(public).sospep.subjects ~ view article ~ Toronto-is-poised-to-become-the-next-great-producer-of-tech-startups

<h1 style="text-align: center;">Toronto is poised to become the next great producer of tech startups</h1>
<h2>[WHAT]</h2>
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<li>] by Josh Guttman&nbsp;@ techcrunch.com - Guttman provides his analysis of the Toronto startup scene and why he feels it is well on its way to becoming one of the next big tech hubs.</li>
<li>]&nbsp;Josh Guttman is a partner at SBNY, formerly Softbank Capital.</li>
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<h2>[WHY]</h2>
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<li>]&nbsp;</li>
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<h2>[WHERE]</h2>
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<li>] READ THE FULL ARTICLE</li>
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<li>]&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/12/toronto-is-poised-to-become-the-next-great-producer-of-tech-startups/" target="_blank">https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/12/toronto-is-poised-to-become-the-next-great-producer-of-tech-startups/</a></li>
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<h2>[WHEN]</h2>
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<li>] 2016-06-12</li>
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<h2>[EXAMPLE]</h2>
We made one investment there in 2015 and the experience &mdash; with the company specifically and the city generally &mdash; has been overwhelmingly positive.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s been so positive, in fact, that we&rsquo;re actively looking for more high-caliber Toronto founders to fund.
The city has all the markings of a world-class hub for technology startups and reminds me a lot of how New York City felt in the early 2000s when I moved back from the Bay Area &mdash; simmering with entrepreneurial talent, opportunity and a strong foundation to support it. I think Toronto is poised to contend as one of the biggest North American hubs for technology startup activity over the next five-10 years.&nbsp;
&nbsp;&ldquo;Toronto always had the talent, but it was historically recruited away. Today, the city is recapturing more of those people who left to work in the Valley or elsewhere, and they&rsquo;re coming back to build businesses back home.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Most people don&rsquo;t realize Toronto is the fourth-largest city in North America (only New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are larger) and produces the most engineering-focused university graduates each year. There are 150,000 full-time students enrolled in universities throughout the Greater Toronto Area, all within 90 minutes of the city center.&nbsp;
Two schools &mdash; the University of Toronto (which has a world-class technology and engineering program) and Ryerson (a dedicated technical university) &mdash; are located in the heart of downtown and boast 80,000 students between them. There&rsquo;s also nearby York University with another 65,000 students, Queens College with more than 16,000 students and, of course, the widely acclaimed University of Waterloo (which in many ways, launched the local movement), with a few thousand highly sought-after students 90 minutes west.
Both the Canadian federal government and Ontario&rsquo;s provincial government offer strong support, encouraging technology innovation in many ways. The two government bodies have set up several grants, matching contributions and financial assistance programs specifically designed to encourage and support technological development. Including ... ] SRED ] FedDev ontario, ]&nbsp;International Science and Technology Partnerships Program: ] Conservation Fund:&nbsp;
+ = Affordable Health Care
+ = Favorable Exchange rate
+ =&nbsp;As a result of &ldquo;the RIM diaspora,&rdquo; significant talent has been unleashed on the Greater Toronto ecosystem.&nbsp;
Toronto&nbsp;is already home to a number of successful venture-backed businesses, such as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shopify" target="_blank">Shopify</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kik-interactive" target="_blank">KIK</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/freshbooks#/entity" target="_blank">FreshBooks</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/500px" target="_blank">500px</a>, Assurex Health,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/influitive" target="_blank">Influitive</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wattpad" target="_blank">Wattpad</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://soapboxhq.com/" target="_blank">SoapBox</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/figure#/entity" target="_blank">Figure 1</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vidyard" target="_blank">Vidyard</a>.
There&rsquo;s also a strong network of emerging local venture capital supporting the ecosystem, firms such as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/golden-venture-partners" target="_blank">Golden Venture Partners</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omers-ventures" target="_blank">OMERS</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/georgian-partners" target="_blank">Georgian Partners</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/relay-ventures" target="_blank">Relay Ventures</a>. Finally, there are more incubators and accelerators hatching every month, including Ryerson&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/digital-media-zone" target="_blank">DMZ</a>, MaRS, Highline,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/the-next-36" target="_blank">The&nbsp;Next&nbsp;36</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/communitech" target="_blank">Communitech</a>.
There&rsquo;s also a strong community developing with lots of weekly events; the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.meetup.com/TechTorontoOrg/" target="_blank">TechTO Meetup</a>is one of the largest, with more than 11,000 members, playing a role very similar to the one the NY&nbsp;Tech&nbsp;Meetup served for New York City five-10 years ago.
