The founders of the new startup, Deck, deny the accusations and say they were allowed to create the venture.
The owners of their former company Flinks are suing the co-founders of data infrastructure startup Deck for allegedly violating a non-compete agreement.
The lawsuit alleges that Leboeuf and Lavoie gradually “withdrew” from running the startup they created, despite their leadership roles.
National Bank and its subsidiary Flinks filed a lawsuit in Quebec Superior Court on Dec. 3, alleging that Yves-François Leboeuf and Frédéric Lavoie, co-founders of Flinks, violated a non-compete agreement through the activities of their new startup, Deck. As first reported PressThe bank alleges that LeBoeuf and Lavoie began building Deck after Flinks sold a majority stake to National Bank in 2021 and misrepresented their business intentions, which the suit alleges ultimately competed with Flinks' intentions.
National Bank is seeking C$5.7 million from the defendants to repay any profits they made as a result of the alleged non-compete violation, as well as by writing down the Flinks shares they repurchased last year. The lawsuit demands that Deku cease its business activities related to the aggregation of financial data (which is the main product of Flinks).
The lawsuit alleges that, beginning in 2023, Leboeuf and Lavoie gradually “removed” from running the startup they created, despite their leadership roles. It also alleges that then-executives failed to provide guidance to Flinks, and when they did, it was not in the best interests of the subsidiary.
“We have been completely transparent with National Bank and Flinks from the beginning and have clear written permissions that directly contradict the allegations made against us,” the co-founders said in an email. “These written approvals were granted when National Bank and the current CEO of Flinks had full knowledge of Dec's planned activities.”
The National Bank did not comment on the situation, saying that the case is in court.
CONNECTED: Flinks Co-Founders Trade Open Banking for Open Utility with New Startup Deck
Leboeuf and Lavoie co-founded the open banking and data aggregation platform Flinks in 2016. Flinks API began by connecting consumer banking information to FinTech platforms without screen scraping, competing with US-based intermediaries such as Plaid. Prior to this, Flinx had raised a total of $19 million. acquired by the National Bank in 2021and has since expanded through numerous corporate partnerships.
Montreal-based Deck, co-founded by Lavoie, Leboeuf and two other former Flinks employees, is developing an application programming interface (API) for businesses to track metrics such as energy consumption, providing easy access to private utility data. When it lifted seed round last fallThe co-founders told BetaKit that it eliminates corporate inefficiencies by providing an infrastructure for collecting data from all kinds of private, user-protected accounts.
The deck has risen US$16.5 million ($22.7 million CAD) since its inception in 2024 from investors including Toronto-based Golden Ventures, San Francisco-based Better Tomorrow Ventures and Montreal-based Luge Capital. The startup was in development while the co-founders were still working at Flinks throughout 2024, and was officially launched at the same time seed round announcement in October.
Image courtesy of PiggyBank Canada under CC BY 2.0 license.
