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Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

lcc 10y ago
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.
- arez 10y ago
  do you get a green card easier as a canadian than people from europe for example? I'm from germany and know many people who would like to work in the states, but it's really a big problem to get the green card. It takes companies much effort and money to get you in the states for more than 3 months.
  - oniTony 10y ago
    Canadians get access to TN class work visa. It's meant for temporary work, but gives a few years to figure out a more permanent approach.
    - clessg 10y ago
      What would a more permanent approach be? Marriage?
      - coke12 10y ago
        H-1B, O-1, L-1, and perhaps more.
        clessg 10y ago
        I thought the H-1B was a temporary visa?
        hoddez 10y ago
        I am not an immigration lawyer, but this is my understanding: The H-1B is similar to the TN but each have their pros / cons: TN is much cheaper (~$50 + lawyer fees) and there is no cap / application deadline. You apply at the border so there is also virtually no waiting time assuming you get it. The downside of the TN is that it is a "temporary" permit. Technically it's not actually a visa. It simply allows you to work and live in the US for a "temporary" amount of time. The temporary part is very gray in this case, since it is up to the discretion of the border guard to determine if you are using it in a temporary sense. Similar to the H-1B it can last for up to 3 years, and can be renewed after that. The other big difference is that dual-intent is not allowed on the TN permit. In other words, you are not supposed to apply for a green card while you are on it. The H-1B is dual intent and therefore that's what you want if you want to get a greencard. A pretty typical path for Canadians who start working in the US and decide to stay is TN -> H-1B -> Green Card. However, it is not easier for Canadians to get an H-1B. They must participate in the lottery like everybody else.
        potatolicious 10y ago
        One correction: > "In other words, you are not supposed to apply for a green card while you are on it." You can actually do this, it's very painful but it's not rare. The gotcha is that the moment you leave the country your TN is kaput, so you're effectively trapped in the USA until the green card process is complete.
        ctrl_freak 10y ago
        > The gotcha is that the moment you leave the country your TN is kaput, so you're effectively trapped in the USA until the green card process is complete. Not quite true. Once you've filed for adjustment of status (which you can only do once your priority date is current), you can also file an I-131 for advanced parole, and after receiving this, you can leave and re-enter the US with it. Technically you're not on a TN anymore though.
      - cylinder 10y ago
        Work in overseas branch as a manager. Get moved to US on L1 visa. Apply for employment based green card, takes about a year.
        086421357909764 10y ago
        Isn't this how a lot of the big firms are using Their European offices? I've met a lot of people in the valley that worked in places like Zurich, or London for their first year with the company before moving to CA.
      - serge2k 10y ago
        Companies will sponsor a green card on a TN, it is just riskier since it's not a dual intent visa. You can also apply for H-1B and if you get that then you can just switch to it then apply for a green card.
    - Roritharr 10y ago
      Would that be the same for Germans?
      - hoddez 10y ago
        No sorry, the TN is only available to Canadians and Mexicans. It's based on NAFTA. https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/employment/nafta.html https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/employment/nafta.h...
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    You have to immigrate like all the other immigrants, but since you are German, the permanent resident quota is barely used for your nationality. The USA creates a quota system for green cards and then splits them up on a nationality basis. India, China and the Philippines have a long lineup for visas. The USA creates a quota/lineup system on a per country basis. You have 3 basic options: 1. Work at a European office for a year, transfer on an L visa, apply for a green card once your in the USA. 2. Apply for an H1-B around march/april, see if you made the lottery, get your visa in october, apply for a green card once your in the usa. 3. Work at a European office for X years, apply for a green card outside of the USA, starting immediately while your working there, wait until you get a green card, move to the USA. It took about a 1 year to 1.5 years for a former coworker to do it this way. O-1 & E visas are too special case to think about for the most part. And there is always getting married to a US citizen.
    - lewisl9029 10y ago
      #3 is an interesting option that I hadn't heard of until now. Would this option be available to remote workers? Or is it reserved only for those working with companies that have a physical office in their country as well as the US?
      - mahyarm 10y ago
        Actually you don't have to be working for the company at all for #3. I think he wasn't working for the company until his green card came through. Basically it's like applying for a green card normally, except your out of the country and you get the visa with "consular processing". I'm not sure if you can work remotely for the company or not while the green card process is happening. I think most employers don't want to do it although because your not working for them while it's processing. With a dual intent visa you can work for the company while the green card is processing and your in the US office. This outlines it: http://www.path2usa.com/employment-based-green-card http://www.path2usa.com/employment-based-green-card *Note: I know technically employers apply for you, not you yourself independently. It's just easier to write it that way.
    - chrisper 10y ago
  - hackerboos 10y ago
    TN visas aren't dual purpose so when it comes to staying permanently Canadians are on the backlog with the rest of the world.
- lewisl9029 10y ago
  Waterloo grad here. Seeing pretty much the same thing. Really not difficult to imagine why Canadian tech companies have mostly stopped being competitive on the global stage, considering most of the talent they have access to at these pitiful salaries are essentially left-overs. Unfortunately, I honestly don't see how the situation can improve. It's a classic tragedy of the commons situation. Companies act in self-interest by paying as low as they possibly can, with no regards for the damage being done to the Canadian talent pool, and have little incentive to do otherwise until most of their peers do the same.
  - 086421357909764 10y ago
    Interestingly this is almost the same commentary for every "next silicon valley" city we read about here. I think sometimes people are trying to cash in on the ideal before it's even been formed. Why is everyone so rushed to be the next SV anyway? Why not be the best Toronto, or whatever city of focus that happens to support entrepreneurship through whatever programs. I feel like being a next SV town is sort of like how every un-employed person I know is the CEO of a startup : / .
    - lewisl9029 10y ago
      > Interestingly this is almost the same commentary for every "next silicon valley" city we read about here. That may be true, but you have to realize even the other "next silicon valley" contenders in the US can easily offer more than double the salary to developers compared to Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto is not even playing in the same league in that aspect.
      - 086421357909764 10y ago
        :*(
      - cmrdporcupine 10y ago
        Even worse than the salary is the attitude at Toronto area startups. Elitist "you-should-feel-so-lucky-you're-at-a-startup-now-work-for-peanuts"... Leaving the Toronto ad-tech startup I was at to work (remote) for a NYC ad-tech startup (well, recent startup and growing) was the best thing that ever happened to me. Got lucky to work for the best founders and senior management I have ever had in my career.
- adomanico 10y ago
  Hit the nail on the head. Until Toronto can match the competitive salaries in the Bay Area I will be working in the US.
  - treve 10y ago
    Kind of surprised that this seems to be the sentiment. I rather live in a place where I make less, but the wealth is better distributed. To me a high standard of living is not just a good salary, but also good living conditions of those around me. If Toronto is to be the next Bay Area, and I have to walk over the homeless to get to work, I'm out of here.
    - aianus 10y ago
      > To me a high standard of living is not just a good salary, but also good living conditions of those around me. To most it's the opposite. Wealth is relative so I'd rather live in a 3rd world country making $50k than SF making $150k.
      - rpgmaker 10y ago
        I doubt anyone can make you leave the States or Canada to work on a third world country for that paltry amount of money.
      - rayiner 10y ago
        Have you ever lived in a third world country? I lived in Bangladesh until I was 5. Homeless people in SF is one thing. But children begging in the street. Fuck, I don't have the stomach for that.
        aianus 10y ago
        Yes, I lived in Vietnam (where the median salary is $150-$200 a month) for 6 months on ~$20,000. It was loads of fun and I enjoyed a lifestyle equivalent to earning at least $250k back in SF. Hotel room in the city center, maid service, bar night every night, motorcycle, valet parking everywhere, restaurants 3x a day, etc. > But children begging in the street. Fuck, I don't have the stomach for that There appeared to be a lot less of that level of poverty in Saigon than in SF, but maybe that's because poor people don't live in the city like they do in the US. In any case, my presence there surely wasn't making anyone poorer so I don't feel bad about it.
- rattray 10y ago
  Do you think there'll be opportunities to start terrific technology companies in Toronto ~5-10 years down the line, when "everyone moves back"? Especially if they pay better?
  - lcc 10y ago
    There's always the opportunity. You could start a terrific technology company in Toronto (and stay there) right now, but you'd be an outlier. That said, I think it'll only take a few high-visibility 'anchor' companies to seed the city and start pulling people back in. And that could very reasonably happen in the next 5-10 years.
- querulous 10y ago
  toronto salaries would shock most american developers. a startup i interviewed at starts entry level developers at $42k and senior developers were making $70k. i was told my ask of $125k cdn was double what they would consider paying me
  - ReactForAll 10y ago
    I am not sure what startups you are applying for, number one rule in Toronto is 1. never use a recruiter because they take 20-10K of your salary, or the companies hiring budget. 2. Apply to startups that are doing well. I am making 120K cad, at a startup. I am a senior tl in training though.
  - nasalgoat 10y ago
    Yeah, anything over $100K CDN is basically impossible in Toronto - anyone that good is already working down south.
- jkoudys 10y ago
  I recently had to make that same decision myself, and chose Toronto. The salaries on the jobs I was interviewing for (not to mention perks) were astronomically high. I'd considered just going to work for 3 years, saving as much as I could, then coming back to Canada. I the end, I worried that I would never come back in spite of my early intentions. Toronto's a great city, and I'm quite comfortable with my compensation, but I don't begrudge anyone who moves for the chance to be instantly wealthy.
- err4nt 10y ago
  You forget that as you move out, talent moves in as well! I collaborate with a bunch of super-talented creative people here and all of us are new to the city. Just because Toronto-born people leave doesn't mean Toronto has a talent shortage :D
