Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

It baffles me to no end that the Canadian government is not leaping on the startup trend. It's an observable fact that a lot of Canadian talent heads south for more money and opportunities, but no-one seems to care enough to do anything about it. Meanwhile, the US passes the JOBS act to allow even more early-stage startup funding.

I lived in and around Vancouver for two years and absolutely loved it, but my visa expired and I had to leave. These days I live in NYC and, well, I love it here too, but my visa in the US is very restrictive- I can't start my own company, for example. The US seems to have an endless, protracted debate about immigration that has next to nothing to do with economic or political reality. Canada doesn't, and has a huge opportunity to attract international entrepreneurs that want to do business in North America. But I have absolutely no immigration routes back into the country, and there's no change on the horizon. So I won't be heading over the border any time soon.

Manitoba is trying. http://www.innovatemanitoba.com/ is a government sponsored body trying to increase entrepreneurship in the province.

I was on one of their programs last year where they brought in some prominent angels and VCs, and ran a 3 day course on how to define your business and pitch it. It was an amazing time.

This year they're increasing the number of programs and trying to get banks, universities/colleges, and some industry to come on board to provide mentorship and advice to would be entrepreneurs.

Interesting, I had not heard about this program, thanks. I grew up in Brandon, where there is not much of a tech culture to be found (moved to and currently work in Calgary). Is there a tech community in Winnipeg?

Small and growing. It's a bit fractured at the moment and there are many places to focus one's attention, but that's better than the alternative of nothing at all.

I see things improving for us over the next few years.

Hadn't heard about this yet, thanks! Also good to see fellow 'peggers on here :)

Canadian in NYC on restrictive visa here. You can actually sponsor your own H1B now, but you need at least seed funding to be able to sponsor your own visa. It doesn't matter if you have users or paying customers -- you need to be able to show that you have the money to be able to pay yourself at least 50K-60K (for a developer) for 3 years.

Yeah, it's a start. But there's definitely a Catch 22 situation whereby you have to convince an investor that you're worth the extra time and uncertainty involved.

I won't deny that there's more opportunity in the US, but I'm not sure we can fault the government for that. The British Columbia Innovation Council (a Crown agency) seems to care enough to do something[1]. What would you suggest they do differently?

1. http://www.bcic.ca/programs

Well the Canadian federal and provincial governments are basically just a collective cartel in control of every regulated industry in the country. They really only exist to protect the existing monopolies and oligopolies around banks, oil, electricity, telecom, tobacco, agriculture, alcohol etc. This leaves no money or interest in sponsoring new industries, and helps encourage anti-competitive behavior to crush small companies before they can grow.

Nearly every technology company leaves Canada as soon as they can because they know the Canadian business environment is hostile to startups and small businesses. Canada wants innovators to leave their monopolies alone.

>...a collective cartel in control of every regulated industry in the country. They really only exist to protect the existing monopolies and oligopolies around banks, oil, electricity, telecom, tobacco, agriculture.

You just described almost every government in the world except in the US, you'll need to add Defense Contractors :)

This sounds an awful lot like political talking points without any substantiating evidence. Most tech startups on this site don't overlap with any of the big regulated areas you've listed. It's also the case that you do not see new startups in most of those areas in the US either.

Most startups avoid these markets for an extremely good reason, they are well protected from competition. Every company that's tried to enter the regulated Canadian markets gets shut down pretty quickly either by bankruptcy, lawsuits, or forced acquisition. It's particularly brutal here. What we have in Canada can no longer be described as capitalism. It is totalitarian corporatocracy.

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