Targeting Local Startup Excellence
Summary
While portfolio themes like AI and deep tech have emerged, Orbit has remained sector and technology agnostic, making investments in SaaS, marketplaces, consumer, real estate, cyber, aerospace, and more. FounderFuel is a huge asset for the fund, providing an established network and a brand that not only attracts top young startups from Montreal but also enables us to recruit companies from across Canada to participate in the local ecosystem. Investing in a second accelerator was not part of Orbit’s original mandate, but when the opportunity arose to bring a Tier 1 global player to Montreal, we worked with our wonderfully supportive investors to make it happen. We met Front Row’s three precocious founders — Eleonore Jarry-Ferron, Nicolas Synnott and Raphael Christian-Roy — before our fund closed and were thrilled to partner with them, providing $600K of capital to support 24 investments over four years across Quebec. These student investors have built a strong portfolio with a special flare for deep tech, including: Reaction Dynamics, which provides launch services for satellites, Enuvio, which builds ‘lab on a chip’ technology for life sciences, and Nplex, which uses nanotechnology to improve protein screening in blood tests.