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  - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
    It depends on how long they can resist the suction that is the Bay Area.
- edwinnathaniel 10y ago
  Is the ratio of compensation really 2-3x? One datapoint: Senior Dev (say Level 1 Senior) base pay is $100k. So are you saying SF will pay this person at least $200k?
  - cnfjti3 10y ago
    Yes, seniors usually get more than 250k at established companies. Provided you can make it in as a senior.
  - lcc 10y ago
    Yes. Junior dev base pay in SF is 100k. I know junior devs here making 130k. Add RSUs, factor in the exchange rate... the multiplier is easily 2-3x.
- hackerboos 10y ago
  Could be worse. Salaries in London, UK are even lower than Toronto.
  - reledi 10y ago
    Doesn't feel like it for me.
    - hackerboos 10y ago
      It was anecdotal but I think once you factor in rent it's definitely lower. Average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in centre of Toronto is £750. In London it's twice that and probably not in the centre. Plus tenants pay the taxes on property in the UK. Taxes are also higher in the UK than Canada. Travel cards in Toronto are fixed at £75 a month. In London you pay for your zone which starts at £124.50 going above £300+ for Zone 9. No doubt it's a better network but Toronto's flat rate system is better on your wallet.
fingerprinter 10y ago
I moved to Victoria, BC from the states. There is zero chance anything in Canada can compete with SF for quite some time until a few things change. I actually get asked this question quite a bit being here. I have many long and drawn out thoughts having lived in SF and now Victoria, but I'll try to condense them. First, if any place in Canada will start a tech boom, it isn't Toronto. It's not Vancouver. It's Victoria. Why? Victoria is close to SF, where the VC money is. The life and cost of living in Victoria is dramatically better than either Toronto (high cost, terrible weather) or Vancouver (high cost). And tech is already one of the bigger industries in Victoria. Victoria has the added bonus of already having a vibrant start-up scene, albeit mostly local and under 20 people and on the very young side. Second, even with the above, Victoria (which I consider the most likely, so that means even less for other cities) is highly unlikely to get any major traction for a few reasons. 1. Canada is very conservative with money. Canadian banks, angels and VCs are all pretty conservative. They are not like SF VCs and do not want to make 10 bets to get one win. Canadian startups typically have to bootstrap well beyond what any in the states would ever have to do. Sometimes this is ok, but for the most part it shows that Canadian startup scene doesn't quite understand risk and reward well. And, the majority of VCs are still out east in Canada, though they are even worse in this regard because they simply don't get the modern internet. In Toronto the tech industry was telephony and devices and it seems that most of the VCs are so old school they still think this way. Canadian VCs need to modernize their thinking quickly. 2. SF VCs are not forward thinkers. At all. SF VCs continually say to Canadian companies "you need to move to SF", which of course in 2016 is complete and utter bullshit. Most VCs are actually not inventive or progressive. Instead, they are followers of a few stronger VCs. And by a few, I mean a tiny minority. Being followers, they have playbooks and patterns they follow. It's basically scripts. SF based VCs want to invest in SF based companies. This is a 1990s model that doesn't matter in 2016 and, much like Canadian VCs, SF VCs need to update their thinking and look beyond this. They might not feel they have to because there are so many people willing to live and work in SF, but SF based VCs, the progressive ones, look for good ideas and good teams. Location is not important. SF based VCs should adapt to the brave new world and expand from a single geo. 3. Salaries. Canadian salaries in tech are low. So low that many that live close to the states and are young would simply move to the states. Now, this sometimes works out, sometimes it doesn't. It works in places like Toronto and Vancouver when the cost of living is awful (worse than SF when you factor in housing with salary, IMO). It doesn't work when it's places like Victoria (at the moment). This could actually change if salaries go up, ironically, though it's unlikely for quite some time. 4. Cargo Culture. Most techies in Victoria view SF as the mecca of tech. I mean, it is, but not the way they idolize it. Smart and stupid have no geo lock and many in Victoria/Canada have a bit of a complex when SF comes up. Canadians need to stop looking at SF for inspiration and instead build the local community up, make it a vibrant scene of their own and own it all. Forget what SF is doing. Don't chase trends and build things of value.
mabbo 10y ago
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.
- gabbo 10y ago
  How is the pay at Amazon Toronto and what are the projects like? I work in tech (not Amazon) and live in Seattle, and given the reputation I don't think I'd really want to work for them in this city given the other options we have here. But if they paid top-notch salary and had great work, I'd seriously consider it as an option when moving back to Toronto. The employment options seem quite limited and I have a hard time justifying a move home if I end up working on less interesting technology and make less than half of what I do here. I'm afraid of my only options moving home being a massive pay cut, boring work, a terrible commute, and being priced out of real estate anywhere appealing in the city. :( RE: IBM, if I recall most/all of their engineering is in Markham, they don't treat their employees particularly well, and the pay is so-so (though maybe market rates given Toronto).
  - stan_rogers 10y ago
    It's not in Markham. It's on the other side of Steeles, over 50 feet away from Markham ;-)
  - flamedoge 10y ago
    yea.. Toronto is just not competitive at all compared to other "scenes"
  - mabbo 10y ago
    Re: pay- It's less than in Seattle, it's "competitive" for Toronto (ie: few companies pay this much, but then few companies need to here). Never heard of anyone leaving for better money unless they were headed for Seattle or the Bay. Re: projects- there's lots going on in Toronto. Depends what you're interested in. Toronto: housing is overpriced. Just a fact of the city. No one under 30 is ever going to own a house in the city, but there's lots of decent condos going up. Find a place on the subway or Go lines and your commute is pretty painless. And the Amazon office is 200m from Union station, don't need to go outside. That was nice in the winter.
6gawd 10y ago
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.
DeBraid 10y ago
Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo are both healthy, vibrant startup hubs, but are distinct regions IMO. They are 120km apart and it takes ~90min to drive from Communitech to MARS https://goo.gl/maps/vRJqc7JsNcp https://goo.gl/maps/vRJqc7JsNcp. Both positively influence each other, compete for resources. Waterloo has some more affordable suburban housing, and less vibrant city/'downtown'. Toronto is more expensive, is bigger and better in many respects. Vancouver and Montreal are also decent startup ecosystems. I've been writing a researching Canadian cities/startup ecosystems for a book. Lots of stats and resources here if you're really into this topic: https://github.com/DeBraid/ham-innov-essay https://github.com/DeBraid/ham-innov-essay
- emilyfm 10y ago
  There's also Victoria BC. A smaller city, but that makes the tech and startup scene more important locally: by some measures, tech is now the biggest "industry" in the area, beating tourism. Plus, it's got the best weather in Canada.
tzakrajs 10y ago
Lol
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clutchski 10y ago
"Toronto is already home to a number of successful venture-backed businesses, such as Shopify, KIK, ..." Fact check time. Shopify's headquarters is in Ottawa. Kik is in Waterloo.
- api 10y ago
  It's really too bad I Waterloo us not in Toronto. It would be like Stanford being the heart of SV or MIT being in Boston.
- shazow 10y ago
  While we're at it, a bunch of YC companies are headquartered or have an office there like Appcanary, Upverter, PagerDuty. Big tech companies have offices there too, like Mozilla and Google (mostly sales in Toronto for now, eng in Waterloo). Lots of small bootstrapped tech startups, consultancies, and agencies, too—like the famous Teehan+Lax agency that got bought by Facebook. This is just from the top of my head, I'd love to see a more comprehensive list.
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- kenrose 10y ago
  Don't know about KIK, but Shopify has a large development office in Toronto near King and Spadina.
  - wahnfrieden 10y ago
    Kik requires devs to be in Waterloo.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Shopify is also in Montreal
locacorten 10y ago
20 bucks says it won't.
- deleted 10y ago
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- coredog64 10y ago
  20 USD or 20 CAD?
johan_larson 10y ago
The main complaint I have heard from Toronto entrepreneurs is the difficulty of raising capital. You pretty much have to get on a plane to raise a series A, apparently.
- tomnewton 10y ago
  and you have to do that once... big deal.
justinlaing 10y ago
Who is going to move to Toronto to join the tech scene? If given the choice who is going to choose Toronto over Bay Area or Seattle? Without it having a massive draw it won't even register compared to Bay Area or even Seattle.
- shazow 10y ago
  After being in the Bay Area for the past 7 years, I'm moving back to Toronto next week. Can't wait.
  - hughes 10y ago
    Congrats! What convinced you to go back?
    - shazow 10y ago
      I loved living in Toronto, it's a great city. Like any city, it has its problems, but it feels like a healthy city. There's good transit, it's reasonably affordable[0], there is great diversity, there is tech but there is also everything else. Living around SF, the problems don't feel like they're being treated, but rather covered up with more and more money. It feels dysfunctional on too many levels (many of these problems are not at the municipal level). At this point, I can't afford to live anywhere near the SF core (and I'm not sure I'd want to if I could) while maintaining the lifestyle that is important to me. Living on the outskirts has taken a big toll on my happiness over the years, and it's a good time for us to move for a multitude of other reasons of varying importance (political, cultural, financial, social, etc). I hope Toronto becomes an even more important player in tech, but it's in a great position even as it is. [0] People constantly debate that Toronto is overpriced because prices keep going up, but it's still very cheap compared to most other cities in the world of similar calibre.
- simonbarker87 10y ago
  Visa's a way more friendly and straight forward for Canada than the US. We'd love to move to the US but life's too short for the visa process, my wife and I are both PhDs, electrical engineers (4 years automotive and 5 start up experience) and I genuinely can't see a sensible route in to the US, Canada looks pretty straight forward though.
X86BSD 10y ago
I thought that was supposed to be Austin? Silicone valley of the prairie or something.
- namenotrequired 10y ago
  This kind of thing is said all the time of different places :)
  - cbHXBY1D 10y ago
    I still haven't seen any of the places that are described as being the "next Silicon Valley" actually become a huge tech hub organically.
- dghughes 10y ago
  >Silicone valley San Fernando?
- kodablah 10y ago
  This term is actually already in use by others including DFW https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Prairie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Prairie
robertelder 10y ago
