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Money Manager Interview Excerpt
CANADIAN VENTURE CAPITAL INVESTING – DAVID LEVI – GROWTHWORKS LTD.


Full article published: 09/07/2009


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TWST: Why don't you start by talking about the Canadian venture capital industry and then go on to tell us about GrowthWorks how it fits into that picture?
Mr. Levi: Essentially the Canadian venture capital market is really made up of two major players. When I say there are two major players or rather industry types, I mean one group raises money from individuals, what we call retail venture capital funds, and the other one would be more traditional and they would raise their funds through pension funds, insurance companies, that kind of thing. The Canadian venture capital industry has been like it has been in the US: a very difficult time to raise money over the last five of six years for both groups of funders, so that the number of active pools today in the country are much less than they were in the 1999, 2000, 2001 era. Today in Canada we are seeing two things, which is normal in the marketplace. One is that there is a dearth of capital and very few active players. At the same time we are also seeing probably the best valuation since 1992-93 because there are very few players left in the country. Now I'll tell you a little bit about GrowthWorks. We started out in Western Canada and British Columbia with a retail fund that we grew to about 400 million in size. Then we made a decision that we wanted to have a footprint across the country, which is a bit unusual for a venture capital group. Most of them stay pretty well focused in the immediate area that they start in, but we wanted to move across the country. So about seven years ago, we began purchasing other venture capital managers and the right to manage their fund portfolios. Today we operate in seven out of ten provinces in Canada and are the largest venture capital pool outside of the Province of Quebec with about 700 million in retail venture capital assets under administration.

 

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