Nectarios Economakis, co-founder and partner at Amiral Ventures, joins Sunny Ray for a conversation between two allocators about why Canadian venture needed a fund willing to lead. Amiral is a Montreal based seed stage fund, co-founded with Frederic Bastien and Dominic Becotte, targeting 75 million Canadian dollars and completing a 40 million first close in December 2025, anchored by Investissement Quebec with Desjardins Capital writing the first cheque alongside roughly fifty individual investors. The thesis is blunt: an ecosystem of follower investors produces an economy of subsidiaries, and today roughly two thirds of Canadian seed and Series A rounds are led from outside the country. Amiral plans around fifteen investments out of its first fund, across enterprise AI, robotics, supply chain and advanced manufacturing, entering at seed and following its winners into Series A. Economakis describes what he is actually underwriting when the numbers cannot carry the decision yet: founder conviction above everything, founder market fit ahead of the repeat entrepreneur pattern, and the ability to tell the story at a stage where the P and L is thin. He argues the public markets have overcorrected on SaaS compression, and takes the contrarian position that personal robotics hardware is further out than most of his peers in venture expect.
Two thirds of Canadian seed and Series A rounds are led by foreign investors. Amiral Ventures was built to change that.
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