Waterloo has been investing heavily in improving their public transit infrastructure in recent years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_rapid_transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_rapid_transit http://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/projectinformation/transithub.asp http://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/projectinformatio... Once it is completed, I think this will make Waterloo and Toronto feel a lot closer together. Note that the 'transit hub' mentioned above is a 2 minute walk from communitech (https://www.communitech.ca/ https://www.communitech.ca/), Google, Shopify, D2L etc.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  Those are local projects (Waterloo/Kitchener/Cambridge), right? Are they actually planning on improving the very slow and intermittent rail connection to Toronto?
  - robertelder 10y ago
    Yes, these are local projects, but with the amount of chaos they're creating with construction, I'm willing to believe that once it's finished they'll make much more frequent trips to Toronto. I believe there would be demand for it as the King/Victoria area is changing rapidly. Google just took over a building that was an old derelict factory with broken windows 2 years ago. This building is within feet of the proposed transit station. Lots of new apartment buildings going up in the area. The communitech hub has also been getting much more busy in the last few years.
    - eggsmediumrare 10y ago
      Communitech is about to get a lot busier too... They've expanded into the old Google space and there are potential tenants going on tours through it every 10 minutes.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      OK, so they might have a few more frequent trips, but the train itself still takes an hour and a half. And even if you assume this horrendous construction makes traveling within the KW region magically fast, you're still talking a 1 hour 45 minutes commute, each way. I think Toronto will still be pretty far away.
stuxnet79 10y ago
Eeh ... as a Torontonian developer I don't buy it. Most of the good graduates we have move to Bay Area or Seattle. If you want your career to progress meaningfully you pretty much have to move to the states. Maybe this might change in the future but the story on the ground is very different. Also nitpick - we are the fourth most populous city in North America, and only Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles have a larger population. As of mid last year, Toronto contains more people than Chicago.
- throwwit 10y ago
  In Toronto, I'd tend to say the main tent-pole companies of the scene are clique financed, and know the ins and outs of subsidies. There is quite a bit of skill in the area; but the climate of risk aversion leads to depending on countless hackathons to substitute for any true R&D. Nice city, though tough to find a job.
- amscanne 10y ago
  > Also nitpick - we are the fourth most populous city in North America, and only Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles have a larger population. As of mid last year, Toronto contains more people than Chicago. Ugh, this is a pet peeve of mine. The city limits are drawn in such a way that Toronto _technically_ edges out Chicago. Torontonians seem to feel this is a meaningful point of pride. Get real. The metro Toronto area is 7 million people. The metro Chicago area is nearly 10 million.
  - stuxnet79 10y ago
    Toronto downtown absorbed North York, Etobicoke and Scarborough in the late 90s. It is not until last year that our population edged out Chicago, so whatever the reason for the amalgamation it definitely wasn't because we wanted to beat Chicago out in a pissing contest. However, you want to interpret the data, the truth is that the article writer did not do their homework.
    - amscanne 10y ago
      Yes, the author committed another pet peeve of mine: omitting Mexico City from the list of largest cities in North America. Particularly stupid, given that it is the largest!
dcwca 10y ago
I agree with the article, it really does feel like something special is happening in the city. I work at TWG, a software dev agency in Toronto and we've worked closely with many of these startups and are pretty well connected to the startup culture. Happy to answer any questions you might have about our local scene!
cheez 10y ago
Bullshit.
sotojuan 10y ago
Depends on the salaries they offer, doesn't it?
- adaml_623 10y ago
  I don't know how to upvote this subject enough. All these places wanting to compete with Silicon Valley do not compete on the salary they are willing to pay software development. London has this problem. I'm sure anthropologists could study it and say it has something to do with where software engineers sit in the pack hierarchy in each community. Whatever it impacts the ability of businesses to execute.
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redtrackker 10y ago
Waterloo is far better then Toronto in terms of startups and tech talent. Toronto is riding our coat tails :) Worth mentioning that Waterloo has the world's largest startup incubator/accelerator (physical space wise) via Velocity.
- alexc05 10y ago
  and Sudbury has the world's largest nickel... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Nickel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Nickel It doesn't really follow that they're going to be more successful because of it. World's largest is a bit irrelevant in this case.
matt_wulfeck 10y ago
Ultimately if Toronto wants to be the best they will pay the best (adjusted for cost of living). They're best bet is that the bay cost of living becomes so unbearable that they can be competitive in take-home dollars. As it is, the money for developers is in the bay by a huge margin.
- alexc05 10y ago
  Yeah, the pay here in Toronto is much lower, even when you account for cost of living vs. San Fran. One consideration that offsets that is medical insurance. If your health care is not fully covered by your employer. I ran some numbers once and the "rent difference" was roughly $3k (typical 1 - 2 bedroom apartment at $4k vs. The roughly $1k I spend) and the platinum medical looking like roughly $500/mo Add in a car, ($0 in Toronto, $1000 in The bay w/ parking, insurance, gas & the vehicle) All said and done, $55k appears to make the cost of living difference "break-even" If I'm on roughly $100k in Toronto, $155k would be even. Now that doesn't adjust for exchange rate, so you might get ~20% play there. Maybe the $135k median I've read about is roughly on target in terms of total food cost, etc...) I think there'd be some cachet to having a "big five" employer on your resume, so a year or two in one of the mega-shops would add value to future earnings if you started looking elsewhere, or a handful of other unicorn-class names might have a similar impact. All in all, I'm not convinced that taking a San Fran gig would necessarily feel like streets paved with gold and scooping up baskets of money (which grows on trees), so much as it'd be a nice, sunny, ultra-nerdy town in the heart of movin' & shakin' Incidentally, if anyone would like to disabuse me of any errors in my napkin math, I would welcome it. I'd love to get a more realistic idea of the difference.
  - shurcooL 10y ago
    > Add in a car, ($0 in Toronto, $1000 in The bay w/ parking, insurance, gas & the vehicle) My observation is that's great to not have a car in SF, I prefer not to. But it's impossible not to have a car in Toronto. Why is it $0 in Toronto?
    - raverbashing 10y ago
psycr 10y ago
So this article is about people like me. I went to school in Toronto and stayed. In the > 5 years since: - I joined a seed stage startup - That startup raised a series A ($N millions in total financing) - Was then acquired by a Fortune 500 company, which has kept the business as a separate unit for > 1 year - I was a party to the deal :) I have found salaries to be competitive when total cost of living adjustments are made (even despite the currency value). Importantly, the labour market here values skills over credentials - so there's a distinct pragmatism in the air. So as far as startups go - not the publicly traded and pre-series-G-mega-SF-corps - I think there's a vibrant opportunity and reality.
faramarz 10y ago
My money is on Canada! Look, our culture, the geo-political environment, the general tolerance level of an average Canadian, all of these play a factor and when given a choice, people would easily Canada as their home base. This is where you want to start a family and grow your kids. The tech scene has always been miniature compared to SF or NYC, but the high caliber of talent and expertise is the same if not greater than those cities. The more reports like this come out, I believe the more of the current Canadian Diaspora living and working in the US will be swayed to move back here, bringing their talent, their money and their valley connections with them. This country is already winning with it's social policies and adopting multiculturalism, anything else is really icing on the cake. The tech sector picking up is icing on the cake. Choosing to live here is a no-brainer for anyone given the choice.
- jklinger410 10y ago
  Too bad it's so cold.
  - faramarz 10y ago
    No colder than Chicago or New York, and on most days, it's no hotter or colder than the Bay Area. really.
    - rrdharan 10y ago
      I strongly disagree. I grew up in Toronto. Moved to New Jersey at 17, San Francisco at 21 and NYC four years ago at age 32. Toronto's weather is definitely the worst of the four, no question.
      - James001 10y ago
        Those places must have great weather, because Toronto is mostly sun and climate is moderated by the lake
        antoniuschan99 10y ago
anthony_barker 10y ago
Canada has lost engineering talent to the US for 149 years... In the old days (pre WW2) you just hopped in a car and moved down. Well over a 1 million Canadian born people live in the states including about 70,000 illegals.. That said there are about 200,000 immigrants coming to Canada per year many who have stem backgrounds. Quebec has an open immigration policy for French programmers moving to Quebec. And for all those of you comparing salaries - low salaries are generally good for startups.. WEF ranks canada 4 in the world for human talent http://reports.weforum.org/human-capital-report-2015/report-highlights/ http://reports.weforum.org/human-capital-report-2015/report-...
deleted 10y ago
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serge2k 10y ago
That's gonna be quite a feat with absurd real estate prices, a weak dollar, and lower salaries than the US even before you take into account the weak dollar.
uiri 10y ago
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.
- kogepathic 10y ago
  > even if it means avoiding -40 degree winters. Oh come on, winter in Ottawa isn't that bad. I can't recall many days that were below -30 when I was living there. Although I hear Toronto barely has snow in the winter time, must be heaven not to have to shovel your driveway.
  - halostatue 10y ago
    Oh, come on. I had to shovel my driveway at least twice this past winter. (I was able to bike to work throughout most of the winter, even if some of the rides were abbreviated because I can use the GO train as well.)
- markeroon 10y ago
  It mentions Waterloo because it's one of the best EE/CS schools in the world.
jacquesm 10y ago
If only. The draw of SV on young Canadian talent is just too large. Some of the smartest people I know hail from that region and most of them ended up working in SV. Sad, but it's not happening unless Canada will find a way to balance out the enormous difference in pay between working in Toronto (or any other major Canadian city) versus the Valley.
- increment_i 10y ago
  Would have to agree there. The salaries in Toronto are far, far lower than a comparable on the US West Coast. If you can get a public sector job at a university though, you might be laughing. Although, public sector jobs will suck the creativity right out of your veins like a vampire..
ZainManji 10y ago
