portion of the investment gains shared by the fund) as high as 30% versus the 20% norm.

More importantly, although at its peak, more than half of Canadian VC money was in LSIF funds, returns were, as Doug Steiner says, “lousy.” How lousy? Studies show that average fund returns, also called Internal Rate of Return (IRR), are negative. The best fund appears to have produced a measly 1% IRR. In the US, funds aim for 30% and there is a long term track record of many funds in the 18-20% range.

Undoubtedly, individual investors didn’t have a lot at stake with those huge tax credits and it can be argued that LSIFs encouraged loads of job creation in the all important knowledge economy. All of that is true. My main concern is that the attraction of the LSIF model impaired the formation of a more mature VC ecosystem based on the normal LP/GP model mentioned above.

2. The Banker Effect

In the US, both in California’s Silicon Valley and in the Route 128 area around Boston, the VC industry has always been populated by a healthy mix of the financially oriented fund managers coupled with serial entrepreneurs who have founded and build technology startups. The composition of the partners at Canadian VC funds has always been different than this international norm, having many more banker types than operators. The experiences Jonathan Geist relates in the Canadian Business article are symptomatic of this difference. Too much focus on the numbers is like looking in the rear view mirror when startups need to be focused on the future – building market share, refining partnerships and developing strong go-to-market execution.

Again, I believe that this gap can be attributed to us being a less mature VC and startup ecosystem. In the late 1980’s and 1990’s finding seasoned technology startup operators would have been almost impossible. Most were still building their first startup. However, had things unfolded as they should have, many of the startup founders from the 1980’s and 1990’s should now be partners at Canadian VC firms. That didn’t happen because the dot com meltdown appeared to remove the ability to the industry to make changes or take risks. Ironically, this exacerbated an already more conservative VC culture here in Canada, and this more risk averse approach actually contributed to the lower IRRs seen when Canadian VCs are compared to their US or European peers.

3. Lack of International Money

The fledgling LP/GP VC industry of the 1990’s was funded by a relatively small ecosystem of LPs, such as OMERs, Caisse de Depot, Teachers, CPP, BDC, etc. Thus every VC fund was essentially not differentiated by its LP composition. In essence, a closed group of Canadian fund of funds all were chasing this same relatively small asset class. Furthermore, the relaxation of Canadian content rules coupled with these aforementioned low IRRs, sent the Canadian LPs looking elsewhere (mostly abroad).

What is the right recipe to change this situation? Quite simply, access to more global sources of money. The thousands of US, European and Gulf institutional fund of funds investors have largely ignored investments in Canadian VC funds. This is partially because of the chicken and egg of lower IRR returns. But, more fundamentally, it is primarily because the Canadian startup and VC ecosystem had low visibility to these international funds. Several years ago, I spoke to a large €6 billion LP fund at EVCA in Barcelona, that had investments in 40 tier 1 VC firms in each of the US and Europe. Ironically, that LP’s sense of the Canadian technology scene was limted to Nortel. Since Nortel hasn’t really been a star for many years. Clearly we have a long way to go market our great technology stories to the world.

The Way Forward

Unlike this sign, I don’t want to end this piece on a note of doom and gloom. Nor do I want to leave the impression that there aren’t very talented people in the Canadian VC industry. Nothing could be further from the truth – our long term VC gap arises from long term structural challenges, such as a lack of discipline as imposed by global LPs and not having reached the proper banker/operator mix. There are other factors, including the small population and large geography unique to Canada, but all can be and should be overcome with the proper model.

We already have a few outliers in our funding ecosystem. Being optimistic and entrepreneurial, I’m convinced that many talented individuals will find ways to, little by little, to invent and rebuild a healthy network of startup financing alternatives. As I’ve argued in other blog posts, there is a role for governments. However, that role isn’t to pick winners or to enter the VC business directly, rather it is to be a catalyst to the process by streamlining (securities) regulation and taxation.

As a stakeholder in the success of knowledge-based startups, what do you think?

Please share your comments.

15 Feb 2009

Getting Creative – “Yes We Can” or “Mind the Gap”?

In today’s challenging economic times, it is extra important for governments, academics and individuals to plan our future economic prosperity. Thus, it is timely that Richard Florida and Roger Martin from the Martin Prosperity Institute, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto this month published Ontario in the Creative Age, which provides a detailed future-oriented policy blueprint.

