The Canadian tech sector has been getting hammered for quite a while. First there was the Nortel collapse, then ATI was acquired by AMD, RIM is slowly but surely sliding towards oblivion. Shopify is the only bright spot in Canadian Tech.
A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
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Re: A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
#12As a Canadian who has lived in NYC for 2 years, and just had to go back to Canada for 2 weeks, this is spot on.
There are tons of smart Canadians due to the great education system, but Canadians in general don't appreciate success in the same way Americans do. When I quit my job to start my own thing in America, all my co-workers and friends were pumped up and excited, while many Canadians were perplexed and asked questions like: "Don't you have a great job? Don't you make enough money? Why would you quit?" They concluded there was something wrong with me for quitting a decent job to do my own thing.
They didn't understand that being as upper-middle class as I could wasn't my goal. My goal was to try and build something out of nothing and hopefully be the best in the world. Americans get that because it's part of the American dream.
If you are talented, entrepreneurial and a good hacker, get down to NYC or SF. I used to be worried about visa issues, but then I realized it didn't matter, you can figure them out as you go along.
Re: A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
#13The author left out one point that is too often ignored.we just font have enough people.why don't we have amazon prime? Because Canada is just so huge,and our population is spread so thinly.the population is so much smaller than the USA that its so much harder to launch and support a country wide service. Plus,we don't have LLC or a proper equivalent.
How do you do when compared to other small population nations like Switzerland or Israel, or others?
It isn't just the total number of people, it's that they're smeared across our ample coasts and the longest border in the world[0].
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_bo...
Re: A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
#14I don't know wtf happened... here it is again. http://throwww.com/a/1ft
you should change the link in the title as well. it points to 1fa
Re: A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
#15The author left out one point that is too often ignored.we just font have enough people.why don't we have amazon prime? Because Canada is just so huge,and our population is spread so thinly.the population is so much smaller than the USA that its so much harder to launch and support a country wide service. Plus,we don't have LLC or a proper equivalent.
How do you do when compared to other small population nations like Switzerland or Israel, or others?
Canada has almost the same land mass as the US (9,984,670 sq km vs 9,826,675 sq km) but only about 11% as many people (34,917,000 vs 314,362,000).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
Re: A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
#16As a Canadian startup founder, I agree that we need to try to be the best in the world at what we're doing, not just best in our city or best in Canada. And I think we can do that while being our standard nice, even overly-apologetic selves.
As a start, let's all have our Twitter taglines say what our startup is (or will soon be) the best in the world at doing.
Here's what mine was before reading this article (@peterarmstrong):
Co-Founder of Leanpub, the best way in the world to self-publish in-progress ebooks.
Note how qualified that is: co-founder, self-publish, in-progress. That's because I'm Canadian, and I'm trying to be accurate.
If I was in the valley, I'd probably have mine be:
Founder of Leanpub, the best way in the world to publish ebooks.
What's better?
What's yours?
Re: A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
#17To me Canada's tech sector isn't damned; just dwarfed when it is compared to our much larger southern neighbour. The economy of Canada isn't really based around innovation and technology but rather primary industries like oil/gas/lumber/etc... so it makes sense that our business focus’ on our unique advantage. To me is seems that starting and growing a business is harder to do in Canada then in the States. Just as an example the rate of return for VC firms is roughly about -5% in Canada while in the States it is roughly %10. See: http://www.bdc.ca/EN/Documents/other/VC_Industry_Review_EN.p.... I am not sure why our companies have difficulty competing internationally but alot of the reasons in the article (Lack of Acquisition of Knowledge, Second Place is Good Enough and We Suck at PR) seem like symptoms rather than causes.
Re: A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
#18I got this:
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Re: A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
#19As a Canadian who has lived in NYC for 2 years, and just had to go back to Canada for 2 weeks, this is spot on. There are tons of smart Canadians due to the great education system, but Canadians in general don't appreciate success in the same way Americans do. When I quit my job to start my own thing in America, all my co-workers and friends were pumped up and excited, while many Canadians were perplexed and asked qu…
The challenge is that as a Canadian it's a lot easier to get a TN-1 or H1-B as an employee than as a founder. So the valley is full of Canadian expat employees, not founders. Hopefully some of those will return to Canada and become startup founders. (That's what I did.)
Re: A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you do when compared to other small population nations like Switzerland or Israel, or others?
It isn't just the total number of people, it's that they're smeared across our ample coasts and the longest border in the world[0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_bo...
That's only true for things requiring a physical infrastructure though.
For example, Toronto has a reputation for being a hotspot for mobile development, and there are probably as many talented developers as in any other tech hub. But they all work for agencies. Where are all the Canadian "Angry Birds" success stories?