Frances Layden is Vice-President of Finance of TechnoCap Inc, Gestion TechnoCap Inc., TechnoAnge Inc. and TechnoCap I, L.P. Frances is a Director of FreeBalance Inc., 4198638 Canada Inc. (Hyperchip) and Optimus Ltd. and a former director of BiblioMondo Inc.

Frances provides infrastructure and operations management for TechnoCap and TechnoAnge and is responsible for the financial and legal areas reporting to their investment committees, shareholders and limited partners. Frances also provides start-up business support to portfolio companies and assists start-ups with their finance and infrastructure and with the restructuring of portfolio companies when required.

Prior to TechnoCap, from 1996 to 2000, Frances was Vice-President of Finance and Corporate Controller of Gemmar Systems International Inc., an enterprise software company for retail management in North America. In 1999, Gemmar was recognized as one of Canada's 50 Best Managed Private Companies.

At Gemmar, Frances obtained two rounds of venture capital financing with the Caisse de dépôt; obtained venture debt financing from the Business Development Bank of Canada; and obtained millions of dollars in refundable R&D tax credits from the governments of Canada and Quebec. Over a three-year period, revenues increased from $3 million to $12 million and the number of employees from 34 to 120.
Frances opened the United States subsidiary, negotiated US strategic alliances and managed software licensing, royalty agreements and US trademarks. Frances was VP of Operations for six months covering project management and hardware and software development (NT, SQL, C++, ODBC & relational databases). Frances established the human resources department and was responsible for the recruitment of senior managers including the VP of Operations and the VP of Sales for the US.

Prior to Gemmar, Frances was an Audit Manager in Montreal where she worked with clients in the technology sector, including Gemmar [Software] Systems and Advantech [Semiconductor] Microsystems.

Frances is a Chartered Accountant, and has a Bachelor's degree in Commerce and a Post Graduate Degree in Accounting from Concordia University. Frances is fluently bilingual in English and French.