Chima Ubani: Hi, I'm Chima Ubani, Chair of the Venture Fund Formation Group and a partner in Osler's Emerging and High Growth Companies Group. I'm pleased to welcome Chris Arsenault from Inovia today. So brief intro, then we'll get into a couple questions. So with over 25 years' experience in operating and investing, Chris has been a real driving force in the Canadian tech ecosystem. As a co-founder of Inovia Capital, he was instrumental in shaping the culture and vision of the firm. And over the years, his entrepreneurial instincts have led to the growth of the Inovia platform, extending its reach and propelling it to new levels of success. He currently serves on the boards of AppDirect, Plenty, Super.com and Talent.com. His leadership over the years has contributed to major exits for Inovia portfolio companies, including IPOs for Lightspeed and Sonder, as well as numerous successful acquisitions across the portfolio. Beyond investing, Chris is actively involved in community initiatives, serving on the boards of the Montréal Heart Institute Foundation and CHU Sainte-Justine Foundation and is also a Charter Member of the C100, the esteemed Silicon Valley organization. So without further ado, we'll get into a couple of questions. So thanks for joining me today, Chris.
Chris Arsenault: Thank you for having me.
What does Inovia do?
Chima Ubani: So, to start, maybe you can just provide us with a short overview of what Inovia is and what I know Inovia does.
Chris Arsenault: Inovia Capital is a Canadian headquartered full stack venture capital firm. We have $2.5 billion under active management as well as $1.2 billion in GPLP co-investments to date. We currently manage a portfolio of 47 core companies in addition to 20 high potential companies. And through our discovery program, we have made over a hundred pre-seed direct investments as well as becoming LPs and 30 funds managed by 23 emerging managers. And our investment strategy is built on our full stack vertical integration model, which provides us and our LPs with unique access to curated high growth opportunities from inception to IPO.
Where do you see things looking different for Inovia this year?
Chima Ubani: So just looking ahead, we're in 2025, you can take this question in a bunch of directions. So interesting economic climate, interesting technologies coming to bear. Where do you see things looking different for Inovia this year? How are they similar to the past? How is Inovia thinking about 2025 and beyond?
How are companies going to adapt their own tech stack at the same pace as AI?
Chris Arsenault: So we are witnessing an acceleration in AI innovation velocity, and we're seeing that technology modes are being challenged by execution modes and it's becoming an increasingly more hyper competitive environment. We've always known that large enterprises struggle with adopting new technologies, but now we're wondering how much of the mid-market companies are going to be able to adapt their own tech stack at the same pace as the AI innovations out there.
What is Inovia focused on?
Chima Ubani: Okay, great. So maybe you could take a little bit of time to shed some more light on exactly what types of companies, what types of sectors, what types of investments Inovia makes, and what are you focused on?
Chris Arsenault: We invest in software across all stages. So our focus is mainly on commerce enablement, manufacturing and logistics, future of work, cybersecurity, digital health and travel and accommodations. So that may sound pretty broad, but it actually is a pretty narrow focus on the software industry and the vast majority of our deals are actually B2B or B2B2C SaaS companies such as Lightspeed, Booksy, AppDirect Cohere, Poolside, Spellbook. These are all B2B or B2B2C companies. And on the direct consumer front, which we still continue to invest, our investments looks like Wealthsimple and FinTech space, Hopper, Super.com, Talent.com as an example. All of these companies were founded and led by strong entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs that have, yes, a lot of ambition, but there are narrowly focused on achieving a purpose. They're looking to actually make the world a better place by changing how the user experience is done or by inventing or delivering a product or a service that answers to a new need in the market. Grit, communication, integrity is definitely key characteristics of entrepreneurs that we look for in an entrepreneur and over the last two decades it has served us extremely well.
What is Inovia seeing for 2025?
Chima Ubani: Great. So another question again, coming back to current times 2025, I know you don't have a crystal ball obviously, but what is Inovia seeing for 2025? There are political challenges, economic challenges, all sorts of challenges. What is Inovia looking at?
Chris Arsenault: Yes, we're definitely facing major political challenges and changes, economic impacts and changes and we came out of 2024, which we considered, it was a big year of grind for us in our portfolio companies in order to address the changes on a global front. The U.S. tariffs threats are obviously counter to the well needed network effect that our companies and technology and what software benefits from. So we are staying very close to our companies, helping them navigate the current unstable political and economic markets. But our confidence continues to grow. Why? Because we expect that 2025 is going to be a strong year for tech companies, software companies, our core portfolio companies. Results are showing that they're delivering better results in this chaotic market. Why? Because we're seeing accelerated growth, we're seeing increased margins, and we think that this year is going to be a big year for M&A, M&A of new generation companies that are going to be acquiring smaller companies and or companies that will not be able to raise capital because the capital market remains tight and thin this year, especially if we compare it to the heydays of 2020 and 21.
So M&A on the buy side front from our portfolio companies is looking very strong. And on the sell side company front, Canadian companies right now are extremely attractive for foreign entities. So we're going to be keeping a close eye on the buy side as well as on the sell side M&A, helping our portfolio companies build optionality so that they remain in the driver's seat.
Chima Ubani: Great. Well thanks for taking some time to chat with us today, Chris. Always interesting to hear your thoughts and just wanted to wish you and the Inovia team all the best for 2025. Looking forward to seeing what you guys get up to.
Chris Arsenault: Thank you very much and thank you for being a great partner.
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