FROM PORT TO PORT, THE SEAS OF A STARTUP On board the Consilium Crypto
Interview with Vince Haeger, resident at Notman House.
At the OSMO Cafe bar, Vince Haeger COO and co-founder of Consilium Crypto puts down his cup of latté after taking a sip.
“It was in 2019, deep in the winter crypto bearish market, after telling them we’re looking to raise $600,000, the silence from the nearly eighty investors was very present” recalls Vince about launching the first investment round for Consilium. However, the startup whose office has been running at the Notman house since 2018, would not give up.
It would be two years of sailing the Atlantic before Vince set foot on land in Montreal, Canada where his sister was already living. He loved the city so much that he didn’t hesitate one second to enroll in Mechanical Engineering at Concordia University. This choice of career was obvious, considering all those summers spent at his uncle’s workshop in Dortmund, where he learned the secrets and parts of automobiles to the point that, at sixteen, they reassembled an entire car together.
After two years studying in his field, the doubts arisen. He then decided to drastically change course and began, with new winds, a degree in finance. It was in the last year of his undergrad that his now business partner and co-founder Austin Hubbell invited him to join a fintech startup in proprietary trading. “We proposed to them to not only look at the FOREX markets but also to go for the new crypto currency market, but they didn’t like the idea. That’s how I set my foot in the startup world, it was brief. So I went back to university to finish my undergraduate degree.”
However, that first brief but firm step would stir the seas that any entrepreneur would never hesitate to sail. Months before graduating, like a wave breaking on his voice, Austin came back to him and said, “Let’s do it again, but this time, we are the founders.”
In 2017, Consilium Crypto was launching into the startup sea that took it to Toronto and Montreal to be part of incubators and accelerators, including Holt Accelerator (2018) and CDL (2019). The company was starting to take off thanks to its first investments and projects well underway. But Montreal, one of the pillars of the Canadian startup ecosystem, like a lighthouse to which boats flock, beckoned in the distance.
II
“For us to be in an environment with people who shared the same struggles and the same aspirations is a great motivator. Once inside Notman House, it was not only about having that access to people but also giving back by participating in the community. Also, if we need to approach VCs, Fonder Fuel or Techstars, Notman is like that person who shows you around and opens the doors for you to meet them. And without that open door, it would be very difficult to get that first meeting”, explains Vince.
One of those doors at Notman house is called Google for Startups, which makes products and connections available. “It was huge for us, especially for a fintech company, to have access to services and, of course, the Google Cloud credits were very helpful”, says Vince. The entrepreneur remembers Nick Feller, Google’s Cloud Customer Engineer, walking into the Café OSMO wearing a baseball cap, waving politely as he sat down, looked up and set aside his computer. At this moment, Nick said in a pleasant tone, “Guys, I don’t need that, I’m here to meet you, to hear from you. I want to listen to you all and then teach you what I can teach you”.
“This helped us to further develop our structure plus Google was well aware of how and what we were using the credits for. If it wasn’t for the connection between Notman and Google, our growth would have been stunted significantly”, assures Vince about that 2019.
III
After that silence that flooded the room, floating was not an option, “We are not going to give up, we are not going to stop in this fundraising, we have to keep trying. As long as we keep growing we will try to get investment, at some point people will call and ask Hey, do you accept investment? you’ll see!”
And one day, the call came.
By January 2020, nine companies invested in Consilium Crypto $600,000 USD, which allowed them not only to maintain the team but to hire more professionals in times when the pandemic made the most optimistic doubt. “Many startup companies saw their investors’ funds withdrawn at the last minute,” adds Vince, who believes that while fortune was on their side at the beginning of 2020, that for many, delivered what it promised to be: a year of crisis. Part of the stability of the startup’s growth is due to the strong personal connections and shared vision between team members.
“When I was traveling on a ship for months at a time, all the luggage, people and belongings cohabited the same space. It was impossible to be indifferent to each other. That’s what we have put into practice since we formed the first team at Consilium , if we want to be productive we need to respect each other’s way of working and at the same time get involved in team projects, otherwise we won’t move forward”, concludes Vince, who has been served another Coffee and lets us understand that, while in Notman the synergy of an ecosystem floods its corridors, the synergy in a startup also navigates inside.
