Why You Should Bootstrap in Montreal or Join Startup Chile

There are several reasons why you generally have a huge disadvantage when doing a startup in Canada, and it's not just about taxes and laws.<p>Want to use that cool new service (e.g., Stripe)? Sorry, not available in Canada.<p>Want to start a service that ships anything in the mail? Prohibitively expensive.<p>Want funds? Banks won't lend you anything and investors are very few and risk averse. $20-50K investments in web startups are rare and big news when they happen.<p>I love Canada and I'm not moving from it. But Canadian entrepreneurs have much lower chances of succeeding than American ones.<p>Can you make millions in Canada? Sure, but it's a much less likely occurrence. And if you do, it will generally be still less than what American startups can make.<p>This is why it makes no sense to start a company like Twitter in Canada. You can't sustain it. The best approach for Canadian startups is to bootstrap by charging money from day one.<p>So you can get a lot of nice "Italian restaurants on the web" doing SaaS and making good money, but don't expect groundbreaking innovation a la Google from Canada.<p>With that said, those who are already in Canada, like me, have no free pass. If you don't succeed, you can only blame yourself.<p>"In Silicon Valley they hand out money like candy" is not a good excuse for never achieving your dreams in Canada.

Pretty cool, but Chile is hardly in the tropics. South America isn't automatically warm just because it's "south" :).<p>That said, it looks like a killer opportunity. I've looked at this before and it's really going to be interesting to see the different experiences that these startups have come through over the coming months.

Other recent HN posts and discussions about Start-Up Chile:<p>154 Startups Selected in Start-Up Chile's 2nd Round of 2011 <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3031349" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3031349</a><p>Start-Up Chile is a Great Experience But Be Careful Too <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3055534" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3055534</a>

As someone who lived in Montreal for 4 years, it gets old pretty quick. I now live in Brooklyn for comparable prices to what I paid in Montreal (rent is a bit more, but food is dirt cheap in NY) and like it much more.

This sounds like a fantastic opportunity. I like the Startup Chile project because they offer a great combination of non-equity funds, lots of government support for networking and an opportunity to explore a new place in the world. Congratulations and best of luck with this.

Not much information about other requirements for Startup Chile in the article.<p>Through Startup Chile's website: Teams must also give workshops, attend events etc., which hopefully won't be too big of a hassle. Not sure if you have to keep your business in Chile for a certain amount of time afterwards.<p>Government support and involvement: Possibly good or bad.

Does anyone have any more info on these government grants available in Canada that are mentioned ?

Actually, won't it be summer in both?

wow - 40k of free money to go enjoy Santiago and build a company. Sounds like a dream!

I pretty much agree with the "location, location, location" idea.<p>I am sure there are advantages to doing a startup in Chile and in Montreal. But I still think that to make it big, you have to do it in Silicon Valley.<p>The concentration of talented and smart people is greater in Silicon Valley than in any other place.

This sounds pretty cool. I'd go to Chile if not for a little travel and to escape the Bay Area bubble in lieu of a broader life experience. Wonder once you finish the 'program' what the terms are. I suspect they'd want you to stay wherever they're funding you. I also suspect developing countries (PIGS) are going to be a hot bed of innovative startups. Tangible problems beget real solutions, e.g. - successful companies?