Track Record | Mentor Model | Investment Strategy | Tax Credit

News Releases

Mentor Model
Our experience to date indicates that we can maximize the number of successful companies in our portfolio, and minimize the number of failures, by becoming actively involved in our portfolio companies. By investing our expertise and networks, in addition to our money, we hope to maximize the returns to our investors. Rather than being limited to our own resources, we have created a powerful network of successful technology and life science entrepreneurs interested in working with us to help build our portfolio companies.

Our Mentor pool is made up of more than 60 successful life science and technology entrepreneurs. Our Mentors assist us by bringing us high quality investment opportunities, allowing us to access their expertise in carrying out due diligence, co-investing alongside us, and becoming directors, officers and advisors to our portfolio companies. Our Mentors include some of BC’s most successful entrepreneurs, such as Amos Michelson, the CEO of Creo, Inc. who sold that company to Kodak for approximately $1.3 billion in 2006. We have also attracted Mentors from the United States, including Dr. Chris Fibiger, who recently retired as Vice President and Global Head, Neurosciences at Amgen, Inc. and is now working with us to build life science companies in his old hometown of Vancouver. We believe that the guidance that Amos, Chris and our other Mentors can provide to young technology and life science companies is priceless.

We introduce our Mentors to portfolio or prospect companies when we believe the Mentors may add significant value to the company. We let each company and Mentor determine if they should work together and, if so, what their business arrangement should look like. Mentors might consult to the company, join its Advisory Board or Board of Directors or even join the company's management team on a full-time basis. They may also invest in the company on their own alongside our Fund.

We take our Mentor Model seriously. Approximately two-thirds of our portfolio companies have at least one Mentor as a director or officer of the company. We believe our Mentor Model is a strategic advantage for both our portfolio companies and our investors.