Luigi Fraquelli

Luigi Fraquelli is Co-founder and Managing Director at Gibraltar & Company, a Toronto-based venture investment firm founded in 2013. Gibraltar describes itself as backing fast-growing, disruptive consumer companies and helping them pursue omni-channel growth opportunities.

Fraquelli is based in Montreal and previously spent more than 25 years in investment banking. His Gibraltar bio says his work included M&A advisory and public and private debt and equity financings across telecommunications, consumer products, life sciences, and other sectors.

He earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering from McGill University in 1983 and an MBA from McGill University in 1985, including a one-year exchange at l'ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Paris. From 1985 through 2010, he held progressively senior investment-banking roles at BMO Capital Markets and predecessor companies, starting in Toronto and later becoming Managing Director in Montreal with responsibility for serving Quebec-based corporate clients.

Since 2011, Fraquelli has managed personal investments, including privately held early-stage opportunities. At Gibraltar, he works alongside a team of venture, consumer, retail, finance, M&A, marketing, and operating executives.

• Gibraltar says: "We accelerate the growth of consumer product companies by pursuing omni-channel opportunities."
• The firm’s stated value-creation view is that capital and technology are not enough; Gibraltar emphasizes "a strong will to win, experience and access to influential business development networks."
• Gibraltar seeks companies led by driven management teams with a clear view of market potential and growth strategy, but willingness to pivot when needed.
• The firm prefers scalable, capital-efficient business models with low capital expenditure needs, high cash conversion, recurring revenue, and geographic expansion potential.
• Gibraltar says it provides strategic and business-development expertise, senior corporate decision-maker access, expansion capital, and sales/marketing help for omni-channel go-to-market execution.
• Public descriptions of Gibraltar Ventures specify early to mid-stage technology-based companies serving consumers and SMBs, especially B2C and B2SMB businesses.
• Lusha’s Gibraltar profile states the firm supplies capital in the “critical Series A and B rounds”; Gaebler’s deal history also shows Gibraltar participating in seed rounds.