Gary Berdowski

Gary Berdowski is a Montreal-based finance and strategy professional whose venture-investing career sits within Canada's cleantech ecosystem. He trained as an engineer, earning a Bachelor of Engineering from McGill University, and later completed an MBA with full CFA integration at Concordia University's John Molson / Goodman Institute of Investment Management (2015–2018). He is a CFA charterholder. Before entering venture capital he spent roughly seven years at Velan Inc., a Montreal-headquartered industrial valve manufacturer.

He joined Cycle Capital — described as Canada's leading cleantech private VC firm, with more than $0.5B AUM and offices in Montreal, Toronto and Qingdao (China) plus a presence in New York and Seattle — as an Analyst in 2019. In September 2021 the firm promoted him to Associate alongside Dan Pinault's elevation to Partner; founder and managing partner Andrée-Lise Méthot noted the promotions recognized "excellent work." As an Associate his responsibilities centered on risk and market analysis and on performing asset and business valuations for the firm's growth-stage cleantech deals.

In 2022 he moved to Blue Vision Capital, a Québec-based climate-tech seed fund founded by Meir Rabkin (with Lylan Masterman), joining as Principal. Blue Vision reached a first close of roughly $40M CAD in August 2022 (targeting $60M), planning a portfolio of 25–30 companies with a mandate weighted ~60% North America, ~35% Europe, and the remainder opportunistic in Asia/Latin America.

More recently Berdowski has stepped out of investing into an operating role, serving as Director of Strategic Planning at XNRGY Climate Systems, a Montreal-area manufacturer of energy-efficient HVAC/climate systems. (Note: the stub contact data reflects his Cycle Capital tenure; founders should verify he is still actively deploying capital before treating him as a live check-writer.)

• Invests through institutional cleantech/climate VC funds rather than as a classic solo angel; the "Angel Investors / Seed Round" stub label reflects his seed-stage focus more than his firm type.
• Stage: seed through early growth (Series A/B), with the seed emphasis strongest during his Blue Vision Capital tenure.
• Sector conviction is squarely climate/cleantech: clean and renewable energy, energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies, smart building systems, mobility, agtech, circular economy, and industrial decarbonization.
• Blue Vision Capital's stated thesis — the fund he helped run — is to back "capital-efficient climate tech startups in asset-light, underfunded sectors that are ripe for disruption and/or at an inflection point," seeking "measurable and meaningful positive impact" while generating "outsized venture scale returns."
• Cycle Capital frames its mandate as "impactful innovation" focused on GHG reduction, resource optimization, and process efficiency across North America and China.
• His engineering-plus-CFA background points to diligence strengths in valuation, risk/market analysis, and technical assessment of hard-tech and industrial climate solutions.