+= Toronto IS the center of Canadians
The city itself exudes creativity, especially the Queen West neighborhood, which serves as the de facto center of startup activity with its abundant restaurants, cafes and flexible creative workspaces (it reminds me a lot of the east village of New York in the 1990s). The neighborhood was recognized by Vogue as having the second-best street style in the world.
&nbsp;+= Canadians are nice, multi-cultural,&nbsp;
<h2>[HOW-TO]</h2>
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<li>]</li>
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<h2>[REFERENCE]</h2>
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<li>] SRC = best-of-HN-2016-06-12, (205)<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11888431" target="_blank">comments</a>(286)</li>
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<h1 style="text-align: center;">comment mine&nbsp;</h1>
u/lcc&nbsp;
&nbsp;Not if Toronto keeps hemorrhaging talent. I graduated from the University of Toronto last year and can only name 2 of my classmates who are actually working in Toronto now. The rest are in SF, Seattle, and NYC - including many people who have family in Toronto, like me. All of my friends who were seriously working on a startup have moved it to the Bay Area.
Many of us would love to move back to Toronto 'eventually', for family reasons and because it's a great city overall, but for now the money and opportunities in the States are too good. In SF I'm making 2-3x what I'd make in Toronto and get to work on a globally-relevant system. And 80% of my social network is here now, too.
u/mabbo
Odd they didn't mention Amazon Toronto or IBM. Amazon has 300+ SDEs here (myself included), room for 800 developers in the new office that just opened. Not sure how big IBM is, but I've heard it's fairly big operation here.
It's not that Amazon is a startup itself (what, 100k+ employees worldwide doesn't count?) but that when you have a big company like that you often see people leave to make startups. Young guys spend a couple years being mentored and becoming great developers, then leave to go pursue their passions.
I have two former managers that are both very senior people in local Toronto startups, plus a number of friends who've left to hit up the start-up scene both as founders and early hires.
&nbsp;u/6gawd
I worked in the SF Bay Area for ~4 years. After wanting to re-visit life in Canada for personal reasons, I ended up in Toronto last year. With no expectations, but some sense of understanding that Toronto is Canada's best tech hub, I made a move and worked at an early stage tech consultancy. A lot of smart and talented people from local schools (e.g. Waterloo/UofT). But like most have mentioned, you still see a huge migration of that talent going to US-based tech hubs as the opportunities are more favourable (career-wise and financially).
After a year (and luckily meeting my significant other) we've decided to explore opportunities in the Bay Area again, and will be moving back this summer.
There really isn't anything quite like the SF scene at the moment for tech startups.
This article is great in championing what the city can aspire to, but there is a lot of room left to become a contender.
Can't wait to see what Toronto's tech scene will evolve to in the next 5-10 years. Hopefully in time for when I want to settle down again in Canada.
u/aj0strow
I moved to Toronto from Seattle.
If you value street fashion, nightlife, music, no driving, etc then the bay area isn't very appealing. I wouldn't move back west until I'm married with kids.
I'm 22, rent a huge apt with two friends for ~$900/m each, live on the main subway line (15 min to work). I couldn't spend more than $4k/m if I tried (bought a roomba, tom ford shades, eat steak and berries).
Some toronto companies I admire:
- https://www.wealthsimple.com/ - http://www.uken.com/ - https://shoeboxapp.com/ - https://www.opencare.com/ - https://tophat.com/ - https://www.pagerduty.com/ - http://www.eventmobi.com/
u/uiri
This article is poorly fact-checked:
"Queens College" is, I'm guessing, referring to Queen's University in Kingston (since the attendance number cited also matches), which is over 150 miles away from Toronto. I'm surprised the author didn't include the 25,000 students at McMaster and the 20,000 students at the University of Guelph which are both much closer than either Waterloo or Queen's. And if the author is going to include the University of Waterloo, why not also include Wilfrid Laurier University which is also in Waterloo? It is totally nonsensical. Kitchener-Waterloo is very distinct from Toronto and its various suburbs.
The support provided by the government does not begin to make up for the lack of support provided by local angel investors/VCs. It is much easier to go through the government grant process and get funding for a startup that way than it is to get Angel or VC money in Toronto.
BlackBerry has been dying a slow death for over 4 years at this point. Whatever talent they once had has (hopefully, for their sake) long since moved on. If the author's claims of a diaspora injecting additional talent into the local startup scene are true, we should already be seeing it. I don't.
Shopify's HQ is in Ottawa. They are sucking up a lot of the local CS talent in Ottawa since they are a big fish in a small pond. They aren't going to move their HQ ~200 miles to Toronto any time soon, even if it means avoiding -40 degree winters.
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