Making Ideas Matter - Early Stage Venture Capital
Venture Advisors
- Mr. Jim Fletcher
Chrysalix Energy
Managing Director
- Jim Fletcher has spent over 20 years in the venture capital industry, initially for nine years on the VC fund side as a founding partner with Chrysalix's Executive Chairman Mike Brown of Ventures West Management Inc., one of Canada's largest technology VC funds. Later he became an individual VC while also working on the operations side, playing a wide variety of interim CEO, CFO or other roles as required. He has been a Director of many companies, and President of several through their start-up and early development stages.
He specializes in actively founding, funding and assisting companies through various stages of growth - from financing, management team development and market positioning in early-stage companies to corporate finance and organizational issues at later stages of growth. Jim was a co-founder of Spectrum Signal Processing, CEO at Vector 12, and served as CFO of Angus Reid Group, Canada's largest market research firm, and managed the sale of that company to Ipsos S.A. of France. Before taking an interest in the VC industry, Jim started his professional career as an Investment Banker with Morgan Stanley & Co., from where he moved to become, Director, Corporate Finance and Treasurer with MacMillan Bloedel.
Jim has an honors degree in Engineering Physics from Queen's University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
- Jean Pierre Ouellet
Venture Partner
- Jean Pierre is an investor in,
and a venture partner of, Capital St-Laurent. Prior to joining the firm in December 2008, Jean Pierre had been, from December 2000 until November 2008, Vice Chairman of RBC Capital Markets, in charge of RBC Capital Markets’ operations in Quebec. During his tenure at RBC Capital Markets Jean Pierre was involved in several major capital markets transactions, in both equity and debt financings, as well as many mergers and acquisitions. Prior to joining RBC Capital markets Jean Pierre was Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary of Canadian National Railways from 1996 to 2000. He was a member of the Senior Executive Committee of the Company and was lead counsel on a number of important transactions including the acquisition by CN of Illinois Central in 1998. Prior to 1996, Jean Pierre was a senior partner with a major Canadian law firm specializing in capital markets transactions as well as mergers and acquisitions.
Jean Pierre
holds both a B.A. and an LL.L. from the Universite de Montreal and a B.C.L. from Oxford University which he attended from 1971 to 1973 as a Rhodes Scholar. He was a member of the Quebec and Canadian Bar Association from 1971 and is qualified as a Partner, Officer and Director by the I.D.A. Jean Pierre is on the board of directors of several organizations, including Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, Richmont Mines Inc, Noranda Income Fund, GBO Inc., and the MacDonald Stewart Foundation.
- Dr. Ian Sobieski, Ph.D.
Founder and Managing Director
Band of Angels Fund, L.P.
- Since August of 1997 Dr. Ian Patrick Sobieski has codirected the Band of Angels an exclusive group of high-net worth individuals who were also former officers or founders of high technology companies. The Band has invested approximately $180M of capital into 200+ startup companies in the Silicon Valley creating more than 3,000 jobs. Of these, more than 40 have exited for a profit to investors and 9 have gone public on the Nasdaq, generating a 53% IRR since inception.
Dr. Sobieski is a founding general partner of the Band of Angels Fund, LP, a fifty million dollar venture fund raised in 1999 exclusively from major institutions. He has managed more than fifty direct investments totaling forty million dollars, has served on seventeen boards of directors, and currently serves on three. Seven of his seed investments have exited for a gain via M&A including SeaDragon Software, Quorum Systems, and Ordinate Corp. Two of his seed investments have gone public; Genitope Corp in 2003 and PortalPlayer in 2004.
Dr. Sobieski has an aerospace engineering PhD and MS from Stanford University, and a BA in philosophy from Virginia Tech. He is vice-chairman of the Angel Capital Association and is a member of the Young Venture Capitalists Association, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the National Ski Patrol. He is the author of a dozen technical publications and is a lecturer in the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley.
