What is a Venture Capital Fund? Qualifying For Canada’s Start-Up Visa

Canada immigration news: Canada has almost two dozen venture capital funds that can provide the needed minimum of $200,000 of investment for applicants for permanent residence under the Start-Up Visa program.

A venture capital fund is created when a group of investors pools money to place it in start-ups and small and medium-sized companies which show promise of rapid growth. The investors are looking for equity in these companies and are willing to accept the higher risk associated with these business ventures in exchange of the promise of higher returns.

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Under the Start-Up Visa program, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has designed the following 21 venture capital funds as authorized to provide financing to immigrant entrepreneur applicants.

Those firms are:

7 Gate Ventures
Arete Pacific Tech Ventures (VCC) Corp
BCF Ventures
BDC Venture Capital
Celtic House Venture Partners
Extreme Venture Partners LLP
Golden Venture Partners Fund, LP
iNovia Capital Inc.
Intrinsic Venture Capital
Lumira Ventures
Nova Scotia Innovation Corporation (o/a Innovacorp)
PRIVEQ Capital Funds
Real Ventures
Relay Ventures
ScaleUp Venture Partners, Inc.
Top Renergy Inc.
Vanedge Capital Limited Partnership
Version One Ventures
Westcap Management Ltd.
Yaletown Venture Partners Inc.
York Entrepreneurship Development Institute (YEDI) VC Fund

When a prospective immigrant to Canada decides to apply under the Start-up Visa Program, his or her business idea must get the support of either a venture capital fund, angel investor group, or a business incubator.

These organizations choose which business proposals to review and each has its own intake process for proposals and criteria used to assess them.

If that organization gives the Start-Up Visa program applicant’s proposal the two thumbs up, it will provide a letter of support, allowing the prospective immigrant to continue with the process.

Colin Singer

Colin Singer is an international acclaimed Canadian immigration lawyer and founder of immigration.ca featured on Wikipedia. Colin Singer is also founding director of the Canadian Citizenship & Immigration Resource Center (CCIRC) Inc. He served as an Associate Editor of ‘Immigration Law Reporter’, the pre-eminent immigration law publication in Canada. He previously served as an executive member of the Canadian Bar Association’s Quebec and National Immigration Law Sections and is currently a member of the Canadian Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Colin has twice appeared as an expert witness before Canada’s House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. He is frequently recognized as a recommended authority at national conferences sponsored by government and non-government organizations on matters affecting Canada’s immigration and human resource industries. Since 2009, Colin has been a Governor of the Quebec Bar Foundation a non-profit organization committed to the advancement of the profession, and became a lifetime member in 2018.