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Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

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Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#151

Post by faramarz »

ng12 wrote: post #133
faramarz wrote: post #123

My money is on Canada! Look, our culture, the geo-political environment, the general tolerance level of an average Canadian, all of these play a factor and when given a choice, people would easily Canada as their home base. This is where you want to start a family and grow your kids. The tech scene has always been miniature compared to SF or NYC, but the high caliber of talent and expertise is the same if not greater…

Are you posting from the Canadian Tourist Bureau? I have two main concerns when considering a startup: access to talent and access to capital. As discussed elsewhere in this thread, Toronto falls short on both. Multiculturalism barely factors into it -- and if it did why would I pick Toronto over NYC?

Multiculturalism and the political scene is what keeps your employees happy to live in the city.

regarding access to capital, two things; 1) We have access to NYC and Chicago VC's, easily. If you slightly push your startup in the media (blogs, newspapers) it almost guarantees a call from interested US VC's within a 1hr flight.

2) Where we lack the competitive VC environment, we make up for it with Federal and Municipal programs. Incentives to hire top talent, compensation for hiring new graduates, grans for office space or R & D.

Canada rocks. more people are starting to realize this.

The other reality is, older generations, our parents or their age group, were never as globally competitive as we have the potential to be. They were happy with just having a customer base thats local, if lucky, nation wide.

But no, this new generation is fierce and competitive. We don't want to just dominate in Canada where we have home advantage, we want to compete globally. The rise of the tech startups out of the Toronto region is just a great example of that upward trend. it's just going to get better and better where as SF seems to have peaked.

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#152

Post by kogepathic »

uiri wrote: post #137

This article is poorly fact-checked: "Queens College" is, I'm guessing, referring to Queen's University in Kingston (since the attendance number cited also matches), which is over 150 miles away from Toronto. I'm surprised the author didn't include the 25,000 students at McMaster and the 20,000 students at the University of Guelph which are both much closer than either Waterloo or Queen's. And if the author is going…

> even if it means avoiding -40 degree winters.

Oh come on, winter in Ottawa isn't that bad. I can't recall many days that were below -30 when I was living there.

Although I hear Toronto barely has snow in the winter time, must be heaven not to have to shovel your driveway.

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#153

Post by ZainManji »

Toronto is indeed up and coming like every major city, as tech continues to become more essential and dominant. My company, Fiix (www.fiix.io), is an example of a company based out of Toronto, that actually just got backed by YC. Ideally we'd love to stay in Toronto, but the valley continually entices us and a lot of startups to eventually transition there because of their abundance of top talent. The main reason we are in Toronto is because our current market consists of only Torontonians. As we look to expand our services, staying in Toronto might become very difficult. I think once Toronto has a huge surplus of tech talent, then it will be very interesting... Maybe a first mover advantage works in the valley's favor here ;)

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#154

Post by adomanico »

lcc wrote: post #80

Not if Toronto keeps hemorrhaging talent. I graduated from the University of Toronto last year and can only name 2 of my classmates who are actually working in Toronto now. The rest are in SF, Seattle, and NYC - including many people who have family in Toronto, like me. All of my friends who were seriously working on a startup have moved it to the Bay Area. Many of us would love to move back to Toronto 'eventually',…

Hit the nail on the head. Until Toronto can match the competitive salaries in the Bay Area I will be working in the US.

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#155

Post by lewisl9029 »

mahyarm wrote: post #148
arez wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you get a green card easier as a canadian than people from europe for example? I'm from germany and know many people who would like to work in the states, but it's really a big problem to get the green card. It takes companies much effort and money to get you in the states for more than 3 months.

You have to immigrate like all the other immigrants, but since you are German, the permanent resident quota is barely used for your nationality. The USA creates a quota system for green cards and then splits them up on a nationality basis. India, China and the Philippines have a long lineup for visas. The USA creates a quota/lineup system on a per country basis. You have 3 basic options: 1. Work at a European office…

#3 is an interesting option that I hadn't heard of until now. Would this option be available to remote workers? Or is it reserved only for those working with companies that have a physical office in their country as well as the US?

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#156

Post by chrisper »

mahyarm wrote: post #148
arez wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you get a green card easier as a canadian than people from europe for example? I'm from germany and know many people who would like to work in the states, but it's really a big problem to get the green card. It takes companies much effort and money to get you in the states for more than 3 months.