It sets a policy agenda to help us unleash our full potential in the Twenty-first Century where economic success is increasingly coming from creatively-oriented enterprise versus our traditional strength in routine physical and routine service occupations. The report is backed by research which highlights both our existing strengths and weaknesses including those in education, income and even the gap in our creative/routine job mix compared to our peers. Starting from the base of today, the agenda suggests four main focus areas to drive future prosperity:

“Harness the creative potential of Ontarians”, including businesses’ role in changing job mix, education and even marketing of our capabilities,
“Broaden our talent base”, focused on significant increases to our post secondary educational levels and broadening managerial capabilities,
“Establish new social safety nets”, including early childhood development, better utilization our key immigrant resource and retraining of older workers from declining occupational groups, and
“Build province-wide geographic advantage” which strengthens connections (physical and otherwise) within and beyond the mega-region spanning Waterloo-Toronto-Ottawa-Hamilton-Niagara-Rochester.

Having read this paper, it is encouraging to see such a forward thinking analysis that will certainly drive future governmental, business and economic decision and policy making. With that in mind, and being of an optimistic “yes we can” mentality, I was, however, struck by how very little attention was paid to the biggest gap of all — Funding this agenda.

Without proper funding, our ability to transform our economy in these wise and necessary ways, will go unfulfilled. I’ve written about this “funding gap” numerous times and from different perspectives:

as part of my series on government policy aimed at preparing us for the Digital Age: Digital Policy #3: Startup Investment and Taxes
our recent Federal Budget was chock full of stimulus measures, but seemed totally blind to the creative transformation. For example, I discussed potential green technology initiatives in A Bright Green Federal Budgetary Stimulus Opportunity
much social enterprise, particularly that most creative sector – the Arts, is hurting badly: Another One Bites the Dust – and You Thought Business Was in Crisis Mode

I’m certainly not alone in this concern. Many others in positions of thought leadership have raised the issue of funding of investment, some with very specific policy proposals and others just highlighting the gap:

Avvey Peters from Waterloo’s Communitech blogged about Magic Words: Economic Stimulus right before the Canada’s Januaray federal budget, and her post contains some very specific policy measures.
Dr. Ilse Treurnicht, CEO of MaRS Discovery District, a leading Ontario driver of research and commercialization, provided a well-researched analysis of the major institutional and venture funding gaps of Canada compared to other jurisdictions in their latest newsletter.
Alec Saunders, CEO of one of Canada’s most promising web/mobile startups, Iotum, addressed the tech startup funding gap in the context of the proposed federal stimulus in his blog post Tech in Canada: Can We Do More Than Play Hockey? Also, a number of international discussions of technology competitiveness have been hosted on their innovative Calliflower service.
Peter Childs, an Ottawa social media strategist and tech luminary, has laid out a framework Tech in Canada: Peter Child’s Framework for Stimulus

Make no mistake, having surveyed funding sources for startups and social enterprise, Ontario (and Canada) significantly lags most regions in the US and Western Europe — our primary OECD comparables. The reasons for this are numerous and will be discussed in a separate posting, but this funding gap is our extra hurdle before we can be successful in driving the Florida/Martin challenge to transform Ontario to a creative economy.

And to be clear, this transition to the creative economy needs to be driven by the competitive, market economy. That implies that it will not the primary role of governments to provide the major funding for our transformation. Fundamentally, governments should not be picking winners and losers, but simply equiping market forces to go to work. And, given our long history and culture of relying on governments for answers, it is important to clarify that point. With the right framework in place, businesses and individuals will compete to drive the path to our future.

Thus, as their primary task, it is imperative that our federal and provincial governments develop a strong and co-ordinated policy framework, dealing with taxation, security regulation, and the like, to encourage the private sector to make such investments. And, in our current times of economic stimulus, the extra icing on the cake should be to channel some of those near term stimulus dollars toward growing the creative sector that is so essential to our future economic prosperity.

25 Jan 2009

A Bright Green Federal Budgetary Stimulus Opportunity

“Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.” – Peter F. Drucker

Is there a green lining in the inevitable mountains of cash being channelled into economic stimulus?

The sequence of September’s ho hum election followed by the almost incongruous state of denial about both environmental issues and the state of our economy by Canada’s Stephen Harper Government, renders the proroguing of Parliament and his rapid policy about face almost exciting to watch. As a result, Tuesday’s budget should prove a lot more interesting than the six months that preceded it.

My post from last year, Finding Negawatts Right on your Doorstep, gave background to show how the EcoEnergy program could significantly reduce our collective residential Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, while simultaneously improving our housing stock and lowering operating costs. As noted, even with the current modest levels of uptake, this is an area where relatively small investments by our Federal and Provincial governments are starting to pay off.