By César Salvatierra, Notman House staff
A successful Networking – Learning Day at Maison Notman House
A successful networking – Learning Day at Maison Notman House
Schedule
- 9am: Workshop – Best practices in talent acquisition workshop with Sourcinc (conditional participation)
- Noon: Lunch’n’learn – How to protect sensitive data with Flinks
- 1pm: Office Hours with Fasken
- Bring your own lunch or order a delicious lunch box from Café OSMO ($7)
Once a month, we welcome you to Notman House for a series of workshops/conferences/networking on finance, human resources, strategic positioning and much more! Over the year, we will host diverse experts who offer you food for thoughts.
The formula: Register for the activities (free) get a lunch box for only 7$ (optional), the workshop is restricted to entrepreneurs.
➝ Workshop – Best practices in talent acquisition by Sourcinc
The workshop is intended exclusively for entrepreneurs, founders, managers of start-ups or small businesses. Workshop in french
In a context of labour shortage, attracting and hiring talent can prove to be quite a challenge! As part of this workshop, Sourcinc will discuss the basic principles and best practices for talent acquisition to help you build a talented team. Learn more about the pitfalls to avoid and discover essential tools. The experts will answer all your questions and discuss use cases with you.
Speakers
Cynthia Bazinet (Talent Sourcing Expert, Sourcinc)
Cynthia has worked with growing startups, tech companies and in the Visual effects and 3D industry of Montreal and New York. She has studied administration and labour law.
Sara-Catherine St-Laurent (Talent Sourcing Expert, Sourcinc)
Sara-Catherine started her career in the financial sector and has worked in larger companies and more recently in SMEs. She also has a great knowledge of the creative sector, having worked with Cirque du Soleil, Gameloft and TRIOTECH.
Discover Sourcinc’s services
➝ Lunch&learn – How to protect sensitive data with Flinks
Protecting our data is a subject a startup must face at one time or another. But when you’re a small business, can you protect your data without breaking the bank? Come meet Francis Lepine, Data Protection Officer at Flinks who will give us best practices in data protection. Reserve your lunch box with Café OSMO for this new monthly Lunch&Learn edition. English conference
Speaker
Francis Lépine (Data Protection Officer, Flinks)
Francis Lépine is responsible for Data protection at Flinks. He speaks fluent data privacy, system security, entrepreneur, and auditor – so he explains what we are doing, and why, in plain English.
➝ Office Hours with Fasken
After lunch, set foot in the door of Notman House. Book a 20-minutes clinic with an expert every month. This month, come talk to a lawyer from Fasken.
Fasken is a full-service law firm with offices located all around the world. They offer comprehensive legal expertise from all types of industries.
*This event is over, but discover our other events here. We have a lot of networking opportunities!
Rencontre avec un résident – Seedcha
Rencontre avec un résident – Seedcha
Locataire depuis septembre, Seedcha est un nouveau venu à la Maison Notman. L’entreprise est le fruit du travail de deux amies, Lauren Lallemand et Rivellie Tchuisseu, qui se sont rencontrées lors de leur maîtrise sur le développement des zones rurales et de l’agriculture.
Ayant toutes deux vécu et travaillé pendant de nombreuses années à l’étranger, elles ont voulu créer une entreprise où elles pourraient se consacrer à des projets de recherche intéressants et à des collaborations liées aux thèmes de l’agriculture et de l’environnement, tant au Canada qu’à l’étranger.
L’entreprise fait des demandes de financement auprès du secteur public (gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux), d’organisations de développement international, d’instituts de recherche et d’organisations non gouvernementales pour effectuer des recherches appliquées sur l’industrie agroalimentaire, l’environnement et le changement climatique.
Si vous souhaitez discuter des défis liés au développement durable, nous sommes toujours heureux de vous aider ! Et si vous avez besoin de conseils sur les plantes d’intérieur ou les jardins, n’hésitez pas à passer voir Lauren.
Nous sommes très heureuses de partager notre première année d’activité avec les autres locataires de l’immeuble !
– L’Équipe de Seedcha
Thank you, Real Ventures
Thank you, Real Ventures
Many people are not aware of the origin story of the non-profit OSMO Foundation which owns Notman House, and has the goal of supporting the growth and development of the ecosystem in Montreal and throughout Quebec. It was co-founded in mid-2009 by Real Ventures, together with several other companies, organizations and members of the Montreal startup community.
