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Practices and Patterns of Informal Investors

Scope of the Work

This two-stage project ultimately entails the collection of data about how private investors decide on and undertake their investments and the creation of a national panel of informal investors. The roles of the panel are to allow ongoing monitoring of levels and patterns of informal investment, to engage members of the panel in dialogue with respect to issues of common concern to investors and government, and to track the experiences of private investors. This panel could also provide data on when and why informal investors cease to be informal investors. At present, little is known about the reasons why private investors exit the market.

This first phase of the study originally sought to conduct and analyze the discussions from a series of eight to ten roundtablediscussions to be conducted nationally. In the event, eleven (11) roundtable discussions were held with the enthusiastic cooperation of many of the national CCIP sites. (Two or three Quebec discussion groups are currently pending). The locations visited were:

• Eastern Canada
  • Mt. Pearl NF (5 participants)
  • Halifax NS (10 participants; most were institutional venture capital managers)
  • Moncton NB (3 participants)
  • Fredericton NB (9 participants)
• Quebec
  • Ste. Hyacinthe (3 participants)
  • Ste. Therese (9 participants)
• Ontario
  • Waterloo (9 participants)
  • Niagara (5 participants)
  • London (6 participants)
• Western Canada
  • Canmore AB (6 participants)
  • Victoria BC (6 participants)

Roundtable participants were asked to:

• complete a short questionnaire designed to provide baseline data (included here as Appendix A);
• participate in a roundtablediscussion organized in collaboration with local CCIP site staff (discussion protocol is included here as Appendix B);
• discuss and indicate their willingness to join a national panel of investors. The role of the panel is described in more detailed elsewhere (information sheet and invitation form are included here as Appendix C). Members of the panel would agree to stand prepared to comment on program initiatives by occasional e-mail based queries, participate in the occasional roundtablediscussion, and complete an annual survey that would monitor levels and directions in investor activity.

Quantitative data from the questionnaires were analyzed using standard statistical methods. Roundtable discussions were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim, and the resulting qualitative data were analyzed using NUD*IST, a recently developed technique specifically designed for rigorous exploration and analysis of qualitative data.

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