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Canada's Start-up Visa

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Re: Canada's Start-up Visa

#181

Post by purephase »

guiomie wrote: post #163
obstacle1 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech cities: Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo (poised for decline), Ottawa (poised to bounce back). School-wise, the best talent in the country tends to come from UToronto, Waterloo, UBC or McGill. That said, there are tons of great programs all across the country. We have some accelerator-like programs and initiatives aimed at fostering an entrepreneurial spirit generally[1][2][3]. Nothing comparable to YC as far as guid…

Out of curiosity, why is Ottawa poised to bounce back, and KW poised to decline ?

KW has been/is largely fuelled by RIM/BlackBerry and the University of Waterloo. If the situation gets any worse for BlackBerry, you'll see an enormous brain drain and capital leave the area.

Ottawa is the country's capital and some tech companies there are doing quite well (Shopify in particular).

Re: Canada's Start-up Visa

#182

Post by joshaidan »

jacquesm wrote: post #156
joshaidan wrote: post #151

There are a lot of smaller cities in Canada, i.e. cities that are not Vancouver, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa, etc. that are trying very hard to build their own start-up communities. You may want to consider these places if it suits your idea. For example, I live in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and there are a lot of grants specific to our region because we're considered a northern community. Since we're smaller, there's less…

Housing in Thunder Bay is much more affordable because it's in the middle of nowhere. Beautiful place, great steakhouse but not exactly a start-up hotbed. Of course, if you really only need an internet connection and a couch then it might actually be an advantage but for most start-ups (apparently outside the medical research ones but those are few and far between) access to facilities, a nearby university, a pool of…

There is a university in Thunder Bay: http://lakeheadu.ca

The advantage with Thunder Bay is that people are trying to develop it into a hotbed for start-ups, and will do a lot to see your startup succeed.

Quick examples of Thunder Bay startups: http://cinevate.com, http://qwantech.com (big in the mining industry, also doing work in autism support systems), http://flightop.com

Re: Canada's Start-up Visa

#183

Post by mjn »

anovikov wrote: post #164
Achshar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually want to set up a startup. But undecided on location, my current location will not do. I really want to go to valley, ideally get into YC itself, but the barrier to entry is high. How would you say is the startup culture over there in canada? How does it stack up against places like valley, london or NYC? Other and more accessible option for me is Banglore, no visa required (I am from India).

My guess is that trying Amsterdam, or Berlin is a safer bet. Apart from mature startup culture, for you as an Indian, these places also have an advantage of being relatively close, timezone-wise, to both U.S. (at least East Coast) which will be most probably your main market, and India where you will probably hire people.

I don't have a large sample size, but my small set of second-hand reports suggests that trying to live-and-work in Berlin can be problematic if you don't speak at least passable German. Not for the startup scene itself, where everyone speaks English, but for practicalities like interacting with the civil service, health-care system, housing, and banks, where German is expected. (This is a difference from Copenhagen, where everything can be done in English if you prefer. And Danes often prefer it, too, because they don't understand foreigners who try to speak Danish.)

Re: Canada's Start-up Visa

#184

Post by refurb »

elchief wrote: post #90
mjhea0 wrote: post #30

i know that business taxes are relatively low, but what about personal incomes taxes? how will this affect having to pay double taxes (both us and canada). i believe you can write off the taxes you pay overseas, but you have to pay the difference in us taxes.

I paid almost exactly the same income tax in Florida as I did in British Columbia. But I got free health care in BC. Gas, cigarettes and booze are definitely cheaper in the USA though.

That seems odd to me. BC has one of the highest income tax rates in Canada and Florida has no state income tax.

Using the online paycheck calculators I get:

$50K/yr in BC would net you $36,758 after taxes.

$50K/yr in Florida would net you $38,296 after taxes.

Re: Canada's Start-up Visa

#185

Post by cperciva »

enraged_camel wrote: post #170
mjn wrote: post #16

Summary 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…

I was excited about this, until I heard the Canadian VC/angel requirement. If they really want to encourage foreigners to found startups, they should allow private investors to become angels, even if the investor in question is of foreign status. Think about it: you have a bunch of rich people injecting large amounts of money into your economy, and the only thing you have to do is give one person permanent residency…

They probably want to avoid the "fictitious investor" problem -- without the "Canadian" requirement, Canada would get lots of people jumping the immigration queue by having their friends and family "invest" in their "startup".

(There's already a way for rich people to buy their way into Canada, but it takes around a million dollars instead of a hundred thousand.)

Re: Canada's Start-up Visa

#186

Post by jrn »

Stop complaining about vc, or culture; Canadians regularly blow billions on prospective mining companies on tsx-v. which never report any revenue.

Alberta spearheaded a funding model in the oil patch in the 90s, which is now accessible to the other provinces, which I believe could be useful in the tech sector. The capital pool company, http://www.tmx.com/en/listings/listing_with_us/ways/capital_...

We get a bunch of proven tech execs together, they issue shares, then they have 24 months to go find something worth buying and growing.

So instead of serial entrepreneurs, I believe we could also foster midlevel serial ceo's for instance I would buy stock in a jaquesm, pg or whoever, headed shell company to go and buy out some up and coming tech.

At least I think you could kickstart building a company out of aquihiring zombie startups. I would do this but I'm a no-name.

Re: Canada's Start-up Visa

#187

Post by aren55555 »

randomdata wrote: post #106
aren55555 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about: Vidyard ( http://www.vidyard.com/ ), Pebble ( http://getpebble.com/ ), BufferBox ( https://www.bufferbox.com/ ), Couple (formerly Pair) ( http://couple.me/ ), or Thalmic Labs ( https://www.thalmic.com/myo/ ) All the above are also YC alumni.

Pebble is the only one I've heard of on the list and their website claims they are in Silicon Valley, so I guess that reenforces my point? Additionally, I think it is quite reasonable to argue that Kickstarter is the source of their success, but Kickstarter is still not yet available to Canadians. Not until later this summer.

I was just trying to point out some of the big name startups that came from the Waterloo area (Disclosure: I am part of BufferBox and live in KW).

Re: Canada's Start-up Visa

#188

Post by codydjango »

brunoc wrote: post #91
icco wrote: post #80

Pretty interesting. Is there an equivalent to 500 or YC in Canada? What are the best tech cities in Canada? I know Vancouver and Quebec have universities with good CS programs, but that's about it.

Toronto, Waterloo, Vancouver, Montreal In Montreal: Founder Fuel http://founderfuel.com/en/

Founder fuel was exceptional this year.

Re: Canada's Start-up Visa

#189

Post by mjn »

agilebyte wrote: post #134
goatforce5 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd have been doing the French test, presumably. You only have to do one or the other. No point making it hard on yourself, right?

Thanks for clarification. Thought you do both so that you can get more total points.

For the skills-based immigration (not the startup immigration) you're right, you can do both. You can get up to 16 points for your primary language (out of [English|French]), and up to 8 points for the other one. So it can be worth getting even a very low qualification for your second language, if you need to tack on a point or two to reach the threshold.

Re: Canada's Start-up Visa

#190

Post by eigenvector »

jt2190 wrote: post #56
untog wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You would think it would be that simple, but you really need to look at it from the investor's point of view: What is my ROI if invest my money this way instead of that way? More unattractive investments won't help the tech startup community grow. My suspicion[1] is that the thing that will really fix this is changing the way that investors are taxed on their capital gains and losses. [1] Been a while since I lived i…

That's not correct. Interest is taxed progressively like any other income, dividends are somewhat taxed according to a complex formula, and 50% of your capital gains are taxed at the applicable marginal tax rate depending on your income.
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