Former Salesforce exec Marcel LeBrun joins Real Ventures as venture partner

Real Ventures has recruited Marcel LeBrun as a venture partner, according to a news release.

LeBrun joins the Montréal venture firm after more than two decades as a tech entrepreneur and executive, including senior vice president at cloud-software maker Salesforce.

He took on that job following Salesforce’s 2011 acquisition of Radian6, a Fredericton, New Brunswick, social-media-monitoring platform, for $326 million.

LeBrun, who co-founded Radian6 in 2006, was the company’s CEO.

The purchase was Salesforce’s first in the marketing tech stack. It also facilitated a major exit for Radian6’s VC investors, including BDC Capital, Brightspark and Summerhill Venture Partners.

Following the deal, LeBrun served for more than four years as Salesforce’s SVP and general manager, marketing cloud. During that period, he led several deals in the space, including the 2013 acquisition of ExactTarget for $2.5 billion.

Before Radian6-Salesforce, he co-founded and led ImagicTV, a Saint John, New Brunswick, IPTV infrastructure software provider. ImagicTV, taken public in 2000, was acquired in 2013 by Alcatel.

JS Cournoyer, a founding partner of Real Ventures, described LeBrun as “arguably one of Canada’s most successful entrepreneurs.”

In the new role, Fredericton-based LeBrun will source Canadian tech opportunities on behalf of Real Ventures and support its portfolio.

LeBrun, 48, has spent most of his life in the Maritimes and especially New Brunswick, where he attended high school and university.

He currently teaches and mentors part-time in the Masters of Technology Management and Entrepreneurship program at the University of New Brunswick.

Last November, Real Ventures closed its fourth early-stage fund at C$180 million. The fund’s high-profile backers included Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, HarbourVest, Singapore’s Temasek and China’s Tencent.

The firm today oversees more than C$330 million of capital.