Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley

I have a few problems with this article, namely the comparisons drawn between The Valley and Canada.<p>I am currently a Canadian citizen, working in San Francisco at a company that moved from Vancouver many years ago.<p>The author seems to be comparing the Bay Area to the entirety of Canada. Canada is not a small area, a city or a state. It is an entire 'continent' spanning multiple provinces with very different laws and dynamics. A startup in Waterloo, Ontario targeted towards engineering may fare better than one founded in Vancouver.<p>Secondly, he is mentioning his connections in the Bay Area that have helped him succeed in Canada. First he is arguing FOR founding a startup in Canada but then admits that most of his barriers to entry were lifted with help from the valley. There is a difference when you're starting fresh in Waterloo without any outside help.<p>I think what the author should have done is draw a parallel between The Valley and somewhere in Canada (Waterloo, Vancouver, Montreal, etc...). One may not be better than the other but perhaps working WITH The Valley can help get your startup off the ground elsewhere.<p>I would personally love to work for a startup back home in Toronto and perhaps one day found my own but I don't see the same enthusiasm towards tech and startup in Toronto that I see here in The Valley.

Rose coloured glasses. You want to startup in Canada? Either a) have access to network with money, or b) bootstrap like there's no tomorrow.<p>Investors in Canada have an appetite for risk somewhere in the neighbourhood of "mutual fund vs GIC" levels. For someone with Silicon Valley connections, fine it could work, but this is not good general advice.<p>Even iNovia, which is probably the most forward looking VC in the country, has a fairly small fund (low $100M if memory serves), I believe below the size of the average US fund.

One thing that Canada has in it's favour is that for competent CS graduates, you're competing with stultifying companies rather than companies in the SF bubble. PagerDuty is one of those companies that I expect Canada would've been happy to keep, and we're loving it in SF, but we're fighting with a lot of similar companies for people.<p>This year, we opened up an office in Toronto, and even though our standards are the same (exact same interview process everywhere) we've had a measurably easier time attracting CS talent.

A good direction seems to be Waterloo/Velocity-&#62;YC-&#62;Seed round-&#62;Main office in Canada<p>There's a ton of advantages of having your main office in Canada, but there are many disadvantages as well. Seed round pretty much has to be done in SV as Canadian investors are notoriously cheap and horrible [1]. So you get your seed money in SV and then work for cheap in Canada.<p>The downside is that not having "close" communication with your investors may impact follow-on financing, though that remains to be seen. Also, for certain types of companies being surrounded by a bunch of other startups can be very useful.<p>No matter what, if you're going to be in the tech industry it's usually a good thing to have some contacts and relationships in the valley. If you're a first time founder then doing everything from Canada is going to be difficult. If you've been around the block a few times, then the downsides aren't so bad, and the upsides are major.<p>[1] Unconfirmed, but I heard a stat recently that BDC takes controlling interest in 75% of their pre-Series A deals.

Other than the Dragon's Den show that makes a mockery of early stage entrepreneurs, or "cockroaches" as one panelist likes to refer to them, Canada has failed miserably to participate in the tech scene.<p>From a recent report by the Conference Board of Canada titled "Canada Fails to Put its Money Where its Ideas are—and it Shows in Poor Innovation Grade":<p>"Ottawa, April 4, 2013—Canada ranks second-to-last among its peers in venture capital investment and business R&#38;D spending, according to The Conference Board of Canada’s ranking of innovation among the world’s leading economies. And the rest of the report card doesn’t get much better, as Canada ranks 13th in the 16-country How Canada Performs benchmarking."<p>Google the report if you have any dillusions about doing a startup up in Cantada

I'd love to choose Canada, but the last time I looked at the immigration 'points' system, they only want me if I have $500k+ USD worth of money to invest in the country (hah, as if I'd need to move if I did) or I'm a fluent French speaker...

It seems disingenuous for the OP to advocate Canada because of the US immigration policy when hiring non-Canadians to fill jobs usually requires a Labour Market Opinion proving that you couldn't find a Canadian to fill the job.

