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Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
#12on a side note, is there anything good coming out of vancouver right now? I haven't heard of anything since the bootup labs debacle.
Is Tarsnap good? (please say yes...)
In all seriousness, though, Tarsnap doesn't really come out of Vancouver. It happens to be located here, but that's just because I'm here; I certainly can't point to anything and say "if Tarsnap wasn't in Vancouver, I wouldn't have had access to X and it wouldn't have succeeded".
I hope we can develop more of a startup community here, but so far all I've seen is hordes of MBAs and a distinct lack of technical people.
Re: Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
#13on a side note, is there anything good coming out of vancouver right now? I haven't heard of anything since the bootup labs debacle.
There are a few startups in Vancouver: HootSuite, Kashoo, AdHack, Indicee, EnergyPulse. There are also a few acquired startups in the past 2-3 years. LayerBoom (Joyent), Smallthought (Twitter). Some solid companies such as: ElasticPath, VisionCritical, etc. Despite the list of startups and "solid" companies. I wouldn't bet on their balance sheet. I've been here since 2001 and while there are several key buyouts in th…
Nice summary but you didn't mention gambling companies. For some reason Vancouver has a ton of these and they are mostly filled with 20 somethings - the kind of people that would be in startups otherwise.
I have to agree with salaries being low compared to the US - but you would think that meant more people doing startups since you would be taking less of a hit. Maybe Canadians are just more risk averse.
Re: Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
#14on a side note, is there anything good coming out of vancouver right now? I haven't heard of anything since the bootup labs debacle.
There are a few startups in Vancouver: HootSuite, Kashoo, AdHack, Indicee, EnergyPulse. There are also a few acquired startups in the past 2-3 years. LayerBoom (Joyent), Smallthought (Twitter). Some solid companies such as: ElasticPath, VisionCritical, etc. Despite the list of startups and "solid" companies. I wouldn't bet on their balance sheet. I've been here since 2001 and while there are several key buyouts in th…
Do you think Toronto might be better for startups?
Re: Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a few startups in Vancouver: HootSuite, Kashoo, AdHack, Indicee, EnergyPulse. There are also a few acquired startups in the past 2-3 years. LayerBoom (Joyent), Smallthought (Twitter). Some solid companies such as: ElasticPath, VisionCritical, etc. Despite the list of startups and "solid" companies. I wouldn't bet on their balance sheet. I've been here since 2001 and while there are several key buyouts in th…
Nice summary but you didn't mention gambling companies. For some reason Vancouver has a ton of these and they are mostly filled with 20 somethings - the kind of people that would be in startups otherwise. I have to agree with salaries being low compared to the US - but you would think that meant more people doing startups since you would be taking less of a hit. Maybe Canadians are just more risk averse.
"... attracts the wrong kind of investors ..." this refers to those online gambling companies who try every possible tricks in the book to avoid being shutdown by the government starting from splitting the software development, business, and HR/Accounting departments. Remember the debacle with Fiver media? (was Riptown, became Fiver, shut down, now become NZone media).
I don't know if they're filled with 20 somethings because the place I work for is filled with 30+ (some even almost 40). Unfortunately I just got in and I didn't know what I put myself into. I plan to stay only for 1 year before jetting off. If you think Enterprise software is full of unnecessary complexity, wait until you deal with Online gambling companies (especially the ones that provide Poker Networks and deal with Casinos and 100 different payment providers in which everybody has their own APIs and payment workflows).
People are doing startups here usually because they want to jump into the social media and mobile bandwagon (at least that was the case 2 years ago, until almost all of them died, quietly).
They're not doing it because of the low salaries, they did it because quite frankly, some of them can't get a job or used to be a freelance web-designer or a contract workers. And it's not about risk averse.
I think there are some crazies out there in Vancouver. They just don't have enough money and they rely on SR&ED grant year-by-year living off it.
It's really tough to have a startup in here. Networking is very minimum as well. You go to a launch party only to meet a handful of people who are in the same boat as you; that doesn't help much of your situation. Sometime these launch parties invite (or in another word, have to fly) people from outside Vancouver (e.g. people from Silicon Valley or Ontario).
Re: Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a few startups in Vancouver: HootSuite, Kashoo, AdHack, Indicee, EnergyPulse. There are also a few acquired startups in the past 2-3 years. LayerBoom (Joyent), Smallthought (Twitter). Some solid companies such as: ElasticPath, VisionCritical, etc. Despite the list of startups and "solid" companies. I wouldn't bet on their balance sheet. I've been here since 2001 and while there are several key buyouts in th…
Do you think Toronto might be better for startups?
In general, there are far more opportunities in places with more people. Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga, and Waterloo area are quite ideal because you have a few good universities (such as UT and Waterloo), a few good companies (Google, RIM, etc), and what seemingly might be a good startup city (Ottawa) thanks to Nortell and a few big name hi-techs shut down.
Re: Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a few startups in Vancouver: HootSuite, Kashoo, AdHack, Indicee, EnergyPulse. There are also a few acquired startups in the past 2-3 years. LayerBoom (Joyent), Smallthought (Twitter). Some solid companies such as: ElasticPath, VisionCritical, etc. Despite the list of startups and "solid" companies. I wouldn't bet on their balance sheet. I've been here since 2001 and while there are several key buyouts in th…
Do you think Toronto might be better for startups?
I think you might as well be asking about favourite hockey teams. I moved from the Greater Toronto Area to Vancouver for a startup and find the areas comparable, and I know a handful of my classmates out here. I found Toronto had a lot of small 10 year old companies masquerading as startups. "Startup Atmosphere!!!!"
Re: Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
#18on a side note, is there anything good coming out of vancouver right now? I haven't heard of anything since the bootup labs debacle.
Is Tarsnap good? (please say yes...) In all seriousness, though, Tarsnap doesn't really come out of Vancouver. It happens to be located here, but that's just because I'm here; I certainly can't point to anything and say "if Tarsnap wasn't in Vancouver, I wouldn't have had access to X and it wouldn't have succeeded". I hope we can develop more of a startup community here, but so far all I've seen is hordes of MBAs and…
The 'distinct lack of technical people' is what worries me the most. But I like to think a lot are just tied up in the video game industry. There are a lot of post-secondary institutions around with solid CS programs and it isn't hard to convince someone to move here. (worked on me)
As for the hoards of MBA's, I've seen a couple startups run by muggles who just contract out the initial coding (Bootup labs sponsored included) then look for a tech lead much later, if at all. There are also odd things like local democamps where the "no powerpoint" rule is cast aside and few of the speakers actually have software to demo. To their credit, a thinking ape was at the last democamp with a demo, unlike the act that went up after them: guys pitching a TV show about iPhone apps.
Re: Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
#19I've always loved cperciva's comments on this site. If he's involved, I can't believe it won't be a valuable session. I'd go if I was in Vancouver.
Re: Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think Toronto might be better for startups?
In general, there are far more opportunities in places with more people. Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga, and Waterloo area are quite ideal because you have a few good universities (such as UT and Waterloo), a few good companies (Google, RIM, etc), and what seemingly might be a good startup city (Ottawa) thanks to Nortell and a few big name hi-techs shut down.
I've always asked myself how come big companies like Google, IBM,etc are on the east side and not in Vancouver. I mean this clearly illustrates that there might be more tech workforce in Ontario. So for a startup this could be an advantage. It's just a educated guess and I don't have any facts yet.