Ron Warburton

Managing Partner

2000 - Current

Ron is a Managing Partner of the BDC IT Venture Fund which manages over $300 million in venture capital investments across Canada in emerging and mid-stage internet, mobile and enterprise companies. Initial investments typically range from $2M to $5M in Series A or B rounds with up to $15M invested over the life of the company. Our investment team includes five partners based in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver and San Francisco. Altogether, the five partners have founded 8 companies. We lead the majority of our investments and use our knowledge, resources and worldwide networks to help promising early-stage companies become global leaders. The fund has invested in a number of successful companies including Radian6 (acquired by Salesforce), Q1 Labs (acquired by IBM), Axonify (acquired by Luminate), Trulioo, Hopper, Cymax, Solink and Vendasta. As part of his Managing Partner role, Ron actively participates on the board of directors of a number of IT companies and has led investments into Tarian Software (acquired by IBM), Blaze Software (acquired by Akamai), CloudLink Technologies (acquired by EMC), Privacy Analytics (acquired by IMS Health), Analyze Re (acquired by Verisk), Hubdoc (acquired by Xero) and Axonify (acquired by Luminate ). In addition, he also manages investments in Solink and Klipfolio on behalf of BDC Capital’s IT Venture Fund. Ron is also the Managing Partner of the BDC Seed Venture Fund with early stage investments in over 70 companies across Canada.

President and CEO

1991 - 2000

Led the acquisition of Simetra Inc. through a management buy-out (MBO) in October 1991. Subsequently, as CEO, facilitated the company’s turnaround and established Simetra as one of Canada’s leading enterprise project management software vendors. Co-founded a spin-off company in October 1996 that specialized in providing consulting services for large US clients based on the Cognos BI software tools. As CEO of Simetra Development Ltd., the company built a solid reputation in the industry until its acquisition by NewSys Solutions in February 2000. End user clients included Goldman Sachs, Concur Technologies and First Union Bank.

Sales Manager

1989 - 1991

Marketing Manager

1986 - 1989

Product Manager

1984 - 1986

Assistant Superintendent

1981 - 1982

Assistant Superintendent of the major RockyView Hospital extension.