So, the announcement Real Ventures made today, makes it clear that they are as committed as ever to supporting OSMO and Notman in our mission. The firm will be donating 20% of the carried interest from their new fund, OrbitMTL, to the OSMO Foundation.
Their latest fund, of $180 million, has just launched and is backed by multiple Canadian and international investors such as Teralys, BDC, Investissement Quebec, Caisse de Depot, HarbourVest, as well as Asia-headquartered investors, Tencent and Temasek. Of this $180 million, $30 million will go to OrbitMTL, the firm’s accelerator and pre-seed investment strategy in Quebec. It is a portion of the carry from this early-stage fund that will be donated to OSMO.
“For Real, it starts with the desire to contribute to startup ecosystems in a manner that can benefit all active participants,” said Alan MacIntosh. “This collaborative mindset inspires us to launch initiatives that help rapidly growing tech communities across Canada,and wherever else we might go.”
-The OSMO Foundation & Notman House
Life After Notman – Corstem
Life After Notman – Corstem AI*
Our time at Notman House was short, and besides the occasional tea or coffee from Café OSMO, we pretty much stayed confined in our office, working hard. As a matter of fact, even that was quite sporadic since we had to attend several tradeshows and conferences in order to simultaneously get acquainted with the Montreal Entrepreneurship ecosystem, as well as the Canadian and US healthcare industry. However, this four-month stay allowed us to perfect Corstem’s business model and build its foundation. It also gave us a cozy place to work from, for our first contract.
We must say that when we joined Notman House last October, the market traction was already significant. That keen interest is mainly due to two ingredients: first, we are part of the wave of Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies surging in Montréal, and second, we’ve been closely collaborating with physicians for the last few years which has allowed us to pinpoint their needs.
Since being at Notman, Corstem has moved to Inno-centre’s office which is quite convenient because we have a coaching/consulting agreement with them. Being at the same workplace as your lawyer, your financial advisor, and your business advisor has proven to be quite practical!
Also, in the past three months, we’ve had the chance to participate in CENTECH’s high-standard Accelerator Program and have since secured ourselves a place in its newly-managed Propulsion Program. Its affiliation with École des Technologies Supérieures (ÉTS) also facilitates the access to highly qualified resources.
On the business side, we are currently collaborating with the National Institutes of Health in the US as well as other research organizations and major foreign industrial partners. Our flagship software product is saving cardiologists up to 40 minutes of diagnosis time per patient. We do this by automatically eliminating the manual labor involved in their medical image analysis, and we’re planning to do even more with new proprietary products that we’ll be introducing to market shortly.
Finally, despite all the exciting possibilities that AI promises, it’s important for us, at Corstem, to nurture our primary objective, which is to allow physicians to spend more time at what they do best: dealing with patients, not with machines.
Pascal Labrecque
Co-founder/COO
Corstem
*Corstem was acquired by Circle Cardiovascular Imaging in 2019.
Life After Notman – Motorleaf
Life After Notman – Motorleaf
Drinking from a firehose is an expression we heard from other startups while we were located in Notman House during our time at FounderFuel, which all culminated in July 2016; I understood from an intellectual level, and now KNOW what it means.
In August we shuffled out of Notman House, saying goodbye to our awesome neighbours and Notman staff (upstairs and downstairs), with a mix of excitement and melancholy.
Little did we know that in 6 months we would have landed our lead investor (500 StartUps Canada) and be 7 full time, and 4 part time staff at Motorleaf HQ.
It’s so easy to write that last sentence, it’s another thing to explain what a tough and nerve racking journey it was before we knew our runway was secure.
It’s now a task of execution verses planning what to execute.
We have moved into a loft style building in St-Henri, my Husky dog Shadow comes to hang out with us (he’s broken his leg so right now is taking it easy at home in Sutton Quebec), and we are starting to feel ‘it’s happening!!’ from a company culture / momentum perspective.
We’ve hired Masters and PHD brainiacs from McGill University, awesome business development, client experience, and engineering team members – and even an expresso machine and robot vacuum (this was a big deal for our team!)
Notman House showed Ramen (my Co-Founder) and myself what a vibrant tech community there is, and I also saw a community that truly wants others to succeed. We’ve had nothing but good wishes and positive feedback on what we’re doing, which before you land funding keeps you going during those darker days when the mountain you wish to climb looks too big to scale alone.
