How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
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Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#2Who says it doesn't work?
If it produces viable companies, it does work (sure, it might fail to do that, but the parent haven't showed that).
Don't have to ve FAANG sized.
If anything, in my book, it's more of a societal success and healthier for them to NOT be FAANG sized - and screw the VCs.
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#3There's a lot in here, but the title may be better as "How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay"
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#4So is this romatizizing the bay area, or are these the true reasons for bay areas success?
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#5Promising Canadian tech startups need to stop selling out to America and global competitors. Shopify has the potential and likelihood to get to near the market cap of Amazon one day, and we need to encourage more of these types of companies to stay here and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs here.
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#6There's just one line in the article about low wages, but IMO that's a massive problem with the Canadian tech scene today. You cannot have a thriving startup ecosystem when your best talent leaves for the US right after graduating from college. I love Vancouver as a city and would move there in an instant if it didn't mean taking a 50%+ pay cut for the exact same role (with comparable costs of living to the Bay Area).
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#7IMO the conclusion isn't that the scene "doesn't work" but that it's not producing a lot of "moon shots" and tends to focus on "roof shots". There is nothing inherently wrong with this strategy and it produces solid gains over time, but it's a lot harder going to accidentally create a billion dollar company. That said, Solect got acquired for 1.5B back 20 years ago, Shopify exists, it's not like there are zero Canadian unicorns, they just get produced a lot more slowly.
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#8So is this romatizizing the bay area, or are these the true reasons for bay areas success?
Yes and yes.
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#9Who says it doesn't work? If it produces viable companies, it does work (sure, it might fail to do that, but the parent haven't showed that). Don't have to ve FAANG sized. If anything, in my book, it's more of a societal success and healthier for them to NOT be FAANG sized - and screw the VCs.
> If anything, in my book, it's more of a societal success to NOT be FAANG sized - and screw the VCs.
Agreed. I question the article measure success on wether you can attract angel or other money.
How about “no thanks, we have enough money to make this thing and we really like it, we’re happy, we make enough to keep the doors open and everyone gets a paycheck and no one suffers with or from our product”, that seems like success to me. Surely we have measurements besides how many billions of dollars a company is worth?
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#10This could've just as easily been written about the Phoenix metro area. Phoenix is the 5th largest population center in the US, barely now beating Philly, and while we've had a handful of few dozen small or medium successes (and a very small handful of big ones), our startup scene is... mediocre at best. The good vs. bad angels thing is a factor: we have no REAL good angels to speak of. (Happy to be corrected here.) No one is in the game for the game's sake. And our bad angels are even few and far in between. There are a handful of VCs, family offices, and such, but they usually want lower risk, post-revenue opportunities. There are one or two "angel" groups, but they take forever to stroke a check and it's an ordeal that's discouraging and not a lot of options.
Instead, we have a lot of SF (and other prominent geo) companies moving their ops here because we have lower cost of living and lower tax rates (though our top bracket just took a big step up due to 208) and a decent talent pool.
And while there have been a few incubators and such and there's a feel good startup community in YesPHX, there isn't any real circulating _money_ here. The uber wealth in this state is concentrated in old money forms like real estate and healthcare and conservative family offices and Bruce Halle's tire money and whatever the hell Bob Parsons is up to, but we lack that interconnected network of IPO-30-and-40-something-millionaires-willing-to-throw-down. We don't have anything resembling that.
From what I've heard, SLC is doing better on this front and beating us at a game we should be winning, but no one stays here after they make success, no one rich enough to matter is willing to splash out any real money themselves, and it ends up being a self-fulfilling, far too conservative environment for startup investment.
That being said, there are definitely some great startups still trying to make a go of it here. And per Gregslist & Crunchbase, we have over 300 startups here, with over 100 of them VC funded. And you'll see successes come out of here: InfusionSoft, CampusLogic, and sure a bunch of others... but nothing quite like a mega IPO, and nothing that feeds enough capital back into a huge pool of newly minted moneyed people ready to pay it forward into the next cohort. That ecosystem is damn hard to build up, it turns out.