
Can Montreal Become an Open Source Startup Hub? - evanprodromou
http://nextmontreal.com/can-montreal-become-an-open-source-startup-hub/
======
bravura
[disclosure: I'm a personal friend of the author of this article.]

I lived in Montreal for three years, or four winters, depending upon how you
count.

I believe that Montreal has the most important element necessary to become an
open-source startup hub, namely a lot of good talent. The language barrier
exists, but is not strong enough that it has hindered any open-source efforts
in Montreal (as far as I've seen).

The main hurdle to Montreal becoming any sort of startup hub is cultural.
IMHO, Montrealais are not very opportunistic in starting and pursuing
business.

I don't think this is Montreal-specific in any way, many cities are like this.

I think people are inspired most of all by other people they meet in their
day-to-day lives, not images on TV or in media. The current difficulty is that
Montrealais have very few positive role models around them, to show how it's
done. In SF or NYC, you could easily move in a social circle that contains a
successful business entrepreneur. "Oh, if he could do it, then I can do that
too!" But most people in Montreal don't happen to know a successful tech
entrepreneur, not even as an acquaintance in passing.

Note that I have found that Montrealais ARE very opportunistic when it comes
to _social_ entrepreneurism. Witness social events The Strip Spelling Bee
<http://stripspellingbee.blogspot.com/> (and other productions by Perpetual
Emotion Machine Productions, like Slow Dance Night), musical innovation
particularly in low-fi and DIY subgeneres, and non-profit activism like Head
and Hands.

But business ambition is regarded with skepticism at best, and is generally
considered a form of elitism and lack of social consciousness.

~~~
p90x
i don't understand the purpose of the article, or of your post. if the city
has what it takes it will happen. if it doesn't it won't. everything else is
conversation. that is how i look at it, what am i missing?

~~~
arach
I remember someone making a speech (borrowed from someone else) about "just
words". Words matter.

Conversations matter.

~~~
p90x
if you want to trade proverbs i'm give this one: "a lot of talk and no action
makes homer simpson a dull boy."

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pasbesoin
I know this will probably cost me, but Montréal brings a whole new dimension
to the question, "What language should we use?" ;-)

Seriously, though, I recall visiting during YAPC, and the after-hours
conversations slipping between English and French (and back) mid-sentence.

I really enjoyed the city, but if you want to fit in with the locals, learn
you some French (or English).

(I should add that, personally, I don't see this as a negative. My French was
pretty darned rusty, but it still made things fun. And everyone was quite cool
and easy-going about it, perhaps because I was an American (i.e. culturally
challenged ;-) ).

~~~
narcissus
It may also have been your accent. I'm Australian but have lived in Canada for
the last 5 or 6 years, so I knew of all the 'frustrations' that Anglophones
feel when trying to speak French in Quebec.

Anyway, I was in a bar one night in Montreal and asked a waitress the best
thing that I could do to improve my French. "In all honesty," she said, "you
have an accent, so you're allowed to try". Basically, if you're Canadian,
expect to have a hard time practising your French in Quebec. If you're not
Canadian, however, have at it!

Now I don't know how true it was, but I did give it a shot and didn't do _too_
badly... Oh yeah, and had an awesome time: I can't wait to find another excuse
to go back!

~~~
levesque
For my part, I know that I love it when I see English Canadians trying to
speak French - I do my best to help them practice. I could be pissed at
someone who's lived in Quebec for a loong time (5 years +) and who still
doesn't speak French, but that's about the only case.

All in all, it's only a question of motivation. If you're focused and you keep
practicing, you _will_ get better... the trick is to prevent people from
switching the conversation language (back to English) when they see you're
having a hard time.

Bonne chance :)

~~~
narcissus
That's a really good point and I appreciate you trying to help. To be honest,
the 'frustrations' that I had heard about were all second hand stories, so it
is hard for me to say that it really is a problem.

