Seattle-based venture capital firm Flying Fish Partners is establishing a presence in Alberta following the close of its $70 million fund earlier this month.
Flying Fish has hired Tiffany Linke-Boyko, who is based in Edmonton, to lead its Canadian operations as principal, the firm announced Tuesday. According to a Flying Fish spokesperson, the firm will have an office in Alberta as well.
"I am very excited to join Flying Fish because of the deep expertise they bring and the commitment to roll up their sleeves and help companies succeed," Linke-Boyko said in a news release. "It has been incredible to see the growth in the Alberta tech community over the last decade, and I am excited to continue to contribute to that trajectory."
Flying Fish also announced Alberta Enterprise Corp. (AEC) has invested $7.5 million in the new fund. A spokesperson said the $7.5 million is included in the original $70 million. AEC invests in venture capital funds to back technology companies, according to the release.
Linke-Boyko is joining Flying Fish from We Know Training, an online training content company headquartered in Edmonton. Linke-Boyko was president at the company and spent more than a year there, according to her LinkedIn page. Before that, she was the CEO at Startup Edmonton, a community hub for entrepreneurs.
Flying Fish was started in 2017 but began investing in 2018. The firm focuses on early-stage startups in the machine learning and artificial intelligence space, but the firm will invest in follow-on rounds with portfolio companies, said Flying Fish managing director and co-founder Heather Redman.
The $70 million fund is Flying Fish's second, following its first fund of $37 million. Its portfolio includes the Seattle-based food-making robotics company Picnic and the Seattle-based data science startup YData.
At the time of closing its $70 million fund, Redman told the Business Journal she estimated 70% of investments from the new fund would go to startups in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada. Flying Fish will invest in other regions due to the growing importance of artificial intelligence, she added.
Flying Fish has made multiple new hires recently in addition to Linke-Boyko. The firm named Adriane Brown, formerly the president and chief operating officer at Intellectual Ventures, as managing director concurrent with the new fund news, while Lisa Nelson, co-founder of M12, was named a venture partner on the new fund.
"The big message that we've been putting out there is that we're trying to hire the people that will ultimately replace us," Redman previously told the Business Journal. "If you don't really start thinking as early as possible about succession planning, you won't successfully build a firm. A lot of firms fail because they don't think about that."
