OMERS promotes Laura Lenz to lead venture capital unit

Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System has appointed Laura Lenz to head its venture capital arm, the fourth person to hold the job in just over three years, while signalling a continued commitment to backing Canadian technology founders.

Ms. Lenz, a veteran early-stage capital investor who joined OMERS Ventures in 2019 and oversaw its Canadian investments, replaces Saar Pikar, who left in July after just one year on the job to lead Kensington Capital Partners Ltd. He in turn had replaced Michael Yang, who departed two years after replacing Damien Steel, who left in 2023 to lead climate technology startup Deep Sky Corp.

“We have a fantastic track record in Canada, and I’m excited to continue building,” said Ms. Lenz, who started her career as an associate with BMO Capital Markets before taking on investor roles at EdgeStone Capital Partners, MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund and Geoff Beattie-led Generation Ventures. “I know the people, I know our portfolio, I know our strategy.”

OMERS private capital head Michael Block said in an interview: “We have tremendous confidence in her and her whole team. She is very thoughtful and conscious about risk. She’s built a great network of relationships with founders in Canada and has a great reputation.”

OMERS Ventures started in 2011 when then-CEO Michael Nobrega brought on John Ruffolo to back promising Canadian tech entrepreneurs. The timing was ideal. While the Canadian venture capital industry was reeling following the retreat of institutional investors during the 2008-09 credit crisis, the tech startup world was rife with opportunity, as smartphones, cloud computing and artificial intelligence proliferated.

OMERS Ventures made early bets on future Canadian champions including Shopify Inc. SHOP-T, Xanadu Quantum Technologies Ltd. XNDU-T and Hopper Inc. It expanded to Britain and the United States and began managing third-party capital before Mr. Ruffolo departed in 2018.

But OMERS Ventures’ relative prominence in the ecosystem faded as other domestic tech financiers including Georgian, Inovia Capital and Radical Ventures amassed billions of dollars in assets. The information technology sector entered a prolonged slump in 2021 – with the exception of artificial intelligence and quantum computing – and the rise of AI-powered companies weighed on valuations of cloud-software companies, including many held by OMERS Ventures. OMERS this year sustained a nine-figure loss after TouchBistro Inc., which OMERS Ventures and OMERS Growth had backed heavily in the 2010s, was bought by Constellation Software for $100-million.

By then OMERS Ventures had stopped investing in Europe to focus primarily on Canada and shed much of its staff. Today it has four partners including Ms. Lenz, five associates and a principal.

The changes stem from a broader review of OMERS’s private-equity business, which has pivoting toward more investing through third-party funds and as a co-investment partner, with a North American focus. OMERS has also stopped making new growth-stage investments in more mature tech companies through a separate group.

At the same time, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has amassed more than $25.9-billion in investments by financing some of the hottest technology names in the world through its venture growth arm TVG, including Anthropic PBC, Space Explorations Technology Corp. (SpaceX) SPCX-Q, Databricks Inc. and legal AI software vendor Harvey AI Corp.

OMERS Ventures, which has about $2-billion allocated to venture investments – roughly 1 per cent of the pension giant’s assets – has made four investments in each of the past three years. It has continued to back high-profile emerging Canadian tech names, including Cohere Inc., Waabi Innovations Inc., Float Financial Solutions Inc. and Dominion Dynamics. Its stake in Xanadu XNDU-T, despite a recent selloff, is still worth more than US$200-million –a sizable gain given it invested less than US$30-million for its stake.

Ms. Lenz said OMERS Ventures’ refocusing on Canada has worked out. “It’s where our network is. It’s where our best performing companies are. We have a lot of opportunity here,” she said. She said OMERS is looking to invest $5-million to $15-million per company, focusing on rapidly expanding AI-first businesses led by “ambitious founders that have a global market opportunity.”

Mr. Block said OMERS Ventures would continue “the same direction of travel” under Ms. Lenz and that the pension fund doesn’t plan to increase its allotment to venture capital. But, he added, “we’re open minded. We look at opportunities as they come. We just see a really good opportunity to focus on what we’re focused on.”