Toronto is indeed up and coming like every major city, as tech continues to become more essential and dominant. My company, Fiix (www.fiix.io), is an example of a company based out of Toronto, that actually just got backed by YC. Ideally we'd love to stay in Toronto, but the valley continually entices us and a lot of startups to eventually transition there because of their abundance of top talent. The main reason we are in Toronto is because our current market consists of only Torontonians. As we look to expand our services, staying in Toronto might become very difficult. I think once Toronto has a huge surplus of tech talent, then it will be very interesting... Maybe a first mover advantage works in the valley's favor here ;)
RUBwkVjwLsDKgPw 10y ago
I bet $500 USD it doesn't become bigger than the bay area in the next 10 years.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Good. The last thing needed here is a town full of jackasses creating the next unicorns.
gozur88 10y ago
I can't count the number of times I've seen the "[INSERT CITY NAME HERE] is poised to become the new Silicon Valley!" headline.
nathanvanfleet 10y ago
California is really unliveable if Toronto is able to keep and capture talent now. Honestly it has to be really bad living in Silicon Valley at this point.
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  Isn't Toronto very similar to NY, except with worse traffic?
Apocryphon 10y ago
I think if any city/region wants to be a future Silicon Valley (given the rents, why would you?), first focus on being the next Seattle/Austin/Portland. You can't beat NY in terms of having access to capital, but then NY (and LA) is its own world with its own dominant industry, so I'm not sure if it's comparable as to SAP in terms of "the next SV" talk. But you can do what those three cities have and have access to affordable (if increasing) housing, good business environments, and the standard of living that would draw in potential tech folks. Maybe I should replace Portland with Boulder, in which case it'd be SAB. (Or with Denver but that's just SAD.)
- lifeisstillgood 10y ago
  Boulder Austin Denver Atlanta Seattle Salt-Lake? Really stretching my US geography to get anything close to a decent acronym
  - Apocryphon 10y ago
    I think Boulder/Denver should be regarded as one market. SLC is definitely hot for tech, but is it for startups? Atlanta I'm not too sure of.
    - lifeisstillgood 10y ago
      I was just aiming for BADASS I am afraid. Salt lake only came to mind thanks to salt stack. Atlanta - well, as I said, limited geo knowledge. Ironic really
      - Apocryphon 10y ago
        Swap Boston in for Boulder, and you've got your acronym.
467568985476 10y ago
I'd love to see some comments on what it's like raising money in Toronto. Is there a local investor ecosystem? Do companies raise a series A led by a Toronto firm? Do they fly to NYC or SF and hope to find investors who don't want them to move?
cmrdporcupine 10y ago
I almost spat my glass of wine out my nose when I read "Delightfully efficient transport" The GTA has some of the worst sprawl and traffic problems in North America, and its transit system has been neglected since the 80s and the politicians are only starting to get their heads out of their asses on this in the last few years.
- overcast 10y ago
  Seriously, the 401 is horrific. I've spent a great deal of time in all of the major Canadian cities(offices), and the traffic situation is the same. I don't know what the deal is with Canada, but they REALLY need to clean up their transit.
  - guyzero 10y ago
    The Bay Area has no place to criticize anyplace else for bad transit infrastructure. Toronto's infrastructure has issues, but it beats most US cities.
    - cmrdporcupine 10y ago
      Not sure I agree. Having spent plenty of time in the Bay Area for work I'd say that yes it's "transit" infrastructure is garbage on account of it being suburban sprawl. But Toronto's highway network is worse, and in reality the bulk of tech employment in Toronto is out in the suburban sprawl of Markham, etc. where the transit system does you no good. There are more jobs now downtown than there was 10 years ago for sure, with companies like Amazon having moving in there. But the transit system itself has fallen on hard times. Taking the King streetcar is a disaster, the subway is highly unpleasant at peak hours, and in any case housing is unaffordable in the downtown core so many transit trips are an hour long. The system has aged. The Eglinton Crosstown will make a huge difference for sure. Would have helped me a lot as I lived in one of the last affordable neighbouroods in Toronto (Oakwood & Vaughan). But my employment has moved to Waterloo, and I'm living rural now, and the quality of life is much better for me :-) I hope Toronto can get its infrastructure issues sorted. But I don't think it compares well to the Bay Area. Or to NYC.
baybal2 10y ago
Doing an employee transfer to Canada is like playing a lotterey. My past employers had documents returned to them 4 times in a row for: 1. assumed type (s vs z); 2. unclear signature; 3. ESDC called them, but they missed the call; 4. person's passport was about to expire. The regulations never mentioned anything about this.
rmason 10y ago
They mention KIK as a Toronto company. Isn't KIK in Waterloo ninety miles away? That is a pretty elastic definition of greater Toronto isn't it?
- robbbbbbbbb 10y ago
  Yep Kik is in Waterloo, and Waterloo is actually 70 miles away. I've lived in both cities and I have never heard anyone refer to Waterloo being in the GTA. They are both very distinct cities, and even on good days it takes about 90 minutes to drive between them, and it is even worse during rush hour.
fatdog 10y ago
Seconded on risk aversion. Toronto is just not sexy. When you go to pitch a client in a top tier city and you are from one, the client assumes that if you can survive in SF/NY/DC/LON etc, that they should hear you out. In Toronto, it's like you can't type 'hello world," without some cringeworthy reporter going on about how it's by a sparky _canadian_ startup taking on the big bad world with their local blend of quirky charm and _moxie_. I'm sure that's warm and fuzzy to people who live on grant money, but to the rest of the world it means "derivative and subsidized." Toronto is a good place for dev shops, but innovation needs to be in places where it is valued by people who actually pay for it. If you are doing enterprise dev, it's great. But nobody here is going to Mars, except maybe a scrappy group of girl engineers who take no guff, and are writing codes with a critical take on whether colonizing other planets is problematic in the face of our own colonial history and need for healing and reparations...
- minikites 10y ago
  I'm not sure what happened in that last paragraph, can you elaborate?
  - fatdog 10y ago
    What precisely could benefit from clarification?
    - pyre 10y ago
      You're obviously referring to something very specific, while being vague enough that people that are not 'in' on it don't understand.
ygmelnikova 10y ago
Telecommuting out of a Vancouver suburb for years now. $1,000 (USD) days are the norm. I don't care what city your startup is in. We'll take the task, and get it done.
gregoreous 10y ago
Toronto actually recently passed Chicago in population.
overcast 10y ago
Toronto can't even handle getting the current population on time to work. Their highway congestion is horrendous. I can't imagine it transitioning to a major tech startup center.
nanoojaboo 10y ago
If you look at the jobs listings on the website of SBNY (the author of this TechCrunch article works for SBNY), you'll notice that there are no jobs listed in Toronto...The job listings are for companies SBNY invested in. SEems like the Toronto investments are doing really well (sarcasm)
kinj28 10y ago
About 6 months back - we and five other startups were invited by federal government with a pitch that operate in canada & win North American market. They toured us to almost every happening startup place in the city of Toronto, Montreal and Waterloo. Only thing that we couldn't do because of our tight schedule was meet the talent and figure out for ourselves.
tn13 10y ago
How many times have we heard that City X has poised to become "next tech capital" ? Austin, San Antonio, London and which not. Building a specialization is far more complex. It might seem unrelated but I think the SF's historical openness for all sort of "weird" people have played a big role in its emergence as Tech capital. It would take years for nay city to beat it.
ianpenney 10y ago
The deafening silence of polite Canadians up in here. I love it in Toronto. YC:HN has taught me a lot so I hope you allow me to share the reasons why Toronto is a phenomenal city in which to be a Hacker. I've been a sysadmin for 16 years. My experience, is that Toronto is extremely liberal and militantly tolerant. A bigoted insult upon someone on public transit or in the streets will not go without being criticized by the public. Even if you cast it in french. We are proud of welcoming and integrating people. https://nulogy.com/who-we-are/careers/ https://nulogy.com/who-we-are/careers/ - Here are my company's core values. I think they're uniquely Canadian, in a way. Empathy is pretty much #1. Our HQ is downtown. I've never been happier and further from burnout as the ops manager at this gig. Check out our local music scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IWZWo6IByM#t=53m44s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IWZWo6IByM#t=53m44s techno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPZvNqNFaU8#t=50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPZvNqNFaU8#t=50s hip hop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uev2J_cBHjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uev2J_cBHjQ rock Lots of people want to live here, evident by rising rents :(. The OP highlights an up and coming tech sector. Kitchener-Waterloo (KW)... Yeah... The University of Waterloo has a great funnel system for cooperative intern students in Ontario. They put a lot of effort towards a kind of Mittelstand model. I'm nonplussed. Better self taught hackers are drawn to the urban core after failing out of post secondary. RIM was a thing, once. Now it's a joke. I heard someone throw shade about RIM's big brother nature the other day. I've coded puppet & chef for over 200+ startups. Startups are huge here and the culture is very social and enjoyable! Meetups are big! I regularly run into other new hackers in unrelated social settings. It's fun that way. Uber is big. Dispensaries are big. Nightclubs are great. You can get food of any origin. Cycling is huge here. Incorporating cycling into your transportation means living downtown is affordable, if you plan. OH! Speaking of incorporating, in a business sense, it's trivial. You can do it in 30 minutes at city hall. Toronto, in my experience, has been the most exciting, happy and loving city to call home. I'm truly in love with this city. It's safe, fun and full of opportunity. I love walking down the street and hearing eighteen different languages in one hour. I love seeing any world famous artists who would drop by Canada. Anybody who's seriously interested in the Toronto scene should drop by http://techmasters.chat/ http://techmasters.chat/ and talk to us. The tech scene is on fire here! It's so exciting! ...and very welcoming!
FollowSteph3 10y ago
The article mentions government grants, does anyone know of a small software shop that has been able to get one? We looked into it at one point and its next to impossible. Our advisor told us we had to modify the product in weird ways to maybe get a grant some years later. In other words getting a grant was nice for the media outlets to report but in reality impossible for a small startup...
aj0strow 10y ago
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/ https://www.wealthsimple.com/ - http://www.uken.com/ http://www.uken.com/ - https://shoeboxapp.com/ https://shoeboxapp.com/ - https://www.opencare.com/ https://www.opencare.com/ - https://tophat.com/ https://tophat.com/ - https://www.pagerduty.com/ https://www.pagerduty.com/ - http://www.eventmobi.com/ http://www.eventmobi.com/

