
AI Startups in Montreal - myth_drannon
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/best-startups-montreal
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mr_isomies
Funny enough, the national press is covering the other-side of this issue (in
French). That is, the displacement of artists & creatives:

[https://ici.radio-
canada.ca/nouvelle/1130346/305-bellechasse...](https://ici.radio-
canada.ca/nouvelle/1130346/305-bellechasse-howard-shiff-marc-seguin-david-
lafrance-ateliers-artistes)

What used to be the "creative bohemian area" of the city has been heavily
invested in by Ubisoft (first), and then by a slew of other tech startups. The
same thing happens in every city: the artists and the small community shops
are being forced out to make space for poke bowl restaurants and tiki bars
when the spaceship lands.

As a result, the local framing has become "artists vs AI". Grassroot action
will paint this influx as a bad thing. To be fair, this whole situation has
been mismanaged for decades. By private stakeholders, by the borough's mayors.
Montreal as a whole has been historically bad at using alternative scenes to
rehabilitate part of itself, then undercutting support to these alternatives
scenes & smaller communities... See Griffintown, St-Laurent/Mile-End, St-Henri

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> a slew of other tech startups. The same thing happens in every city: the
> artists and the small community shops are being forced out to make space for
> poke bowl restaurants and tiki bars when the spaceship lands.

You could say exactly the same about the Old Street / Shoreditch area of
London UK in the last 20 years. Hardly changing a word, except for "poke bowl"
and "tiki bar" \- that's just annual fashion.

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plehoux
This presentation by David Bennahum, who moved his startup from NYC to
Montreal is fascinating even for me a guy born and raised in Quebec.

He talks about personal compensation, taxes, subsidies & tax credits,
insurance, visas, etc... and it's crazy.

Others might have different take of this... still fascinating to see how far
your $ can go in Montreal VS NYC.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOnaFt4v0ek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOnaFt4v0ek)

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jypepin
I lived for ~10 years in Montreal. From high school to post college, until I
moved to SF. My family is still there, so get to go back about twice a year. I
really love Montreal, and every time I'm back I think about the possibility to
go back.

Montreal has evolved so much in the past 10-15 years it's incredible. The
culture has opened a lot (it was always full of it, but before it was mostly
internal culture), better food/coffees etc. Remove construction and winter,
and it'd be really the perfect city.

I really like things like that evolving in Montreal, because despite being a
great city, it doesn't have much great opportunities. You get stuck to a
pretty low ceiling pretty easily (at least if you stay an employee).

Montreal's salaries are so low it's almost a disgrace. Yes the city is also
cheaper, but it still doesn't compare. I made a quick analysis with a friend
recently, comparing Montreal with SF. And even if you spend half your money in
rent in SF, you'd still get out with more money, etc.

The government offers great deals on salaries to tech companies coming to
Montreal, so I'd love to see some more regulations on those salaries and
pushing to make them higher.

For a remote worker with a decent salary, going to Montreal is great tho. With
the recent immigration issues with Trump, I've heard a lot of US-based workers
moving to Vancouver or Toronto. I'd recommend greatly Montreal. You don't need
to speak French.

~~~
guessmyname
> Montreal's salaries are so low it's almost a disgrace.

> Yes the city is also cheaper, but it still doesn't compare.

I cannot highlight this enough.

I got offered $90k/year (base salary, no stock options, one bonus capped at
10%)

For a Senior Engineering position at a company with big infrastructure and
capital.

If that's an offer for a Senior Engineer, I cannot imagine what a Junior is
getting.

~~~
ilarum
90k CAD or USD?

~~~
carlmr
CAD would be pretty normal in my Montreal experience. Great city for studying,
terrible for staying.

I still miss Montreal though.

~~~
jypepin
Yeah this is too bad and a big issues. Good, cheap schools. People come study
and then realise opportunities are not that great and go work somewhere else.
Most of friends left after their studies.

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Apocryphon
Nice promo piece, anyone have anecdata about experience living in Montreal and
working in tech there? I've mostly heard about their electronic gaming scene.
Why aren't more people going to there rather than Vancouver or Toronto?

~~~
mdtusz
Montreal is an extremely easy city to live in. Very inexpensive rent, good
nightlife/events and arts/culture scene, and a pretty good transit system.

The Quebecois will disagree with me on this, but I don't think you even need
to speak French if you're working in tech - you might just have a smaller
friend circle of Anglos.

Taxes however are crazy high and salaries are low compared to cities like
Vancouver or Toronto.

Small plug - we (AON3D) are looking for c++, python, and js developers right
now. Find our careers page and send us an email if you're interested in 3d
printing and industrial machines.

~~~
jbrun
This is fairly accurate, I am in Montreal.

~~~
peterb
Except he missed one major selling point. Our food/restaurant scene is second
to none. If you consider moving here then negotiate a couple of months remote
work per year and work from Costa Rica in Jan-Feb.

~~~
woud420
That's a very important point. I moved from Montreal to NYC a couple of years
back and one thing I definitively miss is the food scene. Not that NYC is bad
by any metric but Montreal just has an amazing food scene.

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bg0
We're making our first hires in Montreal for JS Dev's if anyone is interested,
get in touch

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babuloseo
I am looking for internships here if anyone wants someone that really wants to
get into Robotics.

~~~
AYBABTME
You didn't provide any means of contacting you, and your profile also doesn't
list anything. Have an email/github?

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babuloseo
I usually just go by babuloseo everywhere. I have a reddit account you can
message me and github also, I recently started using keybase and it seems to
be pretty cool. [https://keybase.io/babuloseo](https://keybase.io/babuloseo)

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zaptheimpaler
Anyone know of companies doing technically challenging stuff that pays well in
Canada? I recently moved to Vancouver but am finding very few doing
interesting stuff besides big tech like Amazon/Google etc.

~~~
jbrun
We are in Montreal and looking for great people!
[http://nimonik.com/jobs/](http://nimonik.com/jobs/)

~~~
babuloseo
alright I applied >.<

