Diagram’s New Opportunity Fund: Continued support for our growing portfolio

We are excited to announce the first close of $60M for our Opportunity Fund, which was raised primarily from Canadian family offices and entrepreneurs.

Of our 3 funds, the Opportunity Fund is the first that will focus on growth-stage investment, allowing us to bolster our most promising, mature ventures while continuing to offer them a broad network of expertise and operational support as they scale.

As of today, Diagram has co-created 11 new companies through our venture-builder model, eight of which are headquartered in Canada and seven of those in Quebec. We are proud to share that Diagram-backed companies have generated meaningful economic wealth and prosperity including over $1 billion in shareholder value and over 600 full-time jobs in Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco and New York.

Though the last year in company creation and venture capital has been unlike any one before, in some sectors, the pandemic has inevitably served as a growth catalyst for a number of start-ups and technology companies in an increasingly digital world.

At Diagram, we are continually inspired by the track record and progress of our founders and existing portfolio; several of which reached major milestones recently. Some highlights include:

• Dialogue, the inaugural idea that Diagram helped conceive and launch in 2016 went from idea to IPO
• nesto raised an $11.5M Series A round led following explosive growth in demand for online mortgages
• Synctera raised a US$12.4M Seed round led by Lightspeed Ventures and is in demand from both community banks and Fintech to use the product
• Breathe Life raised a $5M Series A round and expanded its presence in the US

We have a promising pipeline to look forward to across our portfolio (including our newest companies like Wingo, Novisto, Baselane, Synctera and ClearEstate) as we move into the second quarter of 2021 and beyond.

At the heart of Diagram’s model is a vision to create successful technology ventures that will improve our world, while delivering better risk-adjusted returns for entrepreneurs and investors. We accomplish this with our unique investment approach: infusing more capital into fewer, concentrated ideas that we foster, de-risk, and co-create with our incredible founders.

With the creation of the Opportunity Fund, we are excited to further leverage our Canadian and global network of corporate partners, investors, and founders as we build a better world through entrepreneurship.

Want to learn more? Here’s what Diagram Co-founder and CEO, Francois Lafortune shared with Betakit about the announcement. If you have a media inquiry about the Opportunity Fund, contact us at media@diagram.ca

We’ve been fortunate to partner with other leading entrepreneurs here at Diagram and are continually excited to talk to founders and top talent who want to join us. If that’s you, get in touch.