Portage Ventures

Portage was co-founded by Adam Felesky and Paul Desmarais III, who lead the platform's investment strategy. The firm operates with a thesis-driven approach and an investment team drawn from both entrepreneurial and operational backgrounds. Portfolio decisions are made through a collaborative process supported by a network of more than 20 advisors with deep financial services experience (per the firm).

Portage is the fintech and financial services investment platform within Sagard, a global multi-strategy alternative asset manager with $45B under management as of December 2025. Sagard co-founder Paul Desmarais III also co-founded Portage in 2016. Sagard invests across venture capital, private equity, private credit, and real estate, and operates Sagard Wealth and the venture creation arm Diagram, giving Portage access to a broad institutional ecosystem (per the firm).

Portage operates as a direct investor through two main strategies: Portage Ventures for early-stage fintech and Portage Capital Solutions for later-stage companies. The firm does not describe itself as a fund-of-funds; rather, it raises its own venture and growth funds and co-investment vehicles. Its capital can be deployed flexibly across stages, from seed to pre-IPO, within the same platform (per the firm).

Portage targets the full company lifecycle within fintech and financial services. Its early-stage strategy, Portage Ventures, covers seed, start-up, and early-stage rounds, while Portage Capital Solutions, launched in 2022, provides growth and later-stage capital. This structure lets the firm support companies from their first institutional round through expansion and recapitalization (per the firm).

Later-stage capital is deployed through Portage Capital Solutions, a dedicated fund launched in 2022. Portage has not publicly disclosed the specific size of that fund, but it sits alongside three earlier venture funds — the most recent of which closed at $655M. The combined platform oversees $6.4B in assets under management as of March 2026 (per the firm).

Portage does not publicly disclose a separate philanthropic foundation tied to its investment platform. The Sagard network includes for-profit arms such as Sagard Wealth and Diagram, but no charitable vehicle is mentioned in the firm's public materials. Any personal or family philanthropy involving the principals would be outside the platform's disclosed structure.

Portage actively facilitates co-investment and commercial partnerships but typically acts as a direct investor rather than a passive LP in other GPs' funds. The firm cites a network of more than 40 institutional, corporate, and family office investors in its own funds, and it orchestrates over 140 commercial partnerships for portfolio companies, suggesting a lead- or co-lead investment posture rather than a fund-of-funds approach (per the firm, September 2025).