Canadian Startups & Cities Thread

[geotag277]

Originally Posted by christmas

Interestingly enough the article this came from ranked Toronto 6 among the markets it considered with a very respectable score of 59.3. Vancouver was a bit embarrassing, being ranked 15 with a score of 51.4

For whatever reason they didn't think to look at Montreal.

[geotag277]

Originally Posted by lio45

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".

Unquestionably it is best for almost anywhere else in the US to start, if you have the correct legal and financial support.

It can be a bit tricky concerning the visa situation, but if you can get over that hump, you should.

If you absolutely must stay in Canada for whatever reason, you should be in Toronto. But that should be a last resort if the above doesn't work for whatever reason.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by geotag277

If you absolutely must stay in Canada for whatever reason, you should be in Toronto. But that should be a last resort if the above doesn't work for whatever reason.

As chance would have it, they happened to be in my hometown (where our alma mater is, as well) of Sherbrooke, Quebec, which is probably the best place in all of Canada for access to VC without having to completely relocate, as one of the global top sites (Boston) is a ~four-hour drive away so it's reasonably realistic to keep going back and forth between your home and the place where your startup is getting developed.

I'm pretty sure I told you that already but their experience is that in retrospect that's what they should have done. Now it's too late and they managed to get it off the ground decently well even here, but it was a long and arduous process.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by christmas

Gotta say that the salary for Vancouver (and Toronto) is really shitty given the cost of living (housing) in these cities. We aren't gonna draw top talent with these salaries.

[lio45]

You think the Best Place on Earth cannot manage to bait someone from Kansas City to accept a major pay cut for the privilege of moving to Vancouver...? Going from owning their Kansas City McMansion to having to squat a DTES building because that's all they can afford on their new, much lower salary for the same job...?



Hmm, maybe you're actually on to something.

[WhipperSnapper]

It's in USD. Luckily costs in Canada aren't. It's also bullshit. Some of those are level 3 averages while others are for level 1.

[240glt]

My sister's husband is a software engineer in Vancouver and he does a heck of a lot better than $60k a year... way better.

They're still living house poor in Burnaby but that's a reflection of house prices, not salaries

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Gotta say that the salary for Vancouver (and Toronto) is really shitty given the cost of living (housing) in these cities. We aren't gonna draw top talent with these salaries.

This is generally true in almost all professional sectors. Americans get paid more, and Americans can usually buy more with less.

What's keeping a lot of us here are the usual things: family and familiarity [I say this even though Vancouver is really testing my patience and wallet].

Also - at least anecdotally - Canada is better in the long haul of your life if you want to have children and grow old.

Apart from healthcare, the American education system is a huge money sink - you either have to enroll your kids in expensive private school, or you pay for good public schools by moving to a city with higher housing costs/property taxes. And if your kids don't end up going to a good state college on a scholarship, be prepared to shell out thousands more for tuition.

But if you're a particularly ambitious and talented twenty-something, then you should make the move to the States.

[christmas]

Some interesting infographics...

list of the top 24 cities in North America when it comes to tech (Scoring Tech Talent in North America 2017/CBRE) :



Toronto's tech job market growth:



http://dailyhive.com/toronto/cbre-re...ch-market-2017

[MolsonExport]

Newark ahead of Vancouver, and no Montreal? yeah, I'll buy that for a dollar.

giphy

[ssiguy]

Where the hell is Montreal?

WhipperSnapper also correctly pointed out that these figures are in US$ which means that "technically" Canadians automatically make 30% less than any of their US peers. Of course that doesn't reflect reality on the ground.

[lio45]

Wait, they've actually fused the San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward MSA and the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA into one single entry even though they're two separate MSAs, and then they actually SPLIT the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA into two separate entries, then they also split the New York-Newark-Jersey City MSA into two separate entries?

In summary:

1) Their #3 and their #13 are in fact the same metro area.

2) Their #14 and #24 are in fact the same metro area.

