Thoughts on Maverix? (New Growth Equity Fund, Toronto)
New PE / growth equity platform founded by the investor behind OMERS Ventures / Growth Equity. They just closed their first growth equity fund (US$500M).
There is no information on them except the founders / partners, so can only speculate.
Think it could be a pretty good opportunity given the growth equity focus and founders background in OMERS. Difficult to tell how much is just "new fund" hype and not completely sold on the rest of management team's background
Anyone have other insights / thoughts?
Sources:
Following
Unfortunately I know as much as you do, but to your point, there are very few people who have done as much as John Ruffalo has for the Canadian tech space. This guy was leading the charge in Canadian venture capital when he started OMERS' VC business. In addition to John, there are some other impressive backgrounds at the fund, both on their core team as well as their advisory board.
Also if you're unfamiliar with John's story take a read here. Some pretty inspiring stuff: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/i-stubbornly-didn-t-die-canadian-tech-inves…
That was an inspiring story - all the best to him.
Why do you say that the background of the other team members are impressive? There's a person from McKinsey but haven't come across anything else that I'd consider "top" brands.
My contention with the opportunity is that the founder was previously in VC and not in traditional "growth equity" / PE. Wonder how that would function from a diligence / day to day work perspective - without a VP in between, I'd imagine the associate will have to pretty much be able to do everything alone
I know there are ex-Greenhill and a an ex-Morgan Stanley people there
I suppose "impressive" is all relative. I'm assuming when you think of "top" brands you're thinking of household PE names that are prominent in the US. You won't find /that/ many people from those backgrounds in Canada, but if you take a spin through their bios I think you would agree that most would view these folks as successful. With respect to John not coming from traditional GE, it's a fair point but IMO this shouldn't really be a huge concern. From a sourcing perspective, having folks like John, Jim and Arlene on your team is definitely a positive because everyone knows who they are.
I'm not in GE or VC so I can't comment on how the diligence process might vary in terms of the day to day, but I understand your concern. However I think the expectation when joining a new fund should be that you are expected to roll up your sleeves and not have your hand held.
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I feel underwhelmed
I wonder if it is super risky to join a first-time growth equity firm like this. If cycle turns, the fund might just go bust?
I think they have good money behind them and the partners have $. At the same time, as I said above, their strategy and group of staff seem very underwhelming.
Juniors or seniors? The juniors seem pretty good. I know some of them
The biggest risk with first time funds is that they won’t be able to raise the money. If they’ve already cleared that hurdle ($500M is very impressive for a Fund I, btw) it’s not going to blow up spectacularly like you see some HFs do.
Didn't they get sued for unpaid work from a senior executive? Also how were the returns at OMERS Ventures?
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-maverix-lawyers-issue-…
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