lcc 10y ago

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.

arez 10y ago
do you get a green card easier as a canadian than people from europe for example? I'm from germany and know many people who would like to work in the states, but it's really a big problem to get the green card. It takes companies much effort and money to get you in the states for more than 3 months.
- oniTony 10y ago
  Canadians get access to TN class work visa. It's meant for temporary work, but gives a few years to figure out a more permanent approach.
  - clessg 10y ago
    What would a more permanent approach be? Marriage?
    - coke12 10y ago
      H-1B, O-1, L-1, and perhaps more.
      - clessg 10y ago
        I thought the H-1B was a temporary visa?
        hoddez 10y ago
        I am not an immigration lawyer, but this is my understanding: The H-1B is similar to the TN but each have their pros / cons: TN is much cheaper (~$50 + lawyer fees) and there is no cap / application deadline. You apply at the border so there is also virtually no waiting time assuming you get it. The downside of the TN is that it is a "temporary" permit. Technically it's not actually a visa. It simply allows you to work and live in the US for a "temporary" amount of time. The temporary part is very gray in this case, since it is up to the discretion of the border guard to determine if you are using it in a temporary sense. Similar to the H-1B it can last for up to 3 years, and can be renewed after that. The other big difference is that dual-intent is not allowed on the TN permit. In other words, you are not supposed to apply for a green card while you are on it. The H-1B is dual intent and therefore that's what you want if you want to get a greencard. A pretty typical path for Canadians who start working in the US and decide to stay is TN -> H-1B -> Green Card. However, it is not easier for Canadians to get an H-1B. They must participate in the lottery like everybody else.
        potatolicious 10y ago
        One correction: > "In other words, you are not supposed to apply for a green card while you are on it." You can actually do this, it's very painful but it's not rare. The gotcha is that the moment you leave the country your TN is kaput, so you're effectively trapped in the USA until the green card process is complete.
        ctrl_freak 10y ago
        > The gotcha is that the moment you leave the country your TN is kaput, so you're effectively trapped in the USA until the green card process is complete. Not quite true. Once you've filed for adjustment of status (which you can only do once your priority date is current), you can also file an I-131 for advanced parole, and after receiving this, you can leave and re-enter the US with it. Technically you're not on a TN anymore though.
    - cylinder 10y ago
      Work in overseas branch as a manager. Get moved to US on L1 visa. Apply for employment based green card, takes about a year.
      - 086421357909764 10y ago
        Isn't this how a lot of the big firms are using Their European offices? I've met a lot of people in the valley that worked in places like Zurich, or London for their first year with the company before moving to CA.
    - serge2k 10y ago
      Companies will sponsor a green card on a TN, it is just riskier since it's not a dual intent visa. You can also apply for H-1B and if you get that then you can just switch to it then apply for a green card.
  - Roritharr 10y ago
    Would that be the same for Germans?
    - hoddez 10y ago
      No sorry, the TN is only available to Canadians and Mexicans. It's based on NAFTA. https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/employment/nafta.html https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/employment/nafta.h...
- mahyarm 10y ago
  You have to immigrate like all the other immigrants, but since you are German, the permanent resident quota is barely used for your nationality. The USA creates a quota system for green cards and then splits them up on a nationality basis. India, China and the Philippines have a long lineup for visas. The USA creates a quota/lineup system on a per country basis. You have 3 basic options: 1. Work at a European office for a year, transfer on an L visa, apply for a green card once your in the USA. 2. Apply for an H1-B around march/april, see if you made the lottery, get your visa in october, apply for a green card once your in the usa. 3. Work at a European office for X years, apply for a green card outside of the USA, starting immediately while your working there, wait until you get a green card, move to the USA. It took about a 1 year to 1.5 years for a former coworker to do it this way. O-1 & E visas are too special case to think about for the most part. And there is always getting married to a US citizen.
  - lewisl9029 10y ago
    #3 is an interesting option that I hadn't heard of until now. Would this option be available to remote workers? Or is it reserved only for those working with companies that have a physical office in their country as well as the US?
    - mahyarm 10y ago
      Actually you don't have to be working for the company at all for #3. I think he wasn't working for the company until his green card came through. Basically it's like applying for a green card normally, except your out of the country and you get the visa with "consular processing". I'm not sure if you can work remotely for the company or not while the green card process is happening. I think most employers don't want to do it although because your not working for them while it's processing. With a dual intent visa you can work for the company while the green card is processing and your in the US office. This outlines it: http://www.path2usa.com/employment-based-green-card http://www.path2usa.com/employment-based-green-card *Note: I know technically employers apply for you, not you yourself independently. It's just easier to write it that way.
  - chrisper 10y ago
- hackerboos 10y ago
  TN visas aren't dual purpose so when it comes to staying permanently Canadians are on the backlog with the rest of the world.
lewisl9029 10y ago
Waterloo grad here. Seeing pretty much the same thing. Really not difficult to imagine why Canadian tech companies have mostly stopped being competitive on the global stage, considering most of the talent they have access to at these pitiful salaries are essentially left-overs. Unfortunately, I honestly don't see how the situation can improve. It's a classic tragedy of the commons situation. Companies act in self-interest by paying as low as they possibly can, with no regards for the damage being done to the Canadian talent pool, and have little incentive to do otherwise until most of their peers do the same.
- 086421357909764 10y ago
  Interestingly this is almost the same commentary for every "next silicon valley" city we read about here. I think sometimes people are trying to cash in on the ideal before it's even been formed. Why is everyone so rushed to be the next SV anyway? Why not be the best Toronto, or whatever city of focus that happens to support entrepreneurship through whatever programs. I feel like being a next SV town is sort of like how every un-employed person I know is the CEO of a startup : / .
  - lewisl9029 10y ago
    > Interestingly this is almost the same commentary for every "next silicon valley" city we read about here. That may be true, but you have to realize even the other "next silicon valley" contenders in the US can easily offer more than double the salary to developers compared to Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto is not even playing in the same league in that aspect.
    - 086421357909764 10y ago
      :*(
    - cmrdporcupine 10y ago
      Even worse than the salary is the attitude at Toronto area startups. Elitist "you-should-feel-so-lucky-you're-at-a-startup-now-work-for-peanuts"... Leaving the Toronto ad-tech startup I was at to work (remote) for a NYC ad-tech startup (well, recent startup and growing) was the best thing that ever happened to me. Got lucky to work for the best founders and senior management I have ever had in my career.
adomanico 10y ago
Hit the nail on the head. Until Toronto can match the competitive salaries in the Bay Area I will be working in the US.
- treve 10y ago
  Kind of surprised that this seems to be the sentiment. I rather live in a place where I make less, but the wealth is better distributed. To me a high standard of living is not just a good salary, but also good living conditions of those around me. If Toronto is to be the next Bay Area, and I have to walk over the homeless to get to work, I'm out of here.
  - aianus 10y ago
    > To me a high standard of living is not just a good salary, but also good living conditions of those around me. To most it's the opposite. Wealth is relative so I'd rather live in a 3rd world country making $50k than SF making $150k.
    - rpgmaker 10y ago
      I doubt anyone can make you leave the States or Canada to work on a third world country for that paltry amount of money.
    - rayiner 10y ago
      Have you ever lived in a third world country? I lived in Bangladesh until I was 5. Homeless people in SF is one thing. But children begging in the street. Fuck, I don't have the stomach for that.
      - aianus 10y ago
        Yes, I lived in Vietnam (where the median salary is $150-$200 a month) for 6 months on ~$20,000. It was loads of fun and I enjoyed a lifestyle equivalent to earning at least $250k back in SF. Hotel room in the city center, maid service, bar night every night, motorcycle, valet parking everywhere, restaurants 3x a day, etc. > But children begging in the street. Fuck, I don't have the stomach for that There appeared to be a lot less of that level of poverty in Saigon than in SF, but maybe that's because poor people don't live in the city like they do in the US. In any case, my presence there surely wasn't making anyone poorer so I don't feel bad about it.
rattray 10y ago
Do you think there'll be opportunities to start terrific technology companies in Toronto ~5-10 years down the line, when "everyone moves back"? Especially if they pay better?
- lcc 10y ago
  There's always the opportunity. You could start a terrific technology company in Toronto (and stay there) right now, but you'd be an outlier. That said, I think it'll only take a few high-visibility 'anchor' companies to seed the city and start pulling people back in. And that could very reasonably happen in the next 5-10 years.
querulous 10y ago
toronto salaries would shock most american developers. a startup i interviewed at starts entry level developers at $42k and senior developers were making $70k. i was told my ask of $125k cdn was double what they would consider paying me
- ReactForAll 10y ago
  I am not sure what startups you are applying for, number one rule in Toronto is 1. never use a recruiter because they take 20-10K of your salary, or the companies hiring budget. 2. Apply to startups that are doing well. I am making 120K cad, at a startup. I am a senior tl in training though.
- nasalgoat 10y ago
  Yeah, anything over $100K CDN is basically impossible in Toronto - anyone that good is already working down south.
jkoudys 10y ago
I recently had to make that same decision myself, and chose Toronto. The salaries on the jobs I was interviewing for (not to mention perks) were astronomically high. I'd considered just going to work for 3 years, saving as much as I could, then coming back to Canada. I the end, I worried that I would never come back in spite of my early intentions. Toronto's a great city, and I'm quite comfortable with my compensation, but I don't begrudge anyone who moves for the chance to be instantly wealthy.
err4nt 10y ago
You forget that as you move out, talent moves in as well! I collaborate with a bunch of super-talented creative people here and all of us are new to the city. Just because Toronto-born people leave doesn't mean Toronto has a talent shortage :D
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- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  It depends on how long they can resist the suction that is the Bay Area.
edwinnathaniel 10y ago
Is the ratio of compensation really 2-3x? One datapoint: Senior Dev (say Level 1 Senior) base pay is $100k. So are you saying SF will pay this person at least $200k?
- cnfjti3 10y ago
  Yes, seniors usually get more than 250k at established companies. Provided you can make it in as a senior.
- lcc 10y ago
  Yes. Junior dev base pay in SF is 100k. I know junior devs here making 130k. Add RSUs, factor in the exchange rate... the multiplier is easily 2-3x.
hackerboos 10y ago
Could be worse. Salaries in London, UK are even lower than Toronto.
- reledi 10y ago
  Doesn't feel like it for me.
  - hackerboos 10y ago
    It was anecdotal but I think once you factor in rent it's definitely lower. Average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in centre of Toronto is £750. In London it's twice that and probably not in the centre. Plus tenants pay the taxes on property in the UK. Taxes are also higher in the UK than Canada. Travel cards in Toronto are fixed at £75 a month. In London you pay for your zone which starts at £124.50 going above £300+ for Zone 9. No doubt it's a better network but Toronto's flat rate system is better on your wallet.

