"Why Canadian Startups Should Choose Canada over Silicon Valley."
Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley
61–70 of 111 posts
Re: Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley
#62> At the end of the day, my advice to Canadian startups is to stay in Canada I think this can apply to many cities outside of the silicon valley bubble.
Yup, you're essentially right (I wrote the post). The gist of the article really could have been "Why you should start your startup outside of the valley" ... but choosing Canada has a few specific advantages I never really delved into with this post ...
Re: Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley
#63I wonder if cheaper health care costs give Canada any kind of advantage business-wise?
In Vancouver you can easily score awesome developers for 80K/year (160K in the valley)
Through SR&ED you can get up to 40% of this back (so you're down to 50K / engineer (*note that I've not personally used SR&ED but I know others who have successfully).
And finally, benefits packages are in the low thousands / year instead of tens of thousands.
All told, you can build a team of awesome engineers for 1/2~1/3 the price of what it'd cost in the valley.
Re: Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thinking about it, I'm sure they can be just as good. Regardless of age. I would guess it's like anything else. Constant exposure and practicing will breed excellence. I would just be scared of all the mistakes they haven't made yet. It's funny you mention Brian Wong, his company is a competitor of the company i work for. He's a smart guy, from what i can tell, but he would actually be one of the examples i'd use to…
"In software development, lack of experience can be a really big issue" can you explain this one to me? I hope that someone who calls themselves a senior developer with 20 years experience will know a lot about different technologies. On the other hand if you are a co-founder who needs to code, design, network and do many many other things, software development has nothing to do with it. Your demo will not be using t…
What is there to explain? As a software developer, experience matters.
If you're building disposable demos, you probably have more problems than building software.
Re: Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley
#65s/Canada/Portland/ Our visa is easier to get. :) (if you're in the US)
Why not s/Canada/New York/ ?-)
Re: Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley
#66It seems disingenuous for the OP to advocate Canada because of the US immigration policy when hiring non-Canadians to fill jobs usually requires a Labour Market Opinion proving that you couldn't find a Canadian to fill the job.
The US system requires the exact same thing.
Re: Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley
#67If I were doing something legally challenging in any way related to copyright or privacy/security of consumers (particularly w.r.t. finance), I'd seriously consider (in no particular order) CA CH NZ HK SG various-EU.
Curious where Chile and Brazil fall for privacy/security stuff, including AML and general financial regulations. Costa Rica and Panama are the traditional Central American options, and there are the Caribbean or other island/tax haven options, but a lot of those are too small to have developers (and expensive), and will bend over for the US officially or unofficially, particularly if a small business is involved (without political connections); I made the mistake of doing stuff in Anguilla before.
Re: Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. A lot of people seem to be mentioning Toronto (never been) but can anyone comment on the tech/startup scene in Vancouver (loved it but it seems very small)?
Vancouver has exceptional talent, a shared time zone with the valley, and ski hills minutes away. Grow labs and launch academy are also seeding and launching legit companies. All this adds up to a pretty strong scene. I'm not aware of investors stoned Boris and Bdc ... But again, SV investors aren't shy to invest globally. In fact, many including Dave McClure, and our former investors (tandem entrepreneurs) focus on…
It's funny that theres a west coast startup lab called "grow labs". Wonder what sort of business ventures they focus on.
Re: Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley
#69One thing that Canada has in it's favour is that for competent CS graduates, you're competing with stultifying companies rather than companies in the SF bubble. PagerDuty is one of those companies that I expect Canada would've been happy to keep, and we're loving it in SF, but we're fighting with a lot of similar companies for people. This year, we opened up an office in Toronto, and even though our standards are the…
I run an internship program placing Canadian interns in the valley, and have interviewed plenty of students from US schools. There's some amazing students coming out of Waterloo and UBC in particular. Waterloo grads are as competent and hungry as grads from MIT or Stanford. I've been amazed with them.
You should have spoken to them pre-2001 then. Waterloo dumbed down the first two years to be "more industry focused".[1]
Waterloo has been founding great companies for decades - the Watcom compiler came out of there in the 80's and 90's.
1. A quote from a friend who did his PhD there during the period.
Re: Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
* Disclaimer - I wrote this post. Totally agree, Canada is incredibly diverse so this article is a bit overgeneralizing. Starting in Waterloo / Toronto / Vancouver / is night and day to Winnipeg (nothing against winnipeg). The main take away is to be wary of the hype in the valley. That pervades the culture. Everyone from investors to your family fill you up with hype. You don't get that in Canada. You've gotta fight…
Thanks for the shout out David!
Ya, I've been meaning to reach out and connect with you personally for some time now :) <3 Extreme Startups!