10 startups in, the poker players-turned-VC behind the firm unpack its progress and plans.
Montréal-based Developer Capital (DevCap) has closed another $5 million CAD to invest in early-stage AI startups in what co-founder and CEO Jordan Steiner referred to as a “seed” round.
DevCap operates differently from most venture capital (VC) firms. Born out of Montréal-based full-stack software development consultancy Monadical in 2023, the firm is an evergreen investment corporation with no management fees.
CEO Jordan Steiner aims to take DevCap public by 2028.
In 2024, DevCap raised $3 million at $0.10 per share. Since then, the firm has backed 10 companies, moving quickly to take advantage of the growing opportunity Steiner and co-founder and CTO Max McCrea saw in AI.
On Tuesday, DevCap announced that it has closed another $5 million, at $0.15 per share, from a group that includes returning “anchor” investor Urbana Corporation, Steiner himself, and other undisclosed individuals, such as tech founders and workers as well as portfolio managers and leaders from large asset managers.
“That’s honestly what the strategy was the whole time, which is to go small, go fast, raise more at a higher price, and keep it moving like a startup,” Steiner told BetaKit in an exclusive interview.
DevCap plans to deploy this capital across another 10 pre-seed and seed-stage startups and make follow-on investments in its existing winners. Steiner hopes to use the money to build the track record DevCap needs to go public.
Steiner is an experienced investor and longtime public markets portfolio manager, while McCrea has a deep technical background and experience in AI. The two friends and colleagues were also previously online professional poker players.
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These days, in his spare time, Steiner helps organize Founder Poker Montréal. The DevCap CEO said his poker playing experience has thus far translated to an ability to get a read on people and make investment decisions quickly, “without perfect information.”
“You just don’t have it in poker,” Steiner said. “I would say VC is the same.”
DevCap made five investments in 2024 (three of which have since closed up rounds) and another five last year. Seven of them have been Canadian, including Backboard.io, Mycroft, Rithmik Solutions, and Unified.to, while the other three are US-based, like EdgeScale AI. Steiner expects DevCap to make another five investments this year.
Eyeing a public listing
DevCap’s longer-term plan is to become a publicly traded VC; the investment corporation hopes to make that leap before the end of 2028. “If I could do it quicker, I will,” Steiner said.
Steiner argued that being a public company would help DevCap raise additional capital and give its existing backers easier access to liquidity by allowing them to sell their shares to new backers seeking exposure to early-stage, privately held AI startups—an otherwise tough-to-access segment of the market for the average retail investor.
Should DevCap take this route, it would be following in the footsteps of players like Toronto’s Stack Capital, the Fundrise Growth Tech Fund, and Robinhood Ventures Fund.
Compared to this group, Steiner views DevCap’s lack of fees, focus on direct ownership rather than special purpose vehicles, and early-stage over late-stage tech startups as differentiators.
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“We were attracted to the fact that DevCap remains focused on early-stage AI opportunities, at a time when much of the market attention is still concentrated on later-stage technology companies,” Urbana portfolio manager Tom Simopoulos told BetaKit over email, noting that the firm also offers “a valuable potential pipeline for follow-on investments.”
Another differentiator Steiner said has proven effective is DevCap’s ability to lean on Monadical’s in-house expertise to help source, vet, and support its portfolio companies.
This has also been helpful amid what has become a frothy AI market. For his part, Steiner thinks “we are definitely in an AI bubble” that has become particularly pronounced in public markets and late-stage investing.
“My job is to navigate that and find investments that are good IRR,” he said. For DevCap, this means “not playing the $50-million pre-seed Y Combinator companies” but investing in startups at “$10-million valuations with great founders” and helping them grow.
Feature image courtesy Developer Capital.