To those complaining about raising money as a Canadian startup. Overly simplified steps: 1. Stop whining. 2. Build something awesome. 3. Spend time on angelist angel.co 4. Spend time on hipmunk.com booking your trip 5. Be thankful you're starting your company in 2013 and not before 2009 when tax laws made it painful for foreign investment, there wasn't a frothy environment in the valley, when fundraising was actually hard, when starting up was way more expensive. 6. Watch the money roll in.

As a VC in Silicon Valley I have tremendous respect for the Valley, but I must say (having formerly lived in LA) it sometimes feels like a 1 industry town. In L.A. every and his brother "had a screenplay." "Oh man, can you read my screen play? We're looking to raise a million for this indie film." In Silicon Valley say you're a VC and my lord the way people change, from talking to you casually to looking at you like an addict and you're a bag of heroine they desperately need.<p>Startups CAN actually survive and meet early milestones without us VCs you know. In Canada I'll bet it would be refreshing to "have" to meet those early milestones without being made to feel like a failure just because you're not already "funded." "Are you funded? Yeah, by who?" "You're not funded? Oh bummer." (Person walks away.)<p>So eventually a Canadian entrepreneur may need/want to move to Silicon Valley, but I'll bet they learn alot - and find it alot more refreshing - to start out at first without the non stop "you got a screenplay? you got an agent?" equivalent I see and hear every day and every hour in Silicon Valley.<p>We VCs aren't the be all end all.<p>Happy to take any questions from entrepreneurs.

Being in Canada also means flying under the radar, which can be a good thing for long term viability of your product.<p>My company does 100x the traffic of our nearest competitor but you'll never see a TechCrunch article about us, since we're in Toronto. So there's no pressure for overnight success and you can work diligently towards making a better product instead of meeting unreasonable expectations.

If I were doing something legally challenging in any way related to copyright or privacy/security of consumers (particularly w.r.t. finance), I'd seriously consider (in no particular order) CA CH NZ HK SG various-EU.<p>Curious where Chile and Brazil fall for privacy/security stuff, including AML and general financial regulations. Costa Rica and Panama are the traditional Central American options, and there are the Caribbean or other island/tax haven options, but a lot of those are too small to have developers (and expensive), and will bend over for the US officially or unofficially, particularly if a small business is involved (without political connections); I made the mistake of doing stuff in Anguilla before.

To be clear, this is specifically aimed at telling Canadian startups to stay in Canada. YMMV.

I wonder if cheaper health care costs give Canada any kind of advantage business-wise?

Not sure if this has been picked up anywhere else in the comments, but I find the Canadian university coop system prepares students there to be entrepreneurs better than anything I've seen in a U.S. university. This requires them to work in an actual JOB. As mentioned, Waterloo grads tend to be stellar, and our best intern to date came out of UBC in a coop (thank you, David Q, for placing him with us!).<p>Why don't U.S. universities run coop programs? My school fought like hell to keep students on campus. I guess they viewed work as destroying the "art" of liberal arts...

On the main point of the article, I do agree that a lot of ideas fly higher in San Francisco than other parts of North America. I see "Highlight" as a good example of this where an app finds a lot of early adopters in a small area but it becomes harder for that kind of ubiquity to happen somewhere people aren't as fascinated by new technology like people outside of the valley are.<p>I believe that a number of communities like this end up being "geek ghettos" on account of this.

The author says he chose to start his company in Canada because, "In the Bay Area, investors, friends, and early adopters are so embracing and supportive of new ideas," and this can actually have bad consequences. It's an interesting notion. I have no startup experience, so maybe this is a dumb question, but isn't the solution just, "Take what investors, friends, and early adopters say <i>with a grain of salt"?</i>

&#62; At the end of the day, my advice to Canadian startups is to stay in Canada<p>I think this can apply to many cities outside of the silicon valley bubble.

Not to be mean, but the author looks really young.<p>Maybe I'm getting old, but I find it really hard to take advice from such young people. My personal take is that they're bypassing a lot of the experience it takes to make a well rounded business person.<p>I personally feel like a douche trying to give advice to other people, particularly people older than me.

"Why Canadian Startups Should Choose Canada over Silicon Valley."

So the moral of the story is: if you are a first timer, do it in SV. Once you make enough connections from SV, do it in Canada.

s/Canada/Portland/<p>Our visa is easier to get. :) (if you're in the US)