Montreal’s #Startup Social Media Discussion

“Venture capital matters” dominate the Montreal tech startup scene, according to what the data shows around Twitter discussion from Canada’s second largest city:

Montreal’s Investors Lead the Conversation

Montreal is home to some of Canada’s largest VC firms, including Real Ventures, Rho Canada, BDC Capital and iNovia Capital. The city also made Compass’ list of top startup ecosystems globally:

Montreal, ranked at number 20 in Compass’ 2015 Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking https://t.co/fBURm4I5vd

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— Montreal Tech Watch (@mtw) March 23, 2016

It makes sense that money leads the discussion. Early-stage startups live and die by their next round, and a local investor who knows the founders, the talent pool and the city’s other companies is often the first cheque a young company gets. When several of those firms share one city, they also share deals, co-invest and refer companies to each other, which is a big part of what makes an ecosystem feel like a community rather than a list of companies.

Compass, the research firm behind that ranking, was formerly known as Startup Genome, the name it publishes under today. Its rankings weigh things like startup performance, funding, talent and market reach, so a top-20 placing in 2015 was a signal that Montreal was being taken seriously beyond Canada.

Notman House: A Home for the Community

After funding, physical accommodation for startup activity shows up prominently in the Montreal social media discussion in the last 90 days. Notman House – a startup campus providing office, event, and communal space for entrepreneurs, investors, technology partners and community groups – has attracted 3.3 million Twitter impressions from nearly 1,000 mentions in the last 3 months.

Notman House aims to contribute to Montreal’s startup ecosystem by “producing companies that contribute to the social, economic and cultural fabric of [Montreal] while shaping the future of our global society,” according to the organization’s website.

The building itself has a long history. According to its Wikipedia entry, the Greek Revival house on Sherbrooke Street West was completed in 1845 and takes its name from the photographer William Notman, who lived there from 1876 until his death in 1891. It later became part of a hospital run by the Sisters of St. Margaret for close to a century. In January 2011 the non-profit OSMO Foundation leased the house for the city’s web and startup community, and on December 19, 2012 it bought the property with the help of government grants and private sponsors.

Opportunities to work at, or with, Notman House drive the social media discussion:

Key role in MTL startup ecosystem: @Notman looking for a new Campus Director. https://t.co/tt19FxQcyz. Thx to @NoahRed for his amazing work.

— Sylvain Carle (@froginthevalley) March 1, 2016

Fantastic opportunity: Campus Coordinator @Notman House. Play a key role in Montreal’s startup ecosystem. https://t.co/gEYwFY7dDF

— Sylvain Carle (@froginthevalley) April 29, 2016

Notman House has a very international view to its place in the world, saying its vision is “predicated on the beliefs that not only do startups make cities great, but that great cities need great startups.”

Want a look inside Notman House? Here’s a 3D tour:

The People Driving the Discussion

In addition to Notman driving Twitter discussion around the Montreal tech #startup scene, is one person: Sylvain Carle, a Partner at Real Ventures and General Manager of FounderFuel.

Known as “@froginthevalley” on Twitter, Carle has proven to be both a supporter of Notman House, and a driving force of Twitter discussion in Montreal recently.

Montréal’s Startup Ecosystem Report: a call for collaboration! With @credoprod @startupfest & OSMO. #StartupMTL https://t.co/QcNvtrtTJa

— Sylvain Carle (@froginthevalley) March 30, 2016

Carle ranks as one of the more influential Twitter users talking about startups in Montreal, alongside MontrealNewTech, Montreal Tech Watch and Sebastien Provencher.

FounderFuel, the accelerator Carle was running, is one of the clearest examples of how Real Ventures tried to build the local scene. Real Ventures founded it in 2011, and by early 2023 it had seen more than 100 companies graduate across 13 cohorts, with alumni including BenchSci, Paper, Sonder and Unsplash, according to BetaKit.

Want to browse through Montreal’s startup community? Here’s a start:

What’s Happened Since 2016

The ecosystem has had both good years and harder ones. FounderFuel paused in 2020 after running one virtual cohort, and came back in 2023 as a hybrid, national program backed jointly by Real Ventures, Panache Ventures and Inovia Capital, the firm this article calls iNovia. The relaunch plan was to admit eight startups, with the three firms together investing $120,000 CAD in each, BetaKit reported. The same report noted that Real Ventures itself faced an uncertain stretch after changing managing partners and pausing fundraising for its next fund in the fall of 2022.

Montreal’s place in the global rankings has also moved. Startup Genome’s 2024 report placed the city 39th in the world, up one spot from the year before, and said Montreal generated $39 billion in ecosystem value between 2021 and 2023, according to BetaKit’s coverage. The report singled out life sciences, cleantech and fintech as the city’s main strengths.

That’s a lower position than the 20th place celebrated on Twitter in 2016, but the two numbers aren’t a like-for-like comparison. The 2015 list covered just 20 ecosystems, while the more recent reports draw on data from millions of companies in more than 300 cities, so many more places are now competing for those spots.

What It Means for Founders

The 2016 conversation pointed to three things a startup city needs: local investors, a physical place for people to meet, and well-connected people who keep the community talking. Those still hold. A founder choosing where to build should look at who is actually writing cheques nearby, whether there is a shared space or regular event where the community gathers, and who the connectors are.

Montreal’s story also shows that these pieces rise and fall. Accelerators pause, funds change hands and rankings shift from year to year. The parts that tend to last are the relationships, which is exactly what spaces like Notman House were built to create.