Pangaea Ventures

The firm is led by founding general partner Chris Erickson, who established Pangaea in 2000. He is joined by partners Andrew Haughian, Janelle Goulard, and Sarah Applebaum. The partner group operates across the firm's Vancouver, Phoenix and Tokyo offices, with each partner leading deal origination and portfolio support in their respective focus areas (per firm website).

Pangaea defines hard tech as startups whose core innovation is a proprietary advance in materials science, chemistry, or biology. This excludes pure software plays and instead targets physical products — new molecules, engineered tissues, alternative proteins, or industrial processes — that address planetary challenges in energy, food, water, and emissions (per the firm's published Hard Tech Report and website positioning).

Pangaea does not publicly disclose its fund structure or vehicle names. The firm describes itself as a venture capital investor with a portfolio of over 40 companies built across more than 20 years. Its capital is deployed from entities in Canada, the United States and Japan, but the specific fund family, vintage years, and vehicle sizes remain undisclosed.

The Tokyo office — staffed by associate Kandai Yamashita and senior advisors Yuki Shirato and Kay Enjoji — is designed to bridge Japanese corporate limited partners with Pangaea's portfolio companies. Rather than operating as a separate regional fund, it functions as a technology-transfer conduit, connecting Japanese industrials and investors into the firm's North American and global deal flow (per team biographies and firm contact page).

Pangaea's public materials do not list excluded sectors, but the firm's exclusive focus on materials, chemistry, and biology innovations implicitly excludes software-only, consumer-internet, and traditional services businesses. Every publicly disclosed portfolio company — from CarbonCure to Aspect Biosystems — owns a hard-science asset that is the core of its value proposition.

Pangaea's disclosed activity shows it makes direct equity investments into hard-tech startups. There is no public evidence of a fund-of-funds program or commitments to external managers. The firm's contact page directs entrepreneurs, scientists and visionaries to submit opportunities, consistent with a direct-investment model (per firm website).

The firm combines its partner-level technical expertise — partners hold advanced degrees in engineering, chemistry and business — with a multi-office network spanning Vancouver, Phoenix and Tokyo. Its senior advisors include a former president of TEL Venture Capital and the managing director of Techstars Japan, creating a sourcing funnel that taps academic labs, corporate R&D pipelines, and startup accelerators across North America and Japan (per team biographies).