The portfolio of WorkingVentures has now developed sufficiently to reflect certain investment standards described above.
For instance, financings are distributed well among provinces. A relatively heavy balance of transactions in Ontario and Saskatchewan suggests the fund's sequential pattern of entering provinces to both raise capital and invest. It is the policy of Working Ventures to create a wing of its investment department in every province once $10 million has been mobilized there. This permits it to extend its field operations for advertising, locating opportunities, and negotiating and striking deals.
Investment activity is already apparent in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Working Ventures also began full operations in Nova Scotia at the end of 1994. Recent data provided by Macdonald and Associates, and analyzed by the CLMPC, show that the fund has become the most important source of institutional venture capital and investment in Atlantic Canada currently.
Some balance in investing by region within provinces is also showing up in fund data. In future, this will happen partly due to the establishment of new equity pools that are geared to industrial activity in specific regions. The MOTIVE fund, for example, made its first investment of $400,000 in the computer retailer Cary Peripherals, Inc. of Nepean, Ontario.
As Figure 20 and 21 indicate, there are also signs of diversification on the basis of sectors and stages of development. Fund officers point out that the portfolio essentially divides between value-added industrial projects in technology — telecommunications, computer, biotechnology, industrial automation, electronics, medical health — and manufacturing and processing. In this fashion, investments by Working Ventures appear to be close to mainstream trends in the national venture capital market.
As Working Ventures must finance only small and medium-sized enterprises, all investee firms have a workforce of under 500 employees. Small companies, defined as 50 employees or fewer, constitute roughly half of the overall portfolio.
Working Ventures publishes its own regularly-updated economic impact analysis of the investment portfolio. Featured in this are key economic outputs of investee firms, in aggregate. For instance, since inception, it is estimated that fund capital has backed 52 enterprises with a total employment of 5,575 (including jobs created since investing began), total sales of over $895 million (of which 30 percent are exports) and total research and development spending of over $40 million.