Having said that, I agree: everyone should be giving it a go. I live on PEI so
it's a bit harder, but trips to New Brunswick are great as you see the English
/ French mix there as well: I think the bilingualism is amazing.

Merci :)

------
imack
"As for talented potential employees… that’s tougher"

No kidding. What Montreal has going is pretty impressive, but Quebec has an
abnormally high personal income tax rate and the language issue is always
going to hang like a cloud over it. I know everyone in Montreal speaks
english, but the default is French and all public signs are too. While some
Canadians will put up with that because our country is founded on playing lip
service to bi-lingualism, I can see it as a massive barrier to importing
American talent in.

~~~
ianl
I'm going to be graduating soon from Dalhousie in Halifax with a BCSci, and I
would be more than willing to move to Montreal.

You won't import American talent to Montreal however, why would they come to
Canada when they can move to New York, Boston, Seattle, or the mecca of
technology in North America Silicon Valley.

This doesn't mean that Montreal won't be a technology hub, but it has to
compete with Waterloo which has a lot of draw for new graduates. I know
several of my graduating class have already secured jobs in Waterloo.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"why would they come to Canada when they can move to New York, Boston,
> Seattle, or the mecca of technology in North America Silicon Valley"_

As a Canadian working in Seattle... come here for a visit. There are a _lot_
of Canadians in all of the above places, and most of them are just itching for
a chance to go home.

Cost of living, social stratification (in a way that we really don't feel in
Canada), health care... the list goes on.

Not to mention, if you like the whole metropolitan lifestyle, the Valley
really cannot compete, nor Seattle (found that out the hard way)... and
NYC/Boston are _much_ more expensive than Toronto/Montreal.

~~~
neilc
_if you like the whole metropolitan lifestyle, the Valley really cannot
compete_

There is a ton of startup activity in SF these days, as opposed to the Valley
proper. Cost of living in SF is higher than in Toronto, but not by an enormous
amount if you want to live downtown (Montreal is cheaper though).

------
jleyank
Getting Yanks to Montreal is easy as long as (a) they are single, (b) they are
married and the spouse doesn't work and there are no school-age kids or (c)
the spouse knows French and there are no school-age kids. Getting a work visa
at the border merely takes a CV and an offer letter. School-age kids require
French schooling, and customer-facing positions require French (both of which
might be show stoppers).

It's a great place to live and work, but we fall into one of the above
categories.

~~~
gamble
My husband's company opened a (English-speaking) branch office in Montreal two
years ago. Language is definitely an issue for working spouses. It is very
difficult to find an English-only job in Montreal if you don't work in tech or
finance. Plus, the insular Anglophone community that used to make it possible
to function in Montreal without French doesn't exist anymore. You need to
learn French. Thankfully, if you're willing to put in the work, the Quebec
gov't offers ridiculously cheap intensive French lessons that can be scheduled
around a 9-5 job.

Also, if your children were originally enrolled in English, they can get into
an English-language primary school in Quebec.

~~~
jleyank
I might be wrong, but I thought that only parents from Anglo Canadian schools
can select English schools? If those from UK, US, ... can pick English
schools, that would remove a huge stumbling block.

Did some quick checking via Google, and what I found requires attending a
Canadian english school (based on law 101).

~~~
gamble
You are right that it's much more difficult for immigrants. It is possible to
send your kids to an English public school if you're on a temporary visa, but
not as a permanent resident. If you can afford tuition, an alternative is to
send them to an unsubsidized English-language private school while they learn
French.

Either way, moving to Montreal requires that the whole family makes a
commitment to learn French - kids included. It's not an effort that children
generally appreciate until they're later in life. =)

------
d0m
I don't know for Open Source project, but I often think about leaving Montreal
as it's really hard to find good co-founders and to get investments. Usually,
investors have ideas on what they would like to invest and you'd have to
forget your project and build theirs. Also, IMO, the french problem isn't a
problem since the big majority of the startup world speaks english. For
instance, if one person speaks english and 5 speaks french, the conversation
will be in english as Quebec people are way better in english than the
inverse.

