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Canada's Start-up Visa
41–50 of 249 posts
Re: Canada's Start-up Visa
#42Went through the different links - does anyone know how long this Visa is valid for? If it's on that page, it seems to be hidden somewhere...
It's permanent. Even if your business fails you keep your permanent status.
Re: Canada's Start-up Visa
#43The canadian "citizen and immigration" service is seriously understaffed (thanks, Mr. Harper!). Some consequences of this: * It currently takes more than two years in average to process a citizenship request. * The CIC stopped accepting any new application from canadian citizens or permanent residents to sponsor their parents or grandparents for permanent residency. So, this all sounds good in paper, but Im skeptical…
Since this is permanent residency and not citizenship, shouldn't it be a fair amount less effort and paperwork on immigration's part?
Actually you typically apply for citizenship after you become a permanent resident, and it takes less effort (from the candidate, at least). But in any case, it is the same service that is in charge of both citizenship and permanent residency, and they are understaffed. Perhaps they will give more priority to Startup visas processing than to other types of visa.
Re: Canada's Start-up Visa
#44I would rather have temporary worker visas for startup employees. Our biggest labor problem has been the difficulty of getting programmers who didn't go to college into the US. We'd move to Canada in a heartbeat if we could get the developers we wanted colocated with us. How about N temporary worker visas/amount of VC funding?
Your complaint is because US based developers are expensive? I hope that you don't think developers in Canada are dime a dozen.
Re: Canada's Start-up Visa
#45Summary of the conditions: - Secure $75k in angel funding or $200k in venture funding, from a list of designated Canadian funders. - Score relatively highly on a language test in either English or French, for both verbal and written ability (note that everyone must take this test, even those coming from English- or French-speaking countries). - Have satisfactorily completed at least one year of higher education (no d…
The big part is this: you get the equivalent of a green card - Permanent Residency. The Minister's office actually did a lot of research into this thing before launching it, and consciously didn't want to put talented people into the awkward position a lot of H1B holders have when their visas expire and are forced to pack everything up and head home.
Re: Canada's Start-up Visa
#46The canadian "citizen and immigration" service is seriously understaffed (thanks, Mr. Harper!). Some consequences of this: * It currently takes more than two years in average to process a citizenship request. * The CIC stopped accepting any new application from canadian citizens or permanent residents to sponsor their parents or grandparents for permanent residency. So, this all sounds good in paper, but Im skeptical…
Since this is permanent residency and not citizenship, shouldn't it be a fair amount less effort and paperwork on immigration's part?
Permanent residency is the major step towards canadian citizenship, and the biggest bottleneck. Citizenship is (from what I heard) relatively straightforward after waiting the necessary number of years.
Re: Canada's Start-up Visa
#47The conditional on Canadian funding thing is killer. There is so little VC in Canada.
Well, I suppose this is a two way street. Hopefully something like this would kick-start Canadian VC funding, as they'll have a lot of very qualified international applicants knocking down their doors.
My guess is that's part of the purpose, to use the visas as a carrot to improve deal flow to Canadian angels/VCs. Could also be that they think companies funded by Canadian investors will be less likely to jump ship to the U.S. later, versus if they were funded by a Valley-based firm.
(As for why the investors have to be from an approved list? Probably to avoid sham "angel investors" fake-funding their acquaintances, or outright selling visas.)
Re: Canada's Start-up Visa
#48What's the possible reason for the education requirements? Shouldn't VC support and sufficient financing be enough?
I would guess that it serves as a risk mitigation strategy; if business was unsuccessful, you'd have some 'know-how' to survive with very little dependency on the social system. Just my $0.02
Re: Canada's Start-up Visa
#49What's the possible reason for the education requirements? Shouldn't VC support and sufficient financing be enough?
It doesn't mention any particular reason for the education on the website. I'm at least a little glad it isn't a requirement to hold a degree or diploma. I'm assuming this is simply an empty requirement to weed out people during application. That said, if a few very intelligent hacker types who never went to college had successfully achieved all of the other three requirements, then I'd see no reason to deny that app…
> I'm pretty sure this rule also extends from my countries intense fascination with secondary education.
That was my takeaway. A way to save face with the strong "education or else" group of people in the country, while acknowledging that formal education is not all that relevant to the program.
Re: Canada's Start-up Visa
#50Summary of the conditions: - Secure $75k in angel funding or $200k in venture funding, from a list of designated Canadian funders. - Score relatively highly on a language test in either English or French, for both verbal and written ability (note that everyone must take this test, even those coming from English- or French-speaking countries). - Have satisfactorily completed at least one year of higher education (no d…
If anyone is seriously considering applying and needs assistance meeting the Canadian angel / VC requirement, feel free to reach out to me, I am based in Canada and active in the angel/VC community. Contact info is in my profile.