
Startups in Montréal - jordigh
http://builtinmtl.com/
======
toomim
I moved to Montreal last summer and spring, after years in Seattle and
Berkeley. Then I gave up and moved back to Berkeley.

Pros:

    
    
        + Bitcoin Embassy Montreal!
        + Really cheap hipster life
          + Wonderful cheap food
          + Walkable city
          + A French culture that values living, parks, & community!
        + Beautiful women, and lots of them
        + There actually is a tech scene!  Woah!
        + It's different
    

Cons:

    
    
        - Less edgy culture.  Less individual extreme boundary pushing.
          People move in largish herds of friends.
        - Racist against people who speak English.  Language racism.
        - Corrupt government
        - McGill and Concordia are nowhere near as good as
          Berkeley and Stanford, and not even UW.
    

Overall, it has a culture that supports working for a startup or doing tech
contracting work, but it lacks that revolutionary west-coast culture that I
like to live inside of to take a stab at doing something breakthrough.

And language racism really sucks! On the upside, it's a great way for a white
american male to experience being a discriminated minority.

~~~
jordigh
I find it a bit troubling that you list beautiful women as a plus of a city,
as if women were a natural resource like trees or clean water.

I also don't know what you mean about Montreal not being edgy enough. There's
plenty of counterculture in Montreal. Did you ever spend a lot of time in
Hochelaga?

The language laws have a very good historical basis. Used to be that the
bosses all spoke English and the employees all spoke French. That's the reason
for the language laws, so that nobody in Montreal cannot access local jobs due
to lack of French and that nobody is ever spoken down in English. Seeing how
the linguistic majority is French, think of it more as affirmative action than
racism. It's about levelling a historically unlevel playing field.

~~~
futuravenir
>I find it a bit troubling that you list beautiful women as a plus of a city,
as if women were a natural resource like trees or clean water.

As a Montrealer, I would say that we have beautiful people living here in
general. OP is likely heterocentric in their commentary.

>Did you ever spend a lot of time in Hochelaga?

Not much of a tech scene...but incredibly progressive/beautiful attitudes.
Also, very French. If you don't have the language, you're missing 80% of it.

I think a good bit of the incredibleness of Montreal is kept at arm's length
through the language barrier.

I grew up mostly with English friends and never spoke French. These days, I
spend a lot more time with French friends and I feel much more at home.

~~~
jordigh
> I grew up mostly with English friends and never spoke French. These days, I
> spend a lot more time with French friends and I feel much more at home.

I went through the same, actually. I "grew up" in the McGill bubble, but when
my French got better, it's like a whole other city opened up to me.

------
euphemize
Montreal is not known for its tech scene. Scrolling through this page, I can
immediately identify:

\- the "startups" that are a 1-guy team doing "disruptive-PASS-agile-SCRUM"
consulting

\- large, partially government-backed monsters where money is burnt and not
much is produced

\- the students who just built their first social photo-sharing app, wondering
why they can't find any funding

I've heard of them from others or was offered jobs there - there isn't a lot
to choose from around here. Salaries are low as the city is cheap. There are
also good companies in that list (some great ones even), but I'd say it's
pretty inflated.

I work remote for a US company with its headquarters in Europe, it's the best
arrangement possible, I'd recommend it for others (paid USD, half-day overlap
with coworkers = lots of time for quiet coding, trips to Europe often to catch
up with team).

~~~
Apocryphon
Odd that Hopper wasn't on the site. I guess that's because it's located half
in Boston.

------
musha68k
It's a great city, especially if you are sick of industry monoculture. Lots of
very well educated and open people from all around the world (lots of old-
school hippie folks too:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=montreal+tam+tams&t=iphone&iax=1&i...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=montreal+tam+tams&t=iphone&iax=1&ia=images)
:))

You might as well download
[https://www.duolingo.com](https://www.duolingo.com) and practice a bit of
French (seriously, try it - it's _fun_!) if you are too lazy for that a
"salut-hi" will usually suffice to break "the ice" :)

IMHO: NYC > MTL > SF

I do miss Montréal though! <3

------
devereaux
That's great!!

Montreal is the place to be. Open, not so expansive, with easy access to North
American market and it's easy to recruit internationally.