~~~
evanprodromou
I totally agree that it's a hard place to have a startup. That's one of the
reasons ecosystems matter to founders (see
[http://nextmontreal.com/12-reasons-a-healthy-startup-
ecosyst...](http://nextmontreal.com/12-reasons-a-healthy-startup-ecosystem-
matters/) for my thoughts on the matter).

I think if there's critical mass, there can be a strong ecosystem here if we
specialize.

------
neilk
The premise doesn't make sense to me. Open source is a business model, not a
technology. How do you build a "hub" out of that?

I think you are arguing that familiarity with the business model is
transferable across organizations, but that seems dubious. At least so far,
there has never been a "hub" based on an investing or management talent pool.
It's always been based on the employee talent pool -- for the Bay Area,
electronics and software.

FYI, I'm a Montrealer by birth, San Franciscan by choice.

~~~
evanprodromou
Hey. I grew up in SF, moved to Montreal in 2002. So, you know, we probably
crossed around Iowa City or so.

There's a lot to unpack in your comment. Is there enough similarity between
Open Source companies that they will benefit from being near other OSS
companies? I think so, for a few reasons.

1\. Local investors will have experience with Open Source (we've seen this
here in Montreal; our big seed investor MSU has invested in 3 OSS companies).

2\. Local service providers (accountants, lawyers, consultants) are aware of
and can work with Open Source business models, licenses, etc.

3\. A pool of business talent -- people who know how to commercialize Open
Source.

4\. A pool of Open-Source-sensitive technical talent. It's hard to make Open
Source work from a technical level. Some people have the chops for it --
others don't. The ones who do a good job make it look easy; and then there's
the hundreds of thousands of 1-person projects on sourceforge.net.

I think that making a successful Open Source company is as different from
making a shrink-wrap software company as making a Web company is. It's a
sufficiently different model that you have to have a much different team to
pursue it.

------
zaatar
Perhaps. But it sure as hell won't be including any immigrant folk in it,
which is quite against the spirit of free software. Any immigrant in Montreal
who is even remotely into that sorta stuff that I personally know have moved
onto more welcoming lands such as the US (me, and some others) or
Ontario/British Columbia (several others). In my opinion, Montreal is still
very much a preferred destination for francophone immigrants from impoverished
nations who aren't functional in a non-francophone environment, but the
English speaking folk (South Asia/China/Rest of the World, if you prefer) are
usually better off elsewhere. Really pains me to say this, I gotta say ...

------
guinness
I've worked for a couple of startups in Montreal. Their biggest competitive
advantage was always that they could do things for less. This is because wages
are low and so is the cost of living.

I don't think that undercutting your competitors is a viable long term
business strategy since you end up being cheap labor. This also discourages
innovation since the focus is on copying what someone has already done and
doing it for less.

There is already a lot of talent in Montreal but if Montreal is to become an
open source startup hub, it needs to change this cheap labor mindset into one
of innovation.

~~~
arach
> it needs to change this cheap labor mindset into one of innovation. I agree
> with your point that Montreal needs to change its cheap labor mindset, but
> I'm pretty sure the innovation part is and always was very strong here.

Thankfully, Canada's currency has reached parity with the US Dollar, in part
because of Canada's stability during the clusterf*ck recession but mostly
thanks to our country's vast natural resources. The dollar parity is forcing a
lot of people to rethink the cheap labor approach, whether they like it or
not. It was not so long ago that the US dollar was 1.5 Canadian dollars, but
wages and costs were much less than 1.5x. The arbitrage opportunity was way
too easy to ignore. That's over.

------
p90x
I didn't find any use in the article. Apparently, the useful information will
be coming next week:

"Next week, I’ll give what I think is a potential plan for Montreal to take
the lead in Open Source commercialization."

