A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector

"DoesNotExist" error.<p>At first I thought it was a joke related to the title, but now I see that it's just a Django error page. Made me chuckle at least.<p>Here's a cached version in the meantime: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Athrowww.com%2Fa%2F1fa&#38;sugexp=chrome,mod=14&#38;sourceid=chrome&#38;ie=UTF-8" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Athrow...</a>

"Quick test - name the sprinter who won the 2008 100m sprint. You probably guessed Usain Bolt - which is correct. Who came second? Exactly.... Want to know why? No-one cares. This is how the world works - in business and in life."<p>The hugely hyped media coverage of celebrities is not really a good model for anything in the real world. We don't all buy products and services from only the largest business in any given market sector. If I'm buying a car, or cellphone service, or software, I'm certainly going to consider offerings from companies that are not the #1 company in their field.

As a Canadian startup founder, I agree that we need to try to be the best in the world at what we're doing, not just best in our city or best in Canada. And I think we can do that while being our standard nice, even overly-apologetic selves.<p>As a start, let's all have our Twitter taglines say what our startup is (or will soon be) the best in the world at doing.<p>Here's what mine was before reading this article (@peterarmstrong):<p>Co-Founder of Leanpub, the best way in the world to self-publish in-progress ebooks.<p>Note how qualified that is: co-founder, self-publish, in-progress. That's because I'm Canadian, and I'm trying to be accurate.<p>If I was in the valley, I'd probably have mine be:<p>Founder of Leanpub, the best way in the world to publish ebooks.<p>What's better?<p>What's yours?

As a Canadian who has lived in NYC for 2 years, and just had to go back to Canada for 2 weeks, this is spot on.<p>There are tons of smart Canadians due to the great education system, but Canadians in general don't appreciate success in the same way Americans do. When I quit my job to start my own thing in America, all my co-workers and friends were pumped up and excited, while many Canadians were perplexed and asked questions like: "Don't you have a great job? Don't you make enough money? Why would you quit?" They concluded there was something wrong with me for quitting a decent job to do my own thing.<p>They didn't understand that being as upper-middle class as I could wasn't my goal. My goal was to try and build something out of nothing and hopefully be the best in the world. Americans get that because it's part of the American dream.<p>If you are talented, entrepreneurial and a good hacker, get down to NYC or SF. I used to be worried about visa issues, but then I realized it didn't matter, you can figure them out as you go along.

I don't know wtf happened... here it is again. <a href="http://throwww.com/a/1ft" rel="nofollow">http://throwww.com/a/1ft</a>

The author left out one point that is too often ignored.we just font have enough people.why don't we have amazon prime? Because Canada is just so huge,and our population is spread so thinly.the population is so much smaller than the USA that its so much harder to launch and support a country wide service.<p>Plus,we don't have LLC or a proper equivalent.

LOL. I think the error message appropriately describes the Canadian tech sector. BTW, I am Canadian.

&#62; article = Article.objects.get(pk=int(article_id,36))<p>You (assuming op is the maintainer of the site) should really handle any django "get" with a try/except block.<p>That, and you should also set debug to False on a production server.<p>Once the article exists again, it might be worth reading.

Personally, as a Canadian in the consumer-and-internet-software sector ("tech sector" to HN), the constant comparisons to the equivalent U.S. sector appear far more annoying than the state of our sector. Nobody else does it with as much frequency as we seem to. Much of the discussion simply consists of pointing out and explaining in depth differences between the two sectors. It feels worse than the constant internet handwringing in the U.S. about their health care. I am getting attention fatigue. It is what it is. If you're unhappy with the current state and wish to change it, stop talking and start doing. Another post explaining that Canada doesn't have the VC scene or salaries or that Canadians are "nice" and happy with second best won't change these things.

How can you compare Canada to the unique place that is Silicon Valley?<p>Edit:<p>How about a damning look at Canada's film industry (hint: it's not Hollywood)?

Maybe part of the problem is that a lot of our tech talent ends up going down to where the money is instead of staying in Canada?

To me Canada's tech sector isn't damned; just dwarfed when it is compared to our much larger southern neighbour. The economy of Canada isn't really based around innovation and technology but rather primary industries like oil/gas/lumber/etc... so it makes sense that our business focus’ on our unique advantage. To me is seems that starting and growing a business is harder to do in Canada then in the States. Just as an example the rate of return for VC firms is roughly about -5% in Canada while in the States it is roughly %10. See: <a href="http://www.bdc.ca/EN/Documents/other/VC_Industry_Review_EN.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.bdc.ca/EN/Documents/other/VC_Industry_Review_EN.p...</a>. I am not sure why our companies have difficulty competing internationally but alot of the reasons in the article (Lack of Acquisition of Knowledge, Second Place is Good Enough and We Suck at PR) seem like symptoms rather than causes.

Entertaining but I disagree with most of the article. It's about time we stop comparing Canada to America. Canada is about the size of California in terms of population. This is like comparing a small tech company to Apple.<p>Canada is great, but easier access to capital in America.

The Canadian tech sector has been getting hammered for quite a while. First there was the Nortel collapse, then ATI was acquired by AMD, RIM is slowly but surely sliding towards oblivion. Shopify is the only bright spot in Canadian Tech.

finally - a "realistic" look at canada's tech sector. there is a lot of work to be done.

This is a great article! I myself am Canadian and agree with many of articles points.<p>Living in Toronto it's noticeable to recognize it's the financial industry runs this city, then comes marketing and advertising. Tech here in Toronto primarily just service these industries.<p>Now when it comes to getting people to invest in tech startups, is not a lack of money - it's the investors who have money and lack of knowledge in the tech industry. (Most of them having financial backgrounds)

I got this:<p><pre><code> A server error occurred. Please contact the administrator. </code></pre> That's pretty damning of the Canadian tech sector, all right.

This post is great! It gets the juices going. It describes everything wrong and everything right about Canada's tech market and i'm so glad you wrote this. It's the Manifesto we needed.<p>I'm already excited about the opportunities ahead. I'm in. I'll do my part, starting Today!<p>Aside: I think I finally found a use for my domain torontotech.org - colleagues and collaborators wanting to take part, get in touch