"The ability to individually select my VC investments injects a bit of fun into the investment process."
Watch Earl's storyEvery time Brightspark invests in a new company, we create a new Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Limited Partnership Fund that is open to accredited investors.
Individuals, family offices, trusts, and corporations that meet the definition of an accredited investor can participate in Brightspark investments. Our team will also work with you to assess whether you are suitable for venture capital investments based on your financial situation and investment goals.
Generally, an individual is an accredited investor if they meet at least one of the statements below:
The minimum investment is C$10,000 per individual investment (the average is $35,000-$50,000).
When deciding how much to invest, take into consideration that we suggest you diversify your risk by investing in multiple deals, and plan to reserve some capital for a follow-on strategy.
A portion of your investment is applied to fees:
You should also know about our performance fee (also called "carry"). When a company exits, Brightspark (pro-rata) returns 100% of the limited partners’ initial contribution first, and then distributes 85% of the remaining distribution to them. The remaining 15% of profits goes to Brightspark as carry.
As an investor, you make money when (and if) a company in your investment portfolio goes through a liquidation event. You will then receive your initial investment back as well as your allocated portion of the profit.
Brightspark also offers the option to sell your position to other accredited investors through its Secondary Transactions Program.
You should know that:
Brightspark vs investing directly in a company as an angel investor
Brightspark vs equity crowdfunding
Venture capital investments involve a high level of risk, and investors could lose all of their investment. The best way to offset the risk is to build a diversified portfolio of multiple VC investments.
You can read our full risk disclaimer here
Setup takes just a few minutes; simply answer a few questions to validate your accreditation and tell us your investment goals.
Individuals, family offices, trusts, and corporations that meet the definition of an accredited investor can participate in Brightspark investments. Our team will also work with you to assess whether you are suitable for venture capital investments based on your financial situation and investment goals.
Generally, an individual is an accredited investor if they meet at least one of the statements below:
Review key information (founding team, product, market, and more) that can help you decide whether or not an opportunity interests you. We send you an email every time a new investment opportunity is available for your review.
We share information about the company and technology, the management team, competitive landscape, industry data, use of funds, as well as any other information that can help you make an investment decision. Often, we post a video pitch featuring the company's management team and Brightspark's investment team.
We currently invest in approximately 5 to 7 new early-stage companies per year.
All companies are vetted thoroughly through the Brightspark due diligence process. We commit to only invest in what we think are the best early-stage companies in Canada. This means that the investment cadence may vary, depending on the quality of the deal flow we are seeing.
Usually, our investments are fully subscribed in 5 to 20 days, but this varies.
Sometimes, our investments get oversubscribed and it happens quickly, so we encourage investors to let us know if they want to participate in the investment as soon as possible to secure allocation room.
Our team is available to answer any questions you have about the opportunity. We often post questions and answers for other investors to see.
The entire investment process is paperless and automated on our secure platform: from reviewing our due diligence, connecting to your bank, and accessing a live dashboard of your investments.
You have the option to send your funds online through your bank, send them via wire transfer, or send a cheque (delivered by mail or in-person).
We designed the entire investment process to be paperless. To complete an investment, we simply require that:
We go to great lengths to keep all account information safe and private on our investor platform. All of our investor's account details are stored on our servers using AES-256 encryption, the same level of security as the world's largest commercial banks. In addition, all traffic goes over Secure Socket Layer (SSL) security to prevent third parties from accessing connection to the platform.
You will receive detailed quarterly reports, have access to an online dashboard of your portfolio and financial statements, and be invited to our exclusive annual investor summit.
Every quarter, we send you a report containing updates and commentary on all of your Brightspark investments. We also issue quarterly and early financial statements - a summary of all of your current investments and their current unrealized value.
We also send monthly newsletters, which include news and updates on all of our portfolio companies.
You will not have a direct line to the portfolio company - Brightspark usually takes a Board seat and follows the company closely - meeting and speaking on at least a monthly basis. This approach benefits the portfolio company, which doesn’t have to manage multiple Limited Partners.
You will get the opportunity to meet with the management team of your portfolio companies at select Brightspark events, and at our annual investor summit.
Occasionally, the Brightspark team will make connections that they think will be beneficial to the portfolio company.
After you complete your investment, you will get a copy of your signed Limited Partnership Agreement and your units certificate.
Thereafter, you will receive quarterly updates, which is a summary of key business metrics, and our investment team's commentary on the progress of your investments.
You will also receive tax documents, as well as quarterly and annual account statements – which are a financial summary of all of your investments and their current unrealized value.
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