I hope he isn't going to ask for government money.

~~~
evanprodromou
Why not? Don't you think local government has a stake in building the startup
ecosystem in the city?

I think there's some serious opportunity for some jurisdiction to pwn Open
Source startups with significant tax incentives for Open Source development.

What about tax incentives on salaries for developers who release code under an
OSI license? Incentives for "soft" Open Source work like community management?
Infrastructure like an accelerator space, business development aid?

Building a market helps, too. Vancouver has made it city policy to put Open
Source software on an equal footing with proprietary software.

[http://eaves.ca/2009/05/14/vancouver-enters-the-age-of-
the-o...](http://eaves.ca/2009/05/14/vancouver-enters-the-age-of-the-open-
city/)

Other governments have chosen to use OSS exclusively.

If there's not yet an established Open Source startup hub (and I think there's
not), there's an opportunity for cities around the world to claim that mantle.
And that's going to take the contributions of all stakeholders.

~~~
danielharan
Procurement is definitely an area that should be looked at. Open data too,
since it creates opportunities - it's a disgrace that we give Google transit
data but locals can't compete.

Cheap, fast internet connections: the city could engage with Ile Sans Fil.
Municipal fiber too.

The biggest challenges are not technological. On the political front, I think
we're falling far short of what we'd need to compete.

~~~
p90x
"it's a disgrace that we give Google transit data but locals can't compete"

my city and transit system offers that info to locals if they want to compete.

------
olalonde
Glad to see there are fellow Montrealers on HN. As a totally unrelated side
note, it would be nice if it was possible to create "groups" on GitHub so that
smaller communities can unite their forces on open source projects. It would
also make it easier to discover related projects.

~~~
sedachv
Check out <http://devlabmtl.org/>

I haven't been yet, but planning on going soon.

------
gamble
I'm not sure I agree with this article, but Montreal does have one thing in
it's favor when it comes to the tech industry: incredible subsidies. With the
low wages and cost of living, plus gov't handouts, it can be cheaper to hire
developers in Montreal than in Beijing.

~~~
xster
Agreed. Montreal developers do have a pretty low salary range and at up to
50%, the tax credit definitely makes a dent.

------
RobotGrrl
Interesting discussion. I make a lot of software for Arduinos for my robots
and publish it open source on my blog. I rarely get contacted from fellow
Canadians (let alone fellow Montrealers). >_>

Arduino is a super example of open source, so if Montreal were to be a "hub",
that would entail that a lot more people would be excited about Open Source
and would be downloading the code or getting in contact, right?

I find that there's not enough excitement yet. There are ways we could garner
excitement, by investing in small companies, creating open source hockey
players that can shoot the puck at the back of the net, and gaining more media
attention, harnessing power through local politics. Long-term thinking, it may
happen!

~~~
sedachv
<http://foulab.org/> is where most of the visible arduino work happens in
Montreal, although I'm sure you know about that.

I think you're overestimating the amount of interested people have in Free
Software/open source and Arduinos, though.

------
evanprodromou
I think it's interesting that people here on HN are focusing on the pros and
cons of Montreal as a city rather than the article's main point: that startup
ecosystems outside of SF and (possibly) NY need to specialize to thrive. Maybe
it's Open Source, maybe it's... I dunno... defense contracts, but in order to
get that critical network effect, you have to be the best in _something_.

~~~
neilc
Specializing in "open source" seems like a strange choice: open source is a
business model / licensing decision. I think it would make a lot more sense to
specialize in a vertical industry (e.g., biotech, hardware, robotics, etc.)

------
evanprodromou
Follow-up here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2248114>

------
windsurfer
Is anyone here looking for a _potential employee_ from Ottawa? Already a
Canadian and available for the whole summer ;)

~~~
philgo20
@matchFWD is ;-)

send resume, links to code and why you think you'd be a valuable asset for a
new startup at phil AT matchfwd.com

thxs @philgo20

------
jbrun
I live in Montreal and can attest to our growing ambitions in the startup tech
community. Great place to start a company.

