Evidence of meeting #15 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pat Martin
I think the research shows that this is a relatively cheap way to loosen up venture capital and get it into circulation, by giving the tax credit to the labour-sponsored investment funds. Could either or both of you speak to your experience, or would you recommend that as a viable source of venture capital to get it into circulation?
So I'd be interested in the unbundling and the venture capital from labour-sponsored investment funds.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Virtual Marine Technology Inc.
I would say it would be a good idea to unbundle, because if you don't do that, the small companies have to try to break into the supply chains of big multinational companies. It kind of depends on their geopolitical structuring whether or not they're going to tolerate you coming into their supply chain. So if you can unbundle where it makes sense, it makes sense.
Labour-sponsored venture capital.... As you said, GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund has invested in our company. The money was really good, but the better thing was it made our company much more disciplined when it comes to structuring our company and looking for additional funding. We're talking about due diligence. Someone asked a question about the due diligence on this one. After going through a venture capital due diligence, this one was very lightweight. When you go through a venture capital due diligence, you learn a whole lot of things, and you've got a lot of structure in place to answer the questions with other people.
So I'd say that we're in a better position to raise additional venture capital because we had GrowthWorks, and it's just because GrowthWorks taught us so much.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Virtual Marine Technology Inc.
Yes, actually, that's what they do. They buy shares in the company. They came in with an archangel and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and then through that we were going into all kinds of wild and wonderful things, like mezzanine financing and so on and so forth, which we could never think of in 2007 when all this started. We were very enthusiastic and very smart people, but we had zero track record on financing a company, and GrowthWorks brought us along.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pat Martin
That's pretty good.
Do you have any views, Mr. Hayward, that you want to share on either of those?
President and Chief Executive Officer, DataGardens
I'm afraid my experience is limited on both.
Let me just say, with regard to the bundling and unbundling, that we haven't competed on enough federal government contracts to really have a considered opinion on that. Most of the customers we have go to market strategies very much focused on private cloud providers, major companies like IBM and Savvis and Terremark. So we have not competed on many government contracts. As a point of principle, yes, it sounds great, but I just don't have much experience on that.
Similarly, on the labour-sponsored investment funds, I'm not aware of any such funds that are available to us in Alberta or that tend to invest in Alberta. There was one based in Quebec that did a few years ago, in a company called TechnoCap, but they're no longer around. We don't have a lot of experience with them out here.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pat Martin
Okay.
I think that ends our rounds of questioning. I want to thank both of our witnesses for taking the time to share their views with us today. They were both very interesting and very useful presentations.
Thank you very much.
I'm going to suspend the meeting briefly and we'll reconvene for some private committee business.
[Proceedings continue in camera]