fingerprinter 10y ago

I moved to Victoria, BC from the states. There is zero chance anything in Canada can compete with SF for quite some time until a few things change. I actually get asked this question quite a bit being here. I have many long and drawn out thoughts having lived in SF and now Victoria, but I'll try to condense them. First, if any place in Canada will start a tech boom, it isn't Toronto. It's not Vancouver. It's Victoria. Why? Victoria is close to SF, where the VC money is. The life and cost of living in Victoria is dramatically better than either Toronto (high cost, terrible weather) or Vancouver (high cost). And tech is already one of the bigger industries in Victoria. Victoria has the added bonus of already having a vibrant start-up scene, albeit mostly local and under 20 people and on the very young side. Second, even with the above, Victoria (which I consider the most likely, so that means even less for other cities) is highly unlikely to get any major traction for a few reasons. 1. Canada is very conservative with money. Canadian banks, angels and VCs are all pretty conservative. They are not like SF VCs and do not want to make 10 bets to get one win. Canadian startups typically have to bootstrap well beyond what any in the states would ever have to do. Sometimes this is ok, but for the most part it shows that Canadian startup scene doesn't quite understand risk and reward well. And, the majority of VCs are still out east in Canada, though they are even worse in this regard because they simply don't get the modern internet. In Toronto the tech industry was telephony and devices and it seems that most of the VCs are so old school they still think this way. Canadian VCs need to modernize their thinking quickly. 2. SF VCs are not forward thinkers. At all. SF VCs continually say to Canadian companies "you need to move to SF", which of course in 2016 is complete and utter bullshit. Most VCs are actually not inventive or progressive. Instead, they are followers of a few stronger VCs. And by a few, I mean a tiny minority. Being followers, they have playbooks and patterns they follow. It's basically scripts. SF based VCs want to invest in SF based companies. This is a 1990s model that doesn't matter in 2016 and, much like Canadian VCs, SF VCs need to update their thinking and look beyond this. They might not feel they have to because there are so many people willing to live and work in SF, but SF based VCs, the progressive ones, look for good ideas and good teams. Location is not important. SF based VCs should adapt to the brave new world and expand from a single geo. 3. Salaries. Canadian salaries in tech are low. So low that many that live close to the states and are young would simply move to the states. Now, this sometimes works out, sometimes it doesn't. It works in places like Toronto and Vancouver when the cost of living is awful (worse than SF when you factor in housing with salary, IMO). It doesn't work when it's places like Victoria (at the moment). This could actually change if salaries go up, ironically, though it's unlikely for quite some time. 4. Cargo Culture. Most techies in Victoria view SF as the mecca of tech. I mean, it is, but not the way they idolize it. Smart and stupid have no geo lock and many in Victoria/Canada have a bit of a complex when SF comes up. Canadians need to stop looking at SF for inspiration and instead build the local community up, make it a vibrant scene of their own and own it all. Forget what SF is doing. Don't chase trends and build things of value.

mabbo 10y ago

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.

gabbo 10y ago
How is the pay at Amazon Toronto and what are the projects like? I work in tech (not Amazon) and live in Seattle, and given the reputation I don't think I'd really want to work for them in this city given the other options we have here. But if they paid top-notch salary and had great work, I'd seriously consider it as an option when moving back to Toronto. The employment options seem quite limited and I have a hard time justifying a move home if I end up working on less interesting technology and make less than half of what I do here. I'm afraid of my only options moving home being a massive pay cut, boring work, a terrible commute, and being priced out of real estate anywhere appealing in the city. :( RE: IBM, if I recall most/all of their engineering is in Markham, they don't treat their employees particularly well, and the pay is so-so (though maybe market rates given Toronto).
- stan_rogers 10y ago
  It's not in Markham. It's on the other side of Steeles, over 50 feet away from Markham ;-)
- flamedoge 10y ago
  yea.. Toronto is just not competitive at all compared to other "scenes"
- mabbo 10y ago
  Re: pay- It's less than in Seattle, it's "competitive" for Toronto (ie: few companies pay this much, but then few companies need to here). Never heard of anyone leaving for better money unless they were headed for Seattle or the Bay. Re: projects- there's lots going on in Toronto. Depends what you're interested in. Toronto: housing is overpriced. Just a fact of the city. No one under 30 is ever going to own a house in the city, but there's lots of decent condos going up. Find a place on the subway or Go lines and your commute is pretty painless. And the Amazon office is 200m from Union station, don't need to go outside. That was nice in the winter.

6gawd 10y ago

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.

DeBraid 10y ago

Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo are both healthy, vibrant startup hubs, but are distinct regions IMO. They are 120km apart and it takes ~90min to drive from Communitech to MARS https://goo.gl/maps/vRJqc7JsNcp https://goo.gl/maps/vRJqc7JsNcp. Both positively influence each other, compete for resources. Waterloo has some more affordable suburban housing, and less vibrant city/'downtown'. Toronto is more expensive, is bigger and better in many respects. Vancouver and Montreal are also decent startup ecosystems. I've been writing a researching Canadian cities/startup ecosystems for a book. Lots of stats and resources here if you're really into this topic: https://github.com/DeBraid/ham-innov-essay https://github.com/DeBraid/ham-innov-essay

emilyfm 10y ago
There's also Victoria BC. A smaller city, but that makes the tech and startup scene more important locally: by some measures, tech is now the biggest "industry" in the area, beating tourism. Plus, it's got the best weather in Canada.

tzakrajs 10y ago

Lol

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clutchski 10y ago

"Toronto is already home to a number of successful venture-backed businesses, such as Shopify, KIK, ..." Fact check time. Shopify's headquarters is in Ottawa. Kik is in Waterloo.

api 10y ago
It's really too bad I Waterloo us not in Toronto. It would be like Stanford being the heart of SV or MIT being in Boston.
shazow 10y ago
While we're at it, a bunch of YC companies are headquartered or have an office there like Appcanary, Upverter, PagerDuty. Big tech companies have offices there too, like Mozilla and Google (mostly sales in Toronto for now, eng in Waterloo). Lots of small bootstrapped tech startups, consultancies, and agencies, too—like the famous Teehan+Lax agency that got bought by Facebook. This is just from the top of my head, I'd love to see a more comprehensive list.
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kenrose 10y ago
Don't know about KIK, but Shopify has a large development office in Toronto near King and Spadina.
- wahnfrieden 10y ago
  Kik requires devs to be in Waterloo.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Shopify is also in Montreal

locacorten 10y ago

20 bucks says it won't.

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coredog64 10y ago
20 USD or 20 CAD?

johan_larson 10y ago

The main complaint I have heard from Toronto entrepreneurs is the difficulty of raising capital. You pretty much have to get on a plane to raise a series A, apparently.

tomnewton 10y ago
and you have to do that once... big deal.

justinlaing 10y ago

Who is going to move to Toronto to join the tech scene? If given the choice who is going to choose Toronto over Bay Area or Seattle? Without it having a massive draw it won't even register compared to Bay Area or even Seattle.

shazow 10y ago
After being in the Bay Area for the past 7 years, I'm moving back to Toronto next week. Can't wait.
- hughes 10y ago
  Congrats! What convinced you to go back?
  - shazow 10y ago
    I loved living in Toronto, it's a great city. Like any city, it has its problems, but it feels like a healthy city. There's good transit, it's reasonably affordable[0], there is great diversity, there is tech but there is also everything else. Living around SF, the problems don't feel like they're being treated, but rather covered up with more and more money. It feels dysfunctional on too many levels (many of these problems are not at the municipal level). At this point, I can't afford to live anywhere near the SF core (and I'm not sure I'd want to if I could) while maintaining the lifestyle that is important to me. Living on the outskirts has taken a big toll on my happiness over the years, and it's a good time for us to move for a multitude of other reasons of varying importance (political, cultural, financial, social, etc). I hope Toronto becomes an even more important player in tech, but it's in a great position even as it is. [0] People constantly debate that Toronto is overpriced because prices keep going up, but it's still very cheap compared to most other cities in the world of similar calibre.
simonbarker87 10y ago
Visa's a way more friendly and straight forward for Canada than the US. We'd love to move to the US but life's too short for the visa process, my wife and I are both PhDs, electrical engineers (4 years automotive and 5 start up experience) and I genuinely can't see a sensible route in to the US, Canada looks pretty straight forward though.

