A Year on the Community Team at Front Row Ventures
When I stepped into Espace CDPQ for my first Front Row Ventures meeting in April 2018, I admit there was close to nothing I (really) knew about venture capital. There was little I knew about how FRV itself worked, where the organization was heading, and the role I would come to play within the team.
At the risk of sounding cliché, I could not have anticipated the breadth and depth of what I didn’t know. I had entered this new space of unfamiliar faces, systems, cultures of working and views of the world and, quite frankly, I felt unprepared. If there was one thing I knew, it was that the learning curve would be steep.
But my growing interest in the world of startups, particularly Montreal’s, urged me to take that first step. Since then, I have been exposed to the nitty-gritty of venture capital, the hardest-working of individuals and an unbelievably fast-paced environment that is full of energetic innovation.
I began at FRV as the only Community Associate of the 2018 cohort, and I worked under our co-founder and community guru, Nicolas Synnott. At the time, the organization was three years old, and the Community Team was practically non-existent. I went through onboarding with the rest of the new team members and learned about FRV’s investment process alongside them.
However, my role was different from that of the Investment Associates. Nicolas liked to describe it using an analogy of an onion.
“Imagine Montreal’s startup ecosystem as if it were this layered vegetable. At the center is Front Row Ventures and Real Ventures — our immediate team. The next layer is our portfolio companies — all the startups we invest in. Next is all the university student entrepreneurs in Montreal, followed by all the students who could potentially become entrepreneurs. The final layer is the entire community of students across Montreal, who are interested in tech and/or venture capital in some way, shape or form.”
The Community team’s mandate is to find the various ways in which we can create and capture value for the communities among these different layers. This means connecting various ecosystem players, so that they can collaborate in unique ways. It also means building events and programs that foster interest in tech entrepreneurship for student communities across Montreal. The possibilities are endless, and the extent of our founders’ vision for Community within FRV was grand from the very start.
Nicolas also made it clear that, when it came to my responsibilities as a Community Associate, my experience would be full of firsts — for both myself and for FRV. I would have a say in the first portfolio of Community projects to be executed within FRV. We would build the first Community team in Quebec by recruiting other students in the fall. I would help create an initiative from the ground-up — a pilot for the first FRV community-centric program.
This was as exciting a prospect as it was daunting. One minute ago, I was absorbed in my little university bubble, where the “real world” felt just a bit too abstract. Now, I found myself in this space of immensely talented entrepreneurs, techies and business people, who were all striving to make an impact on their communities in some significant way. It was now my job to both work alongside them and somehow create value for them. Definitely a daunting task.
But what made it exciting at the same time were two things I knew about myself. The first — I truly am interested in diving into the domain of tech entrepreneurship. It’s challenging, creative, thought-provoking, and a driving force behind change within societies. The second — I love people! I love trying to understand what makes them passionate, what they could talk about for hours and what drives them. Those two qualities were enough to remind me how and why I could contribute to building something special with the Community Team at FRV.
That reminder manifested itself around two months ago when we launched FRV’s first community initiative, the Women Founders’ Project. For the first six months of 2019, I helped build this four-week program for female-identifying student founders in Montreal. Through workshops and masterclasses, the WFP was designed to address topics within tech entrepreneurship. Our goal was to create a supportive and tight(er)-knit community of women in Montreal’s startup ecosystem — founders, VC investors and other professionals alike.
It was pretty awesome to be in a space so charged with a desire to make an impact. From our ten student founders to the 15 mentors we invited to participate, every person was passionate for a cause — be it reducing gender inequality, improving food waste levels, or revolutionizing oil remediation techniques. The conversations we had were insightful and filled with energy that was contagious! And genuinely inspiring.
My experience with FRV so far has humbled me, reminding me that there is always more to learn. Confidence must go hand in hand with open-mindedness. It’s hard to create any impact if you don’t believe you have the power to do so; but you also don’t know everything.
In the past year, I became acquainted with certain processes involved in the management of venture capital funds. While my role didn’t involve carrying out these processes, I was exposed to the mechanics of deal sourcing, the details of SAFE’s, and the formalities of Investment Committee meetings. Beyond that, I learned what makes or breaks the success of a startup — especially at its early stages.
There are still a fair few “firsts” for the Community Team to go through and I expect this next year to be filled with many. Now a team of three, we are gradually finding our groove and understanding the role we can play as a team within FRV. More importantly, we are beginning to understand the role FRV can play within the larger startup ecosystem in Canada. The learning curve looks slightly less steep from here, but the prospect of personal and professional growth for us all is just as palpable.