We’re planning to change the world, helping anyone grow crops anywhere in the world – automatically. Reach out if you think that’s a project worth looking at in more detail – we’re happy to speak with you!
– Ally & Ramen
Life After Notman – Crew Collective and Cafe
Life After Notman – Crew Collective and Cafe
You may have heard the buzz about the hybrid coffeeshop/co-working space that is Crew Collective and Cafe headquarters in Old Port, Montreal. After all, the redesign of the former Royal Bank on St-Jacques Street was described by Slate Magazine as “The World’s Most Elegant Startup Office”. Designed by architect Henri Cleinge, the opulent space retains the old-world elegance of the historic bank, while integrating all the necessities of a modern tech-startup space: integrated office space, conference rooms, individual work stations. What you may not have realized, is that Crew actually got their start at FounderFuel, and worked out of Notman House for the duration of the program.
Crew Collective and Cafe, at that time going by the name of Ooomf, applied and were accepted into the 2012 Founder Fuel cohort. “That’s where we met our two other cofounders actually,” says Stephanie Liverani, COO of Crew Collective. “At the end of the program we changed the name to Crew Collective and Cafe and had a slightly different business model.”
Turning their headquarters into a co-working space seems like a natural extension of Crew’s concept; they provide a platform that connects freelance designers and developers with people with project ideas. Their website boasts that many of the Crew team members are themselves former freelancers. The Crew Collective and Café venture has been wildly successful; the Café serves up gourmet food, pastries, and coffee, and the private workspaces have proved so popular there is a waiting list.
But the inspiration for many of these core concepts, a shared space promoting interaction among like-minded individuals, can be seen in the startup community fostered by Notman House. “I think it was the community feel about Notman House. You were really close together; there were always ongoing events happening at night that you can attend,” says Liverani. And this was especially useful at a time when Crew was just getting off the ground. “For us, it was great being close to our investors because they were working upstairs. And I just think Notman House is really a place for a lot of Montreal tech community to come hang out; whether they’re coming for an event or coming for a meeting, it was constantly being able to see people in our tech community, all the time.”
As they have grown from a team of four to thirty-two, and moved from Notman to their current 13,000 sq. ft. space, Crew has tried to incorporate these ideas into Crew Collective and Café. “I think they [Notman House] did a really good job of hosting; not only having your office space as a place you go in to work, but having it placed as a collaborative space for a lot of people to use. And so that’s kind of what you think of for the Crew Collective as well. We shared our office space with a bunch of people, and it’s not just for us, it’s for people that are coming for business meetings or that want to rent desks, and we really embraced that concept and shared our space with the community of Montreal”.
-Quinn Mason
Life After Notman – Volume7
Life After Notman – Volume 7
Although Montreal-based Volume7 develops mobile and web application technology for a variety of startups, don’t confuse them for your run-of-the mill web agency. “We’re really a digital product agency,” explains Business Development Manager Raphael Christian-Roy. Most of our clients have a seed idea, but don’t necessarily have the background nor the know-how to execute it. Essentially, we’re taking their idea and building an MVP (minimum viable product) out of it, which they use to raise more money; if they don’t have money already, they go raise money with investors.”
The decision to make digital software products for startups was a deliberate one, despite the fact that early stage startups have significantly less funding than firmly established corporate giants. “We quickly realized that these established companies aren’t the clients we want. They typically just want a bunch of coders to execute on command, which is not what we’re about. First and foremost, we collaborate with clients during the ideation phase, ensuring that we’re building the best possible product.”
That’s why the decision to become tenants at Notman House earlier this year made so much sense; “Given the fact that we primarily work with startups, Notman House was the obvious choice when came time to find an office space. As Montreal’s largest startup hub, it was the best of both worlds for us,” said Christian-Roy. At the time they were tenants, Notman was also hosting between 20-30 events/month, providing the perfect opportunity to mingle with the community. “From meeting startups, founders and entrepreneurs, to individuals who are looking to develop an idea, Notman House events were and continue to be an invaluable part of my role as Business Development Manager.”
And although Volume7 moved out of Notman house in June to accommodate a steadily growing team (they’ve since jumped from four employees to twelve, with plans to be at 15-20 by the Summer), Christian-Roy is a member of the Young Founder’s Circle, and still finds himself at Notman at least twice a week. “Meeting and getting to know everyone in the startup community was definitely the coolest part about being a tenant here.”
–Quinn Mason
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