Only one real problem: the brain drain to the US

And I'm not talking about subsidies or taxes because that's a similar problem
everywhere.

~~~
tedmiston
I might add that the standard for both coffee and bars in Montreal is quite
high, and also priced cheaper than the midwest. Montreal is truly a hidden
gem.

~~~
branchless
ok that's enough now. ssssh.

------
bhouston
My favority is [https://www.artstation.com/](https://www.artstation.com/)

So much inspiration.

Hard to beat their Alexa.com traffic growth:

[http://alexa.com/siteinfo/artstation.com](http://alexa.com/siteinfo/artstation.com)

------
JamilD
Love seeing more prominent Canadian startups.

I'm always impressed when I speak to people from McGill too… they have a tech-
focused culture that could rival Waterloo. Miles ahead of the University of
Toronto.

~~~
Apocryphon
How does Concordia compare to McGill? Those are the two main Anglophone
universities, right?

~~~
chm
Yes. I've never followed classes at McGill but Concordia was excellent. I
mean, anywhere in the world you could be stuck with a sub-par teacher. The
facilities (chemistry) were also great. Nothing to complain about.

------
icpmacdo
Any hot tips on places to apply to for junior mobile developer positions in
Montreal? I am graduating in a month from a college in Ottawa with a diploma
in Mobile Application Design and Development and need to start gearing up to
find a job. I have experience in Objective-C iOS, Android and Cordova and am
wrapping up decently large native iOS game for a school client project.

~~~
jordigh
Gameloft? Not a startup, but they make games for mobile.

[https://www.gamesjobsdirect.com/jobs/3963024/user-
interface-...](https://www.gamesjobsdirect.com/jobs/3963024/user-interface-ui-
designer.asp)

------
the_duck
I've heard vague tales of Canadian companies receiving tax incentives to do
research, in the form of SR&ED credits. ([http://www.cra-
arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/menu-eng.html](http://www.cra-
arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/menu-eng.html))

Does anyone have any concrete experience with the program?

~~~
Khao
I'm working on one of the startups mentioned on the website (although one
that's buried way deep in the list).

What I know as a dev : My company pays an outside firm specialized in getting
R&D credits for companies. I don't really know how much it costs and how much
it brings in. Every quarter, all the devs have to sit down and do a kind of
interview with a guy from that firm. We're a pretty standard SaaS platform so
it's hard to really know what can be considered R&D from my point of view.
During the interview, we go over our work for the last quarter and dig into
areas that could potentially be considered R&D. We'll explain in details what
are the technical challenges, how what we're doing is different than what's
already available out there, if we did prototyping, research, user testing,
etc... Then they write up a nice report and try to get us as much R&D credit
as they can!

------
Apocryphon
I'm really quite surprised that Montreal lacks the same sort of rent crisis
that other cities like the Bay Area (or Vancouver and to some extent Toronto)
has. Apparently they've got a surplus of condos for some reason?

~~~
jordigh
For better or for worse, Quebec is a nation of renters. The rent laws are thus
skewed in the favour of tenants. The rental board enforces the laws very
strictly. Tenants can refuse rent increases and have many rights that are
probably keeping prices down.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9gie_du_logement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9gie_du_logement)

~~~
Apocryphon
Interesting. How come there isn't a large influx of people moving into the
city?

~~~
Khao
Montreal is still expensive compared to the suburbs. Urban sprawl and
congestion on bridges at rush hour is a big problem.

Québec is the most taxed province in all of North America too and salaries are
lower than most other places. It's all relative.

------
jonny_eh
The biggest reason I won't do a startup in Montreal again is the need to make
your product bilingual. It's a huge distraction when it's just you and one
other person trying to find product/market fit.

So many pitches ended with "we'd pay for your product, but it needs to support
French". You can guess what happened next, we wasted weeks supporting i18N,
then translating to French, only to discover people didn't want the product,
even with French support.

The rent, food, and (most) people were great though!

------
mosburger
I'd love to work remotely from Maine for a Montreal based company if I could
visit HQ once in a while. ;) I love both Montreal and Quebec City, albeit for
different reasons.

