Canadian Startups & Cities Thread
 

Thread dedicated to the latest news & discussions of Canadian startup ecosystems and startup companies.

http://cdn.betakit.com/wp-content/up...M-1046x580.png
http://betakit.com/startup-genome-re...15th-globally/

"$225M BlueRock Therapeutics "monster" a magnet for Canada’s biotech sector - Leveraging Toronto's ability to research, manufacture and commercialize a breakthrough therapy is drawing others to the table"

https://financialpostcom.files.wordp...n-lab_ccrm.jpg

How raising $102 million opened doors for Element AI

https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/u...C620&strip=all

1. Google's DeepMind to set open a research centre in Edmonton:
They're famous for AlphaGo...

http://fortune.com/2017/07/05/google...igence-canada/

2. Vancouver company Semios aims to eliminate all pesticides from farming:

http://www.straight.com/life/941196/...icides-farming

First, you should tell us more about the subject, and why it's relevant.
What's the point in starting a thread without a decent introduction.

:???:

Toronto and Waterloo have merged?

cherrypicked article for boosterism?

That's what I thought as well.
Toronto-Waterloo...
Why not Montréal-Ottawa then.
haha.

A "high tech corridor". Hence the need for HSR. The "Toronto-Waterloo" is being seen more frequently, istm.

I've not heard much about techies and academics commuting between Ottawa and Montreal as they do between Toronto and K-W.

Cue every backwater town in the country claiming to be the best start-up incubator

Does it matter? Toronto and Waterloo suck royally going by this list. All funding should be therefore directed to Vancouver.

^ no not really. It's become quite fashionable to make such claims though it seems

Toronto and Waterloo are merged when convenient to fit a certain narrative. Canada is still woefully underperforming on the tech scene, the (little) sleeping giants are Montreal and Vancouver. Toronto, woefully underperforming to comparable cities. When you score that Toronto is one of the most educated major cities globally and the Canadian VC and finance hub this is all unacceptable.

Look at the table.

12th in funding

Dead last in talent and second to dead last in both performance and experience.

I don't see San Francisco listed at all, so I guess it's been completely absorbed by Silicon Valley.

The Genesis Centre at Memorial University of Newfoundland is the cornerstone of our very, very small start-up industry. If I'm generous, I'd say three of the businesses developed there every year survive, and one every two years becomes the global leader in its field.

They're all small, niche businesses.

One that comes to mind (had an event there recently) is Verafin, which provides cyber security for a lot of multinational companies:

https://verafin.com/

And another is SkyHawk Telematics, which your municipal or provincial government probably uses to track its government vehicles.

http://www.skyhawk.co/

Here, most start-ups are, of course, software-as-a-service since it makes absolutely no economic sense to establish manufacturing and the like. We rarely do that for export, and if we do it's usually niche luxury goods (i.e. seal coats, high tops, etc.).

Generally, we don't have an entrepreneurial culture (we're the type of city that, if it burnt down, it'd stay ruined until government rebuilt it) - but it's starting to grow a bit. We're certainly aware of what companies started locally.

Won't be long before the GTHKWA is a "thing"

And perhaps GTKWA (sorry Hamilton, yer out ;) )

What do you mean? Toronto's startup industry in the IT & the biomedical sciences has been booming lately as a result of a decades-worth of strategic government investment. See MaRS District and the recent Vector Institute.

Vancouver's notable start-ups imo are D-Wave, and Hootsuite.

D-Wave is the first company to use quantum mechanics in creating computers that utilize the logic of quantum computers. They've recently made deals with Volkswagen, Google, NASA, and other US tech firms. They're also holding hands with U of T, and USC for the development of future quantum computers. As a person of a science background, this company should be getting more hype. It's Canada's answer to Intel, Samsung, Google etc.

Some recent articles:

Quantum Computing Is Real, and D-Wave Just Open-Sourced It


Quantum upgrade: D-Wave tech advances artificial intelligence
The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab in California will upgrade its computing power with the new 2000Q system.


U.S. gets Canadian help to take on China in supercomputer race: ‘A perfect world for D-Wave’

When Will Quantum Computers Be Consumer Products?

These start up graphs are so comical sometimes. They all end up looking like this to me:

http://i.imgur.com/pXVHxss.png

You can find an article which essentially gives you any order you want for Canada's "tech hubs".

Here's one with Ottawa first and Vancouver dead last:

http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/new-report-...nada-1.3330059

Here's one with Montreal first:

https://www.thestar.com/business/201...ort-finds.html

In my experience, Toronto is far and away Canada's tech hub. Head and shoulders about the rest. Most people, most talent, most companies, most connected to finance, most wealthy investors who actually invest in start ups, etc. Best financial eco system, good connections to silicon valley, and the sheer size enables it to have a very healthy ecosystem of talent, funding, prospects, and growth for companies that actually do well.

It's not as outsized as Silicon Valley is compared with the rest of the United States, but anyone who is starting a start up in Canada should probably be in Toronto to do it.

I was having some fun based on the above ranking. Take a good look at the performance rankings.

It's nice to see Vancouver doing so well ...

http://www.straight.com/life/883296/...5th-best-world

Certainly seems so. ;)

Based on the experience of close friends who have started a start up in Canada, I would instead say that "anyone who is starting a start up in Canada should probably start it in Silicon Valley".