3) Their #1 consists of two separate metro areas that they've somehow decided to merge, because why not.

Yay for apples to apples. Who did this? In any case, definitely not worth paying attention.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Newark ahead of Vancouver

Yep - most definitely. The Newark area is actually in the top three of this chart, together with places like, say, the hamlet of Armonk, NY, in Westchester County, etc. It's called Metro NYC and it does beat Van for tech (understandable; it's huge, and it's kind of a magnet for capital).

(I'm not going to even dignify their ranking of Newark separately with my attention. )

[christmas]

Apparently "a healthy lifestyle" is Vancouver's biggest merit in attracting tech...


[BCBUSINESS]Why some corporate head offices put down roots in Vancouver:

Tech success Bench Accounting, billed as North America’s number one online bookkeeping service, recently launched a 55,000-square-foot head office at Telus Garden on Robson Street. Bench, which called New York home until 2013, outgrew three other nearby spaces as it expanded to 250 employees.

The company chose Vancouver because it’s cheaper than places like New York and San Francisco and has the tech talent, says director of communications Natalie Burgwin. “We have yet to see staff leave Bench to go somewhere else because of housing prices,” Burgwin adds.

Family-run Saje appears to be on that trajectory. Ross LeBlanc and chief wellness officer Jean-Pierre LeBlanc launched the business in 1992 after moving from Ontario with their daughter, Kiara—now brand and creative director—for the B.C. lifestyle. Over the past five years, Saje’s revenue has grown more than 1,000 per cent, Ross LeBlanc says. The company employs about 1,000 people, 125 of them in Vancouver. Saje will have almost 80 North American stores by the end of 2017.

The founders plan to grow their Vancouver head office to some 500 in the next half-decade. “Seeking a healthier lifestyle is the reason we came here in the first place—it would be super counterintuitive to leave,” Ross LeBlanc says.

Saje's new headquarters in Mount Pleasant, Vancouver:

[kwoldtimer]

A local (K-W) media report on the new Start-up Visa Program:

http://www.570news.com/2017/08/14/in...gion-new-home/

[christmas]

Why Toronto Could Inevitably Dominate Fintech

REPORT: TORONTO IS THE FASTEST-GROWING, SECOND-CHEAPEST TECH TALENT MARKET IN NORTH AMERICA


This one is expanding really fast as I've mentioned in the first page:

BLUEROCK THERAPEUTICS OPENS R&D AND MANUFACTURING HUB IN TORONTO

BlueRock Therapeutics launched in December 2016 through a $225 million Series A investment from Bayer AG and Versant Ventures.
The company, which added three executive members to its team in June, said it expects its team to reach more than 30 members within a year.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by christmas

Why Toronto Could Inevitably Dominate Fintech

REPORT: TORONTO IS THE FASTEST-GROWING, SECOND-CHEAPEST TECH TALENT MARKET IN NORTH AMERICA


This one is expanding really fast as I've mentioned in the first page:

BLUEROCK THERAPEUTICS OPENS R&D AND MANUFACTURING HUB IN TORONTO

"Could inevitably"? Is that somewhere between "will" and "has a chance to"?

[LeftCoaster]

Honestly, what a needlessly contradictory title.

A little suspect of a source too...

[christmas]

Here are the top 25 most high-tech cities:

1. San Francisco, California
2. New York, New York
3. London, England
4. Los Angeles, California
5. Seoul, South Korea
6. Taipei, Taiwan
7. Boston, Massachusetts
8. Singapore
9. Toronto, Canada
10. Chicago, Illinois
11. Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas
12. Tokyo, Japan
13. Stockholm, Sweden
14. Vancouver, Canada
15. Amsterdam, the Netherlands
16. Beijing, China
17. Shanghai, China
18. Montreal, Canada
19. Bangalore, India
20. Shenzhen, China
21. Berlin, Germany
22. Hong Kong, China
23. Copenhagen, Denmark
24. Barcelona, Spain
25. Washington, DC

http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vanco...gh-tech-cities