Vancouver's angel and VC scene, by the numbers
Vancouver is British Columbia's startup hub, and BC punches above its weight in Canadian venture capital. In 2025, British Columbia investors deployed $1.4 billion CAD across 70 deals, the second-highest total of any Canadian province behind Ontario, according to the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association. That gives Vancouver founders real access to institutional capital without leaving the West Coast.
Of the 400+ investors tagged to Vancouver on AngelMatch, about half focus on seed and early stage venture rounds, with a smaller group active at pre-seed and Series A. Most are angel individuals rather than institutional funds, which matches the city's reputation for founder-turned-investor money: people who built and sold a Vancouver company and now write checks into the next one.
That mix matters for how you should plan your raise. A city with mostly angels and a handful of seed funds is not the place to expect a $10 million Series A to appear out of nowhere. It is a good place to stitch together a $500,000 to $1.5 million seed round from ten or fifteen individual checks, then look outside the city, often to Toronto or the US, once you need real growth capital.
What Vancouver investors like to fund
B2B, consumer internet, and information technology top the list of markets among Vancouver's tagged investors, with health care and enterprise software close behind. That lines up with what the city is actually known for: a strong enterprise software base, a growing health tech cluster around the University of British Columbia's research pipeline, and a long history in gaming and visual effects that keeps feeding consumer tech talent into new startups.
If your company sits in one of those five markets, you're pitching into Vancouver's strength, not against it. If you're outside them, that's not a dead end, but expect to spend more time explaining why an investor here should care, since you won't be the obvious fit in their portfolio.
Vancouver's older industries still shape who's writing checks today. Decades of video game and visual effects studios in the city trained a generation of technical talent that has since moved into SaaS, consumer apps, and AI tooling, and a lot of that talent cashed out and became angels. The city's clean tech roots run just as deep, tied to BC's hydro-heavy power grid and a long run of climate-focused research coming out of local universities, so if you're building in energy or climate, don't skip past that history when you frame your pitch.
How Vancouver's ecosystem stacks up
Startup Genome ranked Vancouver 36th globally in its 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem Report, a small slide from 34th the year before, though the city has held a top-40 spot for years. The persistent gap isn't talent. It's capital: Vancouver produces strong technical teams but has fewer large local funds than Toronto, so many of its most active investors also write checks into Seattle and the Bay Area to stay close to bigger rounds.
Boris Wertz is the clearest example. He built his angel track record backing Vancouver companies like Indochino and Clio before founding Version One Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm that now invests across North America and beyond, and it's still run out of Vancouver. Ryan Holmes, who founded Hootsuite, is another: he's an active angel and co-runs LOI Venture, a seed-stage fund for founders under 30. Investors like these give Vancouver founders a way to raise locally and still land on cap tables that reach into the US.
Vancouver's angel networks are older than you'd think
Two organized angel groups have shaped how early checks get written in this city for decades. VANTEC, the Vancouver Angel Technology Network, has run monthly pitch nights since 1999, screening a handful of BC companies for a private room of accredited investors each time. Angel Forum runs a similar model with a broader Western Canada reach, pulling in angels from Victoria, Calgary, and as far as Seattle for its events. Both are invitation-based rather than open platforms, and both exist specifically because a screened, warm-referral pitch converts far better here than a cold approach.
If you're raising in Vancouver, applying to present at one of these groups is often a more productive use of a week than sending fifty individual emails. You get one pitch in front of thirty or more angels at once, and the vetting process itself is a useful forcing function for tightening your numbers before investors ever see them.
A BC-specific reason angels here say yes
British Columbia runs a provincial tax credit that most founders outside Canada have never heard of, and it changes the math for local angels. Individual investors who put money into a registered small business in BC get a 30% refundable tax credit on the investment, up to a maximum credit of $300,000 per year following BC's 2025 budget increase, according to the Province of British Columbia. In practice, an angel who writes a $50,000 check gets $15,000 of it back from the province regardless of how the company performs.
That doesn't make Vancouver angels reckless, but it does lower the effective risk of an early check, and it's worth mentioning in your pitch if your company can register as an eligible business corporation. Not every startup qualifies, and the paperwork sits with the company rather than the investor, so this is worth confirming with a lawyer or accountant early, not something to promise loosely on a call.
Founders who skip this step often leave money on the table without realizing it. An investor deciding between two similar pitches will lean toward the one where their check goes further, and a properly registered eligible business corporation is one of the few things you control that directly changes an angel's math. Get the registration sorted before you start pitching seriously, not after someone asks about it on a call.
How to approach Vancouver investors
Vancouver is a small enough ecosystem that warm introductions carry more weight here than a cold email ever will. Most of the active angels know each other from the same handful of exits, accelerators, and meetups, so one good intro tends to open two or three more doors. Show up to local events, mention founders or investors you already know in the city, and lead with traction, not just a big vision, since a tight-knit market talks and a weak pitch travels fast.
Because so many Vancouver investors also look at deals in Seattle and beyond, it's worth checking Seattle investors alongside your Vancouver list if your company could plausibly serve either market. Keep your outreach organized as you go. A fundraising CRM helps you track who you've reached, who's gone quiet, and who's asked for a follow-up, which matters more once your list stretches past a dozen names.
What a check actually looks like
Canadian angel checks follow the same broad range as the rest of North America, typically $25,000 to $500,000 per investor, most of it going into seed-stage rounds in Vancouver's case. Venture capital checks run much larger, from $2 million up to $100 million or more depending on the stage, and early rounds usually give up around 15% to 25% of the company in dilution.
Set your expectations for the current climate, not the one from a few years back. Canadian seed activity slipped in 2025, with fewer dollars and fewer deals than 2024, and pre-seed rounds saw both smaller average checks and fewer of them than the five-year norm, according to CVCA data. Investors are being more selective across the board, in Vancouver and everywhere else in Canada, so a clear plan for what the money buys you matters more than it used to.
Vancouver's investor base skews small and selective, which means your target list matters more than your outreach volume. Start with the 400+ investors tagged to the city, narrow to the ones already backing B2B or health care companies at your stage, and build a shortlist you can actually follow up with one by one. AngelMatch's investor database lets you filter that list by market and stage so you're not cold-emailing people who have never written a Canadian check.
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