X86BSD 10y ago

I thought that was supposed to be Austin? Silicone valley of the prairie or something.

namenotrequired 10y ago
This kind of thing is said all the time of different places :)
- cbHXBY1D 10y ago
  I still haven't seen any of the places that are described as being the "next Silicon Valley" actually become a huge tech hub organically.
dghughes 10y ago
>Silicone valley San Fernando?
kodablah 10y ago
This term is actually already in use by others including DFW https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Prairie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Prairie

robertelder 10y ago

Waterloo has been investing heavily in improving their public transit infrastructure in recent years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_rapid_transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_rapid_transit http://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/projectinformation/transithub.asp http://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/projectinformatio... Once it is completed, I think this will make Waterloo and Toronto feel a lot closer together. Note that the 'transit hub' mentioned above is a 2 minute walk from communitech (https://www.communitech.ca/ https://www.communitech.ca/), Google, Shopify, D2L etc.

jessriedel 10y ago
Those are local projects (Waterloo/Kitchener/Cambridge), right? Are they actually planning on improving the very slow and intermittent rail connection to Toronto?
- robertelder 10y ago
  Yes, these are local projects, but with the amount of chaos they're creating with construction, I'm willing to believe that once it's finished they'll make much more frequent trips to Toronto. I believe there would be demand for it as the King/Victoria area is changing rapidly. Google just took over a building that was an old derelict factory with broken windows 2 years ago. This building is within feet of the proposed transit station. Lots of new apartment buildings going up in the area. The communitech hub has also been getting much more busy in the last few years.
  - eggsmediumrare 10y ago
    Communitech is about to get a lot busier too... They've expanded into the old Google space and there are potential tenants going on tours through it every 10 minutes.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    OK, so they might have a few more frequent trips, but the train itself still takes an hour and a half. And even if you assume this horrendous construction makes traveling within the KW region magically fast, you're still talking a 1 hour 45 minutes commute, each way. I think Toronto will still be pretty far away.

stuxnet79 10y ago

Eeh ... as a Torontonian developer I don't buy it. Most of the good graduates we have move to Bay Area or Seattle. If you want your career to progress meaningfully you pretty much have to move to the states. Maybe this might change in the future but the story on the ground is very different. Also nitpick - we are the fourth most populous city in North America, and only Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles have a larger population. As of mid last year, Toronto contains more people than Chicago.

throwwit 10y ago
In Toronto, I'd tend to say the main tent-pole companies of the scene are clique financed, and know the ins and outs of subsidies. There is quite a bit of skill in the area; but the climate of risk aversion leads to depending on countless hackathons to substitute for any true R&D. Nice city, though tough to find a job.
amscanne 10y ago
> Also nitpick - we are the fourth most populous city in North America, and only Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles have a larger population. As of mid last year, Toronto contains more people than Chicago. Ugh, this is a pet peeve of mine. The city limits are drawn in such a way that Toronto _technically_ edges out Chicago. Torontonians seem to feel this is a meaningful point of pride. Get real. The metro Toronto area is 7 million people. The metro Chicago area is nearly 10 million.
- stuxnet79 10y ago
  Toronto downtown absorbed North York, Etobicoke and Scarborough in the late 90s. It is not until last year that our population edged out Chicago, so whatever the reason for the amalgamation it definitely wasn't because we wanted to beat Chicago out in a pissing contest. However, you want to interpret the data, the truth is that the article writer did not do their homework.
  - amscanne 10y ago
    Yes, the author committed another pet peeve of mine: omitting Mexico City from the list of largest cities in North America. Particularly stupid, given that it is the largest!

dcwca 10y ago

I agree with the article, it really does feel like something special is happening in the city. I work at TWG, a software dev agency in Toronto and we've worked closely with many of these startups and are pretty well connected to the startup culture. Happy to answer any questions you might have about our local scene!

cheez 10y ago

Bullshit.

sotojuan 10y ago

Depends on the salaries they offer, doesn't it?

adaml_623 10y ago
I don't know how to upvote this subject enough. All these places wanting to compete with Silicon Valley do not compete on the salary they are willing to pay software development. London has this problem. I'm sure anthropologists could study it and say it has something to do with where software engineers sit in the pack hierarchy in each community. Whatever it impacts the ability of businesses to execute.
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redtrackker 10y ago

Waterloo is far better then Toronto in terms of startups and tech talent. Toronto is riding our coat tails :) Worth mentioning that Waterloo has the world's largest startup incubator/accelerator (physical space wise) via Velocity.

alexc05 10y ago
and Sudbury has the world's largest nickel... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Nickel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Nickel It doesn't really follow that they're going to be more successful because of it. World's largest is a bit irrelevant in this case.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago

Ultimately if Toronto wants to be the best they will pay the best (adjusted for cost of living). They're best bet is that the bay cost of living becomes so unbearable that they can be competitive in take-home dollars. As it is, the money for developers is in the bay by a huge margin.

alexc05 10y ago
Yeah, the pay here in Toronto is much lower, even when you account for cost of living vs. San Fran. One consideration that offsets that is medical insurance. If your health care is not fully covered by your employer. I ran some numbers once and the "rent difference" was roughly $3k (typical 1 - 2 bedroom apartment at $4k vs. The roughly $1k I spend) and the platinum medical looking like roughly $500/mo Add in a car, ($0 in Toronto, $1000 in The bay w/ parking, insurance, gas & the vehicle) All said and done, $55k appears to make the cost of living difference "break-even" If I'm on roughly $100k in Toronto, $155k would be even. Now that doesn't adjust for exchange rate, so you might get ~20% play there. Maybe the $135k median I've read about is roughly on target in terms of total food cost, etc...) I think there'd be some cachet to having a "big five" employer on your resume, so a year or two in one of the mega-shops would add value to future earnings if you started looking elsewhere, or a handful of other unicorn-class names might have a similar impact. All in all, I'm not convinced that taking a San Fran gig would necessarily feel like streets paved with gold and scooping up baskets of money (which grows on trees), so much as it'd be a nice, sunny, ultra-nerdy town in the heart of movin' & shakin' Incidentally, if anyone would like to disabuse me of any errors in my napkin math, I would welcome it. I'd love to get a more realistic idea of the difference.
- shurcooL 10y ago
  > Add in a car, ($0 in Toronto, $1000 in The bay w/ parking, insurance, gas & the vehicle) My observation is that's great to not have a car in SF, I prefer not to. But it's impossible not to have a car in Toronto. Why is it $0 in Toronto?
  - raverbashing 10y ago

psycr 10y ago

So this article is about people like me. I went to school in Toronto and stayed. In the > 5 years since: - I joined a seed stage startup - That startup raised a series A ($N millions in total financing) - Was then acquired by a Fortune 500 company, which has kept the business as a separate unit for > 1 year - I was a party to the deal :) I have found salaries to be competitive when total cost of living adjustments are made (even despite the currency value). Importantly, the labour market here values skills over credentials - so there's a distinct pragmatism in the air. So as far as startups go - not the publicly traded and pre-series-G-mega-SF-corps - I think there's a vibrant opportunity and reality.

faramarz 10y ago

My money is on Canada! Look, our culture, the geo-political environment, the general tolerance level of an average Canadian, all of these play a factor and when given a choice, people would easily Canada as their home base. This is where you want to start a family and grow your kids. The tech scene has always been miniature compared to SF or NYC, but the high caliber of talent and expertise is the same if not greater than those cities. The more reports like this come out, I believe the more of the current Canadian Diaspora living and working in the US will be swayed to move back here, bringing their talent, their money and their valley connections with them. This country is already winning with it's social policies and adopting multiculturalism, anything else is really icing on the cake. The tech sector picking up is icing on the cake. Choosing to live here is a no-brainer for anyone given the choice.

jklinger410 10y ago
Too bad it's so cold.
- faramarz 10y ago
  No colder than Chicago or New York, and on most days, it's no hotter or colder than the Bay Area. really.
  - rrdharan 10y ago
    I strongly disagree. I grew up in Toronto. Moved to New Jersey at 17, San Francisco at 21 and NYC four years ago at age 32. Toronto's weather is definitely the worst of the four, no question.
    - James001 10y ago
      Those places must have great weather, because Toronto is mostly sun and climate is moderated by the lake
      - antoniuschan99 10y ago

anthony_barker 10y ago

Canada has lost engineering talent to the US for 149 years... In the old days (pre WW2) you just hopped in a car and moved down. Well over a 1 million Canadian born people live in the states including about 70,000 illegals.. That said there are about 200,000 immigrants coming to Canada per year many who have stem backgrounds. Quebec has an open immigration policy for French programmers moving to Quebec. And for all those of you comparing salaries - low salaries are generally good for startups.. WEF ranks canada 4 in the world for human talent http://reports.weforum.org/human-capital-report-2015/report-highlights/ http://reports.weforum.org/human-capital-report-2015/report-...

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serge2k 10y ago

That's gonna be quite a feat with absurd real estate prices, a weak dollar, and lower salaries than the US even before you take into account the weak dollar.

uiri 10y ago

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.

kogepathic 10y ago
> even if it means avoiding -40 degree winters. Oh come on, winter in Ottawa isn't that bad. I can't recall many days that were below -30 when I was living there. Although I hear Toronto barely has snow in the winter time, must be heaven not to have to shovel your driveway.
- halostatue 10y ago
  Oh, come on. I had to shovel my driveway at least twice this past winter. (I was able to bike to work throughout most of the winter, even if some of the rides were abbreviated because I can use the GO train as well.)
markeroon 10y ago
It mentions Waterloo because it's one of the best EE/CS schools in the world.

jacquesm 10y ago

If only. The draw of SV on young Canadian talent is just too large. Some of the smartest people I know hail from that region and most of them ended up working in SV. Sad, but it's not happening unless Canada will find a way to balance out the enormous difference in pay between working in Toronto (or any other major Canadian city) versus the Valley.

increment_i 10y ago
Would have to agree there. The salaries in Toronto are far, far lower than a comparable on the US West Coast. If you can get a public sector job at a university though, you might be laughing. Although, public sector jobs will suck the creativity right out of your veins like a vampire..

