
Toronto’s transformation to Silicon Valley North - faramarz
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/torontos-transformation-to-silicon-valley-north/article1593023/?cmpid=rss1
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OmarIsmail
As someone that's grown up in Waterloo and Toronto and also worked in SV for
about a year it's a little annoying when writers compare one city to all of
SV. SV is the corridor that runs from and includes San Fran down to San Jose.
This is quite similar to how the Toronto to London corridor is setup. Except
in Canada's case you have the 401 instead of the 101, no Caltrain equivalent,
and there's quite a bit more farmland in the middle.

Overall though the past few years has seen a huge number of new and exciting
tech companies pop in this corridor. Primarily In Toronto and Waterloo.

What'll truly make this place a force to be reckoned with is if we have two or
three more big corporate HQs. Right now it's really just RIM. The problem is
that as soon as a company starts getting pretty big they get bought out by an
American for lots of cash. That's not a problem for the people doing the
company of course, but that common path prevents a huge company growing here,
and I doubt any major Corp is going to move their hq here.

For reasons why Canadian companies are more likely to sell out than try to
make it big on their own I'd have to guess it's a combination of more
conversative attitudes and the lack of big vc financing. It's just a different
culture here. Most of the successful companies in this area are not VC
financed. We like to blame that on the VCs but I have a suspicion that the
entrepreneurs here are also less VC friendly in general.

Either way it's an exciting time to be here and this place is going to be very
different in 5-10 years. Waterloo especially.

~~~
mikeryan
Not to pick a nit but as someone who grew up in the San Francisco Bay area,

San Francisco is very tech heavy but is separate from silicon valley. I put
the Northern most edge of SV at the Oracle complex in Redwood Shores. But back
during the bubble that was too far north for some.

Also SF seems to be gaining more traction with Web 2.0 then with the 1.0 trend
so my statement may be facing a shift with companies like twitter and digg
making their homes in SF proper.

~~~
jojopotato
There are tons of tech companies that are north of that Redwood Shores
complex, virtually all the programmers I know work north of there actually.

~~~
mikeryan
I'm not actually disagreeing with you, I'm just saying that at some point
there's an edge of SV and it does not actually reach as far north as SF.

Wikipedia at least seems to agree (though of course it doesn't have an edge
instead saying "Southern Peninsula")
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley>

Also remember the term actually didn't refer to software companies originally
it referred to the semi-conductor and chip makers who pretty much stayed in
santa clara county.

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sthomps
I think we need to stop trying to coin the phrase "Silicon Valley North".
Toronto, or Ottawa, or Montreal or Vancouver can not, and never will be SV.
The infrastructure, funding and talent just isn't here. Instead, Canadians
should be proud to create new companies that aren't part of the "echo-
chamber", but are instead profitable, disruptive and innovative. We should be
trying to model NYC and the companies they are pumping out rather than trying
to be a whole other ecosystem.

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kitcar
While I value the positive press, assigning the words "Silicon Valley" to
Toronto is quite a misnomer. As a lifelong resident of Toronto / member of the
tech business community, I've watched many of our best business/tech minds get
sucked south of the border - leaving local businesses with a real lack of high
quality senior tech talent. I can't blame them - lots more opportunity down
there, and businesses in the US on the whole more welcoming to new entrants
than up here in government-sanctioned monopoly land.

At the end of the day, I think if you look at Chicago, Boston, or any other
big US city you will find an equal if not larger number of successful tech
startups.

~~~
perlpimp
Very true, payscale just doesn't match to what the offerings are south of the
border. Some say there more attraction for 'senior' talent - with
families,with reliable and free healthcare and fairly family friendly city.
That is however not what startups need. They need daring fresh talent, and
such talent requires a fertile soil to be planted on.

Just as article pointed out, Haze of Finance covers everything. That may mean
smarter, brighter people will go to finance in Toronto, or go south work on
exciting projects.

One great thing Toronto, has rest of Canada has less of, it 'lets do it'
attitude. Whats hindering it though, very canadian attitude to seek consensus.
We like to get permission, something disruptive business models do go against.

It seems there is a lot of hurdles Toronto has to overcome before making it
huge as an IT Startup Hub. I believe New York is also having some sort of
cultural issues as well in trying to grow up as the fertile place for starups.
[ Its this whole east coast thing :) ] my 2c

~~~
ojbyrne
Admittedly anecdotal, but I found for me, after taking into account higher
cost of living and higher payroll taxes in the US, the pay scales are
comparable.

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arach
Not a fan of the the use of the phrase "Silicon Valley North", but good press
for the Canadian startup scene is ... good.

One of the great points made in the article is about the pick-up mechanism:

"""“Say you’ve got three brilliant young people graduating – one from
Waterloo, one from Ryerson, one from U of T. They’re best buddies, and they
start a company – and it fails.”

When a region has a thriving ecosystem, talented workers land on their feet
instead of decamping.

“In Silicon Valley, they just pick up the pieces. Others say, ‘You’re fabulous
people, come work for us now.’ We don’t have that pick-up mechanism.” """

Toronto is getting closer to this. Montreal too. Almost there.

