We’re excited to share that Golden Ventures has closed its fifth fund, Golden Ventures V, at just over $100 Million USD. Golden Ventures V will continue to carry out our work of supporting the most high-potential founders who seek to change the world through transformative technology.
Challenging ourselves to be the founder’s ideal partner:
We launched Golden Ventures in 2011 as one of the first seed-stage micro-VC funds. Having experienced the challenges of founding a company in Canada, the fund was created in response to a lack of capital and mentorship for seed-stage founders. Everything we have done since 2011 has been to improve the fund for the benefit of founders.
Now, having backed well over 100 seed-stage companies and with several funds under our belt, we have the advantage of scale and experience, which allows us to invest in and deliver critical value to our network of founders. We are founder-driven — and we embody this ethos in every decision we make to support founders in pursuit of the extraordinary.
The Canadian tech ecosystem is experiencing tremendous growth and is one of the leaders in many of the most promising next-generation platforms, including AI, Climate, Blockchain and Quantum. However, we have learned that founders who build outside of Silicon Valley have a different and more nuanced set of needs. We have focused very squarely on building our capabilities in the critical areas that founders care about: talent, downstream capital and connectivity. We have built systems and processes to support these efforts; the results speak for themselves.
Our Head of Talent, Alison Kaizer, works with founders in our portfolio to improve their capabilities in recruiting, closing, and retaining top-tier talent across North America. In 2023, the fund made over 700 talent introductions and placed 24 director-level (or above) candidates across the portfolio.
As a seed-stage fund, we’re acutely aware of the importance of downstream capital. We spend a lot of time working with downstream capital partners to identify the right opportunities ahead of company fundraising efforts to help founders and investors find the right fit and ensure a high graduation rate amongst our portfolio companies.
Last year, we held over a dozen targeted community and portfolio-specific events. Most notably, our Plated event series has featured incredibly talented speakers, including the SVP of Global Engineering at Shopify, ex-CTO of GitHub, the Global Lead for Gen AI at Google Cloud, the Head of Growth at Deel and many more. These events have resulted in tremendous access, learnings and connections (engaging over 1,000 attendees), and we plan to hold even more events that benefit the ecosystem over the coming year.
Golden’s team
With the recent addition of Nick Chen as a Principal in the fund, we have rounded out our domain expertise in AI and Blockchain. Nick has recently published his first installment in a series of blog posts on the Fund’s AI Investment thesis.
The seed stage is a unique area of expertise, and we will continue investing in additional infrastructure to support our current and future portfolio companies better. We never forget that every time high-potential founders raise capital, they have a choice, and we strive to be that founder’s first call.
A proven strategy
We remain fully committed to our consistent strategy of being a seed-stage and sector-agnostic-focused investor. Golden Ventures V will be invested in approximately 30 core seed-stage companies across Canada and the US while reserving follow-on capital for future investment rounds. We will also allocate a very small portion of the fund to angel investments in companies that may not meet our core investment criteria but where we strongly believe in the founders and the opportunity. For more details on Golden Ventures, including where and who we invest in, we invite you to review our public FAQ. Sharing this information is part of creating a culture of transparency in venture capital, and we hope to see more funds make this data accessible.
Continued support from our partners
Golden Ventures V welcomes returning investment from our incredibly supportive and helpful limited partners, including returning institutional LPs (BDC Capital, ECMC Group, Foundry, HarbourVest Partners, Kensington Capital Partners, Northleaf Capital Partners, RBC, Teralys Capital, University of Chicago and Vintage Investment Partners) and new institutional partner, Deloitte Ventures.
We’d like to extend our deepest gratitude to all of our founders, partners, co-investors, mentors, and supporters who have been steadfast supporters over the years. Golden Ventures V is ready to help catalyze the next generation of founders.
If you are building an early-stage startup in Canada or the United States, we would love to be your seed-stage partner.