Joe Catalfamo had heard the story of Radian6 before, but he certainly didn’t seem to mind hearing it again.

The managing partner of the Toronto venture capital fund Summerhill Venture Partners sat happily at the back of the hall during a panel discussion at Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Association's annual meeting in Ottawa last week.

On the stage, Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun told the story of how angel investor Gerry Pond got him together with fellow entrepreneurs Chris Newton and Chris Ramsey. Together, they decided to launch a company that would help corporations monitor and analyze their social media.

The company, Radian6, ended up being purchased by Salesforce.com of San Francisco for $326 million in 2011 and gave impetus to the regional startup craze. It got the venture capital deal of the year in 2011 from the association.

LeBrun mentioned in the discussion that one reason the company took off was it had backing from several venture capital backers at a time when venture capital funds tended to ignore Atlantic Canadian companies.

Pond, other angels and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation backed the startup. But as well as the local support, Radian6 received investment totalling $9 million from Summerhill, Brightspark Ventures and BDC Venture Capital.

“No one region has a monopoly on good ideas,” Catalfamo said when asked last week why he invested in an Atlantic Canadian company when few others did.

What’s more, he had been coming to the region, New Brunswick in particular, for years and understood the brainpower that Pond and his colleagues had assembled. Catalfamo had been brought to the province in the 1990s to see ImagicTV, LeBrun’s previous startup. It was a pioneer in streaming television over the Internet, and Catalfamo was impressed by the concept, the execution and the support network.

When he heard about the team putting together Radian6, he invested. It worked out well for him — Summerhill and the other funds earned a total return of 22.8 times their original investments over three or four years.

For his part, LeBrun said the sale of his company benefited Atlantic Canada in several ways. Radian6 is now a key component of Salesforce, one of the world’s great software companies. It employs more Maritimers than when it sold out, with offices in Fredericton and Halifax. And the Maritime investors in the company have since invested in 37 other regional startups.

Catalfamo said his fund is fully invested now, but he continues to follow what’s going on in Atlantic Canada. He applauds the development of the startup community in the region and said it will likely be a great vehicle for attracting expatriate Atlantic Canadians back to the region. And he saluted Pond and his colleagues at East Valley Ventures in Saint John, N.B., for continuing to develop the ecosystem for starts.

“I have so much respect for all those people because they care so much about the region.”