~~~
alex_c
I'm Toronto-based. While I was working on my first startup, I received many
more job offers than when I was salary-based. A large part of this is, of
course, that when you're working on a start-up you do a lot more networking,
by necessity.

The offers were from other startups or small companies, though... are large
companies in Toronto willing to pick up entrepreneurs? I don't know.

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mmphosis
There are signicant "Valleys" in Ottawa, Montréal, Vancouver, and in the
province of Alberta. I would speculate that the more "relatively" active
software companies since dot com have surprisingly been in Quebec. In the
past, Vancouver has been home to many gaming companies, and being in the
Pacific northwest it is close to Seattle, Redmond, with some direct influences
from Silicon Valley.

    
    
      EA - Montréal, Vancouver (Black Box & EAC), Edmonton (Bioware)
    

Toronto's "Valleys" are primarily in the outlying suburban cities: Markham /
Steeles Avenue, and Mississauga. Ottawa and Kitchener / Waterloo are fairly
distant cities from Toronto. Waterloo is home to RIM and the university:
<http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/>

    
    
      RIM - Waterloo, Mississauga, Ottawa
      Nortel  - Mississauga, Belleville, Ottawa (2)
      Oracle - Mississauga, Markham, Ottawa, Toronto - Steeles, Toronto (Numetrix)
      Microsoft - Mississauga, Ottawa, Toronto (MSN)
      IBM - Markham
      AMD - Markham
      Apple - Markham

~~~
nkassis
Lets not forget

    
    
      Ubisoft - Montreal 
      Softimage - Montreal 
      

And many more of course.

One non tech but awesome company I like is Cervelo (high tech bicycles, as
seen in the Tour de France) which started in Toronto by two students from
McGill (I'm from Montreal so gotta point that out ;p).

One thing thing that is good about Montreal is the number of talented students
from the US who come here to avoid paying expensive tuition in states like MA.
It seems that it's mostly the Biotech industry that benefits the most here.
Maybe with more investment in the region they could be persuaded to stay and
create more tech startups.

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tsmith
Having spent the last two years cutting my teeth in the Toronto tech
entrepreneur scene, I've come to experience a lot of what I call a "if it
isn't broken, don't fix it" mentality, which tends to discount visionary
thinking.

Specifically, the standard form for a Toronto tech start-up pitch is to
identify "the bleeding neck wound" that some large group of customers have
(usually enterprises - bonus points if they are a bank!), and then explain how
your solution will come in and save the day for them. This is what Weissman
refers to as a "Problem/Solution" story in "Presenting to Win".

This is all well and good, as a hammer without a nail is not much use to
anybody, but someone with an actual bleeding neck wound will tell you (if they
had the mental clarity) that they are not too concerned about tomorrow, next
week, or next year - all consciousness is wrapped up around solving the
(admittedly very important!) problem at hand.

The issue is that the scene fixates on this form of storytelling to the
exclusion of all others. I was trying to make this point to a member of the
Toronto business community the other day by rhetorically asking what bleeding
neck wound the iPad solved; the person told me with a straight face that
mobile device screens were too small and that laptops were too heavy.

The "build it and they will come" visionary thinking that brought about order-
of-magnitude improvements in the way things are done (the automobile, the
personal computer, the Internet) is simply, and sorely, lacking in Toronto.

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warwick
We could really use a strong startup city in Canada, but when your shining
example is an incubator whose only features seem to be interrupting people who
are working, I don't know that it's the best example. That might impress the
Globe and Mail's readership, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I don't think we need to focus on getting more VCs or more incubators, what we
really need is to collect all the startup-inclined geeks in one place.

~~~
paulgb
The people who run Extreme University are well connected with Toronto/SV
startups and have quite a bit of experience under their collective belts.
Extrapolating one anecdote is silly.

As I see it, the value in programs like EU is that people graduating from
places like Waterloo and UFT are less likely to take their talent with them to
join a big tech company or hedge fund (more often than not, crossing the
border to do so).

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hello_moto
Toronto, or any other cities, would you want to be in the shadow of Silicon
Valley and always follow whatever the trend is in SV? Or would you define your
own city yourself?

There are this... um... communities or group of people... in Vancouver that
tries hard to "be like Silicon Valley". At the end of the day, they only speak
about "Social this and that" (Social Media, Social Gaming, Social Education,
or just put "Social" with whatever comes along next) stuffs that has yet to be
seen if they truly offers long-term values or solved problems.

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pyre
Being away from the Toronto area for a while I don't really have my finger on
the pulse of the scene there, but I've only ever seen a couple of companies
from the Toronto (or Waterloo) area show up in the "Who's Hiring" threads. Is
it that Toronto-based start-ups rely more on networking? Or do they just not
hire many people outside of their founders?

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terra_t
Toronto has long surpassed Silicon Valley in the dark side of Internet
Marketing such as Acai Berries, Porn and Black Hat SEO.

~~~
pyre
source?

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mitjak
While we're on this would HNers mind sharing some known start-up names?
Personally I'm a regular FreshBooks user