You have to immigrate like all the other immigrants, but since you are German, the permanent resident quota is barely used for your nationality. The USA creates a quota system for green cards and then splits them up on a nationality basis. India, China and the Philippines have a long lineup for visas. The USA creates a quota/lineup system on a per country basis. You have 3 basic options: 1. Work at a European office…

One can't apply for H1-B. A company on your behalf has to do that. And I never heard of option 3. Do you have a link for that?

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#157

Post by MustardTiger »

faramarz wrote: post #123

My money is on Canada! Look, our culture, the geo-political environment, the general tolerance level of an average Canadian, all of these play a factor and when given a choice, people would easily Canada as their home base. This is where you want to start a family and grow your kids. The tech scene has always been miniature compared to SF or NYC, but the high caliber of talent and expertise is the same if not greater…

Ontario is not winning anything, it is circling the toilet economically, with a government hell bent on making things much worse. There is no chance any significant number of people or companies will come back to Toronto to make less money because you think "we're progressive" is a selling point. So is San Francisco, and you can get paid there.

>This country is already winning with it's social policies and adopting multiculturalism

The current trend is towards more and more people opposing those policies. Ontario, Alberta, and the federal government being hyper progressive all at the same time is resulting in a significant push back towards traditional values and people are rediscovering their Canadian heritage.

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#158

Post by rhc2104 »

AlexC04 wrote: post #59
MichaelRenor wrote: post #43

Ultimately if Toronto wants to be the best they will pay the best (adjusted for cost of living). They're best bet is that the bay cost of living becomes so unbearable that they can be competitive in take-home dollars. As it is, the money for developers is in the bay by a huge margin.

Yeah, the pay here in Toronto is much lower, even when you account for cost of living vs. San Fran. One consideration that offsets that is medical insurance. If your health care is not fully covered by your employer. I ran some numbers once and the "rent difference" was roughly $3k (typical 1 - 2 bedroom apartment at $4k vs. The roughly $1k I spend) and the platinum medical looking like roughly $500/mo Add in a car,…

If you were moving to the US and were worried about cost of living, Seattle would be a great option. You'd probably spend 2k on an apartment there, making the math much more enticing to move.

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#159

Post by bsurmanski »

AlexC04 wrote: post #94
jt2190 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes? Canadians jump very quickly into the highest tax brackets. Goods and Services are taxed in Ontario at... 14% now?

Perhaps surprisingly, that's mostly a wash. Canadian federal tax is 33% over 200k USA is 33% over 189K Ontario taxes 11.16% up to 500k California 9.3% up to 250k ... Ok so realistically 2% in taxes :). Maybe that's not a total wash. But if we're looking at the break-even point it might hit $3k in California's favor

Okay, I tried to graph out taxes between Toronto and SF.

check it out: https://github.com/bsurmanski/TorontoSFTax

It looks like between 60k-200k, taxes in Toronto are actually lower. Between 200k-700k, it is cheaper in SF. At 300k, Toronto tax is about 1.5% more, and at 400k, Toronto tax is about 2% more.

But being realistic, most people in tech would pay less tax in Toronto.

edit: This calculation also does not take into account any other taxes (such as sales tax, or property tax), and is not adjusted for cost of living. SF has an edge in sales tax (8.75% in SF vs 13% in Toronto), but Toronto has a huge edge in cost of living (according to [0], Toronto is 32% cheaper), and property tax (1.14% in SF vs 0.7% in Toronto).

[0] - https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/san-fra...

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#160

Post by MustardTiger »

jacques_chester wrote: post #25
justinlaing wrote: post #10

Who is going to move to Toronto to join the tech scene? If given the choice who is going to choose Toronto over Bay Area or Seattle? Without it having a massive draw it won't even register compared to Bay Area or even Seattle.

If someone made me choose between the Bay Area and Toronto, I would pick Toronto. Every day of the week. Toronto's great. Sure, it's like the planet Hoth for a third of the year. But in every other way it's a more liveable city. The public transport in the core of the city exists and works, rather than being a cobbled-together mishmash of uncoordinated systems of which 2 out of 3 seem to be broken at any time. The re…

>and the people who look like lumberjacks probably are

No, they are the same hipster dufus people as in Portland. There are no lumberjacks in Toronto.

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