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Ask HN: Has anyone had success with Canada's startup visa?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with Canada's startup visa?

#21
post #20
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, he would have to either: 1)Invest 1M+ of his own money 2)Be a superstar with hundreds of publications and experience 3)Come as a tourist and pray everything works fine in 3 months 4)Fall in love and get married(...in the Valley?)

5) work for a company until you get a green card.

Which could take anywhere from 7-10 years! Easier said than done!

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with Canada's startup visa?

#22
post #18

Can anyone say if there's a benefit to moving my startup to BC? I'm currently registered in Delaware, but I plan to move to BC within a year (my wife is Canadian and sponsoring me). The tax situation looks better, but I'm wondering if someone with actual experience running a business in both countries could give me some insight.

I'm a dual-citizen who has done software startups in both countries.

The advantages of Canada are:

- free health care, especially important for self-employed

- retirement plan easier to contribute for self-employed

- easier tax preparation (no AMT, no IRS 20 rules, etc.) resulting in lower overall taxes for self-employed with deductions

- cheaper to hire educated people

- no federal deficit, so no looming financial crisis

- virtually no police shootings, SWATing, executions

- French/English divide is not an issue outside of Quebec

- good to excellent public schools, few discipline problems

- no global income reporting.

- no Selective Service for you or your kids

- Toronto is an interesting combination of finance/software/mfg, great place for robotics, makers, etc.

- Canadian Tire money can really add up!

- if you're middle class, it's good to be the king!

Advantages of USA are:

- much easier/possible to get venture investment

- Silicon Valley

- often the dollar is higher, though I'm not sure why

- if you like guns or are far rightwing, welcome home

- good place to practise trauma medicine/prosthetics

- if you're the 1%, it's good to be the king.

Same in both countries:

- 401k and RRSP are very similar

- same ACH network

- same timezones.

- same urban housing prices

- same culture, but the USA has guns and Canada has politeness.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with Canada's startup visa?

#23
post #18

Can anyone say if there's a benefit to moving my startup to BC? I'm currently registered in Delaware, but I plan to move to BC within a year (my wife is Canadian and sponsoring me). The tax situation looks better, but I'm wondering if someone with actual experience running a business in both countries could give me some insight.

I'm a dual-citizen who has done software startups in both countries. The advantages of Canada are: - free health care, especially important for self-employed - retirement plan easier to contribute for self-employed - easier tax preparation (no AMT, no IRS 20 rules, etc.) resulting in lower overall taxes for self-employed with deductions - cheaper to hire educated people - no federal deficit, so no looming financial c…

no federal deficit, so no looming financial crisis

Huh? Canada's debt-to-GDP is as bad as the US.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with Canada's startup visa?

#24
post #20
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, he would have to either: 1)Invest 1M+ of his own money 2)Be a superstar with hundreds of publications and experience 3)Come as a tourist and pray everything works fine in 3 months 4)Fall in love and get married(...in the Valley?)

5) work for a company until you get a green card.

I thought we were talking about the Startup Visa.

In that case, it's very difficult to sponsor yourself or your co-founders for an H1-B

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with Canada's startup visa?

#25

If you'd like to immigrate to Canada for any reason whatsoever, I cannot possibly recommend my own immigration attorney M. Lee Cohen highly enough: http://www.mleecohen.com/ His main focus is human rights work (political asylum and refugees) however he finances that by charging completely reasonable fees for regular immigration applicants such as myself. Real nice guy and he knows his stuff.

Political asylum is pretty profitable as well. In US attorneys ask around $7000 for the process (usually pursued by people who came to US on a visa and want to legally reside forever, but don't have any real reasons for asylum).

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with Canada's startup visa?

#26

If you'd like to immigrate to Canada for any reason whatsoever, I cannot possibly recommend my own immigration attorney M. Lee Cohen highly enough: http://www.mleecohen.com/ His main focus is human rights work (political asylum and refugees) however he finances that by charging completely reasonable fees for regular immigration applicants such as myself. Real nice guy and he knows his stuff.

Thanks! I myself could use a recommendation for Vancouver area.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with Canada's startup visa?

#27
post #4

The visa just got started recently but last I heard they are still working out the details. I applied for CEC (Canada Experience Class), paid >$4k for lawyer fees but application got rejected saying quota is fulfilled even though the website notes that its less than half filled. Trying now on express entry but I doubt I'll get anywhere. I feel its a broken system which caters to very expensive lawyers as they know th…

Canadian immigration rules are changing multiple times a year nowadays, and they're doing so without much regard for anyone currently in the process. While the rules themselves are on par with Australia / NZ (= much easier than US), the transition is not well thought out. CIC's CEC quota screwup of late 2014 is just one of many examples. Students, PNP nominees, TFWs have all been screwed in different ways in 2014. While CIC touts shorter processing times for select categories, they're often using MagicMath. For many categories of applicants processing times doubled to quadrupled last year.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with Canada's startup visa?

#28
post #18

Can anyone say if there's a benefit to moving my startup to BC? I'm currently registered in Delaware, but I plan to move to BC within a year (my wife is Canadian and sponsoring me). The tax situation looks better, but I'm wondering if someone with actual experience running a business in both countries could give me some insight.

Depend on your startup's industry and where you customers are going to be. BC may be a good place for media and entertainment startup as there are lot of such companies, small and large, in BC.

Overall, I don't believe Canada offers anything positive w.r.t. to startup and business. The local market is too small and your primary market and customers most likely will be in USA. Though salaries are lower in Canada, the regulatory and taxation cost is very high specially if you are going to have employees and office.

Most Canadian companies, based on my experience in Eastern Canada, form a US subsidiary with mailing address typically in New Hampshire. Most of the investors in early stage companies are "old" money so the threshold to raise any angel/seed money will be much higher specially for businesses investors may not understand and there is too much focus on financials rather than opportunity. There is scarcity of tech-success founders supporting the local startup scenes, I saw more of them in Bay area instead of Toronto/Ottawa.

I don't know how things have changed in last 10 years in Canada, may be a tech bubble is bubbling there too right now. But when I last tried to start a company in Toronto, 12 years ago, I didn't have any positive experience, in the end I landed up moving to US permanently.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had success with Canada's startup visa?

#30
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5) work for a company until you get a green card.

Which could take anywhere from 7-10 years! Easier said than done!

It doesn't take that long unless you're from India or China.

http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy...

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