Canadian Economic Stimulus — Proper Economic Stimulus Can Lead To …

In the context of Canada’s 2009 Federal Budget, there will certainly be significant funds allocated to economic stimulus, almost certainly with the traditional focus on infrastructure projects. As I discussed in my recent post, Playing the Lottery after the Meltdown, I generally favour a laissez faire approach to government. But, considering our current economic situation, signficant stimulus will be essential.

I strongly urge the government to consider channelling some of these fund to two areas:

bright green investments such as reducing the collective carbon footprint of our homes, as I discuss below.
in addition, some package of stimulus focused on our future competitiveness by jump starting the knowledge economy, especially startups.

In the Negawatts posting, I didn’t elaborate enough on the relative merits of different approaches to offsetting our carbon consumption (or indeed all Greenhouse Gases). I would draw a parallel to the 3 Green R’s of Reduce, Reuse & Recycle which form a hierarchy in dealing with the solid waste issue, with Reduce (ie. not creating the waste in the first place) being much preferred to Recycle (reducing the impact of waste already consumed). Similarly to this, there are also choices around offsetting our carbon footprint.

Most carbon offsets involve tree planting in some distant, usually tropical, country. While this gives maximum impact, it does nothing for our local output of carbon (GHGs). While planting trees locally is useful, typically the ROI is lower than in warmer climes, if only because trees grow more slowly in Canada. The best approaches would involve a direct reduction of our local carbon use, instead of a mere offset. And that is exactly what residential programs like EcoEnergy home labelling and retrofit achieve.

Therefore, the timing is right to channel the relatively small amount, as compared to the enormous size of the entire stimulus package, needed to transform our residential housing stock. And, the resulting Negawatts we will generate in return, will be a lasting efficiency we can enjoys for decades to come.

Jim Balsillie Speaks to Laurier Students

23 Jan 2009

Attacking a Canadian Icon

While I’m hardly a shrinking violet, I generally shy away from newspaper coverage. That being said, after saying no several times to Gordon Pitts at the Globe and Mail, I finally agreed to be quoted. Here’s why.

Yesterday, Jim Balsillie won the Laurier Outstanding Business Leader of the Year Award. With his business, economic and philanthropic contributions to our area and Canada as a whole, I can’t imagine a more deserving recipient. It is truly inspirational to have people like Jim making a real difference to all of us.

In an unfortunate coincidence, on the same day, both Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis were the subject of media coverage regarding a possible (and staggering) $100 million penalty regarding a stock options pricing case dating back to 1996.

In the current financial meltdown, many might believe that ever more zealous regulation is the answer, but this really isn’t the root issue here. And, bearing in mind that I don’t have all the facts that the OSC and SEC possess, I present some key points in questioning the motives of the timing and magnitude of this regulatory action:

from my reading of this case, the company, when made aware of the concerns, proactively launched a board-level investigation and, upon the release of the report, about $1.6 million was repaid, this being the estimated amount of gain based on the differential of pricing and dates of the option strike prices.
further, that committee, found that the mis-pricing was inadvertent and not done for the purposes of financial gain.
when compared to other securities regulation actions, this case seems minor, especially given the wealth most people have generated with RIM. In other words, there don’t seem to be any real victims here.
And yet, over the last 10 to 15 years, the OSC has been colossally impotent when it comes to prosecuting real shareholder frauds, such as:
- the many cases of equity monetization that allowed senior management of many companies pocket tens or hundreds of millions while ordinary investors ended up suffering staggering losses.
- real abuses and frauds around income trusts, such as is the case of the many people in my home town of Listowel who lost life savings on the fiasco in which a long term business, SpinRite, was hollowed out in the process of becoming an income trust.
- Diane Urquhart, an ex Bay Street investment banker and now expert shareholder crusader, is a great source to provide anyone who is interested the documented evidence of how much of a wussy our own OSC has been in stock market regulation.
Jim, and his partner Mike, have each given countless hours and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to major philanthropic initiatives that, in addition to helping to transform Waterloo Region, have national and international stature.

It’s this background that left me feeling compelled to comment to Gordon at the Globe & Mail. Clearly, this feels like a desperate OSC acting on the basest political motives.

I’m not sure why Canadians feel that we have to attack our winners. At a time of economic meltdown and too few national champions left standing, why can’t we celebrate the great heroes we do have?

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