Former Real Ventures partner Sylvain Carle is joining a new climate-focused fund while former Vention CMO Guillaume Mercier is joining BDC Capital.

Sylvain Carle joins SecondMuse Capital

Just a few weeks after announcing his departure from Real Ventures, Montreal-based investor Sylvain Carle has joined SecondMuse Capital.

SecondMuse Capital says it builds resilient future economies for both people and the planet. Carle’s work with the group will focus on climate impact investment.

“My new role will enable me to take my personal convictions and put them into full practice with the help and experience of SecondMuse and their global network,” said Carle. “I am confident we will be able to build on SecondMuse’s track record of building resilient, inclusive economies and increasing their momentum in bringing an ecosystem development approach to impact investing to make systemic, global changes to solve some of the most pressing challenges in climate change.”

Together, SecondMuse Capital and Carle will work to support climate impact entrepreneurs. Carle wants to help shorten the gap between the idea stage and raising enough capital to impact real change.

SecondMuse is located in 13 cities across the world, but primarily in the United States. It has launched and run programs that support entrepreneurs in several countries. SecondMuse says it is bringing “this type of development to the venture capital world and is de-risking investments by aligning siloed capital and partners.”

“We are changing the venture capital game by de-risking our investments through an approach that incorporates our experience in developing entrepreneurial ecosystems,” said SecondMuse founder Todd Khozein. “By combining Sylvain’s experience as a VC and our experience building ecosystems, we believe we are going to not only invest in the most innovative climate impact ventures focused on Quebec, but also put in place a network of support to ensure these ventures succeed.”

SecondMuse has designed and implemented programs on seven continents with over 600 organizations, including NASA, The World Bank, and Nike.

Its programs include The Incubation Network, which supports entrepreneurs with a focus on ending plastic pollution, GET Cities, where they are accelerating female representation in the tech industry and NASA Space Apps Challenge, where they foster solutions to address real-world problems on Earth and in space.

Guillaume Mercier joins BDC Capital

Former Vention CEO Guillaume Mercier is joining BDC Capital’s $250 million Industrial Innovation Venture Fund.

According to BDC, one of his Mercier’s areas of focus will be advanced manufacturing.

Before joining BDC Capital in 2020, Mercier led small and large teams in various executive positions at start-ups and scale-ups such as SSENSE, Vention and Aevium (Lune Rouge). He was previously a principal at Real Ventures, investing in companies at the seed stage, and he spent four years at McKinsey & Company, advising large organizations on key strategic issues across a variety of industries.

Mercier started his career at Procter & Gamble in Toronto and also worked as a videogame producer in San Francisco for Take 2 Interactive. He is a board member for Montreal’s Pour 3 Points, a charity that helps underprivileged youth learn life skills through sport.