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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

#21

Post by jessriedel »

robertelder wrote: post #16

Waterloo has been investing heavily in improving their public transit infrastructure in recent years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_rapid_transit http://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/projectinformatio... Once it is completed, I think this will make Waterloo and Toronto feel a lot closer together. Note that the 'transit hub' mentioned above is a 2 minute walk from communitech ( https://www.communitech.ca/ ),…

Those are local projects (Waterloo/Kitchener/Cambridge), right? Are they actually planning on improving the very slow and intermittent rail connection to Toronto?

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

#22

Post by stuxnet79 »

anonymousab wrote: post #15
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.

Waterloo and Toronto alumni, presumably.

No a lot of us are either staying here and working remotely for companies stateside or we are moving to the states altogether. This is especially true of Waterloo. Most of the Waterloo devs I know, and they are really good mind you, are either in Seattle or Bay Area working for one of the Big 4. To stay competitive, Toronto will have to reel these individuals in and I don't believe there's sufficient incentive to accomplish that right now. See this[1] for instance.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/2d7818/w...

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

#23

Post by barkingcat »

johan_larson wrote: post #9
clutchski wrote: post #4

"Toronto is already home to a number of successful venture-backed businesses, such as Shopify, KIK, ..." Fact check time. Shopify's headquarters is in Ottawa. Kik is in Waterloo.

Waterloo is arguably part of greater Toronto. The local commuter service (Go Transit) reaches all the way to Kitchener-Waterloo. I say "arguably" because it's a two-hour train ride each way, which is pretty brutal.

No Waterloo is not and will not call itself a part of greater Toronto. It's like saying Baltimore is a part of DC (just a little bit closer), or like saying Philadelphia is a part of New York City (just a little bit farther).

Kitchener-Waterloo is a distinct town, and is a part of the original Canadian "Tech Triangle" - with the demise of RIM/Blackberry, it's lost the lustre but there's no way anyone can take seriously bundling Waterloo into the Greater Toronto Area.

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

#24

Post by personjerry »

anonymousab wrote: post #15
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.

Waterloo and Toronto alumni, presumably.

Most the talent gets drawn to Silicon Valley, from what I've seen.

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

#25

Post by jacques_chester »

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 rent is a shit ton cheaper, the people are much nicer, the food is more varied, the city is gorgeous in summer, it's big enough to have serious amenities, small enough to be walkable and the people who look like lumberjacks probably are.

I live in NYC, because I prefer it to SF as well. As an Australian citizen I find it significantly easier to work in the USA than in Canada. But if Toronto's scene were on a rough scale with NYC's and if the immigration thing could be sorted, I'd be tempted to move.

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

#26

Post by dcwca »

I agree with the article, it really does feel like something special is happening in the city. I work at TWG, a software dev agency in Toronto and we've worked closely with many of these startups and are pretty well connected to the startup culture. Happy to answer any questions you might have about our local scene!

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

#28

Post by falsestprophet »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #19

Eeh ... as a Torontonian developer I don't buy it. Most of the good graduates we have move to Bay Area or Seattle. If you want your career to progress meaningfully you pretty much have to move to the states. Maybe this might change in the future but the story on the ground is very different. Also nitpick - we are the fourth most populous city in North America, and only Mexico City , New York and Los Angeles have a la…

Toronto is the seventh largest metro area in North America. 2/3 the size of Chicago.

About the same size as Washington and Philadelphia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metro...

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

#29

Post by robertelder »

jessriedel wrote: post #21
robertelder wrote: post #16

Waterloo has been investing heavily in improving their public transit infrastructure in recent years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_rapid_transit http://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/projectinformatio... Once it is completed, I think this will make Waterloo and Toronto feel a lot closer together. Note that the 'transit hub' mentioned above is a 2 minute walk from communitech ( https://www.communitech.ca/ ),…

Those are local projects (Waterloo/Kitchener/Cambridge), right? Are they actually planning on improving the very slow and intermittent rail connection to Toronto?

Yes, these are local projects, but with the amount of chaos they're creating with construction, I'm willing to believe that once it's finished they'll make much more frequent trips to Toronto. I believe there would be demand for it as the King/Victoria area is changing rapidly. Google just took over a building that was an old derelict factory with broken windows 2 years ago. This building is within feet of the proposed transit station. Lots of new apartment buildings going up in the area. The communitech hub has also been getting much more busy in the last few years.
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