ZainManji 10y ago

Toronto is indeed up and coming like every major city, as tech continues to become more essential and dominant. My company, Fiix (www.fiix.io), is an example of a company based out of Toronto, that actually just got backed by YC. Ideally we'd love to stay in Toronto, but the valley continually entices us and a lot of startups to eventually transition there because of their abundance of top talent. The main reason we are in Toronto is because our current market consists of only Torontonians. As we look to expand our services, staying in Toronto might become very difficult. I think once Toronto has a huge surplus of tech talent, then it will be very interesting... Maybe a first mover advantage works in the valley's favor here ;)

RUBwkVjwLsDKgPw 10y ago

I bet $500 USD it doesn't become bigger than the bay area in the next 10 years.

astrodust 10y ago
Good. The last thing needed here is a town full of jackasses creating the next unicorns.

gozur88 10y ago

I can't count the number of times I've seen the "[INSERT CITY NAME HERE] is poised to become the new Silicon Valley!" headline.

nathanvanfleet 10y ago

California is really unliveable if Toronto is able to keep and capture talent now. Honestly it has to be really bad living in Silicon Valley at this point.

Apocryphon 10y ago
Isn't Toronto very similar to NY, except with worse traffic?

Apocryphon 10y ago

I think if any city/region wants to be a future Silicon Valley (given the rents, why would you?), first focus on being the next Seattle/Austin/Portland. You can't beat NY in terms of having access to capital, but then NY (and LA) is its own world with its own dominant industry, so I'm not sure if it's comparable as to SAP in terms of "the next SV" talk. But you can do what those three cities have and have access to affordable (if increasing) housing, good business environments, and the standard of living that would draw in potential tech folks. Maybe I should replace Portland with Boulder, in which case it'd be SAB. (Or with Denver but that's just SAD.)

lifeisstillgood 10y ago
Boulder Austin Denver Atlanta Seattle Salt-Lake? Really stretching my US geography to get anything close to a decent acronym
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  I think Boulder/Denver should be regarded as one market. SLC is definitely hot for tech, but is it for startups? Atlanta I'm not too sure of.
  - lifeisstillgood 10y ago
    I was just aiming for BADASS I am afraid. Salt lake only came to mind thanks to salt stack. Atlanta - well, as I said, limited geo knowledge. Ironic really
    - Apocryphon 10y ago
      Swap Boston in for Boulder, and you've got your acronym.

467568985476 10y ago

I'd love to see some comments on what it's like raising money in Toronto. Is there a local investor ecosystem? Do companies raise a series A led by a Toronto firm? Do they fly to NYC or SF and hope to find investors who don't want them to move?

cmrdporcupine 10y ago

I almost spat my glass of wine out my nose when I read "Delightfully efficient transport" The GTA has some of the worst sprawl and traffic problems in North America, and its transit system has been neglected since the 80s and the politicians are only starting to get their heads out of their asses on this in the last few years.

overcast 10y ago
Seriously, the 401 is horrific. I've spent a great deal of time in all of the major Canadian cities(offices), and the traffic situation is the same. I don't know what the deal is with Canada, but they REALLY need to clean up their transit.
- guyzero 10y ago
  The Bay Area has no place to criticize anyplace else for bad transit infrastructure. Toronto's infrastructure has issues, but it beats most US cities.
  - cmrdporcupine 10y ago
    Not sure I agree. Having spent plenty of time in the Bay Area for work I'd say that yes it's "transit" infrastructure is garbage on account of it being suburban sprawl. But Toronto's highway network is worse, and in reality the bulk of tech employment in Toronto is out in the suburban sprawl of Markham, etc. where the transit system does you no good. There are more jobs now downtown than there was 10 years ago for sure, with companies like Amazon having moving in there. But the transit system itself has fallen on hard times. Taking the King streetcar is a disaster, the subway is highly unpleasant at peak hours, and in any case housing is unaffordable in the downtown core so many transit trips are an hour long. The system has aged. The Eglinton Crosstown will make a huge difference for sure. Would have helped me a lot as I lived in one of the last affordable neighbouroods in Toronto (Oakwood & Vaughan). But my employment has moved to Waterloo, and I'm living rural now, and the quality of life is much better for me :-) I hope Toronto can get its infrastructure issues sorted. But I don't think it compares well to the Bay Area. Or to NYC.

baybal2 10y ago

Doing an employee transfer to Canada is like playing a lotterey. My past employers had documents returned to them 4 times in a row for: 1. assumed type (s vs z); 2. unclear signature; 3. ESDC called them, but they missed the call; 4. person's passport was about to expire. The regulations never mentioned anything about this.

rmason 10y ago

They mention KIK as a Toronto company. Isn't KIK in Waterloo ninety miles away? That is a pretty elastic definition of greater Toronto isn't it?

robbbbbbbbb 10y ago
Yep Kik is in Waterloo, and Waterloo is actually 70 miles away. I've lived in both cities and I have never heard anyone refer to Waterloo being in the GTA. They are both very distinct cities, and even on good days it takes about 90 minutes to drive between them, and it is even worse during rush hour.

fatdog 10y ago

Seconded on risk aversion. Toronto is just not sexy. When you go to pitch a client in a top tier city and you are from one, the client assumes that if you can survive in SF/NY/DC/LON etc, that they should hear you out. In Toronto, it's like you can't type 'hello world," without some cringeworthy reporter going on about how it's by a sparky _canadian_ startup taking on the big bad world with their local blend of quirky charm and _moxie_. I'm sure that's warm and fuzzy to people who live on grant money, but to the rest of the world it means "derivative and subsidized." Toronto is a good place for dev shops, but innovation needs to be in places where it is valued by people who actually pay for it. If you are doing enterprise dev, it's great. But nobody here is going to Mars, except maybe a scrappy group of girl engineers who take no guff, and are writing codes with a critical take on whether colonizing other planets is problematic in the face of our own colonial history and need for healing and reparations...

minikites 10y ago
I'm not sure what happened in that last paragraph, can you elaborate?
- fatdog 10y ago
  What precisely could benefit from clarification?
  - pyre 10y ago
    You're obviously referring to something very specific, while being vague enough that people that are not 'in' on it don't understand.

ygmelnikova 10y ago

Telecommuting out of a Vancouver suburb for years now. $1,000 (USD) days are the norm. I don't care what city your startup is in. We'll take the task, and get it done.

gregoreous 10y ago

Toronto actually recently passed Chicago in population.

overcast 10y ago

Toronto can't even handle getting the current population on time to work. Their highway congestion is horrendous. I can't imagine it transitioning to a major tech startup center.

nanoojaboo 10y ago

If you look at the jobs listings on the website of SBNY (the author of this TechCrunch article works for SBNY), you'll notice that there are no jobs listed in Toronto...The job listings are for companies SBNY invested in. SEems like the Toronto investments are doing really well (sarcasm)

kinj28 10y ago

About 6 months back - we and five other startups were invited by federal government with a pitch that operate in canada & win North American market. They toured us to almost every happening startup place in the city of Toronto, Montreal and Waterloo. Only thing that we couldn't do because of our tight schedule was meet the talent and figure out for ourselves.

tn13 10y ago

How many times have we heard that City X has poised to become "next tech capital" ? Austin, San Antonio, London and which not. Building a specialization is far more complex. It might seem unrelated but I think the SF's historical openness for all sort of "weird" people have played a big role in its emergence as Tech capital. It would take years for nay city to beat it.

ianpenney 10y ago

The deafening silence of polite Canadians up in here. I love it in Toronto. YC:HN has taught me a lot so I hope you allow me to share the reasons why Toronto is a phenomenal city in which to be a Hacker. I've been a sysadmin for 16 years. My experience, is that Toronto is extremely liberal and militantly tolerant. A bigoted insult upon someone on public transit or in the streets will not go without being criticized by the public. Even if you cast it in french. We are proud of welcoming and integrating people. https://nulogy.com/who-we-are/careers/ https://nulogy.com/who-we-are/careers/ - Here are my company's core values. I think they're uniquely Canadian, in a way. Empathy is pretty much #1. Our HQ is downtown. I've never been happier and further from burnout as the ops manager at this gig. Check out our local music scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IWZWo6IByM#t=53m44s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IWZWo6IByM#t=53m44s techno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPZvNqNFaU8#t=50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPZvNqNFaU8#t=50s hip hop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uev2J_cBHjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uev2J_cBHjQ rock Lots of people want to live here, evident by rising rents :(. The OP highlights an up and coming tech sector. Kitchener-Waterloo (KW)... Yeah... The University of Waterloo has a great funnel system for cooperative intern students in Ontario. They put a lot of effort towards a kind of Mittelstand model. I'm nonplussed. Better self taught hackers are drawn to the urban core after failing out of post secondary. RIM was a thing, once. Now it's a joke. I heard someone throw shade about RIM's big brother nature the other day. I've coded puppet & chef for over 200+ startups. Startups are huge here and the culture is very social and enjoyable! Meetups are big! I regularly run into other new hackers in unrelated social settings. It's fun that way. Uber is big. Dispensaries are big. Nightclubs are great. You can get food of any origin. Cycling is huge here. Incorporating cycling into your transportation means living downtown is affordable, if you plan. OH! Speaking of incorporating, in a business sense, it's trivial. You can do it in 30 minutes at city hall. Toronto, in my experience, has been the most exciting, happy and loving city to call home. I'm truly in love with this city. It's safe, fun and full of opportunity. I love walking down the street and hearing eighteen different languages in one hour. I love seeing any world famous artists who would drop by Canada. Anybody who's seriously interested in the Toronto scene should drop by http://techmasters.chat/ http://techmasters.chat/ and talk to us. The tech scene is on fire here! It's so exciting! ...and very welcoming!

FollowSteph3 10y ago

The article mentions government grants, does anyone know of a small software shop that has been able to get one? We looked into it at one point and its next to impossible. Our advisor told us we had to modify the product in weird ways to maybe get a grant some years later. In other words getting a grant was nice for the media outlets to report but in reality impossible for a small startup...

aj0strow 10y ago

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/ https://www.wealthsimple.com/ - http://www.uken.com/ http://www.uken.com/ - https://shoeboxapp.com/ https://shoeboxapp.com/ - https://www.opencare.com/ https://www.opencare.com/ - https://tophat.com/ https://tophat.com/ - https://www.pagerduty.com/ https://www.pagerduty.com/ - http://www.eventmobi.com/ http://www.eventmobi.com/