Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

betakit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 161 posts

Re: Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

#81

Post by chris_wot »

trollbridge wrote: post #71
curmudgeon22 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely still health insurance benefits (I'm Canadian). Yes, our doctor and hospital visits are covered, but many things are covered by employer paid insurance (or not at all): - prescription medicine - dental - vision - mental health - things like physiotherapy

Yeah, correct, but it's not going to be a $4000/mo line item expense for the employer per employee. I don't have to deal with this as we are a (very) small business but it's a major headache for larger small businesses. Basically, as an employer it simply isn't fun to be forced to be in the "providing access to healthcare" business when that's not your core business.

If only there was single-payer universal healthcare, huh?

Re: Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

#82

Post by gucci-on-fleek »

tptacek wrote: post #69
gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can still run a company from Canada under these terms, the same way every international YC batch company runs Having a Canada-registered company is usually required to get government grants and loans from Canadian banks, although that's probably not very important to VC-backed companies. There are also some tax advantages to running a Canada-registered company if you're based out of Canada, plus it's much easie…

I'm sure a lot of British people want to run UK-registered companies! I'm not saying Canadians wouldn't rationally prefer to have the option of taking investments in a Canadian corporation, just that it doesn't look like there's a lot more to this than details for your finance person, and that it's the same deal every other country gets. Read the thread: clearly a lot of people are reading this as "you can't HQ in Ca…

Right, I agree with you that where the business is incorporated has essentially zero bearing on where its HQ is, where it can operate, hire staff, etc.

But I think that it counts for a little bit more than just "details for your finance person", since the tax and grant eligibility implications could mean that some startups would be better off incorporating in Canada and not taking the Y Combinator money. But if you're taking the VC funding route (which most applicants to Y Combinator are), then I agree that none of this should really matter very much.

Re: Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

#83

Post by deaux »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #46
greenavocado wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NVIDIA makes up 7% of the S&P 500 ETFs. We live in the United States of NVIDIA.

Yes but at least it's not People's Republic of NVidia , so there's that.

Right, it's the Democratic People's Republic of Nvidia.

Re: Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

#84

Post by Roscius »

garbawarb wrote: post #75
ooooppppppp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attractiveness to talent? Fairly senior dev, US citizen here (20 years experience). After what I've seen this past year, but more the past month, I will work for peanuts for a path to citizenship in Canada. US in 5 years is not a place I want to be, looking into all options and very serious.

The lifestyle difference is real but the income difference is enough to sway most people to the US. If Canada can close the gap on that I'd say it can become an even more attractive place for global tech talent than the US because of its overall better livability.

Live in Canada and work remotely into the US. Been doing it for the last 6 years...

Re: Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

#85

Post by ragall »

tptacek wrote: post #47
1attice wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat. Our provinces have fewer rights, powers and responsibilities than US states. The experience is more homogenous. It's only a nightmare if you hate all taxes and labour rights. So, you know, YC

You can still run a company from Canada under these terms, the same way every international YC batch company runs --- you can just go to the YC directory and select for EMEA, LATAM, APAC, &c. There's hundreds of them. Since this is purely about ownership structure and equity governing law, I'm curious what the intersection you're seeing between these terms and "labour rights" are. We're a US company with employees in…

> We're a US company with employees in Europe (not even an HQ in Europe, just employees there)

I don't think that's true. You can't have employees without a local subsidiary. If you're going through an EOR agency, they're contractors not employees.

Re: Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

#86

Post by anon291 »

ooooppppppp wrote: post #45
garbawarb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like which?

Attractiveness to talent? Fairly senior dev, US citizen here (20 years experience). After what I've seen this past year, but more the past month, I will work for peanuts for a path to citizenship in Canada. US in 5 years is not a place I want to be, looking into all options and very serious.

It is difficult to take anyone worried about the US seriously when their solution to protect themselves is to move to Canada.

Not saying anyone's right or wrong but the idea that, should America go psycho, Canada would somehow be okay is a pipe dream. Canada is essentially an outpost of the United States. Yes, I have Canadian family (even old stock "Loyalist" Canadian family) and they all feel the same way.

People need to be real.

If you actually want to be able to declare independence from America you'd need citizenship in a country with actual nuclear capability. France, the UK, China, etc

Re: Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

#87

Post by RobRivera »

kdazzle wrote: post #67
garbawarb wrote: post #5

> “It’s the Valley-or-bust mentality that breaks the ecosystem and really hurts Canada,” Gomez said. Canadian pride isn't enough to keep a company in Canada. There are real and significant economic incentives to move elsewhere. That said, it's disappointing that YC no longer supports Canadian companies.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

#88

Post by dang »

Sanzig wrote: post #3
dang wrote: post #2

I haven't talked to anyone at YC about this, have no inside information, and can't read the article*, but I imagine this is some technical change about where startups are incorporated. I'm sure applications from Canadian founders are as welcome as ever and there will be no change on the level of which applications get funded. (* edit: I originally posted this in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46772809 but have…

Seems like a very bizarre move, considering Canadian-domiciled corporations have access to very generous financial incentives (SR&ED) at both federal and provincial levels. Can't help but think this is a move meant to satisfy the US admin.

Again, I have no inside info, but I'm pretty sure it's got nothing to do with that.

Most Canadian YC founders incorporate their startups in the US (sctb and I did that, way back when), just like other international founders do and of course U.S. founders do, so the number of companies being affected by this change must be very small—small enough that it would be of little interest to the US govt.

Most probably the change is because the number was too small to justify all the paperwork, legal hoops to jump through, compliance tracking, etc., that inevitably come with cross-border investments. The startups that YC funds are almost always so early-stage that it ends up being easier for everyone if the founders just incorporate in the US. (It would be like a software team saying "why are we putting all this extra effort into supporting platform X when we only have 3 users on platform X and they can all easily switch to platform Y".)

But please understand that I'm just guessing here. The reason I'm posting at all is that I'd hate for any Canadian founders (or potential founders) to read a misleading headline and say "welp, I guess YC doesn't want us then". That is certainly not the case!

Re: Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in

#89

Post by jonway »

RobRivera wrote: post #87
kdazzle wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Well he got mad about the Canadian version of “A letter to our colleagues” and then endlessly harped on that in social media. Like, years and years later he got a board review, but it’s not like a “some stuff I tweeted” or some “opinions shared on social media”, it was trading on his professional credentials to ply a self-help business scheme among other stuff iirc
Post reply on HN