While at the Canadian Venture Forum two weeks ago, I asked Joe Deal of JMI Equity Fund if he would tell Gagglescape readers about JMI's Canadian investments. Joe's synopsis provides good insight into the desirability of Canadian companies.

Changepoint provides comprehensive Web-based business process automation solutions for corporate IT departments and IT professional services organizations to manage projects, people and budgets effectively. IT services organizations use Changepoint to automate their internal business processes, source and procure valued resources, manage contractors and collaborate with customers and partners.

Eloqua provides the leading integrated demand generation platform for executing, automating and measuring highly effective B2B marketing programs.

Empathica provides the leading customer experience management platform for the retail industry. The Company empowers its clients to protect their brand equity and improve profitability by enabling them to measure, manage and improve the quality of their customer experiences.

Intellitactics' products create an enterprise security command and control center for its customers, enabling them to manage security as part of their business and operations.

Panorama extends the Microsoft Platform through integrated business intelligence and corporate performance management solutions. Panorama's software helps Global 2000 organizations make informed decisions that improve profitability, increase revenues, reduce costs and time to market and mitigate competitive risks.

QuIC is a leading innovator in enterprise-wide risk management and financial analytics solutions. The QuIC engine(tm) provides speed, accuracy and flexibility for pricing and risk calculations that is able to handle the most complex models, instruments and analytics.

All 6 are software companies - Eloqua and Empathica deliver it as a service (ASP model) and the others are license models.

We've invested in 20+ states over our history, so in one sense investing in Canada is just a natural extension of our existing strategy of digging up interesting companies regardless of geography and getting on planes to go see them. More specifically, we've found great technical talent in Canada, as well as government incentives (SRED claims) & culture (earnest & fiscally conservative - more in the style of the US East Coast and some of the other, non-California parts of the US) that provide fertile ground for the formation and growth of interesting, capital-efficient companies. The final point is that since we've built up meaningful experience on the legal/tax side by now, we're in a much better position than other US investors (who haven't had as much experience) to structure and execute deals with Canadian companies that work for both the existing shareholders and the new ones (us).

From the company side, the ones that can benefit the most from bringing on US investors tend to be high-growth companies that are finding more and more of their customers, partners, and competitors in the US, and don't have a lot of US sales experience & contacts in-house. Typically they're growing their sales organization pretty rapidly and also wrestling with where to put a VP Sales, where to add sales reps, etc., all in the context of the fact that most of their market opportunity exists south of the border.